Been thinking a lot about luddism lately, in part because the social media addiction synergises so competently with the mental fatigue I was left with after my last bout of covid. and I have been thinking about things like:

• Social media as a coping mechanism for loneliness, and ultimately for the existential question, for the impermanence of every human action (screaming into the void et cetera).
• The fragility of supply chains and electronica generally (cf. RAM/SSD shortage due to spambots, Israel war oil supply issues).
• March of technofascism (ID checks, chat control, deanonymisation, “AI” everywhere, spyware is now normal, every smartphone is a 1984 spy TV, Anduril/Palantir merely smokescreens for an entire complicit sector etc.)
• The defanging of anarchism as a movement, the unbelievable erasure of Rojava and Chiapas from international discourse paralleling only the erasure of anarchist Spain in thoroughness.
• We living in interesting times, History II: A New Beginning, todo dia um novo 7×1, the surreality of fascism increasingly normalised without anybody taking on weapons, each week a new headline that would have been unthinkable two years ago.
• Reality fragmentation and narrative control through increasingly sophisticated technological means.

And what that all adds up to me is: We should keep diaries. As in, on paper.

Yes, becoming a political prisoner for your diary is a very real possibility, but IDGAF. I would much rather get arrested for doing something with a chance to help the world, than spend my time on the stage performing this rehashed trope of “complacent masses who refused to pick up guns as the nazis took power”, which is a role that's not only 20th-century-derivative but also boring, depressing, and doesn't go well with my outfits.

I've toyed with the idea of journaling in a conscript (perhaps my own Vinescript) or even a full conlang, but in the end that's a deterrent to the important thing, viz. to write. Journaling is intimidating. I type at 100wpm, if you're used to computers, moving into longhand feels painful. But one thing that I learned from #bujo, and later longhand creative writing, and then working on my thesis on paper, is that the slowness is a feature. It changes how your mind works, your relationship to language and the text; compared to typing, handwriting increases focus, attention and retention. It does, however, takes time. When I wrote my Holocaust poem in a frenzy while travelling through Berlin, I basically spent my entire time hopping from café to station bench to café writing nonstop, revision after revision, trying to capture what I experienced at Platform 17.

Then again, typing also takes all day if you account for drifting into the Internet because you have a device in your pocket. And even if you don't, if you had a e-ink typewriter or some other toy—again, your relationship with the text is just different by virtue of the slowness. A bit like you're editing and writing at the same time. I don't think I would have been able to write “Two is for Joy” if I had composed it on a keyboard.

This will be a very niche analogy but maybe some of you have had the experience of playing NES/Famicom Castlevania after getting used to SotN or other titles of the Igavania era. Suddenly everything is so sluggish. Your Belmont marches forward without the slightest haste, steps slow and imperturbable like the march of inevitability. Your whip flickers back for a beat before going forward. The Belmont commits to every jump, you can't change direction in midair, whatever you decided to do you have to face the consequences. Hordes of the undead knock you back undignifiedly, not terrible bosses but random bats flying you off-platform with the slightest brush of their wings. Used to the backdashes and fluid double jumps of an Alucard, a Soma, you feel like, wow, this game sucks. But it cannot suck. There's no way that fucking Castlevania has bad controls, Castlevania III has such high ratings, Rondo of Blood, Chronicles have such a stellar reputation. You must be not getting it. So you persevere, and then, eventually, it clicks; you realise how intentional these old games are, every screen carefully laid out like a puzzle; here's your set set of verbs, here are the enemies, how do you get through? You jump and whip a bat, and you keep the action button down; the Belmont walks backwards, with slow dignity, calmly dodging by a few pixels the hitbox of a bone thrown by the skeleton on the platform above; you move forward, then back, following the skeleton's movements, waltzing your own 8-bit danse macabre to chiptune Bach; it all fits together perfectly, like the elaborate gears of a clock tower. The Belmont is exactly as fast as they need to be.

That is how writing longhand feels like when you're used to typing.

Some time ago I was at a political conference travelling with a comrade, and a local comrade (a stranger to us) was kind enough to host us on her sofa. On the last day of the conference she wasn't at home so I decided to leave her a thank-you note, and I engaged my entire gender in it, writing a cute little one-page note with round letters and doodles and colourful pens and highlighter, the works. I wrote about how the trip went for us, because then she would know that her hospitality allowed all these experiences to be part of our personal history. This was the trip during which I had that misadventure where I forgot my bokutō at the top of a mountain at night and ended up climbing up and down twice, with just a tactical flashlight, futilely retracing my steps and failing to find the telltale iris-pattern sword bag anywhere, until I gave up and headed home and realised I had forgot Álmdrósar not at the top of the mountain as I had assumed, but rather on the sidewalk by a lamplight, after hiking down. It was down there all along.

So I wrote a summary of the entire misadventure in few sentences, a bit shorter than the one above, and my comrade read my note and said like: kinda incredible how you managed to condense the entire thing in such a small space. Because to her I had told the entire little drama, much of it by dumbphone calls as it happened, with great granularity of detail; and looking at the note I wrote, yeah, I accepted the compliment; there is an artistry to it, to sketching just the life lines that convey the energy, the feel of the subject you're portraying, with minimal hand movements. But I didn't even think of it, it just comes naturally when you're doing longhand. We had a conference to go, i couldn't sit there writing all morning. One thinks about which words to set down when it's impossible to change your jump mid-air.

That is what I think I should be doing with a paper journal. Think about what happened in the day, to me and to the world at large, and sketch the lifelines. Leave a record of what it was like to be a lesbian immigrant when the nazis came back in the 2020s and nobody took the threat seriously; and maybe my record will perform to someone in the 2120s, when nazis return again like fucking Castlevania Dracula, the same role that Weimar-era lesbian magazines did for me, viz. show that I'm not crazy, or that I'm crazy but I'm not wrong; how surreal it is, that everybody keeps going to work like nothing is happening; and this hypothetical future queer would learn, like I learned, that this entire thing is so very precedented, that we are here and have always been here, and that it's up to us, the living, to risk our necks this time. To commit to the jump.

Or maybe my diary will be destroyed by fascists, or more likely just be quietly forgotten and buried in a dumpster to rot with me. But the act of having written a diary will surely do me good in some way. At least it's not social fucking media.

But in addition to that it's also straight, like not in any particularly invasive way, just by default. And thinking about that as I read, I understood why I obsess so much about that sweet sweet rep ever since stories with lesbians in it became a thing I can access. It's not that girls kissing get me off, or that I self-insert in place of one of the girls, or that the girl being a lesbian makes her my waifu. Not dissing any of that, but what I get from it is something much more ambient-level, like a radiating warmth. Consuming 90s media, I feel like I don't matter enough to be portrayed. Looking at transfem characters whose transition is defined by their attraction to men, I feel like I don't matter enough to be talked about. Heteronormativity makes me feel like I don't exist.

Once I realised that weird depersonalisation wasn't actually a necessary side effect of reading stories, looking for stories where queerness exist became important for me.

It helps that it just feels fresh—straight monogamic romance as a perfunctory plot device does feel tired and mechanical most of the time, especially in USA cinema. But that's not the primary problem. Sometimes straight romance is actually portrayed in interesting ways. I still get that sense of alienation when the entire worldbuilding erases the existence of queerness.

The same goes for own voices. One time a long time ago a girlfriend said casually while browsing books: eh I think I have read enough about the thoughts and feelings of straight men, I filled that quota for a lifetime. There's so much more I still have to read. And at first I thought it was a bit unfair, to have someone's identity be a factor in why you choose to pass on a book or not, but with time I came to understand her point of view, the ways that the identity and experiences of the writer actually affect the creation, the reasons why relative social position matters in one's intellectual sphere. Now it's a factor for me, too.

And the person said, “if I could I'd just finance charming little European cafés for you and call it a day”. Which made me think: how much does it cost to use charming little European cafés as a workspace? Like I often joke that an overpriced latte is the price I pay for a workroom with the right type of interior décor, but if you literally treat it as that, how much are you paying for said workroom. I've heard of many writers who will book a hotel vacation to write and I think that would work for me just great too, but it's prohibitively expensive; take that as a ceiling—a bed in a 6-people room in a hostel in the off-season here goes for some 30€, you're not finding a hotel for less, so as long as I'm spending less than 30€/day I'm spending less than writers who write in hotel vacations.

One could conceivably order a single 2.5€ expresso and stay at the café all afternoon, but for nutrition and comfort, let's suppose you get a medium cappuccino or a small kettle of hōjicha etc. for ~5.5€. I doubt I could write literally every day, let's say 4×/week as an optimistic estimate. That would make the cost of my lavish WeWork indulgence come to total of ~90€/month. Round it up to 100€ to have cake or a croissant a couple times: that's not something I can afford right now, but assuming my finances improve medium term, is a 100€/mo workspace really too expensive to get done my translation of Kaneko Fumiko's complete poetical oeuvre, in a method that I know for a fact works for me?

1. Change the translation to “Fae”

As the remaster suggested with “Faeblade”, the fae are a very decent comparison to the yōma and this is a much better translation than “Mystic”. The “yō-” in “yōma” is used to translate European fae into Japanese, too. For a full argument see foonote #1 on the Asellus analysis.

2. Give the Fae inherent regeneration

The Fae are supposed to be scarily powerful, but in gameplay terms they ended up significantly weaker than human characters. Moreover, Asellus is shown regenerating from a stabbing in the opening story, and Orlouge is supposed to be uniquely scary to the other Fae and maintain power over them because he has the special power to obliterate a Fae, who are otherwise immortal. Asellus' mangled corpse coming back to life with Orlouge's blood is itself indicative of the yōma's unique regenerative power, and it's the entire premise of the scenario, and yet none of this takes any part in gameplay.

You can therefore both improve the game balance and fix a plot hole by giving them a builtin regen.

3. Give Noble Fae the ability to suck blood

The fact that only nobles (=high class Mystics) can absorb the powers of other Fae by vampirism is part of the final story (Rei did it to Orlouge, Ciato to Rastaban, and Ciato tries with Asellus), but it's not at all clear in the plot. Give Noble Fae an inherent vampire skill, but not commoners like Time Lord etc. This resurrects Shōda Miwa's concept of “the bloodsucking clan”, but a bit wider; being able to suck blood is now the definition of high-class Fae.

I propose that instead of regenerating HP (which happens automatically as per above), biting an enemy regenerates LP. This will fit in ludonarratively with the plot point of a partly-obliterated Ciato desperately trying to bite Asellus to come back to life (he's down to 1LP). It will also quietly make the class distinction especially poignant for Mesarthim—probably the most useful Fae in gameplay due to her ability to heal the rest of the party, but it costs her LP; if only she could regenerate it… It will also balance out a bit the fact that the most useful Fae are all low-class (Mesarthim, Nusakan, Time Lord), but not completely override this fact (even without LP regen, they'd still be the most useful); which fits in with the theme that low-class Fae can surpass the nobles through training and personal abilities, but also the nobles have a unique and immediately visible ability that distinguishes them.

Using this tech as Asellus locks her out of the human ending, like the other Fae abilities.

4. Asellus sealing away her Fae Absorption techs reduces max LP

You don't have to even comment on it; the screen flashes for a moment, a damage noise plays, and LP reduces by 1. The player can draw their conclusions. Putting the abilities back in restores the max LP back, but not currently filled up.

This is a nod to the concept where she would have sealed the Faeblade with a holy talisman that burns the fae, only to be forced to draw it anyway to save her girls every so often, with the result that her sword arm would be all marked by burn scars, which she'd hide with long gloves. This is too far from the finished game to reimplement (the Faeblade isn't an actual object anymore, nor is it particularly powerful), but the themes of self-harm through suppression of her Fae side come through. Seal away all the Fae abilities and you're safely on the Human path, but you can tell you're hurting her. Morever the fact that if you're indecisive and seal the ability and then bring it back, the maximum LP is restored but not filled, and you can fill it with the vampire bite (above), is beautifully complementary.

5. Fascination by a Fae works on both genders, and also monsters

This isn't just for me being gay. The original concept for the yōma says that their idea of personal attraction is based purely on beauty (=CHA) and wholly unrestrainted by gender. Moreover, for a character class defined primarily by their supernatural seductive powers, the Fascination magic is kinda useless in the game, overshadowed by just doing direct damage. Make it also work for monsters (who are genderless shapeshifters anyway) would make it much less useless, since monsters are by far the majority of enemies. But we can exclude monster forms that don't seem sentient enough to understand the concept of beauty (e.g. slimes and living weapons), as well as the undead, and of course mechs, whose programming wouldn't be affected by magic.

This is not the case for humans casting Fascination, who still can charm only the “opposite gender” as in the original game. Maybe make a few characters secretly vulnerable to the same gender instead, or to both genders or to none, which both adds representation and a fun little easter egg.

Orlouge as the Charm Lord is irresistible to women, and this power passes to Asellus; both of those things are key plot points. Therefore Orlouge should do 100% success Fascination on all female characters except Asellus and Rei (bringing women to the Orlouge battle should be dangerous); and, conversely, Asellus should have 100% Fascination rate on all female enemies. This shouldn't affect things significantly since there's so few female human/Fae enemies, it's just a little detail just to make the plot point present in game mechanics. For extra lore points, quietly make T260G count as a woman for purposes of Fascination.

6. Rei starts without Fae tech

This is a nod to the fact that, in-lore, her Fae nature comes back only slowly as she ages in each reincarnation, until she hits 25; and we find her at age 12, so her powers shouldn't be fully back yet. She should begin with no absorption tech, and with only one spell each of Mirage and Fae schools—but with the gift for both. Regaining the spells and the absorption tech fairly quickly as you grind her would solve the plot contradiction by implying that fighting alongside Asellus accelerated the process of her Faeness catching up with her.

7. Bring back White Rose's roses

I like the original concept where Princess White Rose literally grows roses out of her hair; it is kinda awful in a body horror way but also beautiful, which fits in with the theme. And the idea that she managed to independently break free of Orlouge's Blood Rose-induced sleep by assimilating the roses adds a layer of depth to her character, which generally comes off as too passive. The fact that Orlouge tolerated this is not a plot hole, since he's secretly fond of servants who stand up for themselves, and admires both Rei and Zozma on this count. In fact, it further motivates the next point…

8. Be more explicit about Orlouge's jealousy

The fact that the Dark Labyrinth is meant to separate lovers who make Orlouge jealous, and that he's jealous of White Rose falling for Asellus, is too subtle in the final game. A single line on White Rose's escape would suffice to make this point clear; for example, “the Dark Labyrinth was created to punish those who incur the Charm Lord's jealousy. [continuing with the standard text] Once inside, you can only exit by leaving behind the one you love the most…”

9. Be more explicit about Golden Lion's background and sympathies

The fact that Princess Golden Lion was not chosen by Orlouge but gifted as a bribe by her father, and Orlouge made her a Knight because he's a fuckboy who doesn't see beauty in muscular women and “this way at least she's good for something”, adds a motivation beyond pure brainwashing for her loyalty—she's trying to prove herself worthy. This would be perfect as content found out in out-of-way places (e.g. alluded to in a history book on Shrike's library).

The fact that Golden Lion secretly sympathises with Asellus' rebellion because she hopes conditions for women would be better under an Asellus regency isn't made clear either. This shouldn't be spelled out but just alluded, as well as the tragedy that without the benefit of Orlouge's blood, she's simply unable to break the Fascination regardless.

10. Clarify the lesson of the Furdo Visit

What Asellus learns from the Fae Visit quests is generally clear:

• Mesarthim: The attraction that beautiful Fae women exert on men can turn them possessive and oppressive, even though this makes the men themselves sad (Mesarthim's captor is a miniature Orlouge).
• Dr. Nusakan: Even if Asellus purifies her blood, she can't change her past; once things are mixed, they are mixed forever. Her charm over women is part of her story now, and it's a mistake to reject it.
• Nasira: Evilness does not come from inhumanity, or from gender itself. A human woman is every bit as capable of objectifying cruelty as Orlouge himself. Powerful people from different societies will unite to oppress the lower classes, as in Orlouge selling out low-class Fae to Nasira.

The lesson of the Furdo event, by comparison, is pretty unclear. Initially it seems to be about how low-class Fae can surpass even the nobles with effort and by developing their unique abilities; except of course Furdo doesn't actually do that, his petrification technique means nothing to Asellus and would mean nothing to Orlouge, either. (Arguably Time Lord is the actual proof of this points.) Even in the restored remaster, I found this side quest confusing and pointless.

I propose that this is a good point for Zozma to point out how Fae society is stagnated, oppressive, and failing at its own values. Great artists like Genmu/Asura's swordsmith are ostracised despite contributing the most precious thing, Beauty; incredibly powerful yōma like Time Lord have no respect by virtue of birth, in violation of the society's core value of Terror; and the value of Pride, of refusing submission, conflicts with Orlouge's absolute rule. Wonderful beauties like Golden Lion and Kurenai are set aside, and a hundred others locked away forever, due to the ruler's paranoia over any change to the status quo; Orlouge has made the Chateau sad and empty, rather than prettier. Furdo should have been a genius magical crafter, treasured by a society dedicated to beauty and art; instead he ends up as this sad petty villain, turned reactionary by his oppression. Zozma is already commenting on Furdo during this quest and he's also the biggest critic of Facinaturu society, so it's an opportunity for him to weave some acid remarks.

11. Make some other lore points more explicit

• Orlouge is bored of perfect obedience, and has a secret respect for those who disobey him, like Rei and Zozma (after all, “pride in refusing to submit” is a core Fae value). He himself doesn't understand that all his relationships are unfulfilling because he relies on Fascination so none can be genuine; he himself isn't aware that he's trying to groom Asellus into a successor because that would be a true relationship for once.
• Asellus was ran over after getting distracted by the beauty of an adult Rei.
• Nasira is bitter over Asellus rejecting the gift of immortality, which she worked so hard to achieve and ultimately failed.
• Rei's ability to reincarnate while keeping her memories is a unique process she developed through spirit magic.
• Rastaban sent Ciato after Asellus to get rid of an obstacle to his coup, while simultaneously waking up Asellus' royal “obliteration” ability so she has a chance of defeating Orlouge as he planned. (I think that's why he schemed to bait Ciato in her direction; it's not at all clear.)

In all cases a very brief allusion would be more than enough to suggest these themes, usually no more than a single sentence. For example, if you defeat Orlouge in the full-Fae “bad ending”, he could say some final words like “Through endless centuries, I have never known such bliss... Rule, O Charm Lady of Facinatoru! Rule, my...”, dies, cue in Evil Queen Asellus starting her regency with a genocide in an attempt to surpass Orlouge in every aspect.

12. Restore the missing endings

This is the big one and would be the hardest to actually mod into the game. It restores what the Visit subquests were meant to do, which is to affect the ending as Asellus learns more about herself.

A 5-ending system would be nice:

• Denial Ending: As in the game's Human ending, but add a brief epilogue with Gina narrating that Princess White Rose never heard from Lady Asellus again, and Gina wonders how she's doing after she left forever. This implies she has wholesale rejected every bond she made in her period with purple blood. She wants to forget ever having been a Fae and is pretending it never happened.
• Human Good Ending: Do all the Fae Visit subquests, do the Save Gina subquest, and refrain from using any Fae powers. Asellus rejects a Fae body and becomes human again, but stays friends with her Fae allies, who continue young forever. Both her and Gina marry men and age into grandma bffs. The tone is happier than the Denial ending, with only a shade of melancholy from White Rose regretting Asellus' mortality.
• Half-Fae ending: As in the game.
• Golden Ending: The equivalent of the Case Files / Crazy Journal endings, but without Fuse. The ending implied by the gatcha games. Asellus stays half-Fae, but accepts the role of rulership. She does not genocide Orlouge's “leftovers”, but rather frees all the Princesses (they of course want to stay in the court anyway, grateful to their saviour; with some comedic relief of White Rose being jealous over it—this is a nod to the Crazy Journal ending). Rastaban still fights her due to his prejudice about her decision to stay a half-Fae, but once subjugated survives in penance. Golden Lion falls bravely fighting Asellus, but Asellus does not obliterate her, so she will regenerate eventually; the process may take years, and she is last seen in her glass coffin. (This is to make her loyalty still tragic, but also respect that in Asellus half-yōma endings she's contradictorily seen with Golden Lion; the knight survived, but will miss a golden era). Queen Asellus, with White Rose by her side, begins the long process of reforming the class divisions in Fae society. Ending unlocked by doing all the Fae Visit subquests and also saving Gina, while using Fae powers.
• Tyrant Ending: As in the game.

Fig. 1: Kirikaeshi, a kendō exercise (＊写真はイメージです).

• 切り返し Kiri-kaeshi (DoubleSlash / Double Vertical): As Sevon already noted in the main article, it's a basic exercise in kendō (and a fun one, too). We don't do it just “double”, but any number of times, typically 9, 11 or 13; in the game it might be double, though.
• 巻き打ち Maki-uchi (HardSlash / Winding Strike): In “maki” techniques you twist around their shinai with a circular movement of your wrists, then strike. Done properly, it feels super weird to take this, in a way I have trouble explaining—the force vectors go to places they shouldn't, and before you know what's happening, your shinai flies to the ground dramatically.
• 諸手突き Morote-tsuki ([Two-Handed] Thrust): One of the 4 fundamental techniques of kendō. It's quite different from the thrust in Western fencing in that we don't lunge, we step onto them both feet almost as if running over them, but with a pointy thing on the way. We also have a katate-tsuki (single-handed thrust), which isn't a move on SaGa.
• 二刀十字斬 Nitō-jūji-giri ([Two-Sword] Cross Slash): Not a kendō technique but has the feel of one; we have nitō (two sword) techniques, and a cross stance (jūni-no-kamae) and a cross guard (which is in the game, jūji-dome 十字留め), but not a cross cut (an idea which feels kinda pointless to me, but in a videogame it's ok).
• かすみ青眼 Kasumi-Seigan (Kasumi/Optical Slash): As Sevon already noted, “Seigan” refers to the middle of their eyes, and in kendō to the principle of always tracking their eyes with the tip of your sword. Kasumi, “mist”, refers to an old kenjutsu stance where you keep the sword horizontally at eye level with the opponent, now uncommon in kendō (you might have seen kasumi-no-kamae in samurai media; it looks like this). It's called “mist” because the purpose of this stance is to hide the length of your blade.
• 無拍子 (NoMoment / No Rhythm): In the sense of “syncopated” or “offbeat”. This refers to taking the opponent unprepared by striking all of a sudden in between the natural rhythm of their movements (the pacing of actions like lifting the sword then striking, or measuring the distance then lifting it, etc). You match the opponent's rhythm, then purposefully break it ( 「拍子合わせて無拍子で打て」).

払車剣 I think it's specific to SaGa. As a kendō player I immediately thought of harai-waza 払い技, techniques to sweep your opponent's sword off-centre forcefully. But I never heard of kendō techniques named 車; these are famous in judō throws, like ō-guruma, kata-guruma, te-guruma etc., and while some forms of kendō have throws, none of this make sense in context—this technique doesn't disarm or stun enemies, nor throws them. Since the game description is “車輪が転がるような剣の軌跡で切り刻む”, and it hits in a cone area, it seems to be pure fantasy, and called “wheel” because the fencer is pivoting while slashing multiple opponents; and “harai” in the sense of making wide swings that sweep a large area. The description in Minstrel Song is more evocative: “素早く移動しながら逆けさの連撃で敵全てにダメージ”, so they would be chasing enemies while repeatedly drawing reversed (bottom-up) diagonals.

A cultural note about SaGa series' iconic katana combo 乱れ雪月花 (“snow, moon and flowers in profusion”) is that snow, moon and flowers is a trope in Chinese poetry about the beauty of the seasons, originally from Bái Jūyì, which was highly influential in Japan (wikipedia article).

White Rose: Look, Lady Asellus! It's the new T-shirt for Asellus' chapter! Isn't it cute? Asellus (internally): Dammit, right on her squishies… Red Turnip: Girl you look great in this! Very fresh! Asellus (internally): Red Turniiiipppp…!! (Fan comic: Sugiyama Daria (Dah) on Pixiv.)

Updates to this text:

• 2026-03-16: Added fan comics with translations.
• 2026-03-18: Added commentary by KentonAlkemi on questions #5 and #12-13; added Rastaban speculation to #11.

1. Where do Yōma (Mystics) come from?

I assume yōma are not fertile because otherwise Orlouge wouldn't need to go all the way to transform Asellus to get a daughter—he has after all an entire harem to breed, if they could breed. We never meet yōma characters who are parents, siblings or otherwise related by virtue of reproduction.

Asellus is transformed by a blood infusion, but that turns her into a half-yōma, and the plot is clear that this is unprecedented. So how were all the other yōma created? In the canon storyline, Orlouge ends up arrested for kidnapping human girls (thanks to Rastaban’s secret schemes to snitch on him to the human cops). Presumably this is how he got the yōma Princesses of his harem. But what exactly does he do to them to turn human girls into yōma? It cannot be a blood transfusion because otherwise they'd all be half-yōma. The Essence of SaGa concept seem to imply it's a consequence of his vampire-like bite. If that's still the case in the final game, shouldn't Nashira's research have a trivial answer?

Or is this why most Princesses are kept in stasis? They're still being transformed and the process takes many years? Asellus' 12-year sleep is remarked as unusually fast—compared to what? Does that imply that most of the glass coffins have incomplete princesses? But Essence says that the coffins were created only recently, in order to prevent another Rei incident. Since only high-class yōma are able to suck one another's powers, does that imply that every single one of Orlouge's 99 mistresses is a high-class bloodsucking yōma and a potential contender to the throne? (No wonder he keeps them all in stasis, then.)

Keeping in mind that not all of the Essence character concepts made it to the final story, originally White Rose assimilated the bloodsucking roses on her coffin and was “able to break free”—but not escape Orlouge's charm powers like Rei, so she just wanders around the castle. (In the game she's asleep like the others and is woken up for Asellus' sake, which obscures the background of her rose-growing hair). Presumably Orlouge just lets her roam the castle. Are the coffins secretly something like a test, a miniature version of what Orlouge did to Asellus—he wants his girls to show some spunk, because he's so bored? (Canonically, that's the reason he's attached to Rei, Zozma and Asellus—getting everyone to magically submit to your every whim for centuries eventually gets old, he needs to spice things up, he needs brats.)

2. What did Evil Queen Asellus do to Gina?

Besides hot lesbian sex every night, I mean.

I can't imagine Asellus would dress up a human Gina as a Princess, she must have been turned in some way. Can she bite human girls into immortality like concept-Orlouge? If Princess Gina is a full yōma, does that mean she could pull a Rei, suck Asellus' blood and become royal-level? Or if Asellus gave her her own blood like Orlouge did to herself, does that mean Gina the half-yōma has inherited Asellus power, and Rastaban will eventually start an anti-Asellus coup around Gina, who will face Asellus in a tragic battle of lovers…?

3. Asellus' nominative determinism.

Rastaban, Ildon (=Yildun), Mesarthim, Ciato (=Scheat), Zozma and Furdo are all named after stars, and all of them are Mystics. To my knowledge, nobody else in SaGa Frontier's multiple Regions takes names after stars. So this seems to be a custom among the yōma. Essence says that the names of the Princesses are granted upon their rebirth, to fully sever the connection with their previous, human lives.

But “Asellus” is also a star name (either δ Cancri or γ Cancri; the north little ass, and the south little ass). The disastrous meeting with her aunt makes it clear that this was her birth name as a human. Is it a coincidence that this random human girl who gets miraculously turned into a (half-)yōma just so happened to follow yōma name conventions?

I mean probably yes, it must have been a decision outside from the game world—just an aesthetic choice for Shōda's chapter in the game. But suppose it's motivated in-plot, just for fun. Could Asellus have been marked since before birth as Orlouge's successor? Canonically, Orlouge is bored, and he set up Asellus on a quest of rebellion because he wanted to test the mettle of his chosen daughter. Since he can't breed, did he pay a couple humans to generate a baby to become his successor? Is this why Asellus' parents died when she was little? They were killed for going back on their deal and trying to run away with her? Because Orlouge had planned the horse carriage “accident” all along?! Is this why Asellus is named after the donkey star?!? (Certainly not, but feel free to write a fanfic with this idea.)

4. The other nominative determinism

Wait no I just remembered a single other human who has a star name: γ Capricorni is called… Nashira. As in, the biologist who wanted to duplicate yōma immortality, only to give up and dedicate herself to magical rose cultivation instead—and whose research Orlouge, known rose appreciator, is graciously supporting. mind=blown.

5. (Answered:) Who was the beautiful woman who killed Asellus?

According to Essence, the reason Asellus got ran over by the carriage is that (true to her tendencies) she got distracted by a beautiful woman. Who was this woman from out of town, pretty enough to distract Asellus in the middle of the street, and what was she doing at the scene of the Yōma Hunt?

Update 2026-03-18: Sevon points out that this is heavily implied to be Princess Rei. She's the target of the Hunt, after all; and it's stated in her lore that through her reincarnations, her beauty keeps bringing calamity. This is one such case.

I think this theory is downright certain, at least in terms of intention—even keeping in mind that the Essence materials aren't necessarily canon to the finished story. In the materials, immediately after the accident Orlouge asks, “What about the woman?” (女はいかがした), and his coachman says, “I am sorry, milord, I have lost track of her”. (I am very grateful to Sevon's translation for helping me navigate this large book; I just want to note that in this case it's even clearer in the original than in Sevon's translation, Orlouge is definitely asking about the status of a woman they're tracking, not about a girl—and immediately afterwards, his coachman remarks that Asellus was only a child, who will now never grow up to adulthood).

Which brings to mind the fact Princess Rei doesn't let herself age, due to her yōma powers returning gradually on each reincarnation (it's unclear to me if she rejects being full yōma in itself, or only because this is necessary to hide from Orlouge). We meet her in-game as a child, but Rei at carriage accident time was definitely an adult; Essence says Asellus passed by a woman (ひとりの女性とすれちがう) whose beauty grabbed her attention (その美しさに気を取られた). If she were a kid like at game time, we'd expect a “cute girl”, not a “beautiful woman”. Rei's playable incarnation is 12 years old, which… ah.

Our Rei has the same age as the duration of Asellus' sleep after the accident. This has to be intentional. So 12 years ago she must already have been on her 20s, and killed herself soon after the accident to escape Orlouge once more. Presumably not on spot after Asellus' death, or that point would be mentioned by the coachman (or in Fuse's case files, or by her aunt, etc.), but also not long afterwards. Asellus' death was a distraction (Orlouge does stop to pour blood over her on the spot), but Rei disappeared suspiciously quickly before he even stopped for the transfusion. Maybe she was already allied with Kirin, who just needed a moment's distraction to spirit her away with space magic?

The only mystery left, then, is what the heck was Princess Rei doing in Shrike.

6. How did Asellus survive being stabbed?

It is one of the most memorable scenes of the game: A freshly turned Asellus is panicking about all these monster people when Ildon stabs her dramatically on the field of white vampire-roses, which eagerly tinge purple with her blood, the beautiful stain spreading fast like the realisation of her inhumanity… (Because the yōma wouldn't just tell her “hey you're half-yōma now btw”, they have to be drama queens about everything, obvs.) And then she gets up to her horror to find out the stabbing fully healed, as additional proof of her inhumanity.

Except the yōma don't have regenerative powers of any kind, nor are they more resistant in battle than humans or monsters. They don't have any sort of immunity or defence or resistance either, and their immortality refers only to eternal youth.

I'm guessing this is a plot hole left over from earlier conceptions of yōma. This is shown by the original Kurenai escape route, which would involve their bodies being destroyed and fully regenerated in the incinerator fire, and also in Fuse's Crazy Journal, where Asellus regenerates supernaturally from a stab in the back. (Since the yōma are underpowered relative to humans in the final game, one could solve both the plot hole and the game imbalance by giving them inherent regeneration in battle, or maybe infinite LP or something.)

7. Asellus' sucking on White Rose

The original concept for the yōma was even more vampire-like: blue blood causes a thirst that can only be sated with human blood. Asellus would distract herself from vampiric urges by sucking on the spirits of flowers. Any flowers would do, or is it the blood roses specifically? The latter makes sense symbolically, but where would she procure blood roses from, after escaping Facinatoru?

Oh yes, how convenient—due to her assimilation of the parasitic roses on her coffin, Princess White Rose literally grows blood roses out of her hair.

What an eerily sensual, decadent imagery we never got, to be addicted to suckling on the delicate, lush blossoms that grow out of your girl's locks…

8. White Rose sucking on Asellus

Orlouge seems pretty fine after his blood donation. Rastaban, too, after baiting Cialis to go down on him. And Princess Rei escaped by sucking on Orlouge's blood, thereby acquiring Asellus-like powers—she can resist Orlouge's charm, too, and it's stated she could become a Queen if she wanted, she's just not interested.

Doesn't that imply that Asellus could give White Rose immunity against Orlouge by feeding her her own blood? For that matter, couldn't Asellus—and Rei—share Orlougian blood with every single yōma in their rebellion? Orlouge vaccination campaign? Wake up all of his 99 Princesses and feed blood to each and every one, ending up with history's prettiest army? If the blood is diluted in Asellus and Rei, it should still be enough to at least increase their resistance somewhat? What about empowering the lower-class yōma—apparently they can't suck powers through blood like the nobles, but if even a human girl can get Orlouge-level powers through a transfusion, surely Mesarthim and the others would get at least a power up with the same process?

Yōma Queen Asellus: Dang I'm so bored. Princess White Rose: Lady Asellus! Look! White Rose, full yōma version!! Asellus: You were already full yōma to begin with… (Fan comic: Hanaimo on Pixiv)

For that matter, how come Nashira doesn't immediately obsess with Asellus' yōmafication process as soon as she hears her story? Her entire point is she sacrificed everything in the pursuit of immortal bodies like the yōma, right? And in the end she gave up upon the inevitability of death, and changed to recreational rose breeding instead? Shouldn't the existence of Asellus prove to her that humans can become immortal after all, and rekindle the flame of the old research?

9. Is human route Asellus self-harming?

Another abandoned concept of the more vampiric conception of the Yōma was that Asellus would have sealed away her Faeblade/Mystic Sword with a cross talisman that burns yōma to the touch. However, plot reasons would keep calling on her to draw the sword anyway, to protect her girls. So her sword arm would be covered in burn scars, which she'd hide by wearing long gloves. (What a beautiful image for being in denial.)

What this makes me think of is how unequipping techs is called “sealing” them in SaGa. I wouldn't pay a lot of mind to that since applies to everyone, except—remember that the “Mystic equipment” count as “techs” in the version we got, they're inherent abilities not really objects; and none of the yōma can seal them away, even when you would really rather equip more spells, except Asellus.

Normal yōma are unable to seal their yōma tech, or unwilling? When Asellus seals away her absorption abilities, is this a painful process, like the original holy talisman? Is Asellus suppressing her yōma nature an act of metaphysical self-harm?

10. What's up with Princess Rei reincarnations?

They just throw this lore casually, refuse to elaborate, leave.

She was originally turned into a Princess at age 25, and she escaped Orlouge's surveillance by killing herself and reincarnating as a human. But her yōma powers come back gradually, getting stronger the closer she is to 25, so she keeps killing herself and being reborn as a human baby, again and again.

• So she has a human body when we meet her?? Her character class in the game is just “yōma” though?!
• How does she keep her memories between reincarnations?
• Is this something just anyone could do in this world?? If not, how does Rei specifically do it?
• Will any yōma, upon murder or suicide, be reborn into a human who recovers their yōma nature gradually? Is yōmafication an eternal condition that transcends death itself?!
• If the yōma don't get skills because their immortal bodies are static, but Rei has human bodies that grow and age (at least until 25), shouldn't she be able to spark skills and train stats like Asellus? Since she gradually transforms until hitting 25, shouldn't she start fully human and become full yōma only at adulthood?
• For that matter, her current body upon recruitment is 12, which is exactly halfway, so shouldn't she be a half-yōma just like Asellus?
• What colour is Rei's blood?!

Kirin: Princess Rei, what would you like to eat? Our orphan paradise has all sorts of tasty snacks! Princess Rei: Is that so…? I do enjoy rice crackers as an appetiser, and if we are indulging on pastries, I'm quite fond of azuki bean cakes, yes I am. Would go well with some roasted green tea, I daresay. Kirin [dejected]: I'm so sorry…! All we have is bags of candy and juice boxes and the like… (I thought that was the kind of thing human kids want…?) Princess Rei: Oh my gracious, Kirin! Pardon me, I'm actually an old woman… (Fan comic: Kouya on Pixiv)

11. What was Rastaban's plan with Cialis… I mean Ciato?

I understand that Rastaban had been planning a coup for a long time, and that he provoked Cialis into a duel and let him win, so that he'd suck on some… powers and get hyped enough to go fight Asellus. Apparently he doesn't think Asellus was ready to fight him either, since he sends his own boyfriend to go bodyguard her. But uh, why exactly is he doing all that? What's the point of making Cialis go fight Asellus, and how exactly does that advance the insurrection?

Pure speculation/headcanon on my part: Rastaban saw Ciato as an obstacle to his coup, and at the same time, he wanted to awake Asellus' royal “obliteration” power that she inherited from Orlouge, without which making a move would be hopeless (because the yōma are originally meant to be immortal). Two birds with one stone. He sent Ildon to tilt the balance in her favour, Asellus represents a unique chance for insurrection; but if even with backup she still failed to wake up her power, he would discard her as too weak for his purposes, as he tries to do in the half-yōma ending.

12. Who was Red Turnip's lover?

The Dark Labyrinth was designed to punish yōma whose love makes Orlouge jealous. Throw a couple in, and they can only exit after one of them leaves behind the person they care about the most.

Who loved Red Turnip so much that they had to leave them behind? Was Orlouge jealous of Red Turnip's lover, or of Red Turnip themself? I don't peg Orlouge for a monsterfucker, he's not cool enough for that, so—who was the turnipsexual Princess who cheated on Orlouge with a sentient vegetable??

13. Who was Zozma's lover?

Two people whose existences are important to Orlouge are Rei, who maintains her free will, and Zozma, who refused a position as head of the Black Knights and left.

By the way, Zozma broke the rules of the bloodsucking clan and already gained his freedom by conquering the Dark Labyrinth. It’s unknown who he left behind in the Labyrinth at the time. —translation

(Stares at question #12 above) oh my god

Update 2026-03-18: Ruining the joke a bit but for information purposes: Sevon pointed me to the part in Essence where they explain that, out-of-universe, Red Turnip was added to the Dark Labyrinth by the director, because the character was left over and he didn't know where to put it. The writer wasn't informed, and reportedly she wasn't happy when she found out about Red Turnip being White Rose's replacement (^ ^ );;. The in-universe explanation (offered half as a joke) is that Red Turnip must have pissed off Orlouge at some point. Fans have also proposed that Red Turnip is one of the 99 Princesses—they even have a theme colour name, just like White Rose and Golden Lion. Since the Princess titles are wordplay on numbers (goro-awase), I propose Red Turnip is Princess #97, because while I can't think of a goro-awase pun with カブ kabu (“turnip”), カ kinda looks like 九 (9) and ブ kinda looks like a ７.

Asellus' drama as a half-Mystic is that of being the only one of her kind, and here in the real world, too, she's an alluring anomaly; like the gothic court of Château Aiguille, she stands as a piece of liminal art, outside the flow of time.

So when I was writing the brief history of early yuri in console games, the Asellus analysis section grew more and more and accrued author quotes and etymological footnotes and whatnot, until it was way bigger than the entire rest of the post. I have therefore given Asellus her own glass coffin… I mean, her own entry in the blog series.

Zozma the rebel yōma: “Surely the fact that you are so devastated by her absence only proves how much you love the Princess.” Asellus: “Yes… as a friend! She was like a sister to me!” Denial is a hell of a drug—but Zozma won’t be having any of it…

Updates to this text

• 2026-03-15: Elaborated more on the translation of Princess Golden Lion's statements
• 2026-03-16: Added link to author's page for Yasōkyoku.
• 2026-03-18: Added a much longer discussion on the idea of Asellus' “true ending” in the foonotes, and a new footnote on the idea that Asellus×White Rose supposedly are “canonically not an item”.

What the Heck are you talking about anyway what is this “Sega” video game

SaGa is Squaresoft's odd cousin to the celebrity series, Final Fantasy. Like other entries in the series, SaGa Frontier is ambitious and creative with its game systems—seven distinct but interconnected stories; open world exploration; level-less powerup system where you grow in battle by perfecting the skills you actually use; four different species with fully distinct mechanics, etc. Like many other entries in the series, SaGa Frontier fails at its ambitions and is not, like, good, if I'm honest. But it fails because it was willing to take risks and break formulas, meaning it fails in interesting ways; and it succeeds in evoking a distinct, otherwordly atmosphere. The gameplay systems are baroque, mystifying, and for all their iconoclasm the grinding isn’t any less boring than other traditional RPGs (though I do find its rhythms oddly hypnotic, and get lost in the game for a week every time I touch it); the open world concept was not technologically feasible yet, and the various worlds feel small and constrained, like theatre sets; the lack of linearity in a plot-oriented game makes the pacing end up all over. A large cast of colourful characters joins your quest, only to prove unrelated to the plot and say nothing for the rest of the story.

Moreover SaGa Frontier was notoriously rough at edges, published rushed and unfinished, with many elements that suggest something but go nowhere; doors that are clearly meant to be interactive but never open, worlds you can never visit, strange characters you meet once and never see again. By accident, this reinforced the haunting ambiance and atmospheric appeal. The jank is a feature, as the saying goes. Much of this unfinished content has been restored in the remaster; I'm not sure if always for the better.

So I do not particularly recommend this game to modern players in general, who have so many better RPGs to play—we’re in a golden age of highly creative indies that deserve your attention and money. But if you're not afraid of reading a few guides to get your head around the game's cryptic mechanics, SaGa Frontier is still enjoyable enough that I do recommend playing through Asellus' scenario if you're an RPG-minded yuri fan interested in lesbian representation history. Asellus' quest is often voted the best scenario even among players who don't particularly care about yuri.

(Despite my relative disappointment with the remaster you should still pick this version for the quality-of-life features and the good fixes, e.g. Asellus' beautiful, high-effort character theme, in the OST all along but tragically left out of the 1997 game due to developer crush. It is recommended to play this theme in background while reading this article. Check out also the criminally underrated acoustic reinterpretation of the unused theme song of the one lesbian character of some obscure PS1 RPG.)

Official artwork of White Rose playing the piano next to Lady Asellus and a male yōma, Ildon, by series illustrator Kobayashi Tomomi, titled Yasōkyoku (Nocturne). This beautiful linework is representative, if not of the graphics, of the vibes of the scenario.

The Tribe of the Rose

The Lord who had so captivated me at the dressing-room turned out to be a Lady. This realisation shook me to the core. Nonetheless, Lady Asellus' gallant figure was engraved forever in my heart… (Gina)

What I mean by “scenarios” is, SaGa Frontier has seven protagonists to pick (eight in the remaster), and each has a different story, written by a different author, set in a different subgenre, with distinct a mood—Blue is an evil wizard in a high-fantasy quest; Red is a tokusatsu superhero; Emelia is a cop in a thriller setting, etc. Asellus is a gothic-romantic genderqueer shōjo drama in the Takarazuka tradition of Rose of Versailles, written by Shōda Miwa 生田美和. I think the game came too shortly after Utena to have been influenced by it, but it's, at the very least, drinking from the same sources, and there's many parallels to Utena/Anthy in Asellus/White Rose's relationship.

At the beginning of her story, Asellus, an average human girl, dies horrifically after being run over by a carriage with big black horses (this is based on a nightmare of Shōda's, where the person in the carriage resurrected her by feeding her their own blood). Asellus wakes up in a gothic-renaissance-alien castle-city, Facinatoru, home of the immortal energy-vampire folk, the Yōma (“devil-fae”, “elf-demons”; translated rather boringly as “Mystics”).¹ The yōma have blue blood and can absorb monsters to become stronger. Their aristocratic society is divided rigidly by class, determined by birth; high-class yōma have the exclusive ability to absorb each other's powers through blood vampirism. Asellus had been accidentally killed by the King of Yōma himself, Lord Orlouge; a decadent, hedonistic tyrant with a sprawling harem of Princesses he keeps in stasis and calls to service at will. “Princess” here translates 寵臣, a favoured retainer; a character explicitly clarifies that the term is an euphemism for 寵姫, mistresses, concubines.

Orlouge is attracted to the human girl and resurrects her, by feeding her his own royal blood; that turns Asellus into a singleton type of creature, a purple-blooded half-yōma. She can both absorb powers like yōma, and also grow from experience like humans. This is an explosive combination, since yōma are static, eternal beings, unable to learn skills or become stronger other than by parasitic absorption. More to the point, Asellus' blood makes her immune to the supernatural charm that Orlouge exerts over women; in fact, it gives Asellus the same charm. Her arrival shakes things up at the castle and acts as a catalyst for rebel yōma and subjugated humans to take action against their oppressor.

There are two romantic interest characters for Asellus, both women: Gina, a human tailor who lives beneath the castle, and Princess White Rose, one of the pearls of Orlouge's harem, assigned to Asellus as her chaperone. Gina, who narrates some of the story as a framing device, is powerfully attracted to Asellus at first sight; we are not explicitly shown her undressing the mystery woman, still drenched in purple blood from a lesson in her immortality, to clothe her in a courtly yōma outfit; but, together with Gina's lavish purple-prose praise of Asellus’ beauty, the off-screen scene becomes unexpectedly sensual. Princess White Rose, meanwhile, is a gentle soul, and is moved by Asellus' sense of compassion; she's been ordered to stay with Asellus and, initially because she cannot break Orlouge's mind control, follows the half-yōma upon her escape from Orlouge's palace; eventually she becomes devoted to Asellus rather than the king.

“The portrayal of femininity in games was beyond my suspension of belief”: Meet the writer

I was lucky enough to get away with doing exactly what I wanted for Asellus' chapter, and for the Jewel Thief arc [in Legend of Mana], too. Whenever there was some weird [executive] interference on my writing, my colleagues and seniors protected me. (Shōda)

In the old days it was very difficult to know anything about the people who made videogames, and women most of all—as with anime, very often female creative input was masked behind the name of a male “director” (see Peklo’s “Games: Less made by men than you've been led to believe!”). Shōda Miwa’s case is exceptional, and I entirely attribute the quality of Asellus’ writing to the fact that, for once, they let a woman do things. And now, in the era of Internet, we can finally learn about game creators rather than publisher brand-names, and Shōda has come public online: – Note – Old blog – Bluesky – Website

Shōda clearly sees Asellus' scenario as a high point in her career; but she has denied she meant to write a lesbian story, saying she’s glad if players benefited from reading it that way but it was not her direct intention. This is a kind of amazing claim, given how overt and textual Asellus/White Rose gets. At a critical point in the story Asellus insists to her yōma ally Zozma that she loves White Rose “as a sister and a friend”, emphasising that even in a half-yōma body, she's “still a woman”. The yōma replies by flat out daring her to come out of the closet already (“still limiting yourself by trifling boundaries… come on, say it out loud! You love her! Isn’t the entire point of your quest to become free?”) The type of noncommittal answer that Shōda gave was common in the 90s, and I wonder if people still feel uncomfortable talking about queerness even now. But what comes off the most in Shōda's statements, in my opinion, is suicide-of-the-author; she's adamant about making every Asellus story ending plausible, and about not invalidating any of player's readings. All that she asks of us is that we “pay attention closely” to Asellus' emotional involvements with each of Gina, White Rose and Orlouge. This essay is my attempt at doing just that.

Shōda has traumatic memories of being singled out as weird, and being put outside of the marriage pool for it; and she felt a disconnect between herself and the unidimensional damsels of videogames (as did we all). Therefore, she says, her concept for Asellus was to write about strong women who are able to make their own way without relying on men. (I have to imagine doing a Takarazuka game came immediately to mind for that goal). Many authors who set out to challenge the damsel-in-distress trope did that by making cool badass woman fighters who beat men at their own war games, but interestingly, Shōda instead chose to develop this heavy, psychological exploration of what it means to accrue power like a man—of how it feels, and of the consequences. As I'm about to discuss, the violence, influence, and example of men weight heavily on Asellus' character development, making her story unambiguously feminist in many more ways than your typical “strong female protagonist”. (In a 1997 Sony Playstation video game!)

In our society, women can make a living through marriage. But with the scars I carry on my face and my body, that felt like a world away from me; I didn't think I even had the option. That's why I fell in love with videogames. There was absolutely nothing I could do about my social standing, about being born poor and looking ugly, about how my family treated me. But [in the game world], none of that matters at all…

Crucially, Shōda realised that she wasn't actually as alone as she felt; like Asellus learning about the oppressed Lower Mystics, her struggle turns out to be systemic, once one notices it it’s everywhere:

…They would say stuff like, “And we sent ya to college for this?”, “There's just something fundamentally wrong with you”, and so on. Worse than that, even. And I noticed it wasn't not just me; people around me also had to routinely swallow that kind of abuse…

Which brings the desire to share her safe space—videogames as an attempt to create a better somewhere:

Whether if you're bad at sports or can't talk to people, whether you're a man or a woman, too young or too old, beautiful or ugly, none of that matters […] I wanted to created a playground like that, a place where all that matters is your heart.

If you struggled with being marginalised for any reason, and when you played Asellus' quest you felt oddly at home, despite—or maybe because of—the dreary setting and the tragic plot, well, that was the intention. Welcome to Château Aiguille; welcome to the playground.

Interlude: Spoiler warnings

I cannot present an analysis without spoiling the game's ending and various other details. Personally, I don't think this detracts much from the experience of this story in particular, but if you're intrigued so far and decided to play the game and you're sensitive to spoilers, consider stopping here and reading this text after you're done. I refrained from spoiling plot twists that aren't relevant to my argument (including by being vague in my own translations sometimes), but I do analyse various discoveries that Asellus makes about the effects of her condition, which in a normal playthrough are scattered along the plot like treats, as well as the three endings.

“Contrary to popular opinion, Asellus and White Rose were not an item”

Despite the author's insistence on the validity of multiple player's readings, I can hear in the distance the kind of gamer who will challenge me on a lesbian reading of a character that “has been stated in official sources” to “canonically” not be lesbian, to be just “confused” about White Rose, and so on and so forth.² So let's talk about the queerbaiting.

In the history of early yuri games, we've talked before about the trope of the convoluted lesbian etiology; like Filena who “has to” marry Lila to protect her from abusive male husbands, or Utena who “has” to seize Anthy as her Bride for the same reason, or Lady Oscar who is butch because she “had to” be raised as a man for political reasons, and “must” romance women to keep up the disguise, etc. None of these ladies seem to protest very much about dating their respective waifus but the point is, they didn't have a choice, it was the circumstances. The purpose of a convoluted lesbian etiology is plausible deniability.

A modern audience may underestimate how controversial it was to portray gay desire in the 90s without such cushions; you can get a sense of it from the fact that the predecessor of the LGBT acronym back then was GLS—”gays, lesbians, and sympathisers”, as in “straight allies”, because being a “sympathiser” was enough to make you suspiciously queer yourself. This was especially polemic in children's media; I vividly remember reading a psychology paper in Brazil making a scathing takedown of Ranma ½ because “it teaches children that changing their sex is a normal thing that can happen to them”, which was self-evidently abhorrent, apparently. To this day gay marriage in Bokumono (Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons) is a “special friendship” in the Japanese editions, marginalising it from straight romance, which gets to be called marriage. Like the pixelated genitals on the most decadent subgenres of Japanese porn, there has to be a token concession to heteronormativity, no matter how explicit the queerness. The love still shall not be named.

The convoluted lesbian etiology in SaGa Frontier is of course in the matter of Orlouge's blood. Asellus agonises over not being human anymore, and grieves for the normal human life she has lost. She loathes her unnatural green hair, her new powers, her immortality which she perceives not at all as a gift, but as a monstrous thing. Nor can she bring herself to adapt to life as a yōma, to find a place in their aloof, inhuman society. A weird half-creature neither here nor there; the queer reading of her condition is obvious, and made textually explicit by the inverted gender dynamics—at several points she agonises over the fear of having become a “half-man”, due to the attraction she now exerts over women and—most terrifyingly!—to the fact that she likes it. In this way the mask is kept up; players who are uncomfortable with lesbianism can discount her love for White Rose as fake, an artificial consequence of the blood that was injected into her; when she browses an erotic magazine and finds herself “a bit too excited” (ちょっとドキドキする) about women's naked bodies, that can be treated as not “real” lesbian desire but merely external contamination, an endocrine pollutant (they're turning the freaking Aselluses gay!).

For queer people, that's of course a distinction without a difference. As Andrea Long Chu once noted, here in the real world desire itself is non-consensual; no one has chosen to want what they want. Stories of forced situational lesbianism resonate with lesbians for the same reason trans girls like stories of forced feminisation.

This exceedingly provocative illustration of Asellus and White Rose was not drawn for the SaGa Frontier game itself, but it is official artwork in later gatcha card games like Emperor's SaGa (2012). This is representative of Square-Enix's have-its-cake-and-eat-it-too queerbaiting attitude to the lesbian characters; at the same time as it denies or effaces the original game's more-than-subtextual relationship in strategy guides and public statements, it also sells artwork like the above, or adds sapphic fanservice to the remaster, or does stuff like this. For a variation in large size click here.

A new half

Asellus: Tell me one thing. Even with Orlouge's blood mixed in mine… I'm still a woman, amn't I? I haven't become some sort of… of a half-man, or something? Dr. Nusakan: Our blood is a different kind of substance than that of you humans. It transcends the merely material. Through his blood, you have inherited Orlouge's own fey power... which is to say, the power of a ladykiller.³

And who would not fear becoming like men, after a lifetime of experiencing how men treat women? The cliché of the “useless lesbians” exists because women are terrified of making the first move and becoming that guy. This is symbolic for Asellus because she's not just concerned about being half-man in the abstract, but half a particularly despicable man—Orlouge's “charm” can be wielded as, effectively, mind control, making his harem a form of serial rape.⁵ Even more to the point, Orlouge does not seem to desire Asellus as merely harem princess #100, but as a potential successor—a daughter, literal blood of his blood. (He does a terrible job of conveying this information.) Asellus, meanwhile, has lost her parents at an early age, and aches to find a place to belong, a good parental figure to symbolically adopt her—but that ain't it.

This is mostly background lore, their father/daughter dynamics only come out cursorily and at the very end. But what Orlouge as a father figure stands for is nothing less than patriarchy. As it has been often noted, patriarchy is not just the rule of men, it's the rule of fathers, and Orlouge is the embodiment of the Patriarch. We all fear reproducing the worst of our parents, and Asellus' horror is that of becoming the terrible, sleazy, abusive, absent dad that she's barely even met.

Could the “half-man” thing also imply that Asellus is struggling with gender dysphoria? Does her transformation into half-yōma, through a male yōma's blood, entails a degree of physical masculinisation? Is Orlouge's blood an injection of magic testosterone? It's tempting to read it this way, and there's definitely some undertones of transness—Asellus' body-horror obsession that “even like this I'm still a woman” is reminiscent of how many cis women feel when they're unwillingly masculinised, for example by menopause or PCOS. But much as I would love a trans story, I don't think that's a sustainable reading. Though Asellus becomes an exceedingly powerful swordswoman by the end game, at no point there's mention of her becoming more muscular, or getting a larger frame or male body scent or any other secondary sexual characteristics. (I am using all my willpower right now to not get started about my Asellus “half-yōma” headcanon, which starts with “f” and ends with “utanari”). If there's any unwitting masculinity in her, it's purely at gender level, it's the butchiness she's growing into—one can notice that when talking to male characters she speaks in a normal female register, but when talking to women she takes a gallant soft-butch tone that sounds straight out of Rose of Versailles or Princess Knight. But she never expresses discomfort with gendered changes in her body. No, every time gender terror comes into play, it's in the context of romantic/sexual desire; she has to reassure herself of being a woman whenever she finds herself attracted to women, or—even more horrifyingly—coping with her ability to make girls reciprocate, i.e. with the real possibility of satisfying that desire. In other words, Asellus is trapped in heteronormativity. In her mind, admitting to love a woman would mean she'd stop counting as one—she considers a lesbian couple and thinks, “but who's the man of the relationship? Oh no it me D: ” I believe this is what Zozma is talking about when he remarks she's still “binding herself down by trivial limitations”, when characterising her own love for White Rose as “sisterly friendship, because I'm still a woman”; her mistake is in the “because”.

Contrast that with the yōma noblemen Ildon and Rastaban, who are openly lovers; neither is particularly femme, nor believes himself to be half-woman because of gay attraction; nor does Gina question her own gender, or Asellus' gender, when she falls in love with the half-yōma; as soon as she realises Asellus is a woman, she promptly accepts the fact of being wlw. So Asellus' fear of being a half-man is homophobia, in the original sense of the term: the dread that, unbeknownst to yourself, you might be one of the queers, deep down. To bang on that note one more time, she's in denial. That’s why her quest isn't really about defeating the evil lord (which she's actively indifferent about, and only sets to after he threatens her girlfriend), but about coming to terms with her own nature. Asellus does not want to win a tournament or become the king or hero or anything; she wants emotional resolution to identity turmoil.

Ok, and eventually she also wants her girlfriend back. Sometimes a videogame is just a videogame.

“I shall have 100… no, 200 Princesses!”

Asellus has three possible endings, with very interesting overtones. If you refrain from using the yōma's vampirism powers at all, remember to visit the tailor girl Gina (who has been left unmentioned for most of the plot) to discover that she's been taken by the court, and eventually go on a sidequest to save her, then Asellus will reject her yōma transformation; and, after defeating Orlouge, she'll find a way to return to human life, marrying and having children and grandchildren. Notice that this entails, in gameplay terms, refusing to use the very abilities that make Asellus unique as a protagonist; essentially she's forcing herself to constantly stay down to the level of a human, binding away her unique potential, until the “normalcy” sticks.

On the other extreme, if you embrace her yōma powers and also abandon the human girl to die, Asellus defeats Orlouge only to take his place as the new Queen of the Fae; she brings back Gina as an immortal, turning the tailor into her first Princess, and vows to outdo Orlouge by building a harem of over 200 courtesans. This is supposed to be the bad ending for some reason. (I kid; it's a bad ending because Queen Asellus is a bloodthirsty tyrant whose first act in power is feminicide; but oh!, her evil queen laugh is a delight…)

What is coded as “true ending”,⁴ as in many Japanese games, is the Middle Path: embrace the yōma powers, but also save Gina. In this case Asellus will become a wanderer with White Rose and a couple (male) allies from her yōma uprising. Gina lives a normal human life and marries and has children and grandchildren and grows older and older; an immortal Asellus visits her once a year, along with White Rose and the others. Old Gina explicitly describes these visits as meeting with the love of her life. Asellus feels envious of Gina's human life as a grandmother, but ponders that sadness with the thought that, now that White Rose is by her side for eternity, she'll never be alone again. I do not think it's a stretch for me to see envy in the other direction, too, in Gina’s reply that “you are lucky to have such good friends”.

In this way the fantasy drama of her mixed-yōma blood acts as an analogy for queerness; being human is consistently equated with heterosexual marriage and the cycle of life, reproduction, death; but the beautiful, artistic, and gender-bending yōma exist outside of this flow of time, and do not reproduce save by transformation of humans like Asellus and Gina, pulling them outside of the hetero cycle. In the timeless, decadent gothic world of the yōma, heteronormativity and monogamy rules do not apply. Yet gender and class dynamics still have hold, with Orlouge's harem being decidedly objectifying and cruel. Like many a budding butch player, Asellus find herself suddenly irresistible to the women she's now attracted to, only to recoil at the horror of having become man-like, of acting like the most toxic of fuckboys, King Orlouge; at that crossroads, she can lose herself by forgetting to care about Gina's feelings and reproduce patriarchy, or she can go back into the closet and reject the love she's found in White Rose; by choosing neither path, she becomes a new, better type of being, both empathetic and free.

An aged Gina stares at a photo of eternally young Asellus surrounded by beautiful, luscious yōma women, wrinkled old fingers brushing the paper wistfully… (fanart: Tetora on Pixiv)

Notes

1: Mystics, Fae, or Yōma?

Let's write more words than anybody ever did on this translation!

Yōma isn't a fantasy word invented for this game, but a normal word in Japanese, and a loanword from Chinese. “Yō” 妖 is comparable to elf, fairy, trickster spirit; it has connotations of uncanny, alluring, illusory, dangerous, malicious. “Ma” 魔 is comparable to demon, devil (it actually traces back, through Buddhism, to the Indo-European root *mer, “death” that we see in “mortal”; it is present in the names of Morrigan and Māra, and it's also the “mare” in “nightmare”—originally not a female horse, but the evil spirit that causes sleep paralysis).

Put the two together, and you have something similar to the classic elves/fair folk—not the noble-minded Tolkien elves, but the seductive yet inhumanly cruel beings of folklore. I dislike the translation “Mystics”, but it's hard to think of something better than “the Fey” or “the Fair Folk” (my usual go-to for good translation suggestions, Kenkyūsha's Green Goddess, doesn't even list “yōma”). I imagine this must be why the “Mystic Sword” ability got renamed “Fae Blade” in the remaster—whoever translated that was probably provided with 妖魔の剣, yōma sword, in a spreadsheet without any context, and Faeblade would be a pretty good translation for that, except they still left the name of the species as “Mystics” and, even worse, the name of the other 2 abilities as “Mystic Gloves” and “Mystic Boots”.

There are many parallels between SaGa Frontier's yōma and the feyfolk: Like fairies, the yōma are ethereal, less tangible than humans. They both have an affinity with magic and monsters, and a court with rigid protocol. They both aren't so much evil (like demons) but rather have an alien, dangerous value system: Shōda has defined the Yōma values as 1. intimidation (inspiring fear), 2. charm (captivating with beauty), and 3. pride, all very fairy-coded. Like the Elf Court, Facinatoru is timeless, and Asellus lives through the classic faerie-tale experience of going back to the human realm only to find out that many years have passed for everyone else. The only wizard in the game who is able to use time magic, the unimaginatively named Time Lord, is a yōma wizard.

And, of course, the fair folk have long been connected to sexuality, seductiveness, sensual pleasures—most of all to queerness.

(The other clear influence on the yōma are Western vampires—coffins; blood; absorption; being gay and goth, etc.—but this isn't reflected in the name so it's out of scope for this discussion.)

We can get an idea of what the term “yōma” suggests to native speakers by comparing dictionaries:

• Kenkyūsha: “See yōkai.”
• Kokugo Daijiten: “Monster [bakemono]. Yōkai. Demon [mamono].”
• Kanjigen: “Uncanny demons who lead people astray”; “eerie devils who seduce/trick humans”.
• Kanwa Daijiten: ibid.
• Kōjien: “Henge [goblin/boogey/ghost]. Yōkai. Demon.”
• Shinmeikai 5ed: “Same as monster [bakemono], but said in a Chinese way.”
• NHK: “yó˺òmà”. Ah sorry this is the pronunciation dictionary.

We can see two trends here: 1) Broadly, all the terms for monsters and ghouls and goblins are kinda interchangeable, the same as in Western folklore; 2) more specifically, yōma are beings with the characteristics suggested by the yō and the ma: alluring but calamitous, eerily seductive but misleading into ruin.

I find it fascinating to consider the ancestral etymological connection between the name “yōma” and the “mare” spirits of “nightmare”, when the main attack spell of the yōma is the Phantasm Shot—or 幻夢の一撃 Mugen-no-Ichigeki, where “Mugen” is a compound of “dream” and “illusion”. Players will remember that an actual nightmare—rendered as a black horse “mare”—is one of the creatures that may be summoned by this spell. The dreamlikeness of Facinatoru is often literal; time passed differently for Asellus vs. her human family not because of a faerie distortion of time itself, but because she slept for 12 years; and Orlouge keeps most of his harem in deep sleep most of the time. Finally, this entire world exists as an elaboration of a vivid nightmare that Shōda Miwa had once (a nightmare about being ran over by horses). I'm sure these etymological connections aren't deliberate. They're there nonetheless.

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning. No one ever said elves are nice. (Terry Pratchett)

2: Asellus is canonically not lesbian?

In addition to all the discussion about queerbaiting, the notion of “canonicity” is tricky to pin down in SaGa Frontier anyway. Statements such as “Asellus and White Rose are not an item because it was all influence from Orlouge's blood” are fan speculation based on Essence of SaGa Frontier; but Essence has a lot of tentative material that never made it into the game, such as the yōma and Asellus lusting uncontrollably for human blood, White Rose having assimilated to Blood Roses and literally growing roses out of her hair, Asellus sealing away her Mystic Sword with a talisman that burns her to the touch, Orlouge's Castle being full of low-class female maids servants, that kind of thing.

The best argument that can be made for Asellus being not really lesbian, based on text that actually ended up in the game, is that she wants to have a normal life as a human and be grandmother, and in her human ending she (at face value) seems happy like that, while in the half-yōma ending there's a bittersweetness over never having become a grandmother. But even players who think of the human ending as the “happy one” feel the tension that is to reject her entire yōma life (up to and including gameplay elements) and pretend it never happened. The intensity of her feelings for White Rose, and their reciprocation, is plainly textual, as is Gina's love for her; all of those are spelled out in the game we got. Moreover, the fact that evil Asellus keeps Gina and starts a harem can fairly be understood not as Orlouge's blood making her gay, but simply making her tendencies go out of control, removing all boundaries of ethics and empathy from her desires. We know precious little about human Asellus pre-transformation, but one thing we know is that she was so fascinated by a beautiful woman that she got herself ran over by a huge-ass horse carriage.

But the biggest problem with the often-quoted “not an item” statement is that it merely cites Essence of SaGa Frontier as a whole, without elaborating on which section and why. If we consider the entire book, Essence only makes Asellus *even gayer*. It says, for example, that her true ending never really made it into the game, but if so it would be something in between the “Half Mystic” and “Full Mystic” endings, so even more overt than the half-yōma ending we got. Fuse's Crazy Journal openly portray Asellus and White Rose as girlfriends, unambiguously—like Zozma, Fuse spells it out—and it ends with something similar to this proposed happy ending, and just as gay; we got a version of that in the remaster, as Fuse's Case Files (see Note #5 below for “true ending” discussion).

3: The power of a ladykiller:

Onna-goroshi. Felicitously, the ambiguity of the term translates directly to English; in both languages “ladykiller” is an expression for “womaniser” that keeps sinister overtones, Orlouge being both a seducer and a murderer of women. Within the context of the conversation, it's clear that Dr. Rastaban means the “seductive” connotation (they're definitely not discussing Asellus killing women, save perhaps with yearning…).

I'm unsure how to translate his concluding remark afterwards: either “mere human girls wouldn't stand a chance”, i.e. informing Asellus that her charm is now irresistible—no you're not half-male for having his blood, you're something more compelling than mere men; or it can also be translated as “a mere human girl [=Asellus] wouldn't stand a chance [against yōma blood]“, as in the humanity/femininity/heterosexuality in her red blood was overpowered by Orlouge's blue transfusion. I find the latter interpretation at least plausible, except that Asellus replies with “no! I don't want to have such a power!” and Dr. Nusakan remarks dismissively “then simply refrain from using it/suppress it yourself”. So the first meaning must be the intended one, and Dr. Nusakan is confirming to Asellus that yuri is on the menu, so to speak.

4: Orlouge's charm as brainwashing:

A small mistranslation illustrates this point. When Asellus and White Rose first battle the Amazon warrior of Orlouge's harem, Princess Golden Lion, she interrupts the combat after trading a few blows, saying that she has come to understand the depth of White Rose's feelings for Asellus (and also remarks obliquely that she herself once felt that way (lesbian Golden Lion confirmed, girls)). They then express concern that Golden Lion is bound to be punished for disobeying Orlouge's orders to capture the fugitives. In the English release, Golden Lion says that she doesn't mind taking punishment if it's for your sake (=I'll do this for you, Asellus, or possibly you=White Rose), implying that she's so moved by their love that she's willing to face the dread lord. But in the original, Golden Lion says rather that she will be happy to receive punishment if it comes from His Majesty—using Japanese grammar that not only shows complete submission to Orlouge but also treats the punishment as a gift; “coming from His hand, it will be an honour.” The implication is that even a strong and proud woman like Golden Lion is unable to fully break out of Orlouge's brainwashing—even while disobeying him, her devotion stays unshakeable.

“A wonderful woman like her is into this asshole dude? It definitely must be brainwashing” is kind of a recurring trope in lesbian fiction; I just read Gentlest of Wild Things by Sarah Underwood where that's a core premise.

I'm calling this a “mistranslation” because I'm guessing it wasn't a deliberate rewrite, but I actually like the English version better. From the background lore in Essence of SaGa Frontier, we know that Golden Lion secretly sympathises with Asellus' political uprising, not for lesbian reasons but because she's a feminist (outside of Orlouge's brainwashing), and hopes that conditions for women yōma would be better under Asellus. She nonetheless would still have sided with Orlouge in the end, presumably due to the power of fascination. This isn't clearly signalled in the game, so making Golden Lion willing to take punishment for Asellus' sake acts as a nod to this side of her character, in the version of the story we got.

5: Asellus' True Ending:

“Essence of SaGa Frontier” says that Asellus doesn't have a true ending per se, because she was supposed to learn more about herself in scrapped sidequests. In the remaster, the sidequests were restored, but she doesn’t actually learn much we didn't already know, and no new endings were added. Apparently the canon ending would be “something in between the Full Mystic and Half-Mystic endings”.

Fuse's Crazy Journal, essentially developer fanfic given in Essence, is the prototype of the Case Files added to the Remaster, which can fairly considered to be her best ending. In both the Journal and the Files, Asellus' insurrection is aided by the IRPO, which arrests Orlouge for kidnapping human girls and seals him away in Despair—along with his powers. Asellus embraces her status as half-yōma, and (differently from the half-yōma ending) also accepts her position as the Lord of Facinatoru, with Rastaban still alive and among her allies. Unlike the Full Yōma ending, she does not become a tyrant nor abandons White Rose, but instead maintains a loving relationship with her, which means that their love does not depend on the Charm Lord's supernatural fascination power. And in the Crazy Journal version, half-yōma Queen Asellus is also seen comedically excited at inheriting Orlouge's harem (a fact that causes a fit of jealousy on White Rose).

As for the argument of Shōda's authorial intention, as we have noted, all that the writer makes clear is that she wants every ending to be plausible and every player interpretation to be valid—that is, she does not want us to decide by authorial intention. This idea of multiple endings being all “canon” would itself become a canon of sorts in the “aftergames”, the various SaGa franchise cash-in crossover titles including Emperor's SaGa, Imperial SaGa and Romancing Saga Re;univerSe, which turned the franchise into a multiverse kind of thing, with various versions of the characters coexisting in alternate dimensions. I have not played these games and I do not know what, if anything, they imply for this analysis, but it's clear to me that the Fuse-style “golden ending”, where Asellus both ends up as the Lord of Yōma and keeps White Rose as a lover, is treated by the fandom as the comfort ending and the happy resolution to the various tragedies of the original three.

Taking a step back from trying to make sense out of a lore that's both sparse and conflicting, we can simply ask ourselves what kind of videogame experience we are having; and when you're playing women talking about their undying love for other women, or getting depressed to the point of catatonia for losing a girlfriend, or setting out to build harems of concubines, or White Rose (in Re;) giggling about the flushed reactions she'll get from her girl by wearing a sensual dress, et cetera—come on, make whatever excuses you want, we be playing yuri games.

Asellus: I shall have 100… no, 200 Princesses! And I'll put all of them in maid dresses, too!! [untranslatable gooner brainrot] lolol Rastaban: Lady Asellus! That is, uh, not really the same as Lord Orlouge I guess but still super sleazy!! Asellus: Silence, Rastaban! I shall surpass that man in every way! Asellus: In every possible… hm? Asellus: Wha—I only got two horns?! Even though that man had THREE?? Hey, look at this—a MEASLY two horns!! That's not what we agreed! I demand at LEAST six horns!!! Rastaban [crying melodramatically]: Lady Asellus… those weren't horns, 'twas but his crown… (Evil Queen Asellus fan comic by Kouya on Pixiv)

Thirty years later and only now I found out that “Asellus” is not a made-up name, it's the name of a couple stars in Cancer. In fact, most of the yōma are named after stars; “Rastaban” is β Draconis, Zozma is δ Leonis, etc. Asellus is also the genus of small crustaceans depicted above. And the word means “small ass” which yes, I do find hilarious. (It's “small ass” as in “little donkey”, but my 5th-grade sense of humour is timeless and immortal.)

If you're a SaGa Frontier fan, check out also: Questions I still have about Asellus deep lore

So the lady was like at the top of her game, asked about my country, praised my tattoos, told relatable stories about her own life etc., and she was so bright about showing me the vegan options, and made me try like half a dozen different flavours of halva. (It was genuinely delicious). She was a great conversationalist and I had a pleasant time chatting with her for a long while.

So finally I decided to bring home 10€ in caramel halva. This is where the scam hit: she was already packing it but at the minimum quantity of 100g, which was some ridiculous abusive price, 38€ or something. At this point I wall up and put on my best bimbo face to claim that this 10-buck bill is all I have. It's obvious that it's a lie and she knows that I know that she knows it's a lie, this is a glove slap: I mean what are you gonna do about it, call the cops? So the man of the pair approaches and starts a spiel that they've already cut the halva so now I have to pay. So I say with the most blatant cara de pau I can muster that oh well, my train is about to leave, and I give them the warmest goodbye smile and a wave, and leave them protesting without looking back.

Only afterwards I realise that I had tied up the woman for a good fifteen minutes that she could have been hustling, plus I got to try a significant amount of halva of various flavours, without paying a cent. She was good at the game so the sample portions were quite generous, too.

The lesson we learn from this is, you gotta roll with the punches; your story can't be static, it's a tool not a script. Con artistry is a dance, at the first sign of resistance from the mark you have to change your step. They really should have cut their losses and given me a miserable thumb of candy for 10€ profit, I had opened myself a weakness when I said “gimme this much in candy” without checking the price/kg first. But thanks to their all-or-nothing commitment to the script, I ended up indulging my sweet tooth for free and out-scamming the scammers, purely by instinct. And if they're smart they'll think twice before trying to con a Brazilian again lmao (I mean the Germans are right there—)

The tentacles of addiction are all tangled, and it's useful to think them through.

First, there's an hierarchy, like opium to morphine to heroine to fentanyl:

• Computers are addictive
• The internet more so
• The modern web (social media etc.) more so
• Smartphones more so.

Removing one item makes me fall back to the previous one; not having a smartphone makes me mastodon all day on a laptop. Cutting off social media makes me blog or do software projects. Take of the Web and I start exploring Geminispace. If the internet was fully down I'd probably play games or do even more writing.

This does not mean it's useless to remove smartphones. It's better to be hooked on morphine than fentanyl. I’m happier blogging than on social media (this very blog started during a Mastodon break). It just means adjusting my expectations. Perfection is the enemy usw.

Second, the insidiousness. I've toyed with the idea of listening to audiobooks or podcasts in my MP3 player, but the audiobook support turned out to be fiddly—I put audio files in a supposedly supported format, and they don't show up in the menu, and the whole thing is clunky and annoying to deal with. I downgraded my smartphone to the Fairphone 2 from 10 years ago specifically so that the slowness and clunkiness would act as a deterrent, but it's still so much easier to get podcasts on AntennaPod or audiobooks on Voice or music downloaded offline from Bandcamp or SimpMusic (a Youtube Music pirating app). This has improved the quality of my trips a lot, by cutting on impulsive smartphones use; I should recognise that, celebrate my partial victories. But still, once I have even the small, clunky smartphone on my hands while I'm out, boom! Before I know it I'm doomscrolling r/worldnews on the tram rather than reading an ebook or having situational awareness, which is what I do when I have no smartphone at all.

The problem with smartphones is that they have a ton of useful thing and it's impossible to dissociate it from the damaging things. It's been a slow realisation to me how much the damaging things outweigh the useful. Even a degoogled phone with no social media apps or games and a small screen and slow old hardware is too much. All it takes is a browser, and WiFi is fucking everywhere. どこにいたって、繋がっているのよ。

Third, the elephant in the room: While I've made major progress in cutting off my cellphone and Internet use while outside, I still cannot fully get rid of smartphones because I need various authentication apps, certain chat apps and stuff. I can leave them at home, and wait to do my banking at home, that's not a problem. The problem is that I then end up using the smartphones at home. For hours. Because of the insidiousness: since the smartphones are already there it's just so convenient to have my medicine alarms in them, and my podcasts while doing chores, and checking my Slack alarms from work at a glance. And I'm so lonely in this big apartment that it’s very tempting to have some video or audio clip following me at all times, so there’s the illusion of human voices. The fact that I have so many lovers in other cities just makes going home to an empty bed feel even lonelier. So at some point I got into the habit of putting on videos to sleep, or to shower, just to stave off the dead silence of Germany for a while. I came to feel, wrongly, that I need to find some attention-engaging video clip to leave on the background in order to shower. Sometimes I'll be stuck for twenty minutes on the infinite scroll, trying to find a video that hits just the right way that I “can” get up to do dishes.

And then once I bring the smartphone to bed at night to listen to the soft voice of “ASMR Needy Girlfriend Wants Your Attention (F4F) // Pouting // Whining” for the millionth time, booom! doomscrolling r/collapse until 3am, and so on and so forth.

I know a solution to this, I'm just avoiding committing to it: I could leave all the smartphones in my daughter's room, she would help me with this. When I actually need them to validate paypal or whatever, I simply go into her room, do it, and return.

The rest is learning to cope. To find substitutes, the way people who stop smoking chew gum or take coffee breaks.

• I don't have to cold-turkey silence; in the absence of company to sleep, I have both a TV and a radio, and both of them have timer functions. The loss of midnight Bernd das Brot with the demise of KiKa is irreparable, but I'll manage. I lived most of my life with boring TV to sleep.

• It is annoying that there's no purely mechanical alarm able to set several alarms per day. But in the absence of buying a bunch of alarm clocks, the Nokia is perfectly able to wake me up to work or remind me of hormone times. It can do a timer, too, if I need a timer that's not the mechanical kitchen timer.

• I generally have to get used to not having audiobooks or podcasts on me all the time, when showering and doing podcasts and walking outside. I kinda want to have a physical media music player again, but no money, so it will have to be the mp3 player, or nothing. It will probably do some kind of good to my psyche to be listening to my thoughts more often, I suppose.

The last 3 things that force me to have a smartphone while outside are all the fault of my university: The train ticket, the library card, and the cafeteria access are all apps. But I only seldomly go to the library and cafeteria these days, the cellphone could stay home otherwise except for the train thing. I'm considering writing a .pkpass reader for the Nokia for this reason; though I'm unsure whether the small screen would be enough for the Deutschebahn scanners.

The alternatives are: get yet another old Android, install absolutely nothing on it, lock out the web browser app if possible, never turn wifi on, and treat it as a glorified access card with just the train ticket and library barcode app, leaving it off in the backpack otherwise; or, resign myself to paying 60€/month more to have a different train ticket, despite already having one. These both feel bad to me.

Later I found online a Japanese list of yuri movies, and included is Queen Crab (2015) by Brett Piper, which focuses on the relationship between a woman and her giant killer crab. Which I concur, it's totally a yuri movie. But that made me think of how many different definitions of “yuri” I've seen, usually trying to delineate a specific feeling by contrasting it with some other type of sapphic fiction.

Western:

• Yuri is lesbians when anime.
• Yuri is the fantasy of romance or sex between women, made by straight people; or, it's media with sapphic themes but which doesn't reflect real-life lesbians or queer issues. Opposed to lesbian media proper, which is made by queer people, or informed by real-life queer experiences.
• (outdated) Yuri is hentai porn with lesbians. Opposed to shoujo-ai, which is romantic but not erotic wlw in anime/manga.

Japanese:

• (broadly; casual) Yuri is a general term for sapphic media.

• (original; outdated) Yuri (“lily”) is an euphemism for (real-life) lesbianism. Coined in “Yurizoku” (The Lily Tribe), a lesbian column in the seminal (pun intended) gay culture magazine Barazoku (“The Rose Tribe” = gay men).

• (current) Yuri is “yaoi but with girls”. That is, it's about romanticised relationships between girls in 2D culture (anime/game/manga), predominantly for a straight audience. (I’ve seen a lesbian woman frustrated to be compared with yuri not because of the male gaze thing, but because “I'm not 2D, I’m an actual person”.)

Though reality and fiction aren't so trivially separated, are they. The lives we live in reality are themselves crisscrossed by fantasy. I'm in love with my wife, who is a real woman living with me in the real world (I think). Yet every so often I'm seized by emotions that I can only describe as yuri. For example, once when she was travelling abroad, I had been cleaning our room when I found one of her earrings—the matching pair of the single one she had left the house with. I put the earring on the palm of my hand and stared at it intently for a long time. Before I knew it, I had this vivid image of bringing it to my own ear; of pressing it through. The moment the metal pierces my skin, the elation… Of course, I didn't actually do any such act, which would have been painful in more ways than one. But living with my wife, sometimes those fantasies take over me in a torrent of emotion that I can only possibly describe as “that was so yuri” [yuri-yuri-shii]“. (Makimura Asako, Yuri-Les Ronsōsen-emaki)

• (outdated by Maria-sama?) Yuri is “yaoi but with girls”, in the sense that it's a marketing niche of sapphic media for a target demographic of straight men; either lesbian romance for men who find the girls cute, or lesbian porn for men who find girl-on-girl hot.

• Yuri is “yaoi but with girls”, in the sense that it's made by and for straight people, men or women, without reference to real-life lesbians. It is sapphic love, otherised.

• Yuri is homoaffective relationships between girls that are queer-coded but remain implicit, of the “bestest gal pals” trope (Japanese “class S relationships”). Such bonds are more intense and romantic than common friendship, but the girls typically do not call one another lovers, nor are shown kissing or expressing sexual desire, nor identifying personally as lesbian or sapphic. Opposed to GL (girl's love), which is overtly sapphic romance. (N.b. that Class S antedates “yuri” as a genre.)

• (current) Yuri is any media focusing on the bond between women, on a spectrum from friendship to deep sorority to full-blown romance. “GL” denotes one end of the yuri spectrum.

• (sociological; yuri-bunka) Yuri is a subculture about sapphic 2D media; while the themes of the works have shifted and changed with the times, whatever is published by magazines such as Yuri-hime and Galette, or studios such as SukeraSparo and Studio Élan, is by definition yuri, as well as the people who comprise their fan communities, doujinshi, the associated conventions etc.

• (old-fashioned, I think? e.g. in 90s VN culture) Yuri is sapphic 2D media without eroticism, focusing on relationships and emotions. Opposed to lesbian/“lez” (レズ), which is a porn category.

• (often tongue-in-cheek) Yuri is about the bond between girls, but more specifically about the yearning; more than portraying romance or relationships, it's about their impossibility—forbidden love, distance, absence, extreme devotion/obsession that has nowhere to go; a desire that if fulfilled will destroy one partner or both, like when you want to date a vampire with uncontrollable bloodlust, etc.:

[Miyazawa]: There is this movie called “Sicario” by Denis Villeneuve, released in 2015 (TN: released in Japan as “Borderline”). It's a thrilling masterpiece about the drug war in Mexico. The composer of the movie soundtrack, Jóhann Jóhannsson, passed away this year, and according to one of his interviews, there were two themes in the soundtrack. The sense of dread of two wild beasts glaring and pouncing at each other represents the battle to the death between the illegal police force and the mafia. And the other theme was the melancholy of the border area, two emotional themes. If you listen to the soundtrack with that in mind, you cannot perceive it as anything but “yuri”. Though the movie itself is not yuri at all.

— So if neither the story nor the characters have any yuri, what exactly are you supposed to imagine?

— Two wild beasts glaring and pouncing at each other. It's yuri, isn't it?

(Yuri made me human — interview with Iori Miyazawa)