some people said they were interested in checking out this series so i'll start very light on spoilers and then delve into the deeper stuff

shadows house is a manga series that is available fully in colour!! and maybe you can just google "shadows house manga" and like the first result will be a place you can read it for free... maybe...

it also has an anime that ran for two seasons and might continue, we're not sure yet

the anime is mostly very good! unfortunately they did a weird thing with the last three episodes of the first season where they were like "oops there isn't a good season finale point here" and they just bullshitted some filler that really messed up the progression of certain plot elements so that kinda sucks...

the second season got back on track though so if it does continue it should be able to progress without any more weird inconsistencies... fingers crossed

anyway, the general premise is that this is a story that takes place in a mansion called the shadows house, where the Shadows family resides! all the nobles are faceless shadows, attended to by "living dolls" that act as their servants

in addition to cleaning all the soot that these shadows produce and attending to their needs, living dolls also serve as their "faces" and basically mirror their body language and make facial expressions for them when they're in social situations

everybody has their own personal mime. it is very normal and fine

basically how it's "supposed" to work

im sorry YOURE AWFULLY PALE got me good

HELP YEAH

sits here...

but kate's living doll, emilico, consistently fails to match her vibe. like in every situation.

(reposts to fix these gifs)

i also love stuff like this panel, where kate curtsies and emilico bows, because they're just never in sync

the first few chapters are from emilico's point of view as she's trying to figure out how to be a good servant to kate, who's just kind of distant and mysterious

there are a lot of cute/dumb moments... like emilico trying really hard to read kate's expressions and discovering she can slightly see them from the side

also this sure happened a lot w0

SDFLMLSDMFLDS

i love her

also just the sheer amount of soot that comes off of kate is apparently enough that it takes like a whole day to clean her room, every day. the hh had to deal with this shit for six weeks

(also yes kate just has an entire closet full of the same dress)

because shadows have no faces, one of the ways they distinguish themselves (other than their living dolls miming beside them) is by wearing the same outfit all the time. same styling, same fragrance, everything

after a while we get a chapter from kate's perspective and it's like. just miserable.

it turns out that all the things that were seemingly normal for shadows is not actually normal at all in her view!! she hates it!

anyway after a while they go do a "debut" which is like a trial where shadows and living dolls prove themselves worthy to enter public life. they literally spend their lives just isolated in their rooms until they pass this

there are five pairs at kate's debut and they quickly become good friends! but oops one pair fails

they go to a celebration where it's announced that the failing pair will be disposed of, to applause from all of the children

and kate's like "oh that's really devastating, emilico really liked that girl" and she looks and sees that emilico is also cheering

because it turns out the coffee they serve at these celebrations is drugged and everyone is brainwashed as fuck!!

kate is the only person not affected, for Reasons

and she finds she basically just. instantly loses all of the friends she just made.

but she does some digging and discovers a way to break the brainwashing, which is making someone drink an intolerable amount of water to flush out the soot (it was soot-coffee)

since emilico is brainwashed to be absolutely loyal to kate, her master, she can just command her to drink water and to continue even when it feels like torture, which it is. and she does that

it's real bad!!!

but at the end of it, emilico comes to her senses, and kate starts telling her the truth about the shadows house. because it turns out kate knew more than anyone else about what was going on, all along

but couldn't tell anyone because everyone else was brainwashed and she couldn't trust anybody

anyway, the stuff from here on out are the bigger spoilers!! because it has not been touched on in the anime yet

(if the anime is going to continue which idk still)

kate was born as a human!

she had a face, but we never get to see it (yet?)

she grew up on the outskirts of a village, where she was raised by her grandmother, but when she was 12 years old her body changed, and she became a recluse

so she just stayed inside, reading books and being sad, while her grandmother cleaned all the soot and gave her medicine that never worked and told her to "wait for someone from the Mirrors House to come and get you" which never happened

eventually, her grandmother told her the truth: that her family, the Mirrors family, was a noble family that resided in a mansion called the Mirrors House until it was one day overrun by shadowy fairies

kate's mother, catherine, was pregnant at the time, and one of the fairies attacked her and like... did some fucked up cocoon shit that left her in a coma for 50 years

and then 50 years later she finally gave birth and then died. to a seemingly normal human baby! it was a miracle(?)

(i'm sorry this is absolutely the most fucked up lore)

so kate is 13 but she was in the womb for 50 years so if you count it like an insane person she is closer to 63 (there is such a person later in the series who does count this way like a freaky little guy)

anyway kate's grandmother (who it turns out is not her grandmother but was her mother's servant) finally tells her this and kate is like what the fuck

ME AS KATE

ME ALSO AS KATE

and has a big baby tantrum like why did you even leave me alive??? i can't live with other people?? and now she basically has an identity crisis like she doesn't know if she's a human or a fairy or what

but her grandmother calms her down and reassures her that she was raised as a human and she is loved

but in the end, kate realizes the only way she'll find out what she really is is if she goes to that mirrors house. so she leaves a note and runs away from home

which means trying to sneakily get around crowded places with people but somehow she manages

(this was also basically kate w0)

she gets there and finds out that there is no mirrors house! there is a shadows house. also the townspeople are real fucked up on the brainwashing smog

while sneaking around town she is accidentally discovered by a little girl!

but then they meet again and have a cute lil talk and it turns out the girl made a little doll of kate, which she gives her along with some dark clothes for better stealthing

kate learns that the only way into the shadows house is a train that carries tributes, which are: children, supplies, and little shadow fairies from the forest!
so she disguises herself as one of the fairies and sneaks in

kate's like are these the same fairies that killed my whole family???? but they're like actually just super chill little dudes who bumble around like idiots

they get into the house and it turns out the fairies are shapeshifting mimics, and they use them to mimic the children so they can then raise the resulting shadow-children as shadow nobles

but one of the kidnapped children is the little girl she met in the village! who is the same height as kate. so kate pretends to mimic her in order to sneak into shadow society

kate gets placed in a room by herself, and after a few days, she's greeted by her "living doll"! which is the girl from the village

for a moment, she's hopeful! this girl is a friend! kate tells her she's glad to see her again, that this shadows house is real messed up, but they can figure out its mysteries together!

but the girl has been completely brainwashed to be loyal to the shadows house.

and kate just. gives up on trying to talk to her.

and this leads to the distant, reserved kate that we see at the beginning of the story

in kate's scawwy profile, the thing kate most wants to remember was "The way she was before."
this was in reference to emilico, before the brainwashing robbed her of her identity

kate deeply loves emilico but for a long while she couldn't do anything other than just helplessly watch her trapped in a loop because of the brainwashing.

anyway, the other freaky shadow lore is that their life cycle is basically
1. funny lil morph
2. mimic a creature! now there's a pair! the shadow and the original.
3. steal the original's body and kill it! now there's just one c:

the children of the shadows house are all in step 2! their human pals are supposed to sync with them so they can eventually take over their bodies

HELP NOT THE BODY SNATCHING

the shadows are heavily influenced by their human counterparts, so if the humans are brainwashed to think this is all cool and awesome, then the shadows also think so

so all of the adults of the house are unified shadows, who have taken over a human's body

which is why kate came to scawwy like huh....... sure is weird to be around adults who care about other people's wellbeing and are maybe trustworthy

but yeah kate spent a lot of the game being terrified that people would find out about the true nature of shadows and would shun her as a monster, because that shit is actually pretty monstery!!!

THINKS ABOUT ISHTAR'S HORRIBLE DEATH BY A BODYSNATCHER..... :')

anyway the middle arc of the series is basically kate being a detective and solving lots of mysteries about the house and trying to slowly gather allies so she can stage a revolution and take back the house

so for a lot of reasons... she fits very easily into a mg setting :')

KAAAAAATE HOLDS HER IN MY HANDS

oh yeah the other fucked up shadow lore is clingers!!
normally, when a shadow's soot accumulates for 2-3 days, it can come alive in the form of little critters that are FACE-SEEKING and will just launch themselves into your mouth and poison you

they're cute though

so at the start of the mg when kate was assigned a place to live with other people she was like ummm this might be bad for them. they might get soot-monsters lunging at their faces. we don't even have proper cleaning supplies here

i like that butt is labelled

observe the butt.

the first time you see one in canon, kate just quietly squishes it before emilico can notice

HELP

it would have been very funny if we un-nerfed powers without restrictions so all of kate's soot could come to life and attack everyone. oh well

also..... shadows have "soot powers" which are just all unique abilities but they're all based in soot

kate can control soot and make shapes with it

she often uses it to make little soot ropes to bind people!

but the very cool thing she can do is soot wings

she can't actually fly on them, but she can glide and slow her descent. and look cool as fuck

a lot of her detective work is figuring out who the culprits of certain cases are based on figuring out the mechanics of everybody else's soot powers

HER SOOT WINGS!!!!

anyway i've pretty much only talked about kate and emilico but the other shadows are cute too... please observe john. look at my son

just when you start thinking wow. shadows are so mysterious. this guy shows up with the most Just A Guy energy a shadow can have

he proposes to kate the day they meet and is immediately rejected

and keeps trying

then when kate is like oh. i need allies actually. she comes up with the brilliant plan of

giving him a really mean rejection letter

but writing a secret message in wax over top of it so that when he inevitably soots all over it in despair, he will see the truth about the shadows house and how she actually wants his help

kate so cool....

he is truly the biggest 13 year old himbo

kate is so funny

i think my favourite john moment is when a guy tries to attack kate and he just fucking jumps out from under a table and challenges him to a duel

like he was just sitting under that table the whole time in case he had to fight someone on kate's behalf (and also made his servant shaun do it too)

this guy has never had a thought in his head

oh yeah i guess another thing about the shadows house...

all of the shadows speak in the third person

this includes kate

it's one of the rules of the house and one of the ways that shadows distinguish themselves

but it sure sounds awkward as fuck in english

and most of the translations aren't very good so they don't really know how to handle it... like a lot of them are really inconsistent about it and accidentally drop the third person when they shouldn't... or they don't pay attention to when people drop the third person deliberately and it doesn't really translate

thankfully for me, pazu, kate would absolutely kick the shadow house's rules to the curb at the first opportunity so most people did not see her speak in the third person

i love you john

oh i almost forgot her other application of her power...

she once made a soot doppelganger... just a bunch of soot with her jacket

she got captured by a dude and ended up escaping by convincing the guy that she already escaped using the doppelganger

so he was like uhhh guess we have to put her back in the cage??? opens the cage.

kate doesn't do a lot of shonen-style direct fighting so most of her conflicts end up getting resolved with clever little tricks like that

she's basically a weak lil asthmatic baby... she mentions a few times that her stamina pretty much tanked after she spent a year as a sad baby recluse

sweet baby...

she's so cute

carries emilico to the finish line like a cool guy...
drops her on her ass

its ok shes buff kate now

she can carry emilico...

BUFF KATE i love her

anyway i am DYING right now because i apped kate from one of the latest chapters like "ok they just wrapped up a major arc so probably nothing huge will happen for a bit. probably gonna be a little downtime and buildup for the next big thing"

two chapters later the next big thing hit

like actual massive gamechanger that completely flips the state of the house and all of kate's plans are ruined and there are massive revelations

the main villain of the final arc revealed themselves and monologued for two whole chapters

so that's what kate is going back to now 🧍

except karma is going with her which means he has the opportunity to do the funniest possible thing

i will probably do an actual gametalk plurk tomorrow... or sometime...

NOT THE MONOLOGUE my god tho kate... what a wildass canon

shadows house is now on hiatus until late august... and then it's going to start its final arc

AAAAH THIS IS SUCH A FUN CANON I LOVE YOU KATE

also the fucking doppelganger ploy I'm crying

wish she could have done it in scawwy

there is so much happening here jesus christ

i love this, i definitely want to read this canon it sounds so cool

fyi this intrigued me so much that i just blew through the whole thing and am caught up on the manga now lmao

hell yeah eric

somebody now knows the thing that happened that i was quietly yelling about!!!

yeah!!!!!

i finally also read the entire thing now and i'm !!!! about the newest chapters like OH I SEE

haha!! yeah!!

it's so much........ karma's going to go home with her and kill...somebody...

good :')