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Tear Jerker / Pale

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Unmmarked spoilers below.


  • Clem's backstory is basically a massive Trauma Conga Line as her status as a Gilded Lily leads to the death of her parents, a friend, and causes her to limit her involvement with people to only one or two dates and one night stands for fear of them becoming a victim of one of her cursed items, leaving her starved for intimacy. The fact that she only barely has an understanding of what's going on due to being Aware but not a practitioner makes things even worse.
  • The 2.9 extra material is a comic detailing what happened after Nicolette stole Snowdrop. In it, Avery frantically calls on anyone and everyone she can think of for help as the Wolf devours the detour, and gets no answer.
  • The 6.9 Extra Material is a set of notes on binding - specifically, how to bind the Others of Kennet. Some very icky tactics are involved (e.g. "lock Alpeana in a room until she succumbs to starvation") and the fact that even brainstorming this stuff is a betrayal of the Others who've been nothing but kind to them permeates the document.
    Avery: It's easy to see why [the Kennet Others] hate and loathe practitioners, because this is the sort of thing other practitioners do.
  • Gone Ahead 7.6 has Shellie's memory of realising that her brother lost himself permanently.
  • In Shaking Hands 9.1, Lucy has a nightmare of waking up to find out that a drunk driver hit Booker and Alyssa's car, killing them.
  • In Shaking Hands 9.9:
    • The situation between Verona and Brett come to a head in a heart-wrenching screaming match between them. Verona calls the old man out for being an ungrateful, selfish Manchild. In retaliation, Brett attempts to confiscate Verona's backpack, tells her that her mother doesn't want her, that Jeremy will leave her, and insults Lucy and Lucy's family as well. Then, when she tries to hold his laptop hostage so he'll give back her belongings, Brett slams her backpack against the counter repeatedly until he breaks everything inside, including her mask, in one final Kick the Dog moment.
    • Immediately after Brett's Kick the Dog moment, Verona glamours herself into a cat to escape from the overwhelming pain before rendezvousing with Lucy and Avery, who immediately realize something is wrong when she doesn't talk at all while in cat form, despite being fully capable of it. When she finds the Carmine Furs later in the chapter, she hastily draws out a bunch of silence runes so she can have a screaming, crying breakdown as she sabotages all of the defenses keeping the Furs hidden.
  • The 11.2 extra materials, Just In Case, are a series of letters and other things that the girls made for their families and other loved ones in the event that they died while confronting Edith. While the readers know that Edith gave up without a fight and nobody so much as stubbed their toe, the letters are still absolutely heartbreaking.
  • It's sad to see John both angry and disappointed as he confronts Edith for all the things she's done in Dash to Pieces 11.4, especially in terms of how she was involved in making the Hungry Choir. There's an implication that if it weren't for the circumstances, he might've tried to kill Edith right then and there for her betrayal.
    John: "You couldn't let Yalda rest in peace? She agreed to die because she didn't want to kill innocents. She couldn't exist without binding and rotting the guts of the innocents in the area, she had enough influence there was no getting far enough away, it was the only option."
  • The Carmine Beast's life, as revealed in Summer Break. She did her best to do her job, but humanity moved on, building cities and putting lights everywhere. Knowing there was no place for her there, the Beast took over the Carmine seat, but it didn't make her happy. She had no friends, no lovers, nobody to comfort her and a thankless job, often involving situations where there wasn't really a right or good solution. By the end, the other Roles were making plans for John to replace her, which enraged her because she'd spent hundreds of years doing a shitty job with little to no thanks only to be supplanted and forgotten, and Maricica was openly talking about how pointless the Beast's existence was. The last straw is her seeing Miss choose not to help her after she's mauled by the Hungry Choir, which makes her decide to finish the job herself in order to 1) Save herself the days it would take the Hungry Choir to fully devour her and 2) spite the conspirators plus Miss for what happened.
  • In Break 2, Lucy begs John to become her familiar and not try to take the Carmine Throne. John admits that he wants to, but he refuses because he cut a deal with the other Judges- he takes the Throne, they undo the bindings on his fellow Dogs. Lucy is utterly heartbroken as all her arguments and last-ditch attempts to stop John fail.
  • Break 5. Lauren Snyder's predicament is revealed- with her familiar tainted by a demon and feeding off the power granted to her by her goddess, she can't die. If she dies, her familiar comes out; if the familiar is then killed, Lauren is brought back. John is forced to kill her over and over until the Judges are satisfied, thus relieving the time he killed Yalda, the worst time of his life. Reid, who genuinely liked Lauren, is absolutely horrified by this, ranting that Lauren deserved better and should at least get some kind of memorial, and he frantically tries to bargain for time to talk to his father and Raquel, but is denied it. John agrees to pass a message on and tell people what happened to Lauren, and Reid, assenting, just stands there and lets John kill him.
  • In Summer Break (The chapter not the Arc), John is killed by Charles, who becomes the new Carmine Beast, and everyone else is helpless to do anything about it.
  • In Interlude 20.z we meet Edith James, or to be more precise the human portion of the Girl by Candlelight, who expresses regret about everything that happened, her own weakness in going along with her worse impulses, and wishes that she'd been a better mentor to the girls before Kira-Lynn kills her human body in order for Griffin to reforge her into a minion more useful for Charles and Liz.
  • In Finish Off 24.1, the girls get to the aftermath of the BHI fight and find out that they lost people- Ramjam, Butty, several other goblins, Killwagon, and the Vice Principal. Several of the Dog Tags were bound, a large number of Kennet Below's citizens (Including Mal and Anselm) were unmade, and the survivors are for the most part not doing too well. Overall, Kennet survived, but it was at a hell of a cost.

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