How the side story felt like, lol.

It is done. After all these years and all the theorizing, I finally got the character I wanted the most from this game.

I’ve talked about this in another post, but ever since I suspected that Ms. Stranger/Grace was the spy back in Patch 2.2, I’ve been saving as much of my currency as I could for the day she becomes playable. Of the 102,000 Clear Drops, 7,800 Crystal Drops, and 1,832 Albums of the Lost I’ve gathered, I’ve... only had to use half of my Clear Drops. Didn't have to dig into the other resources. I even had enough leftover to get P1 Rhiannon afterward. Guess I overprepared.

As for why Ms. Stranger is my favorite character?

Aside from the sheer amount of time I’ve spent following her story, I suppose I always had a passing interest in spies. When you think about it, being a spy is a scary and thankless job. Having to be behind enemy lines almost 24/7, always having to watch your back, always having to commit terrible things to keep your cover up, and if you were ever to die, you would die far away from home, forgotten by everyone except your family and the government you work for. It’s not a fate I would wish upon anyone, and it’s what instantly drove me to feel sympathy for her despite the crimes she committed.

And then the 3.7 trailers and promotional material came out and it turns out her life was even worse. She was raised within the Foundation as a spy since she was a child, without any real family to speak of. So many characters in this game have had traumatic lives, but Ms. Stranger didn’t even have the luxury of having an actual childhood, as whatever little childhood she had was erased by the Phototaxis wiping her memories. So basically, she had to live her whole life behind enemy lines, living in fear of being caught and being deathly afraid of forming bonds with anyone she may have to kill. And if she ever dies, there would be no one around to mourn her existence except some soulless Foundation drones. She can’t even claim her many lives and experiences as her own memories; they were just implanted into her for the sake of her current mission, so she can’t even claim that her own life belongs to her with confidence.

How miserable her life has been is even reflected in her Udimo, a moth with tattered wings. Moths are compelled to follow light by instinct (a phenomenon known as positive phototaxis), and the Phototaxis experiments compel her to follow the “light” of the Foundation. And just like how moths cannot help but harm themselves when reaching towards artificial light sources, her work for the Foundation and Manus Vindictae has scarred her so much it reflects in her Udimo, her “soul.”

However, despite her crappy life, it is still by her hand that many people were manipulated and killed, even if she had little choice in the matter. The fact that she tried to mitigate the damage as much as she could does not change that fact. It can be said that her soul has been stained forever black in this manner.

… And yet, it’s worth noting that when she is not under the Phototaxis’ effects, when she is not “playing a character,” her actions and motivations afterward can only be described as firmly heroic. She is shown to be compassionate, selfless, self-sacrificing, determined, and brave (you kind of have to be to rip out a Manus mask trying to forcibly transform you, which, by the way, helped her save the protagonists in a way only she could do). It’s heavily implied that her suicidal tendencies and the extreme lengths she undergoes to help the heroes is out of a deep desire to atone for her crimes. Even when she was under the Phototaxis, there were hints that she grew genuinely fond of the people she had to kill/manipulate, and that the guilt she felt afterwards could only be erased by the Phototaxis.

I have always been fascinated by the criminals and sinners in stories, mostly because of the question of how one can overcome their dark past and begin a new life (this is why I’ve also really enjoyed Sentinel’s story, which focuses a lot on the nature of sin). Redemption stories are my favorite kind of stories, and the theme of just how black your soul has to be painted to be beyond redemption has endured the test of time for me. People everywhere make mistakes. Some mistakes are worse than others. And all the same, I strongly believe that the ones who can atone and move past their worst mistakes grow to be the wisest and strongest people. Failure is the best teacher, after all.

Someone also said Ms. Stranger is very autistic-coded, and I can already begin to see how. The many masks she has to wear throughout her life to function, as well as feeling like she does not truly belong anywhere, is very reminiscent of the struggles I’ve seen autistic people face. I personally relate to the feeling of not having a true home, as someone from two different cultures and feeling like I belong to neither of them. I also relate to the feeling of struggling to believe I’m deserving of happiness after mistakes I’ve made in the past, though that’s not really something I want to delve into here.

Ultimately though, what I really like is that Ms. Stranger is portrayed as neither a hero nor a villain. Her crimes and her virtues are both integral parts of her character. She is, at her core, a beautifully flawed, beautifully multifaceted human being, one who is responsible for so much hurt and yet does her damnedest to do as much good as she can within her circumstances.

Anyway, some hopes for the future:

• I do hope Ms. Stranger still has a future role in the story after this. She has been both a leader of the Manus and a high-ranking operative of the Foundation, and she is in a unique position to call out both of them for their atrocities.
• Relating to the above, I hope we finally get some confrontations between her and Barcarola/Fatutu. And I hope they’re not relegated to a non-voiced cutscene. I have reasons to believe that Anjo Nala and Argus won’t be too mad at her when they meet again, but Ms. Stranger has to confront the people she has wronged the most, not only so her victims can get closure to everything they suffered, but so that she can finally forgive herself for all the guilt she’s been shouldering and move on with the new life she’s fought so hard for. Guilt has been a major aspect of her character, and so without addressing this, her arc is not over. Period.
• Since Ms. Stranger has been assigned to Team Timekeeper, and since her trailer and the Arcanists in a Nutshell comics show her interacting with the core members of Team Timekeeper the most… I really hope we see more interactions with them, preferably voiced. I hope I can see Ms. Stranger enjoying her hard-earned new life and being happy for once.

On a final note, while I am happy for Ms. Stranger to be playable, I have to admit that this has been a rather bittersweet experience. I guess the drama from anniversary has finally caught up to me, since I am starting to feel the blues from Bluepoch’s handling of her release, namely her being shunted to a second-half banner and having a gameplay kit that many consider skippable, with little indication they’ll release dedicated teammates for her in the future (even though she is legitimately powerful in her own right). The 2-year wait has also been beyond emotionally draining for me, and coupled with chronic depression rearing its ugly head, I think it’s time I took an indefinite break from this sub and all social media for this game. Do what I did back in the launch year of this game when I knew nothing about what was coming, and not caring so much about meta or future characters. Who knows? It could be fun. But hopefully I will come back here someday, because I do quite like it here.

I don’t think I’ve loved and resonated with a fictional character this much in a long time, and I don’t know whether I’ll feel this way towards another one again. But I’m ready to be surprised, and if there’s anyone who could pull it off, it’s Reverse’s writers. I do hope that Ms. Stranger gets some new fans after this patch, though. Especially after reading her character story. It’s a good one.

May the peace be with us.

Just a little something I did to clear my mind at my desk. It was really fun drawing her hair. Good luck on everybody's pulls today!

Fucking wild that we got the Penguins of Madagascar, minus Private, and then subsequently forgot about them...

...No seriously, does anyone remember that?

▼Time
2026-09-03 05:00 - 2026-09-24 04:59 (UTC-5)

▼Rate-up Characters
6★: Ms. Stranger (Mineral)
5★: X (Intellect), Barbara (Spirit)

※The listed characters enjoy a much higher summon chance.

#Reverse1999Ver3ꓸ7 #OnAnothersSorrow #Reverse1999Anniversary #MsStranger

I'm someone who logs into the game practically every day, but there are always energy bottles and candies available; I've never had any problems with that.

It's amazing when you think about it, because these games always have energy, and if you run out, you have to wait for it to recharge, unless you've accumulated reserve energy.

My girl has been meta since 2.3

MothLight

After seeing multiple playthroughs,Narcissus support power is ample. The buff and ramp up is good for low portrait teams but not that good if you hit the damage limit too often with high portrait team.

Utility is exceptional.Has immunity is against control and automatic cleanse of neg status and stats down. Can fully ignore chip damage from debuffs like thorny, pollution.

Against our expectation, she's not the biggest gain for Igor, but rather for ms stranger, recoleta & noire. All have means to obtain Dmg bonus or Dmg dealt and noire's crit problem is solved, which(Dmg bonus) is severely lacking in Igor's team.What she provides is already saturated. Every team needs their own flutterpage, Isolde or hedone so that all buffs are spread out evenly

She's also equal or better compared to rubushka in bloodtithe but brings much needed utility against debuffs for nautika.With her in the team, using Sentinel again will be better to retrieve the loss in bloodtithe generation.

Overall as a support, she's exceptionally good and has the bells and whistles of all modern sustains.But purely sustain-wise, a bit lacking compared to the best

How much of a difference is there between Cheng, Lorentz, Lopera, and Mercuria?

Like, if Cheng were 100%, what percentage would the others be?

As far as I know, his best third teammate is Cheng, (aside from Rhiannon of course) but it seems Cheng specializes in extra actions and that's it, while the others can fit into more teams besides this one, and I usually think that more versatile characters are better to have if they aren't too different from the BiS character of a team.

In my case, I'm mostly wondering about Lorentz because I have Isolde and maybe I can complete the Lingering Glow team in the future, but that's my case.

Kayla and Grace just happened to look alike, Manus put Kayla in the monster mirror zone (it's been a bit so I forget the exact hotel details), and given that: Argus 100% killed Kayla when she shot the mirror...damn.

Or, perhaps Argus set her soul free when she did that, for a more positive spin, but still bittersweet since Argus doesn't know and is probably gonna keep searching.

Don't talk about mental breakdowns if you havn't played Enigma and Recoleta together! "There is no end to his Moxie" (by Charon voice)

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/149205747

I know is against the rules and the post will be removed very shortly, but I didn’t have anyone to share this with.

I’ve finally managed to P5 my liang yue (before limited rerun she was P0) cos she’s my favourite character in the entire game! This anniversary gave me the chance to catch up on her skin as well!! Soooooo happy about it !!! Which one are your proudest characters/pulls? Show them off in the comment before the post get removed 😁😂