Something I keep chewing on with Olruggio and Qifrey is the memory erasure. Earlier in the story Qifrey shares his view that to lose your memory is to lose a part of you. It's a desecration of the self, it's stripping away someone's autonomy, it's defiling their soul.
That opens the whole can of worms with Olruggio and Qifrey, because Qifrey is constantly defiling Olruggio, but Olruggio WANTS to be defiled. Some people take the stance that Qifrey can be absolved because, "Qifrey is just following his wishes", but I'm not sure that fully holds up when you consider Qifrey does this to OTHER people who definitely haven't consented. He's even experienced it himself, he's had his autonomy stripped from him and he's been left with the tatters. He still chooses to do it to other people. I think Qifrey has become accustomed to that violent way of living, "I can do it to my partner in pain so I can do it to others too", and it messes me up how their relationship can be interpreted as wholesome but the reality is there is something very deep and fucked up beneath it.
There's a significant power imbalance there, but we'll never see Olruggio be cognizant of it because he's engineered this fucked up situation so he doesn't have to deal with it. Both of them are deeply unwell. Which is worse, the guy who kills or the guy who gave him the knife?
Also more meat to chew on I guess, but Olruggio forgives him each time yeah? Ok, but is Olruggio told how many times this has happened? How much he's lost? And at what point did Qifrey not bother asking for his consent to wipe his memory, because he certainly didn't wait for Olruggio to give him that consent in chapter 40. Who is really in the right in this situation now? (Spoiler: no one because they're both fucked up codependent in the worst possible way 😔)
