Yesterday I made a post about how I was completely frustrated with Anna as a reader. I haven’t even been on her love interest route because plenty of people warned me against it, so I never took romantic options with her. I heard about the fact that she hardly got any time with the MC, which sucks, but I had no idea how bad it was until I saw scenes from her route with my own eyes. It is staggeringly bad. Thank you to the commenters on my last post for convincing me to check it out.
Instead of going through the entire story myself, I went onto YouTube and saw someone had uploaded their playthrough of the story on Anna’s route, so I skimmed through each episode, pausing each time there was a scene with MC and Anna alone to see what happened and what her route entailed. I believe I covered every important scene here, but please let me know in the comments if I missed any!
⚠️The YouTube account doing the playthrough is Lychee, if you wanna check it out! I would recommend doing so before reading this if you haven’t seen anything from Anna’s route. I’m including a link to the YouTube playlist with video timestamps in the comments so you can follow along. YOU MAY NOT UNDERSTAND THIS POST IF YOU DO NOT WATCH THE SCENES LISTED.⚠️
Anyways, below I will be going through each important scene, verbally dissecting it. Here we go.
Scene #1: Batthouse, season 1, episode 2
Sadly, this is the only normal sort of love interest scene in the entirety of Anna’s route. The rest are quite bad for a variety of reasons.
In this scene, things look promising. It’s the first romance scene we get with her and it’s vibey. The one thing that did stand out a little, though, was the author’s use of the word ‘girlfriend’. Throughout my life I’ve noticed that people who use the word ‘girlfriend’ to talk about their female friends are either middle-aged women or homophobes. So, take that as you will. 🤷🏻♀️
In season 1 there appear to be large gaps between Anna’s important romance diamond choices. The next important romance scene with her is during episode 7.
Scene #2: Having tea, season 1, episode 7
This is where things begin to take a lacking turn.
For some odd reason, this was purely a conversation about how both MC and Anna were unhappy with their past jobs for different reasons. This felt so, so pointless to their relationship. This was the type of diamond choice I’d take if I wanted to be on a friendly route, not a romance route. At the tail end of the scene Anna asks MC how many relationships she’s had with a smirk on her face, and that’s the extent of anything ‘romantic’.
In general it felt like a purely friendly conversation that nobody should have to spend diamonds on believing it to be a romance scene, it’s a complete rip-off. Now, after this is when things get realllllll bad. Like, when I read the following scenes my jaw dropped and I just kept saying THAT’S CRAZYYYY BUSINESS.💀💀Cause I did not know what else to say I was stunned lol
Scene #3: sleeping on the train, season 2, episode 2
This started off pretty wholesome. I was like, oh, cute, Anna is checking on Lane while she’s sleeping because she’s worried about her. Aweh. Lovely. They’re getting physically closer, and-
The mood is continuously getting ruined by Lane’s thoughts telling her that what she’s doing is ‘wrong’ or ‘weird’. Hrm…okay then.
I understand thoughts like that (being a bisexual woman myself), but how about we don’t do that during a romantic moment? Let’s keep our internalized homophobia to ourselves for this one.
As I was trying to ignore that, Anna was getting more and more flirty. During this time Lane tells Anna that she’d like to get some sleep and Anna should probably go to bed. This should be taken as a sign to give Lane some space, but Anna, oddly, ignores that and presses herself against Lane. That felt weird. HrrmmmmMMM.
Then, and let me tell yall my jaw dropped to the floor here,
Anna says “I don’t want to lose my first friend in this crazy world”. With the word ‘friend’ in italics, emphasizing it. At first I thought that was sarcasm until a whole ass fucking message popped up on screen saying “You and Anna fell asleep holding eachother. Even if this hug means something DIFFERENT to you”.
🤯HHRRMMMMMM???? So basically the author here just gave us a tiny bit of hope then punched our sapphic selves in the stomach, stating that Anna really didn’t see it as anything romantic and it was just in Lane’s head. Even though she disregarded Lane’s wishes to just sleep alone and pressed herself against her. Oh my.
Scene #4: lip balm, season 2, episode 7
Again, kind of a crazy time skip between important romance scenes here. But anyways,
This was straight disgusting. The last scene was concerning but this was simply disgusting, blatantly so.
At this point in the story, Anna is acting very coldly towards Lane, acting as though there’s nothing between them ever, which began during the train ride.
Suddenly Anna and Lane have a moment in a bathroom while Anna is doing Lane’s makeup. They’re very physically close and Anna, out of the fuckin blue, is like “yo Lane gurl ur lips are dry we gotta fix that” and just kisses her. Literally just presses her lips right on Lane’s lips. Lane is obviously like omg hot girl kissing me I should kiss back right?
EHHH. WRONG.
When she kisses her back, Anna, and I DIRECTLY quote from the story, “recoiled and wiped her mouth as if she wanted to wash herself off”.
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯
Okay I’ll just go jump off the nearest bridge then.
LIKE HUH?????? QUE? PARDON? I beg your finest pardon.
As if making us feel like a gross monster wasn’t enough, Anna becomes ANGRY for kissing her back and begins to MOCK us. I’m not kidding I can’t make this shit up yall. She is literally mocking Lane for wanting to have something romantic with her.
Anna does end up kissing Lane again shortly after, but it feels so awkward and forced at this point. I wanted to shake the bad energy off myself after reading this. YUCK.
Scene #5: blood tree, season 2, episode 9
This one was fairly short, but as far as I know, still significant to each love interest’s route.
Essentially, Lane is able to briefly hear a chosen LI’s thoughts about her, in this case Anna’s thoughts. Anna’s thoughts are very….uhgggggg.
Anna’s thoughts say that she ‘confuses simple affection with much stronger feelings’, again feeding into the ‘we’re just friends and you’re the one making it weird’ thing. Her thoughts also say that she can’t stand the thought of Lane with anyone else, and while I guess that was supposed to be romantic, for Anna it comes off as simply toxic. She purposefully gets physically close to Lane, gaslights her into thinking Lane is crazy and weird, tells her they’re just friends, then basically says ‘if I can’t have you nobody else can’. It’s so weird and gives me the ick.
Scene#6: Lane hanging from a fuckin pole lmao, season 3, episode 1
Well now this one was just a slap in the face. This is clearly when the author stopped caring altogether.
Lane is hanging from a pole, about to fall to her death. On other routes this is where she sees a diamond choice basically asking who she wants to save her. On Anna’s route, there’s no diamond choice. This indicates that the ‘romantic’ scene here isn’t even important enough to spend diamonds on like the rest of them.
Frankly, the scene is giving nothing. Not even a crumb. Here we are, starving WLW readers, and we did not receive so much as an itty bitty crumb of romance during a scene where all other love interest routes did.
Anna literally just shows up, shows the amount of concern you would for a friend, not even a close friend, just an acquaintance, then grabs something Lane can land on when she falls. When Lane does land, the first words out of Anna’s mouth are “oh my god, disgusting!”. Way to go author, just continue to alienate your sapphic audience. She literally doesn’t even hug Lane, no touch happens in general, they just walk away together. I mean holy shit, the lack of care is physically palpable at this point.
Scene #7: making ‘love’, season 3, episode 3
Mannnn this scene had so much potential at first. I thought it was really hot how Lane was ‘controlling’ Anna with her demon powers and it seemed cool at first. But, as per usual on this route, it turned into something completely off-putting and strange.
While Lane is clearly into it, sensual music playing in the background, Anna is asking Lane about the abominations still. Like, huh?? Why are you giving us NOTHINGGG??
There’s also the matter of Anna’s face looking completely disgusted throughout the ENTIRE time. What a turn off, made me want to crawl out of my skin as if Lane was some sort of predator. Anna’s actions by sticking around indicates that she wants what’s happening, but her facial expression and words say otherwise.
Lane then point-blank asks Anna, “do you want this?” You’d think at this point the author would have Anna say yes, or even something along those lines. Even just along those VERY GENERAL PARAMETERS. But NOOOO. We can’t have that. Instead, Anna says “Just order me, we’re playing after all.”
smashes head against hard surface several times in anguish
We are then given the least passionate CG I have ever seen in the history of love interest CG’s. Clothes fully on, nothing shown, Lane leaning over Anna with a finger on her lips. That’s it. THAT’S LITERALLY THE ‘SEX SCENE’ CG FOR ANNA’S ROUTE.
I truly can’t go on any further I’m done lol.
So yah, definitely the most awkwardly weird homophobic route I have ever played in the history of RC, or maybe ever played in the history of interactive stories altogether!
It was a shame to have to call this out because I really, really enjoy Requiem, and I believe the author is very talented and writes other characters well. But my god, the lack of care for Anna’s route is horrifically blatant and I couldn’t sit idly by. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk lol.