From parchment to pixel.

Dear Dante,

Forgive my prolonged silence—four years consumed by the theatre of survival, deadlines, and the daily farce we call progress.

I return to you, not with a confession, but with a restless mind freshly agitated by an experience you would find both foreign and, I suspect, oddly familiar.

Last night, I did something you might find curious: I “binge-watched” a television series. In this modern spectacle, one sits for hours before a glowing box, absorbing episode after episode as if reading all the cantos of a saga in a single night.

The series in question, Bet, is based on a Japanese comic series—what we now call “Manga”, specifically one named Kakegurui. Manga is an art form where stories unfold through sequential images and words, much like illuminated manuscripts, although now read from right to left and often consumed on glowing screens.

(“Imagine an illuminated manuscript that changes its images instantly, powered not by scribes but by lightning trapped in glass, showing tales from across the world.”).

Its roots reach back to the playful narrative scrolls of the 12th century. Still, it truly flourished in the 19th century, with artists like Hokusai, whose “Manga” (literally, “whimsical sketches”) captured the foibles and dramas of his time.

Today, Manga has become a vast universe of illustrated books and animated series, weaving moral tales as tangled as anything found in Florence or Limbo.

Eight episodes without pause, Dante. My body protested, but my mind was snared by the vividness of the tale and the sharpness of its characters. Yet when I finally rose, what lingered was not the plot but a peculiar disgust, a revulsion not for the protagonist’s struggles but for her antithesis.

Why, I wondered, does the villain of this modern Manga stir my bile, while the criminals of Mobland—another series, this one glorifying the underworld—leave me curiously untroubled?

It is not the open criminal, the wolf in wolf’s clothing, who stirs my disgust. No, my bile rises for those who exploit innocence with a smile, who cheat the genuine and the naive with the self-satisfaction of a cat stretching in the sun. Their betrayal is not hidden; it’s televised, monetised, and—most insidiously—normalised. The world applauds, numbed by spectacle, grateful for the illusion of choice.

You once mapped the circles of hell with poetic precision, reserving your most profound contempt for the traitors—those who, with icy calculation, betrayed trust and kin. Today, the cunning men and their well-heeled associates no longer whisper behind closed doors; they stride across the world stage, applauded for their audacity, rewarded for their complacency. Their crimes are not punished but promoted; their betrayal is not a sin but a skill set. You reserved your final circle for such as these, but here, they are the headliners.

Mother Nature, once the wise matron who quietly rebooted herself every few millennia, is now forced into submission by those who see her as a ledger entry. The borders between realms—animal, human, digital—are trampled by those who mistake cunning for wisdom and profit for progress. Now, dear Dante, when I say “digital,” I mean stories and images made not with ink or parchment but with pulses of light and numbers—captured and shared by machines, not scribes.

And here I sit, a reluctant extra in this grand production, watching as the architects of ruin are handed the keys to the city. The deepest hell is not below us but all around—disguised as cleverness, paraded as virtue, rewarded as leadership.

So, dear Dante, as you read this, know that even in the age of binge-watching and Manga, your lessons burn bright. The true villainy is not the violence of the mobster but the complacency of the betrayer in the spotlight. The stage is bigger, the costumes flashier, but the sin—ah, the sin is the same.

Awaiting your response, or that of any other restless soul wandering this limbo we stubbornly call Earth.

May clarity find us,

Irena Phaedra