#because with the way things have been set up that theory is either real or supposed to clown on the audience with all the things hinting at
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Okay, I’m going to do it. I have been holding back and just telling my closest fandom friends my crazy theory, but what the hell. Most of you think I’m batshit anyway.
Here we go.....
What if we have been on the receiving end of a long played out psyop and Louise has been a way to make the public want Milex?
Okay, hear me out...
It’s 2017/8 Alex has abandoned Miles after EYCTE. He has gone to France to write and record TBHC, having realised their little TLSP bubble could never last (see Star Treatment). Without Alex, Miles is a little lost and lonely in LA. His reputation is also at rock bottom after the journalist incident. Miles decides he wants to move back to England, and Alex decides he wants to move back to, as we know they can never be more than a few minutes away from each other
Taylor either wouldn’t or couldn’t leave LA, so she and Alex break up. But they need a new girlfriend to keep up the straight image (especially with the new badly-received album and a world tour about to begin). On the original version of OPP as seen on the AM in Mexico video, over the turtle segment Alex sings ‘One More Year I’ll Call It Quits’ maybe the plan was to give it all up,but he had signed a contract to do another album and tour after TBHC, and with Miles’ reputation so bad, if they were together then they would both be cancelled.
So a European girlfriend is found and this is where the subterfuge begins. We start with old Instagram posts with tags like #alexturnerwillyoumarryme, then we get professionally shot videos of her backstage at AM’s concert (all the time Alex is ‘still with’ Taylor) so as soon as they launch, the first image of Louise the public get is a negative one, as a fangirl who has set out to get Alex, not caring if he cheats in his current girlfriend.
Before I list the reasons why I think she is fake, can I say this idea he has stayed with her as punishment for cheating on Taylor is absolutely ridiculous. Men who are serial cheats aren’t known for wearing hairshirts. Especially when you’re a handsome, wealthy rock star who could easily get another girlfriend.
So, the idea is, Louise is the most unpleasant person who makes Alex miserable, and if most people are honest, they want Alex to be happy..
So, let’s look at the evidence..(where there is a * it means there is a Miles counterside)
Louise doesn’t work. She claims to be a feminist, but her job seems to be being Alex’s girlfriend.
She openly copies selfies posed by previous girlfriends, making her look like she has no personality of her own
She boasts in her IG posts ie the ‘we just fucked’ pic and the panties on the piano.
She claims to be a musician but we rarely see her writing or recording anythjng.*
She writes embarrassing things about itAlex on social media (beautiful dick).*
Openly takes a neutral stance on Palestine.
Claims to wear vintage clothes but they rarely are*
When Alex was ill after the third London show, it is publicised that he leaves the Emirates with his parents, no sign of Louise. She’s too busy taking pics in the hotel with Matt and Amanda
Meanwhile Miles has worked hard on his public image. He has shown he is a hard worker. He rarely mentions Alex on social media and when asked about him in interviews, whilst admitting they are good friends, is insistent they are not working together. Which is good because he has always been accused of riding on Alex’s fame.
He frequently gives updates when he his writing and recording, treating us to little snippets, something Louise never does.
Is it a coincidence that holiday gate is the same as the week One Man Band’s release. Alex looking miserable with Louise Vs Miles being charming and hard working.
Not long after Louise starts going on about her fake vintage, Miles posts a whole real of him going proper vintage shopping so he looks authentic.
Even in Dublin there is no duet with Alex. Miles not using Alex’s,fame,but also those who monitor social media can see how hungry they are for Milex interaction.
The river Mersey comment – another way of guaging public opinion. Finally the legion of doom 😍😍 comment on the NY recent. The fandom went crazy at Milex acknowledgement.
Alex....
His face..Alex is a pro. He has had twenty years of faking smiles after arguments with the other Monkeys, girlfriends, even Miles. He could fake a smile with Louise if we wanted to when they call their friends at Backgrid to take pap pictures. But instead he chooses to look like someone either on the verge of tears or else being held hostage. And in the latest set of pics, Louise looks the same.
The Taylor tattoo....it looks like he thinks so little of her he has kept that tattoo.
‘I don’t wanna be hers, I wanna be yours’ quite often at gigs where Louise is in attendance.
Not one song on the car written about her.
And now of course with the tour over, a lot of people return to watching TLSP videos. Happy, muscly, healthy looking Alex having fun with Miles as opposed to skinny, miserable Alex trapped with Louise.
Apart from Louise’s most ardent fans, most people want to see him away from her and would be overjoyed at a TLSP reunion, and for us Milexers, a declaration of their love.
So, has this been a long game? A way of making the people think they want Milex? I told you it was crazy, but just remember the world of public relations is completely underhand and insane.
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i made a post entertaining the Alice-Karen theory before and i still don't know where i stand on believing it. i thought it was a complete crack theory that's just straight up disprovable by canon going into it but the insane number of odd things somehow supporting it, which i apparently never payed attention to before rewatching s4, weird me out (you can also extend it back to further seasons if you genuinely want to buy into it)
i really don't like the "and they're Related!" twist usually so i don't have a particular bias towards the theory being true. but i wanted to check it out for fairness sake to give it a chance (personal preference aside) and now i don't know what i think anymore. it's like. there's some very good arguments you can make against it. but there's also a weird amount of things that DO imply something is going for which we don't have an explanation for yet
but no matter if Karen is actually Alice
i do genuinely believe something was incomplete about Both the flashbacks to the Creel murders we saw. Victors AND Henry's version. because the story we're ultimately shown by Henry makes sense on a surface level but it also directly contradicts the timeline of events it's trying to lay out to us. Henry is either specifically leaving something out when talking to Nancy that would explain the hole in the timeline he subtly leaves OR Henry is Also an unreliable narrator because he genuinely thinks he's telling the true story like Victor did as well
i'm quite ambivalent to the Wheeler-Creel theories but i DO have thoughts on it after looking into it (i'm going to actually make posts about that at some point. arguing for and against it probably). but regardless of whether Karen is actually Alice. Something is sure going on with Alice Creel. even if she ends up being a random girl, s4 was definitely not the last we heard about her with the story we were left
#i seriously need to write an actual post about the timeline fuckery of Henry's recounting of events#because he's either lying intentionally or unaware of something because the chain of events he shows Nancy isn't actually possible#in the order he presents it#and it's not just a pretty significant gap in his timeline but also the way Henry tells us what he did while the events on screen make#what he says... very unlikely to be the full story. you're leaving shit out Henry. Again#actually given the fact that i'm not the Biggest fan of the Creel/Wheeler theory i have WAY too many notes on it#i thought i'd keep an open mind on a s4 rewatch and it spiraled into WAY too many notes i still don't even love the theory that much#but at this point i'm at least trying to be prepared if s5 actually goes there#because with the way things have been set up that theory is either real or supposed to clown on the audience with all the things hinting at#it being intentional misleads for laughs- there's just too many odd choices made and too many things that you can tie into it#alice creel#karen wheeler#creel/wheeler theory#<- there finally made a tag to find these posts i keep sporadically being weird about it so at least i can keep track of the shit i've#actually made posts about
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A Very Long qRoier Theory
Okay so here's what I actually think, and TRUST THE PROCESS OKAY:
I think that Roier really was kidnapped by the Federation, but I don't think that he was taken because he was looking for Cellbit strictly because the Feds themselves are actually more or less actively searching for the missing islanders and hoping for their return so they can continue the murder investigation. Despite the terrible things going on, the Feds legitimately want all their islanders/lab rats back on the island so they can continue with whatever experiment they're holding. Every time Cucurucho has held a meeting recently, it's asked about the status of the missing islanders, so it really wouldn't make sense for it or the Feds as a whole to punish their one single lead in the case when every actual Federation agent assigned to the case has either come up with nothing or disappeared entirely.
Nah, I think Roier was taken because he was vulnerable and because the Feds figured nobody would've missed him. They know that he isn't really super close with anybody on the island but Cellbit, and they know that he's been actively pushing people away for a while now- basically since Bobby's death, and moreso since his return from Purgatory.
Looking at the QSMP channel's streams, particularly Elena's, we know that the Feds seem to be a pharmaceutical company. They, simply speaking, make drugs. Look at the "happy pills" that Elena helped create, this is what the Feds do.
Roier mentioned that he was drugged. He never said that they stopped drugging him. I think he's still being drugged and that he isn't a rat- not a literal one, anyway.
I think that Roier is still under the effects of the drugs he's being given because he is currently a test subject. He's a lab rat.... at the moment, anyway.
More on that later.
Do I have any evidence for this? Not really, but also some things just didn't add up cinematically. Like, okay, go back and watch everything from after when Roier 'wakes up' in the dungeon:
Everything's got this weird otherworldly fuzziness and glow to it. It's almost dreamlike in a way. Only the focus of the world is, well, in focus. The rest is blurred like a bad 3D movie:
There are all these weird cuts and jumps, too, like 11:16 when we suddenly cut to black for a few moments as Roier goes down the hallway, or 12:13 when we smash cut to the rat and 12:16 when we cut to Cucurucho. It's super sudden and jarring and it sets up a real nice feeling of unease (shoutout to ccRoier, this is SPECTACULAR)
And the music, okay, the background music is exactly the kind of shit you'd hear in a 'Dreamcore Music Video' on YouTube. It's super Backrooms, super weird esoteric vibes, and that's very on purpose.
None of this is real, and "Doied" is the final proof because like. He isn't real lol, if he's real then so is Roger, and the only times either of them front are when Roier's goofing around or when he's extremely homicidal (we saw Roger pretty recently, actually, back in October when he said that Cellbit killing everyone might be a good thing, actually.) Doied isn't like Abueloier or Melissa, he's one of Roier's 'alters', and he's a bit of a freak lol
I think about everyone can agree that this whole 'Ratoier' thing is a hallucination, but then we have to think, huh, what the hell does any of this mean?
First, we gotta follow the whole 'Roier is Currently Super Drugged' thing, because he is. He literally is. If he's not, well, laugh at me when the next tape comes out.
Roier is drugged by the Feds right now probably to test a new drug, possibly a drug meant to- just like the Happy Pills- make people happy again. In this case, however, I think that the pills may actually have something to do with memories, particularly the same memory retrieval stuff the Resistance did to Bagi. Because, well.
I want to go back to the rat, and I want to go back to Doied, because this stream actually implied a LOT about qRoier's character.
The thing about Doied is that he's the manifestation of Roier's "Um, actually!" Nerd Emoji self. He's a nerd. He's a loser with glasses and a nasty attitude.
Doied, in the dream, is a scientist. Doied, in the dream, performed horrible, inhumane experiments for the Federation. He put Roier's brain into a rat's, a lab rat's.
Once a long, long time ago in August, Roier quietly came to the realization that maybe he has a past history with the Federation and that's why Osito Bimbo has always been so weird about him- it basically had a crush on him for the first week or so of the island, and it still seems to, and he is still the only one outside of Foolish the Federation Employee to be addressed directly by his train ticket number: 0037. He brought up the possibility of being a Federation worker in the past to Cellbit, who brushed it off and said that he wouldn't care because he's a worker, too, technically, but what if it isn't a possibility?
We've always wondered how Federation workers end up the way they do. Why are they all the exact same type of bear? Why does only Cucurucho get to have a face and a voice? Why do they all have human minds and emotions? Why are they all dedicated to the Federation?
Easy. Because maybe they were people before, just like how Bagi and several other islanders think they are. But maybe someone put their brains inside of an animal's body- or, at least, inside of a worker's body, God only knows if they were actual polar bears at some point. Somebody had to help come up with that technology, and maybe it's the guy who managed to build an entire computer and radio-satellite setup over the span of about a week in his goddamn backyard without anybody knowing about it.
Roier has always had some weird connection with the Federation. He's the only civilian islander to ever be addressed by his ticket number, and later we find out that Foolish's ticket number- 0039- is his Federation Employee ID Number- W0039. He was Osito Bimbo's favorite for the first week on the island to the point of Osito just giving him whatever he wanted. He and Jaiden were paired up for the Egg Event (something that was intentional, btw, admin confirmed), and it's later revealed that Jaiden has a past with the Federation regarding the SMILE Units (aka Osito Bimbo and Cucurucho and the new guys.) The "Gods" (aka the admins) will happily follow him around and revive him when he's alone and strike him with lightning when asked and give him dirt and whatever. He managed to get someone onto the island from off of the island, Abueloier, and Abueloier was saved from the brink of death by the Federation in the Federation's hospital. His literal pet dog is a Federation employee. He got to name Jorgito the IV Drip.
Doied put someone's brain into the body of a rat, and Doied is Roier's nerd self.
I think that Roier may, in fact, have a past history with the Federation, and that it isn't because his grandfather worked/works for them. Maybe Roier did, just like he suspected months ago, and maybe he did some really bad things. But they were excused at the time because the people being converted into workers were bad people who made mistakes. Roier made the mistake of breaking the rules trying to connect with Cellbit, and so he got turned into a rat. There's been a functional prison on the island for long enough for it to be partially abandoned (see: Tazercraft Prison Stream.) Walter Bob was held there, possibly because he was part of the Resistance, or possibly because he wasn't done cooking yet.
Roier has always been a man of justice. When people do bad things, they get punished, and then things can go back to normal. He ruined Quackity's life. He wanted Slime to be properly punished for killing Tilin and he threatened to murder him when he tried threatening the kids. He built an entire torture dungeon in his basement for the explicit purpose of torturing Spreen to the point of death repeatedly and possibly for the rest of Spreen's miserable life. Cucurucho took Bobby away, and Roier said that the Federation would regret putting and keeping him on the island. Pozolito the Capybara blew Cellbit up, and Roier has literally tried killing every Capybara he's seen since. The Federation screwed with his family and with himself, and Roier is more than happy to join Cellbit in massacring the entire Federation.
He's a man of justice, but not of morals. He's a ruthless killer when it comes down to it, and he only shows regret when it comes to his husband's deaths during Purgatory. He doesn't fight unless he has to, but he's been thinking about killing everyone on the island since the first week of the server when he was betrayed. But, when it comes down to it, he doesn't actually want to hurt anyone he cares about. It's why Purgatory fucked him up so much.
His moral alignment actually matches up pretty well with several other Federation workers'- particularly workers like Elena and Fred who are nice but are willing to do terrible things in the name of their cause. The difference here is that Roier has had the same privilege that workers like Walter Bob and Ron got: he got a chance to socialize.
He doesn't have memories from before the island, but he remembers enough about his childhood to be a little suspicious.
But what if these drug-induced hallucinations are actually hints to Roier's backstory? What if it wasn't Doied running all these terrible experiments for the Federation, but it was Roier? Just a guy acting under the belief that he was making the world a better place, punishing criminals (aka rule breakers) while helping the Federation's cause: finding true happiness and spreading it to the world.
The Eye said that everybody in Purgatory was a sinner, and maybe Roier's sin was some mad scientist bullshit.
The dream today, Tape 1, had Roier being punished. Maybe it's because that's what he did as a scientist to new employees, or maybe it's because of his own guilt over everything he's done; remember, the reason he stopped smiling in Purgatory wasn't because he was killing his friends (because he's thought about killing his friends for a VERY long time), but it was because he killed Cellbit, and then it was because he left Cellbit behind to die. That's why the dream specified Cellbit's lost signal and not, say, Jaiden's, and it's why all the cool cinematic landscape shots focused on either Roier himself or Cellbit.
If my prediction is correct, Tape 2 would have Roger instead of Doied. So we'll see what happens then, I guess. Roger, who represents Roier's anger and his various homicidal tendencies.
Fit said that everybody was on the island for a reason, and Roier has been cooking for a long time now. Maybe qRoier is just like qJaiden: a former Federation associate.
TLDR; qRoier is currently hallucinating due to him being a Federation lab rat. His drug-induced dreams may be implying that Roier has a past within the Federation as a scientist completing the same experiments that "Doied" did in the dream to Roier.
But that's just a theory, a Game Theory. Thank you for reading.
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Link to the translated Q&A Vivinos and Qmeng had recently.
....Guess that means it'll be very long (hopefully) and very good? honestly just scared for what round 7 will bring, it's probably gonna be the last round in the series, and with all the tension buildup this'll be stressful i assume
Yeah, Luka was set to be a popular figure from the jump, there was no way his trick with the Sua imitation was more than just a power trip (Or just a genuine mental break on Mizi's part). because either way with the way Mizi was holding herself up during round 5, she stood 0 chance against him.
Luka, just like the others doesn't actually have real control over his position in Alien stage. So in order to set that boundary for himself and others he uses his presence and the stage because, in any other context, he is simply just a tool and a frail (old) man. (And he has in-universe stans how beautiful)
More Luka lore please vivinos....
Kinda glad this got changed, because imagine this cute guy gradually turning into the Ivan we know now and then doing the shit he did in round 6? then doing the dream face reveal showing that he never truly changed, he just had a mask on. that shit would be 10x more devastating (even though the way it is now is just as devastating) Ivan and Luka twins (scary stuff but quite intriguing, even now they're still quite similar in some ways)
And Sua has been queen since birth love her. she keeps winning.
Augh...it is true though. Aliens and humans are just far to vast in traits to relate to each other on such a level, this reminds me of Mizi and Guardian Shine. Guardian Shine might've been the only guardian shown in the alien stage cast to actually be kind. She even seemed to be crying when she had to send Mizi away to go to Anakt(?). I find it kinda sweet though, that the ones who do actually care really show it and try even if they can't understand their pets that well.
But I also like the more grim side to it, because when you don't understand something specifically another being in this case you're less likely to have sympathy for it. Humans and Aliens don't have any relatable traits so whatever these aliens do to the humans whether for self-pleasure or such. And lab-mice? that confirms lab-rat theory. Alien stage crew were all just succesful experiments and the bad batch are kept behind for further testing i theorize. but its still pretty vague so we'll see. hopefully things get more grim ((
......What are you hiding Vivinos. (she rlly said do your homework....okay mum...i will catch you...)
A story about the death of close loved ones and how that can affect characters who are alive in the long run. im gonna throw up.
(NOT AGAIN WITH THE DEAD WIFE PARALLEL MIZI IS NOT HIS WIFE-)
"Ivan is the perfect man" 😭 I love the details of round 6 clothing so much, even I got that superior or dominating aura from Ivan when I first saw him in round 6 (💀) there wasn't really much to his outfit but the way he carried himself in it kinda just gave off that idea that he's the one in control here. but gradually, we can see that facade fade as he got more into his feelings the more he sang and sunk down to a level where he was most natural. eugh.....
#alien stage#alnst#qmeng#vivinos#alnst round 6#alien stage ivan#alien stage till#alien stage sua#alien stage mizi#alien stage luka#kinda sad....no hyuna info...i wanted to hear about here ;<;#ivan i miss u come back home#till i miss u come back home the kids miss you too please#no questions to be seen about the april 5th kiss scene or till's feelings on ivan i wonder why
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Okay, breaking my principles hiatus again for another fanfic rant despite my profound frustration w/ Tumblr currently:
I have another post and conversation on DW about this, but while pretty much my entire dash has zero patience with the overtly contemptuous Hot Fanfic Takes, I do pretty often see takes on Fanfiction's Limitations As A Form that are phrased more gently and/or academically but which rely on the same assumptions and make the same mistakes.
IMO even the gentlest, and/or most earnest, and/or most eruditely theorized takes on fanfiction as a form still suffer from one basic problem: the formal argument does not work.
I have never once seen a take on fanfiction as a form that could provide a coherent formal definition of what fanfiction is and what it is not (formal as in "related to its form" not as in "proper" or "stuffy"). Every argument I have ever seen on the strengths/weaknesses of fanfiction as a form vs original fiction relies to some extent on this lack of clarity.
Hence the inevitable "what about Shakespeare/Ovid/Wide Sargasso Sea/modern takes on ancient religious narratives/retold fairy tales/adaptation/expanded universes/etc" responses. The assumptions and assertions about fanfiction as a form in these arguments pretty much always should apply to other things based on the defining formal qualities of fanfic in these arguments ("fanfiction is fundamentally X because it re-purposes pre-existing characters and stories rather than inventing new ones" "fanfiction is fundamentally Y because it's often serialized" etc).
Yet the framing of the argument virtually always makes it clear that the generalizations about fanfic are not being applied to Real Literature. Nor can this argument account for original fics produced within a fandom context such as AO3 that are basically indistinguishable from fanfic in every way apart from lacking a canon source.
At the end of the day, I do not think fanfic is "the way it is" because of any fundamental formal qualities—after all, it shares these qualities with vast swaths of other human literature and art over thousands of years that most people would never consider fanfic. My view is that an argument about fanfic based purely on form must also apply to "non-fanfic" works that share the formal qualities brought up in the argument (these arguments never actually apply their theories to anything other than fanfic, though).
Alternately, the formal argument could provide a definition of fanfic (a formal one, not one based on judgment of merit or morality) that excludes these other kinds of works and genres. In that case, the argument would actually apply only to fanfic (as defined). But I have never seen this happen, either.
So ultimately, I think the whole formal argument about fanfic is unsalvageably flawed in practice.
Realistically, fanfiction is not the way it is because of something fundamentally derived from writing characters/settings etc you didn't originate (or serialization as some new-fangled form, lmao). Fanfiction as a category is an intrinsically modern concept resulting largely from similarly modern concepts of intellectual property and auteurship (legally and culturally) that have been so extremely normalized in many English-language media spaces (at the least) that many people do not realize these concepts are context-dependent and not universal truths.
Fanfic does not look like it does (or exist as a discrete category at all) without specifically modern legal practices (and assumptions about law that may or may not be true, like with many authorial & corporate attempts to use the possibility of legal threats to dictate terms of engagement w/ media to fandom, the Marion Zimmer Bradley myth, etc).
Fanfic does not look like it does without the broader fandom cultures and trends around it. It does not look like it does without the massive popularity of various romance genres and some very popular SF/F. It does not look like it does without any number of other social and cultural forces that are also extremely modern in the grand scheme of things.
The formal argument is just so completely ahistorical and obliviously presentist in its assumptions about art and generally incoherent that, sure, it's nicer when people present it politely, but it's still wrong.
#this is probably my most pretentious fanfiction defense squad post but it's difficult to express in other terms#like. people talking about ao3 house style (not always by name but clearly referring to it) as a result of fanfic as a form#and not the social/cultural effect of ao3 as a fandom space#you don't get ao3 house style without ao3 itself and you don't get ao3 without strikethrough and livejournal etc#and you don't get those without authors and corporations trying to exercise control over fic based on law (often us law) & myths about law#and you don't get those without distinctly modern concepts of intellectual property and copyright#none of those things have fuck all to do with form!#anghraine rants#fanfiction#general fanwank#long post#thinking about this partly because the softer & gentler versions of fanfic discourse keep crossing my dash#and partly because i've written like 30 pages about a playwright i adore who was just not very good at 'original fiction' as we'd define it#both his major works are ... glorified rpf in our context but splendid tragedies in his#and the idea of categorizing /anything/ in that era by originality of conception rather than comedy/tragedy/etc would be buckwild#ivory tower blogging#anghraine's meta
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analysing vance hopper because he lives in my head 24/7 !
tw for like. literally everything the black phone covers!!!!!!
also there's some special effects gore rather far down in the post idk just i feel like i should warn you just in case
okay so before anyones like "but bee!!!! he only had 6 minutes of screen time in a 102 minute long movie!!!!! he was only on screen for 5.8% of the movie!!!!!" and to that i say i Know it was a real tragedy so a lot of this will be built on personal interpretation and subtext and stuff said behind the scenes and whatnot
so firstly i wanna rot about what his childhood/upbringing might've been like..... i havent quite decided on something definitive but i think we can take one look at his character and realise that is glaringly obvious he had a bad childhood, in one interview the actor that plays him (brady hepner) says "the background i had set up for vance is that the reason he was the way he was is his home life was fairly difficult, you know maybe his dad was either not there for him or he wasn't supportive, maybe he was fairly abusive, and so that creates a hair trigger sense of rage in vance" hair trigger meaning his patience is literally as thin as a strand of hair it does Not take a lot for him to snap
there more to it after that which i'll get into soon but yea thats the gist of it it's clear he had absent/neglectful/abusive parents and that would certainly contribute to why he's so angry all the time, maybe acting so explosive was the only way to get his parents' attention, either good or bad, so he just internalised that. obviously rage and anger issues like vance's lead to violence (not in all cases but in his case it does) and i think a neglectful and abusive upbringing would obviously expose him to more violence than a normal childhood would, therefore normalising it and desensitising him to it, whether he's seeing it play out in his own home and/or on television or something like that (because i doubt his parents would be the kind to monitor what content he's viewing)
i feel like he has little control over his life and that only adds to his anger, which in his case leads to a fight when his buttons are pushed too many times. i think he probably takes great pride in being the toughest in town and whatnot and winning fights and being perceived as strong and scary is good to him and helps him regain control/power, something he doesnt have at home. the rest of the quote from the interview i mentioned earlier states "this pinball machine could have been the only thing that he has in his heart that's like, good, like 'holy cow i did this, i set the score,' so when someone comes along and messes it up for him, it takes away the only thing that he has. i think that that's when he switches to a 'now you're gonna pay for that'"
similar to what i said about fighting, the pinball machine and his high score is something he has control over and its an important part of his reputation/image like. hes literally pinball vance ! and the whole thing about that high score being the "only thing he has in his heart that's good" implies that hes. well. pretty shit at everything else, which is pretty much canon if you remember that gwen said vance was held back twice in school. makes me think that while he's not the brightest in school he's certainly street smart
moving onto ermmmmm him getting kidnapped era because im sure youre wondering "well bee if he's so street smart then why did he get kidnapped" so may i raise two theories (this is. literally all i got and its not even concrete, me and my friend gray (@staggersz) tried to figure out how this could even happen and this is the most plausible thing we've got. so shoutout to him real quick he has had to deal with me being unnormal about vance for like a year and a half thanks king couldnt have done all this without my rotting buddy)
so either he got taken by surprise (most likely option) or vance's trust was gained first via getting given quarters at the pinball machine and small talk and shit like that but this is unlikely because i feel like it'd take a loooooong time for someone like vance to trust a some random stranger adult man when he clearly has issues with trusting and respecting people older than him and people with authority (e.g. cops, his parents, or school officials) so yea being taken by surprise would probably be the most realistic option, i always see people on tiktok being like "how did the grabber kidnap vance hes so strong!!!!" dude its a 15 year old boy against like. a 45 year old man who's already claimed two lives its really not gonna be a fair fight here
before i get into the next part i wanna quickly address a theory i absolutely Hate and it is so easily disproven and that is the theory that vance is the grabber's son or is related to him in some other way and i see it Far too often on tiktok and i HATE it. from what ive seen this all stems from his dream sequence where he kicks open the fence to albert's house and, presumably, goes inside after being dropped off by the police after the grab n go fight. idk if some people just straight up didnt realise this but clearly in real life he is going to his Own House??? in the dream it's only albert's house because this is how he chooses to show gwen the house she's trying to find her brother in, the house that he himself was killed in??? i hate the theory i hate it sm
the dream sequence itself is interesting though as the ghosts seem to only be able to conjure up what theyve seen in real life (like how bruce can picture the outside of the house and show that to gwen but the house number is all flipped and not right beause he doesnt know it) so vance being able to picture the house and the number and the gate and every detail would imply that hes seen it before, but im going to explain that away as either he got out once before like with finney's failed escape attempt, or the house is most likely on the route he walks to school or the grab n go or something and he hasnt actually been there prior to being kidnapped
mini rant over now onto being kidnapped i guess, so i used the missing posters to try and estimate a timeline of how long each ghost boy would've been in the basement for (although the missing posters are notoriously unreliable for details such as looks/height/age/etc, the dates seem to all line up). so we know the order is griffin, billy, vance, bruce, robin, finney, right?? if we use the poster date then billy was taken on may 4th, 1976, a month and two days after griffin was taken (april 2nd 1976). vance was taken on september 23rd 1977, almost a full year later (stay with me im going somewhere with this), and after that bruce was taken on july 18th 1978, again almost a full year later
its established in the movie that the grabber stalks his victims before he takes them (canon because we literally see the van watching finney and gwen as they walk home from school early on in the movie) but we dont know how long he does this for since griffin/billy and robin/finney were taken such short distances apart and then the others were taken such long distances apart, also it's possible he could stalk his next victim while the previous one is still alive, etc etc lots of confusing factors, but if i've done the maths right then the absolute maximum time vance could've spent down there is 9 months and 25 days, or 298 days, so erm . let that sink in !
howeverrrr in the movie gwen states that vance went missing "last spring" and september is definitely not in spring, meaning he could've been down there for a year or even longer. an explanation or excuse i could think of for the movie and the missing poster saying different things (other than the missing posters being known for some areas being wildly inaccurate) is that maybe he was taken in spring but wasnt labelled as officially missing until september, when he was properly linked to griffin and billy's similar disappearances and the mysterious grabber? i can imagine it'd be very easy for law enforcement, especially in the 70s, to dismiss someone like vance as a runaway until they get solid evidence that he was taken. idk though thats just my personal excuse / angsty headcanon for the difference in information
not sure what exactly killed him but we do hear from vance himself that "he took his time with me" so it was probably blood loss from a variety of injuries, if we look at him in his ghost scenes we can see his hair is absolutely covered in blood which indicates head injury, he clearly has a broken nose and bruising around his eyes as a result of it, he has these deep cuts on his abdomen area (apologies for the image quality but i believe they're like. sfx pieces you would wear under clothing)
and he also has just like. minor bruising (like the fingerprints on his arm) and other random blood splatters on his face and neck (assuming the blood down his neck comes from wherever he was bleeding on his head) so Yeah overall very unpleasant way to die obviously
okay now the part thats actually in the movie and it only took me 13 paragraphs to get here: vance as a ghost!! first thing i wanna point out is appearance wise i just want to say that when he's a ghost he's missing his choker and that fact Pains me. anyway personality-wise i feel like being violently murdered has, understandably, kicked his rage up to like. the highest level it could possibly go. he's insanely snarky and downright rude to finney on the phone, showing no empathy to the fact that finney is literally in the exact situation he was in
i feel like the whole "this is the nightmare end of your pathetic little life" and "if you knew what you had coming, you'd be fucking terrified" thing is definitely to scare finney on purpose and to get him to do something, vance might as well have just told him he's never going home cuz thats how it came across LMAOO, it is startling though because vance is clearly speaking from experience, that he was literally fucking terrified, and he is warning finney in his own weird way
the thing i think sets vance apart from the other ghosts is that while he does help finney, he does it for a different reason than they do. the other ghosts want finney to escape, to get out, to be free, to live, but personally i dont think vance cares about that. the only thing he wants is for albert shaw to be dead, for someone to seek vengeance, to do what vance couldn't. vance doesn't care if it's bruce or robin or finney or whatever boy could've come after that, he doesnt care as long as that man gets what he deserves after what he put vance through, and i see this through the scene at the end of vance's call where finney thanks him for his help and vance says, and i quote, "helping you? this isn't about you, fuck him! and apologies for being repetitive but to me it just literally proves that to vance, this isnt about finney or his escape, its just about revenge
we dont get to find out what happens to the ghosts once the credits have rolled, and i dont think we quite know enough about tbp's version of ghosts to guess what theyre up to, but i have a few theories :3 maybe theyre no longer bound to those two houses and they can now go anywhere they want in town? or maybe since their shared goal of stopping albert has been achieved, the ghosts can finally pass on to whatever is waiting for them next. i dont think vance would be content to pass on that quickly or easily as anger lingers, but i hope he'd be able to let go of it eventually, and hey we might find out in the sequel. i pray it mentions him cuz i will just die if it doesnt
sometimes, ok thats a lie, frequently i think about an au where he survived or escaped or whatever but ohhhh boy this post is already a train wreck so that au would deserve its own essay of a post :3 if u actually genuinely read this far then Wtf thanks for reading the ramblings of an absolute madman, only pure delusion could get like 20 paragraphs about a guy with 6 minutes screentime but hey thats how i roll, thanks again to my pal gray for letting me rot and thank u to my other pal ana for also enduring all this rot
hope u enjoyed my interpretation of vance hopper im going to crawl in a hole now and probably brainrot some more, thanks again for ur time :3
#the black phone#tbp#tbp vance#vance hopper#character analysis#i literally rotted my entire brain for this one#normally i hate when ppl tag characters in a post that isnt really about them im gonna tag the other characters cuz i do mention them quite#a few times so apologies to ppl that are fans of anyone that isnt vance this post is Vance Centric#tbp robin#robin arellano#tbp finney#finney blake#tbp griffin#griffin stagg#tbp billy#billy showalter#tbp bruce#bruce yamada#tbp gwen#gwen blake#the grabber#albert shaw#the black phone 2022#i am the number 1 vance hopper fan and this proves it#if vance has 100 fans im one of them. if vance has 10 fans im one of them. if vance has 1 fan its me. if vance has no fans im dead.#sorry to everyone that followed me for total drama content i have an absolute disease for this movie and this guy#back to regularly scheduled content soon trust#not expecting this to do numbers cuz theres actually only like 4 tbp fans on earth but had to let two years worth#of absolute brainrot for this movie that has like. barely any merch and only the slightest scraps of fan content#i stayed up all night writing this
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So I've been trying to get a gist of post-time skip Ben based on Chaos Theory trailer (obsessed again? wrong, I never stopped being obsessed), and I feel like I can optimistically assume that his personality will make sense for his character development that we've seen in Camp Cretaceous.
I made a post about it once but to sum it up shortly:
season 1 Ben is a boy who was clearly raised in some sort of bubble (a different bubble than Kenji) - he is scared and anxious (not just regarding dinosaurs); at the same time we get hints that he can be very passionate and has a sense of an adventure (he's just scared to cross the line). Season 2 Ben experienced a massive traumatic event, to put it nicely, his personality was put into a blender which was then turned on and left unsupervised for several days. His season 2 jungle boy persona, while still consistent with the traits showed prior (as mentioned - Ben was both passionate and adventurous before - he was just too shy to act on it), is mostly a result of a severe trauma; meaning his personality feels more extreme because he had to rely on extremes to survive. Season 3 Ben is one of the most interesting "forms of evolution". The trauma is still fresh but at the same time Ben tries to think beyond it – wants to make decisions based not on "fight or flight" response but on his own feelings on the matter, it's very interesting but in this season - though not visibly - he slightly reconnects with season 1 personality (slightly) for example by considering advantages and disadvantages of his actions (leaving Nublar or staying) (it doesn't apply to every situation which is actually quite perfect because at this point he is still pretty damn traumatized). Then we have season 4 which is actually very important for Ben's character arc because, for the second time, he loses his footing - Nublar was wild but familiar, Nublar was 'never without Bumpy'. Mantah Corp Island is completely new and Ben is forced to reestablish what actions and behaviors are going to pay off in this environment; ironically enough, I think that the distance from Nublar is good for him - Nublar was also the environment where he got traumatized, personally I think that the island could, to some extent, prevent him from healing. And ofc, season 5 - Ben shows clear signs that he is going to evolve as a person; he mellows down not because he gets soft in a bad way but because he recognizes that he doesn't always have to be a knife. At the same time, he is not hesitant to strike if the situation calls.
So, now let's take a quick look at Ben in the Chaos Theory trailer. I noticed four traits that we can spot in that short clip:
He has that sort of shy-silly boy charm to him. A subtle mixture of bashfulness ("hey Darius," his voice is amused but he also sounds a bit apologetic). That is something that especially shines through his character in season 1
When he needs to be serious - he is ("Someone is hunting us"). This is such Ben-thing to do, especially in season 4 and season 5 Ben – when he is learning how to distinguish between a real danger and something that doesn't require setting the world on fire.
He gets slightly panicky sometimes ("before it's too late!") which is a fantastic news because trauma really messed up Ben's sense of danger and it's just good to knows that he feels fear like a normal person (yes, when someone is hunting you for sport, I guess everyone would be a little bit panicky)
From what I can tell - when the situation calls he does display signs of recklessness - notice how he's driving the car. Notice how Darius is visibly not impressed with Ben behind the wheel. Now, sure we can't tell whether someone (something?) is chasing them at that exact moment but either way - it seems that Ben is in a hurry and, excuse me but, he does not give a flying fck about safety on the road (which is! funny considering how he was driving the gyrosphere in season 1)
So yeah, overall, I think that we are going to get a nice continuation of Ben's character arc in Chaos Theory. I certainly hope so because watching Ben grow as a person was one of my favorite aspects of Camp Cretaceous!
Ah, and also... I really hope that at some point in Chaos Theory Ben will do something unhinged out of nowhere and the rest of the campers (because we will see all of them - I don't doubt that) will look at each other, nod, and say "ah, yes, that's our Ben"
#jwcc#camp cretaceous#jurassic world camp cretaceous#ben pincus#jwcc ben#jurassic world#jurassic world chaos theory
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Have you seen the leaked TOH pilot and pitch bible yet? IMO it’s crazy how most of it is better than the final product.
I have! And... I don't know if I entirely agree with that.
What I found most fascinating about it is that a lot of the contradictions and issues of scope with TOH that doomed it are still in the pitch bible itself. Just some quick examples of what I'm talking about:
When talking about themes, they talk about Fantasy versus Reality but it's as shallow as it is in the show. After all, one of the episode concepts pitched within it features a plot that has Luz literally going "This is just like in my fanfiction!" and being better able to handle it because of that.
It builds up the emperor of the land and Belos (known as Oberon) when talking about them but NONE of the plotlines include Oberon in the episode pitches or even mention the coven system for that matter. They are still barely a thing to the show with the only episode concept about that part of the show being the one about William.
An utter lack of real stakes like how King has to face the deep crises of a decision of either being a lackey to the people he used to run with while also losing any chance to ever reclaim his lost power... Or he can save Eda and Luz and lose the chance to work with these people again. That's not really a compelling decision, is it?
The pitch also claims that the show will mostly be about Luz and Eda's relationship and how Luz's determination will push Eda to be a better person... And most of the episodes pitched are still not actually about the two spending time together. Just Eda making Luz upset so she goes off to do her own thing, just like the same problem as in the actual series.
You actually have MORE characters in this version which sucks harder for trying to narrow things down, especially since more of them are disconnected from each other than before. At least Boscha, unlike Pascha, has a connection to literally anyone in the main cast.
You also have stupidity with your magic still. "Look! I need to work hard to make small objects float!" And apparently that's enough to make all of Hexside lose their fucking minds. WHY!? In 90% of settings, that is as basic as the light spell Luz learns. It's why it's one of the first spells Harry learns.
Oh and let's not forget "Almost all known portals to the human realm have been severed" but apparently Amity has access to one of those known portals freely enough to attend two schools. It's a small thing but it would cause problems in theory.
BUT.
I will give credit to this: Luz is MUCH more compelling in this version. I think if there is something that is just unequivocally true, it's that. She is way less inoffensively nerdy, instead her interests being more upfront and troublesome, helping explain why that would be why she is rejected and not because, you know, she puts people in danger. Also her rise to power is just better.
Arguably, Luz in canon is a chosen one essentially from episode FOUR onwards. Now, this is up for debate but being given a power almost out of nowhere, with no training, that no one else has, is usually a sign of a chosen in a narrative. Episode 4 is when she gets the light glyph. She doesn't work for it, it's not a big character growth moment, etc. like that. She mostly just oops into it. Making it that Luz ACTUALLY has to work for her magic and the show actually has to explore how the magic works, making it so she has something to learn is just strictly better, especially for the concept of her learning to be a witch. Eda would actually be able to teach her something instead of shrugging and going "Welp, good luck!"
I will say that the bible does also lean more into an adventurous aspect though. This version of episodes would easily be more fantastical and include more magic in them which would help the Isles not feel so much like our realm. I will say the fact that there's also active anti-human prejudice also would be good because then Luz being human would, you know... Matter. Not that the Isles is really given a personality even here besides the oppression they're theoretically under. It's still a very generic fantasy setting.
A lot of the rest though? It's really not that unique or different from the show itself. Lilith is almost exactly the same, Tibbles is just Gus but a demon, there are slightly more restrictions on things like being human or magic but, you know, the show didn't care about its one law, why would it care about three? Even Amity, who does look better on here, is only because it's on paper. This is literally just Amity's pitch in S1 after all. All the reasons people loved Amity are here.
Conceptually it is fine but I am surprised about how not only this got picked up but also how it was greenlit so heavily as to get a pilot animatic, with voice acting, based on these concepts. There's just some very clear cleaning up that needs to be done, basic questions on its own setting and own logic that isn't even playing into the comedy/fantasy angles that could let you let it pass. It's not all of them or even the majority but a skeptical prereader could even raise these basic sorts of inconsistencies like the ones I brought up above. After all, this is half a season's worth of episodes pitched and a fifth of them are still going to Amity and more of them have Luz directly interacting with King than they do Eda.
There's a final thing I have to bring up due to it being why I think the show changed so drastically from this pitch bible to its final form: This is way more complicated. TOH already has extremely decompressed storytelling and too many elements working in tandem. Meanwhile, every character is MORE complicated in this one and less connected to each other, necessitating that each, except maybe Eda, will take more time to get through their stuff. The writing team either had to sharpen how much they could do in an episode or simplify and congregate elements. We see this a LOOOOT in S2A, especially Escaping Expulsion, where it seems the writers went "Even with three whole seasons planned, we don't have enough time to do everything we want to, the way we like to, so we need to start cutting and simplifying even more than before."
One example of this that's really easy: In the pitch bible, Willow is a random witch who lives near Eda. Well that means she'll likely either take time out of a couple episodes as she's introduced or take up an entire episode just for herself. Tibbles is also just on their own, like in the show. Introducing both of these characters is not really an option. However, put them both into Hexside and suddenly you can introduce three characters at the same time organically, like we saw with I Was a Teenage Abomination.
Luz just being gifted magic is another element to this. Her having to actually experiment for every spell and having to have a real system to her spells limits what she can do but also means spending a LOT more time on her magic. You can't just have a flower open up and give her the glyph of the day as easily, nor have her be able to throw her spells around as she wants. Making it so she just needs reams of paper and/or a marker makes it a lot easier and simpler to have her start casting magic.
This version of TOH would have SHATTERED under its own scope while the current version mostly bends and cracks from it. However, if people do use this to go "FUCK DISNEY EVEN HARDER!" I won't be surprised. Grand scope ALWAYS looks better on paper than it does in action. It sounds epic and multi-faceted and complex. The problem is that it still has to fit its format and it is MUCH harder to execute on than a more simple concept.
There's a reason the only perfect project is the one you never do because you can promise the world without ever having to deliver. So, while it's nice to see an earlier version, I am by no means going to say this would have been a better version of TOH.
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Sorry for anyone hoping for a link to the pitch bible btw. I just don't have one as I got given it as a document.
I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!
I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past.
I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead.
If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.
A Twitter you can follow too
And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.
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Emojis aren’t Hieroglyphs. But they could be. Because I have insomnia.
🌊📰🐍 1 🦉🥞📰⬇️ 🦉 🎵🐶📰👕🕛 🐶🐰🐰😩
🌊💡🕛 🦉🚶 🥞📰🐶🐰🐶🤔
🌊🦘😩 🦉📰🐶 🌊🐰😩
That’s the opening to Poe’s The Raven. It doesn’t represent the story, it says the words. Those are two different things, and I can prove it.
Two presidents ago, when a large segment of the population was still acting like emojis had just been invented, people used to call it “modern day hieroglyphics.”
And I got very “akshually” about it because part of why we’re able to read hieroglyphs is because it is a written language, but emojis, of themselves, are not.
Sure, you can “tell” a story with emojis, but you can’t read them the same way you read a sentence. Everybody who looks at them is going to say a slightly different explanation, whereas with a written language, everybody will say the same exact sentence when reading it aloud (in theory, there are valid exceptions).
It’s not that I’m afraid to put emojis on a pedestal, but rather that I think it diminishes the Egyptian language.
But anyway, it did get me thinking about how it might be possible to actually write English using emojis, treating them like Egyptian hieroglyphs.
Modern languages are generally written with characters that represent sounds, or characters that represent whole words at once. Even in written languages that use both (like Korean and Japanese) generally use separate sets of characters that are either phonetic or logographic.
But Egyptian was a little more free-form. The exact same character can be used to stand for a sound, a broad concept, or a narrow concept, and even a whole word by itself. And the phonetic ones might represent one consonant, or they might represent two, or three! And sometimes, if you have a double or a triple, you can tack a single at the end to remind the reader of what the extra sounds are. So you can’t even save space that way. Go figure. But then again you’re usually not worried about space because there are no vowels! I know that we’ve all been told that the Vulture is an A and the reed is an E, but this is not really the case. These letters are consonants for sounds that English does not have. So we make it kind of a fairy story that lets 1st graders write their name in “hieroglyphs”. It also makes it more convenient for Egyptologists to pronounce them.
But how on earth does this work? With each letter potentially representing so many different things, how do you read it? Well a typical Egyptian word will be constructed like this:
1. A group of glyphs acting as consonants, usually the shape of the glyph is a clue to the sound it makes
2. If needed, some extra single-sound glyphs to act as a reminder if the word happens to have any doubles or triples
3. A glyph which gives a general idea of what the word is probably about
So for instance, if you saw something like: “grp (food)” you’d be like, “guh... guh-ruh-puh, grup-- grape!” Of course, educated Egyptians wouldn’t have to sound words out like that because once you have spellings memorized, reading is basically reading.
So now we come back to The Raven. Let’s say we wanted to respell some words using emojis in a hieroglyph-like system. We want it to be consistent enough that readers can pick up new words, but no system is perfect, especially not for a language with as many trap-doors as English.
Let’s break down the first word in the Raven, “Once”, looking for consonants, concepts, but not vowels.
The first consonant is W. And it’s definitely a consonant and not just the “oo” sound. Don’t believe me? Try making the “w” sound without raising the back of your tongue. Now make a real “w” sound and leave your tongue in place while trying to say “too”. Doesn’t sound right.
So now we scan through the available emojis, and we see 🌊 , the wave. Wave starts with a W sound. That can be our W emojiglyph.
The next sound is N. We see 📰 , the newspaper. Perfect.
The final sound is the non-voiced S. So we need to find an S emoji. Some of you may be wondering why we’re not looking for a C, and the answer is because we don’t really care how the word is spelled in English. That’s just the 1st grade swap again. We care about the sounds in the word. And the sound at the end of “once” is S.
We find 🐍. The snake. Love it. The word snake starts with an S sound, and snakes hiss. Very easy to remember.
So now we have 🌊 📰 🐍. But it’s missing something. We just have W-N-S. That could also spell “wince” or “whence” (in most accents). We need to add a determinative, a conceptual glyph to let people know what the word is about and narrow it down. In this case it’s easy because the concept is the number 1.
🌊 📰 🐍 1
Boom!
Next word: Upon
Little bit of a tricky point here: If we are super strict about the rules, we will have a word which is spelled P-N. That’s just too vague for my tastes. Let’s bend the rules and give ourselves a clue that the word begins with a vowel.
And what rhymes with vowel? 🦉Owl. BOOM. For the moment, the owl is only for indicating vowels at the beginning of the word. I don’t want to deviate from how hieroglyphs work too much. But even just an initial-vowel indicator hugely improves readability. .
Going through the process again, vowel-P-N (downward)
🦉🥞📰⬇️
🌊 📰 🐍 1 🦉🥞📰⬇️
Once upon
BOOOOM.
Something else that the rest of my spelling has in common with egyptian: exceptions. Not all the words above have a determinative at the end. Sometimes the spelling alone seems clear enough.
One final thing I want to make clear; for something like this to work in the real world, it would need to be made consistent. Right now, it feels kind of like a sandbox for creating puzzles, but a written language should not, by design, be puzzling. A language is a contract we enter into. You and I agree that Apple means Apple and sounds like Apple and is spelled Apple. Although there’s no shortage of exceptions, that’s what languages are usually trying to be. So although there’s no reason to necessarily pick the Yarn over the Yin Yang for Y, or the Newspaper over the Nib for N, it’s something that a formal system would want to lock down.
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imagine your favorite fashion guru on tiktok/instagram/youtube. very good about giving all the tips, about explaining things in a way that you can follow. shows cool ways to do make-up, how to sew missing buttons or replace zippers, to add patches to punk jackets, even hair dye tips - and the best brands for your buck! and very good about stories during the whole thing; you never get bored!
then you hear about something really bad happening in her country, and the videos stop for a while. you miss her, of course, but you get it. you wouldn't upload under the circumstances either. of course, you and a bunch of her other followers leave a lot of positive comments on her last video - the one that explains why she might not be updating for a while.
months pass. every now and again you check on her channel. you're subscribed, so you'd get an email for a new video, but. just in case, you know? and sometimes you go through the old videos. they're just so comforting. you wonder how she's doing. you hope she's doing okay.
one day, you get the email that she's been active again! you automatically check it out. looks like she and a bunch of her friends from school have decided to take shelter in an abandoned school building. they've completely locked themselves in, but she assures you that everyone is going to be just fine! it's just kind of boring in there and everything. but the headmaster has given her permission to do videos again; he doesn't think it's a threat at all!
so now you get a lot of videos. daily content. not just your guru giving her normal tips and tricks, but more real life stuff. she brings in some of her friends, and they all seem really sweet. they livestream video games every now and again, and sometimes she ropes them into doing jackbox stuff so even the viewers can get involved! it's entirely different, but you're addicted. especially when she has a set time every day for her streams and then others around that! and of course, it's so great to leave comments to make everyone feel better, what with everything they're going through.
sometimes, she cries on camera. it's really, really rough. but she thanks you - all of her viewers - for being there for her through everything. it's so nice of all of you. she'd thought you would leave after everything or that the abrupt change of content would cause her to lose viewers. then she says that, you know, given everything, viewer count's not so important to her anymore. she just wants you to know that she's still here, she's still alive, and that they're all going to try and do their best to survive together.
it feels like everyone you know is following her now, tuned into her life, the lives of her friends, their struggles. it's a weird sort of thing; you all have your favorites, but you don't really hate anyone either because...those are real people on the screen. you love all of them. but you love your girl the best. she was the first. of course, you love her.
one day, the live stream starts, and it's...different.
there's a bear? and something about murder? and none of your comments are getting through to anyone anymore. and it's just the bear playing moderator? and the headmaster is...gone? and so is one of the students?
only you look closer - you know what your girl looks like, you know - and that's...that's her sister dressed up as her, you're sure of it. which means your girl is missing.
something's...something's wrong. it's weird. you don't like it, but you can't stop following it. because...well.
there's a bunch of theories. maybe it's like when markiplier did one of his movies or whatever. maybe they were just so bored that they decided to do a movie series or something like that?
and then you see one of the students murder another one on screen.
and then the bear kills your girl's sister.
and you can't look away.
(junko enoshima trends on twitter for over a month, even through the other murders.)
#musings#bandit fic#danganronpa#danganronpa trigger happy havoc#dr1#junko enoshima#sorry this just kind of immediately in my head#like - junko WOULD have a channel#and she WOULD do all of this#and then all of a sudden THAT is where the killing game is streaming#and all of her millions of followers just#glued to the screen
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Fire & Ice (a RoAR drabble)
Flufftober Day 12, Ransom Drysdale x rich!Reader (see series)
I blame @jaqui-has-a-conspiracy-theory and @brandycranby for encouraging HughSaison. This is fairly loosely related to the prompt but there are a bunch of temperature references/illusions. 🤷🏻♀️Hey, I did my best. -> While I'm at it, does anyone want to own up (privately) to being the person who first asked about rich!Reader over a year ago??? I always wonder if that anon is still reading 🥹
Uhhh, angst with a fluffy ending... yeah, yeah, Ro loves writing arguments, we get it.
Warnings: If you've never read my Ransom before, beware. He curses like an angry sailor, inside and outside of his brain. Plus super suggestive language/mentions of sex. LOTS of dialogue. Zero editing. MINORS DNI. WC 1.8k
He cannot fucking believe it's come to this.
"Don't you fucking dare," he snips. “You cannot use a veto. You put me in charge.”
He watches you walk calmly, put away a dish calmly, sit at his couch calmly.
"I've made my decision, and that's final."
"Fuck you." Ran means it, but in his own way. "You said I could choose--"
"Not that," you say, so calmly, too fucking calmly for someone who managed to turn Ransom Drysdale into this, this thing that cares about something so petty for all the wrong--or just different--reasons.
He stretches to his full height and sucks on his tongue for a moment.
You continue to scroll through your phone.
He never thought he’d get married but he’s always loved a good party. Since the ring's not flashy, he wants you in the tiara. He hasn’t given you the ring yet either because…well, because it’s been less than a year and you practically live on the other side of the planet. Call him old-fashioned, but Ransom wants to be home for all the big things. He can plan a damn party though—and the look to match— whenever the hell he wants and for however long he wants.
At length in the quiet, he asks, "why not?"
"Because it's ridiculous, and I'm saying 'no.' Veto."
"You don't get vetoes for--" Ran smothers his frustration, but barely. "Does this have to do with...money? Because you know I’m not talking millions of dollars in real diamonds or something.” But, ya know, he’s expecting a couple hundred thou between colored and semi-precious stones, plus the setting in—would gold or platinum work best for your skin? Grandma Thrombey’s ring is made of yellow gold. Ran guesses he should match that.
The false calm never lifts from you.
Eyes icy and blank, you look at him while his plans keep running amuck. "No."
Two letters. One word. He fucking hates it.
"You'll look beautiful," he yells in annoyance.
The phone drops on the leather couch. "I'm not wearing a crown to be married in. It'll look pretentious, ostentatious. I won't do it and that's that."
"It's a tiara," Ran corrects, "and with a veil, it's near invisible. It’ll include the wedding colors with the stones."
"No."
His blood starts to boil. Don't say it, don't say it, he thinks fleetingly but fails.
"Says the woman with shit taste."
Slowly, calmly, coldly, you walk over to him, stretching to your full height, holding his gaze. You’re wearing one of his sweaters again and nothing else. That’s his favorite look, but only for him.
It’s winter outside, the heater turned up so that your naked skin stays comfortable. You stay comfortably exposed all the time, when he has his way. Comfort is king in Ran’s house.
Despite being exposed though, he can see how you've made it so far in business—in life—even with shitty taste. Your poker face rivals champions, and you are stalwart in your dedication. There's a hard (and hardening) edge to your simple, sly grin.
You take a deep breath in, a whiff of him, a sample for assessment.
"Poor--" you sigh "--boy."
His teeth grind together, jaw tight as a vice. How dare you.
Ran's petty, spiteful even when he tries so damn hard to keep it together, and the wound of disinheritance is still fresh enough he cannot abide that sting.
"Burn in hell."
You don’t take the bait and simply cock your head, waiting for his guilty meltdown. So far, he does this at least once a week, sometimes multiple times a day. It bothers you, you’ve told him, that he questions everything instantly, that he can’t trust you or your feelings or his surroundings, that he panics over the idea of ever having to get a job, but it’s also great ammunition against a man-child.
The grin never leaves your lips. You're in fine fighting form tonight. Ran shouldn't have tangoed.
"Go fuck some bimbo's ass."
Oh.
Oh, you bitch.
That's low.
Ransom's face contorts. "It was one time," he gripes, "and we weren't even dating."
Your palm lies flat against his chest. "We'd slept together several times, and you even volunteered for me by then so..."
Ran grabs your hips and brings you close, avoiding your gaze while hoping you keep looking at him, cooling him down, evening his hot temper.
"Of course," you add casually, "that wasn't the first time you did that, was it?"
This is where it gets tricky for him. Ran never had a real relationship before you--not even his 'bond' with his parents compares--but old habits die hard.
He shoves at your hips, spinning you two until your back hits the glass block window between the house and the bare woods outside.
His head ducks to mirror the angle of yours. "Doesn't have to be the last either."
"Hugh," you warn, as threatening as wind across his cheek.
He's gonna regret this. He knows he will, but curiosity gets the better of him.
"Tell me. Tell me why you don't want to wear something gorgeous and fancy for an occasion where you are meant to be gorgeous and fancy."
The turn in your expression is pronounced. He didn't expect you to be more alarmed by his caring than his come-ons.
"Bad form," you finally admit. "Some rich bitch thinks she's a princess. Looks really bad."
"You are rich. You are a--"
"Careful..."
"--I'm saying 'princess.' Calm down," he says to the perfectly, eerily calm woman in his arms. "Would you just fucking let me compliment you?"
Ran fiddles with some hair around your ear, noting proudly how your eyes droop shut slightly at the smallest touch from him. He likes that you respond to him, his distance, his fury, his doubt, and his passion. You make feeling okay. You are his safe space since you've seen him at his lowest.
You see him.
There's very few things in life that make more sense to Ransom than his wife will be the one who sees him and he lets see him. Everyone else and everything else can piss off.
God, he fucking hates that he loves you so much. Why won’t you just wear the fucking crown? You’ve earned it; you’re the one who conquered his demons, not Ran.
He could buy it anyway, have your veil sown straight on it, not give you the chance to argue, or he could take you out to shop, put one in your hands, knock it onto the floor, and claim ‘you break it, you bought it.’ Problem solved, but he’s a petty bitch.
He tucks the edge of his lip into his cheek.
He should be less of a petty bitch.
“What do you want?” Ran asks. “What’s it gonna take?”
He keeps his sharp eyes locked to yours, watching understanding shrink your once-dilating pupils
Change in demeanor. “Oh my god.”
Aaaand there’s the regret. “Don’t make a big deal—“
“HOLY SHIT.”
“It’s not—I’m just—“
“Hugh Fucking Drysdale?! Trying to compromise??? I’ve see it all now.”
“Stop,” he whines, dropping his head to your squirming chest.
“Wait—” you whip out of his arms and hustle back to the couch, retrieving your phone “—do it again.”
He’s too lost in staring up the sweater as you bend over to notice right away.
“Are you filming me?” Disgusting. Childish. Petty, just like him. Maybe he’s had more influence on you than he realized.
“Your face is priceless.”
“Give me that.” Ran doesn’t put much effort into reaching the phone. He would rather win for his cause. “Seriously, what do you want?”
The arm held up falls lax. He has a clear view of your home screen, so you weren’t taking a video. You just wanted to tease him. Fuck, you love to tease him.
Dramatically, your hand frames your chin in thought. “Well, I don’t want something that extravagant to go to waste, but it won’t go with every outfit…”
“No, not with colored stones,” Ran says absently. He guesses you want to get more use out of it. Gross.
“Okay, my compromise is whenever I wear it, you treat me like a princess, or perhaps, your queen.”
“Uh, sure,” he snorts. You already get treated better than any woman he’s ever known…by him, of course. He’s vaguely aware that some people do even more than the bare minimum, but those are other people. Baby steps.
“If that tiara is on my head, Hugh, you become a perfect and adoring gentleman.”
Ran wrinkles his nose. “What?”
“You heard me. That’s my compromise. Dress me that way and you have to treat me like royalty.”
“Like…” He rushes forward to sweep you up, wrapping your legs around his waist and thrusting his hips. “Princess Pussy?”
“Ran. Ew, no.”
“Queen Cunt?” Heh, he chuckles, King Comfort and Queen Cunt. No, don’t say that out loud.
You gag slightly. “Super not what I meant.”
“You’re already going to marry me, but you want me to worship you? No fucking way.” Ransom flat-out laughs.
“How did you get worship out of ‘treat me nicely?’” Your arms tighten around his neck, pulling your faces closer.
He exaggerates a groan. “I don’t know. That’s asking a lot.”
“Oh, right,” you say with a roll of your eyes. “Just keep on being shitty…even to your future wife. What could possibly go wrong?”
He huffs.
Ran is passionate about making you look good, not just because you are on his arm. Sure, he probably focuses on all the wrong things—all the selfish things,—but you easily think of the big picture and completely forget about yourself.
That’s already a balance. That’s already a big compromise.
And yet…
Ran’s looking at your face and admiring your playfulness when he could be ordering you to unzip his pants. He’s more excited to see you decked out pretty things than he is to say he dressed you. He’s concerned with how you refuse to spend money for you even though you’ve put no restrictions on him. That’s…that’s just a different Ransom Drysdale. That’s a man he wouldn’t recognize if he weren’t watching his reflection in your eyes.
Ran pecks a gentle kiss to your waiting lips.
“Okay, princess,” he coos, his arms snaking tighter over your back and his fingers plunging into your hair. He keeps you close, noses touching, hot breath mingling. “Shh, shhh.”
He hears the faintest whine escape you, and he just can’t help himself. He’s a petty bitch.
“Don’t worry, princess. I’ll fuck your ass.”
🙈🙇🏻♀️😝
sorry not sorry.
@supraveng @1950schick @patzammit @whiskeytangofoxtrot555 @yiiiikesmish @ashesofblackroses @starkleila
[Main Masterlist; The Root of All Ransom Masterlist; Ko-Fi]
#the root of all ransom#ransom drysdale x you#flufftober 2023#day 12#ransom drysdale x reader#ransom drysdale fanfiction#ransom drysdale fluff#ransom drysdale smut#kinda
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Black Hat is going to be Hypnotized by Heroes - Theory
Why?: It'd be cool.
Okay, seriously, this could be nothing more than fanfic potential, but in case there's some small chance that I'm right about this, here are a few points on where I'm coming from.
#1 - Tension
This show has reaffirmed time and time again, in the show, comics, livestreams, interviews, that Black Hat is:
A, Powerful,
and B, Terrifying.
I don't think I need to go through evidence of that being the case, if you're familiar with the show at all, you know this.
He's been side-lined throughout the entire show, and it would not only be cathartic to finally have him show off his powers, but it would also make him feel like a real threat in the story if he's positioned against Flug, Dem, and 505.
The tension would be raised to infinity. The show would practically feel like a horror movie because of how near-impossible it would be to defeat him.
#2 - Goldheart's Plan
According to Miss Heed at the end of s1e6, Goldheart wants to "end all villainy."
Black Hat controls all villainy.
P.E.A.C.E. has already caught on to how deep Black Hat's rabbit hole goes, via the agents creating the Podemos Bailar website. (omg, with Magician being one of the agents, then Black Hat's hat is the "rabbit hole", it's like a pun, you get it? You get that-)
Before the third Arenque Noticias video, Melissa Lead states, "If you ask my objective opinion, I'd say a controlled villain is better than a villain set loose."
As observed by @paper-gold-theories, characters with gold accessories tend to be associated with Goldheart or the Golden Rule in some way (Miss Heed, Porccini, the reporter in s1e4).
Melissa wears a golden necklace and ring, so it's very likely that her opinions either align with the Golden Rule, or Goldheart himself.
So if Goldheart's objective is to brainwash all villainy, then who better to target than the man at the top? (the man in the top-hat, haha, I'm on a roll)
#3 - Black Hat's Weaknesses
Alan has hinted that Black Hat is not invincible, and has actually described him as "lazy".
So the concept of Black Hat slipping up is not an impossibility for the show to explore.
#4 - Details
This is getting into TJLC levels of analysis, but I've noticed a couple things that could somehow be foreshadowing this:
In this poster:
Villains have a red outline, and heroes have blue:
(The fact that Flug and 505 have blue is an analysis for a whole other day)
But Black Hat has a gold-ish color on both sides:
This could be a stretch, but,,
In 2021, promo art was released for the show:
And Black Hat's monocle looks suspiciously pink.
Sure this could just be red shading that accidentally looks pink, but it isn't that hard to edit if the colors came out wrong, I did it just now:
The difference is night and day:
I don't think Black Hat has ever been associated with pink before outside of Demencia's fantasies. It would have been easy to choose any other colors too, like green, yellow, orange, or even blue.
The Black Hat being lit with pink for the first time is a coincidence in the very same promo that ALSO includes Miss Heed.
And as is obvious, ALL of the people Heed hypnotizes have glowing-pink eyes:
Even if this isn't foreshadowing to my specific fan-theory, I find a Black Hat - Heed connection extremely suspicious.
It's very well that in this scene, Flug DID perfect Heed's formula.
The heroes have the perfect hypnotizing formula. Or at least they still have some version now.
They have the means.
So TL;DR, Flug perfected Heed's hypnotizing formula, and so P.E.A.C.E./The Golden Rule/Goldheart is going to use it to control Black Hat when his guard's down.
(or somethin like that, idk)
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Okay, I know it's probably been said before but I am a BIG fan of how the different coping mechanisms of the main characters of The Amazing Digital Circus are portrayed. Like, it seems like a lot of the main characters could be described through how they cope with the idea that their actions don't matter. (I JUST WANNA SAY HERE THAT THESE ARE ALL JUST MY INTERPRETATIONS! IM NO EXPERT, JUST A STORYTELLING NERD) (SPOILERS FOR TADC EP 1 AND 2)
Ragatha plays along, seeing Cain's games as a way to practice escapism. She pretends her problems don't exist, and actively avoids confronting them (Like how there's clearly still SOME kind of tension after Pomni ran instead of helping her, but she says it's fine). She doesn't try to change things because she believes things CAN'T be changed.
Jax just does whatever he wants, because if his actions don't matter in the long run, why shouldn't he? He also practices escapism, but in a very different way from Ragatha. Instead of playing along, he is horrible to the people around him because there aren't any consequences anyways. He also avoids anything he finds stressful, much like Ragatha (He looks upset for a frame before rolling his eyes and walking away when Kaufmo's funeral is mentioned). Both of them refuse to confront their problems, and would much rather ignore them through each of their preferred types of entertainment.
Zooble doesn't really have the energy to participate in Cain's adventures, because their mindset is that if nothing matters, why should they do anything at all? They do put effort into some things, such as setting up Kaufmo's funeral, however so far it's been shown that they prefer not to participate in Cain's activities unless they are actively forced to.
Kinger. Um. I don't know how to describe Kinger if I'm being honest. Same with Gangle. We don't know a lot about either of them yet, but I'm sure other people have some fantastic theories on those two! My personal theory is that they're actually NPCs, because Cain mentioning the risk of mixing up real people and NPCs felt significant. It's kinda a very loose theory though, and it has literally ZERO proof, so
FINALLY, POMNI. I am a HUGE fan of Pomni's characterization! The best way I can describe Pomni is, if she was in a time loop, I imagine that she would, without fail, try to prove that she is a time loop to her friends EVERY loop to try and get their help. She's very clearly struggling a LOT in episode one and the beginning of episode two, but once she actually makes a friend, and later when she realizes that the others DO care, she starts to actually have hope. While the others have less healthy coping mechanisms, the way that Pomni copes with the idea of none of her actions mattering in the long run is, "At least my actions matter to the people around me." Having a support system matters a LOT to her, and I think that's why Pomni is going to be the one to get all of them out of there. The others have given up on escaping, resorting to escapism and/or apathy to cope, but because Pomni copes with her surroundings through her friendships with others, I don't think she'll give up like the others.
Anyways. I love TADC so much. I am SO excited for what's coming up next, and if Gummigoo doesn't come back I'll cry /hj (gummigoo getting eviscerated destroyed me on the inside)
#rant#tadc#the amazing digital circus#ragatha#jax#pomni#zooble#tadc theory#sorta#writing analysis#sorta??#idk#i just had fun with this#character study#again SORTA#tadc spoilers#tadc episode 2
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(Re: The Ginyu Post) 1. If Ginyu had only ever body changed with other mutants, then that might explain why he hadn't encountered the same problem he did with Goku. Goku's power requires a lot more skill to access. 2. Not really relevent to anything but I just want to note that we also see someone who may be a Namekian Mutant: Nail, who Friexa clocks at about 42,000. Though he's also the personal guard of the Grand elder, so it's also possible he reaped the benefits of unlocked potential like Krillin did
Yeah, Nail is pretty amazing for such a short-lived character.
Vegeta should be grateful that the Ginyus showed up because this was probably about to end badly for him.
Jeice's line here has been through some fixing. The original version had him astonishedly reading that Vegeta's battle power is coming up to 20k. This, of course, doesn't seem that impressive since he was said to have been 18k on Earth and, in fact, read at 24k earlier in this very arc.
The line was later revised to set Vegeta's current BP at 30k, following his zenkai from Zarbon.
Viz hedges their bets here by using the original 20k number, but adding "And still rising!" Which is still kinda janky because now Burter's reacting with astonishment to an explicitly lowball estimate of Vegeta's ki.
Either way, uh.
Yeah, if Vegeta had succeeded in starting shit back there, he was about to find out real fast and in a hurry why you don't fuck with the Grand Elder's bodyguard. Nail was about to happen to Vegeta in very much the same way that Recoome later did.
Pictured: An approximate estimation of what Vegeta didn't realize he was volunteering for back at Saichoro's home.
It is a pretty popular theory that the reason Nail is this powerful is because he's already had his dormant power drawn out by Saichoro. It is the logical conclusion. Saichoro can draw out a person's dormant ability from someone and there doesn't seem to be any reason he wouldn't do that for his personal bodyguard and attendant. He does it for Krillin, Gohan, and even Dende.
This is never confirmed nor refuted in the manga. The only explanation ever offered for Nail's power is that he's Senshi Taipu or a "Warrior-Type Namekian". This sets him apart from those earlier 3k BP Namekian fighters, as Saichoro notes that he's the only Senshi Taipu on Namek.
Viz says "true warrior" in place of Senshi Taipu which is kind of a slap in the face to those other guys. Now it just sounds like he's shit-talking the dead. Rude.
But the idea is that Senshi Taipu is the other special class of Namekian. The other being Ryuzoku or "Dragon Clan", the sorts of Namekian mystics who do things like create Dragon Balls. The Nameless Namekian was Ryuzoku - and a prodigy Ryuzoku, at that.
It's weird to me that one is a "Taipu" and the other is a "-zoku". We have Ryuzoku, the corrupted Mazoku, and Senshi Taipu. Why isn't that one a -zoku? But I digress.
Something interesting to note about this is that it retroactively implies explanation for how Piccolo was able to reincarnate himself stronger.
"He broke off a piece of himself that's even more powerful than he is because, uh, of reasons." Kind of a weird thing for him to be able to do, right? Why doesn't our Piccolo ever spit out an egg and make Piccolo III who's 8x more powerful than Piccolo? If spawning copies of himself that are superior to the original is a thing he can do then that implies some brand new options.
The Namek arc implies some explanations. During the Frieza battle, Dende explains to Piccolo that he's Senshi Taipu, so he can't learn mystical arts like healing magic.
But the Nameless Namekian and by extension God and PIccolo were Ryuzoku like Dende. So the implied retroactive explanation for how Piccolo was able to make his new self more powerful is because he reincarnated as Senshi Taipu, trading in the mystical package for pure battle power.
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how come you're a "Dante was never real and is a construct made by Angela" truther? idk nothing about that theory or why it's supported by dante's (heh) meltdown
It's not just the meltdown, it's the specificity of their rescue of aeng-du and the kind of lore we're getting.
dante is instructed to extract someone for information.
dante comes across aeng-du and identifies her as the person they need based on "gut feeling". they do reason that the basis is of their feeling is because of how the company tends to set them up, so the way my thoughts switch hard on this was a conspiracy theorist brain pretzel. My thinking is that they identified her because she was a book in the library, and it's why Dante specifically should be the one to pick her up.
aeng-du explains 2 things: the library and the location of kim. because limbus company already had information on kim, they wanted her extracted to get a firsthand account of the library.
iori was the one who suggested the distortion-centric fixer company, yet she is presumably the one who sent those people to kill dante, the presumed manager of a division of that very company. what gives? (my previous theory was that they stole a branch from her. <- LOL)
until this point it was kind of self-evident that the branch is giving dante freaky spacetime powers due to direct access to the Light. but we witness dante having a full-on meltdown. One thing that stuck out to me is the mundanity of it. The cast has either an intimate or a superficial understanding of everything Dante is saying. So why is it important? It isn't a crazy word slurry.
It sounds like they're reciting an eroded text.
And finally, the end of the story update, Vergilius mentions offhand that he himself is waiting for the lore drop; he is depending purely on Faust, who seems singularly responsible for the LCB, and what info she's deigning to give.
Overall, the update was about the mechanics of Limbus Company, from Acquisitions to After to Distortions, and what they prioritize; Distortions and information on the Library, which is the cause of distortions.
Conclusion?
Dante is a construct made by Angela. Constructs cannot leave the Library, but they are being artificially sustained by the Light present within the branch. They're a construct of a separate person, and the facsimile deteriorated due to the improper use of ■■■. The rewinding death function is also the core gameplay loop of Ruina; Dante is using that same process on their own crew. They resemble the Outskirts clock monsters intentionally; Faust - who is dropping anvil sized hints about being an ex-lobcorp employee - is a Librarian, and witnessed these monsters personally. Iori doesn't want Dante doing anything too crazy because they aren't real; there are not a wide array of universes where they exist. She would know them exclusively in terms of the purpose they were built for. This significantly thins the avenues of attack, and Vergilius would put a lot of faith in that, even if he's never been told why the fuck Dante is a free radical and is kind of annoyed and confused this is who he's working with.
I don't think this is a theory that explains everything, or even most things; who was Dante made out of (carmen without a doubt funniest possible option), what is ■■■ (may be library/도서관), what is the "aspect" Dante is trying to carve, how this helps the library, all of that is very ????. But isn't the tension delicious when you think about it that way.
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Jax might be one of the creators?
I could be totally off base here but here's some thoughts I've been having
Our first introduction to Jax outside of his place in the intro is him asking Caine "Is this one of your NPCs, or is this a new sucker? Because if it's a new character, we're going to have to redo this whole theme song."
Now first off, since as far as we and assumably the characters know, Caine is an autonomous AI, the question of 'Is this one of your NPCs?' especially in the way it's said strikes me as if there's an oddly familiar relationship between the pair. If Jax did create Caine and this game his particular flavour of befuddlement at Caine's possible NPC generation would make more sense IMO.
Secondly, Jax seems weirdly invested in the theme song's completion? He doesn't seem annoyed they have to do it in general like Zooble, just that they have to do it AGAIN.
Moving away from this initial moment, he's also the one to suggest the adventure for Pomni. While he's annoyed with what the Gloinks end up being, he again isn't annoyed by the adventures themselves like Zooble, which you'd kind of assume a character like him might be, but if he was the one to set up the idea as the game's developer it makes some amount of sense he'd be amused by these antics because he made it like that to some extent, and he does seem to have fun on the adventures once they get into it as well.
Then there's of course him having keys to everywhere when Ragatha suggests he literally shouldn't be able to do that. Silly joke that the asshole character can do basically whatever he wants? Probably, but it could also be hold over from his abilities as the game's developer.
He's also easily the calmest and most put-together character of the cast, going with the flow of everything and having no real urgency to do anything but enjoy the ride and watch the other characters suffer at Caine's unintentional hands.
Somebody else also noted that Jax is weirdly upset about abstracted Kaufmo being put in the cellar. This could either imply they were friends, or that Jax has a personal grievance with what happens to abstracted people. If we assume it's the latter for the sake of this theory, I can imagine it would be pretty frustrating to have your playerbase go through this game-breaking bug and the only way to 'fix' it is just to sweep it under the rug.
Another thing that could easily be a throwaway but for the sake of this theory is Jax' last line in the pilot "Sheesh, lay off it, since when are you an expert on the digital world?" would also make sense if he's the actual creator of said digital world, it would be a personal offence to suggest Kinger knew more.
On top of everything, if we assume that Jax is telling the truth about having been there for years, that implies some interesting things. We know from Goose's Q&As/Tumblr/Twitter that Jax is the youngest member of the cast, being only 22, along with Zooble.
But Zooble is also the most recent character to join the circus before Pomni, while we don't know exactly how long before, it at least exempts them from the weirdness that this timeline creates in terms of Jax.
If Jax was stuck here for any more than 4 years, he wouldn't have even been an adult yet, which seems pretty suspicious given the ages of everyone else when they presumably would've gotten stuck in the program.
Of course headset aside we don't actually know the circumstances of how anyone else got stuck in the game or for how long, but it does give me pause to consider that detail about Jax.
So ultimately I could see it being revealed later down the line that Jax was some kind of tech revolution prodigy who created Caine and this world, but being young as he was had no real idea of the ramifications of what he created or ultimately how to manage it. I have no clue how he got trapped, or ultimately if he even is, but that's theorizing for when we hopefully have more to work with.
Regardless, take all this with a grain of salt, I fully recognize all of this could just be connections I'm making of nothing, but it's something that's been plaguing my mind and I'd be remissed if I just let it sit and never put it out there if it did end up being true in the end.
Hope you guys enjoy my massive overanalysis of Jax' actions in the pilot and hopefully we get to see more from this gang in like 3-6 months' time.
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