i used to bristle at "kurt cobain didn't kill himself" theories because I thought they were insensitiv. and it IS insensitive, but I think the main reason I object to them now is that it's just plain stupid. like, there are high profile suicides where I can understand why people have unanswered questions, but this one seems just so patently obvious. Like "hm, a bipolar heroin addict who'd attempted suicide in the past APPEARS to have committed suicide. I wonder what happened?" yeah you're right it's a real thinker. let's get Poirot on the case and see if he can crack this one open

Do you think Ted knows he's complicit in aiding in Jamie's abuse? What about Rebecca?

Ngl I don’t even think Ted realized it is that bad. As far as Jamie goes, he has a huge blind spot in regards to this topic. This could be for a multitude of reasons: the generation he was born into. The fact that he himself used to play sports and may have internalized the idea that ‘sports dads can be like that’ without ever looking deeper. The fact that his own childhood contained a different sort of trauma, watching his own father struggle with mental illness. Then his trauma with how he lost his father. In a way, Ted follows the opposite of Occam’s Razor- when he looks at Jamie’s relationship with his dad, he sees complexity, he sees zebras.

He doesn’t see the simple facts, the hoof of the matter: that this is a mean person who hurts his kid with the intent to do so.

So before Ted has any realization about how his actions might have exacerbated the situation between Jamie and his dad, Ted would first have to come to terms with how he failed to recognize how bad it was in the first place.

I’d also throw in here that part of the tragedy of all this is how there’s no one character who actually has the full Jamie Tartt backstory cheatsheet- it’s spread out amongst Ted, Roy, Keeley, Jamie’s mum. And Jamie’s not good at asking for help, let alone accepting help.

I do think that of the immediate people in his life, the ones who have the clearest idea of Jamie’s abuse are Roy ‘he’s a living piece of shit’ Kent and Willis ‘alright that’s enough / *head smash* / I’m gonna take a walk’ Beard. They might not have the full story, but something about the way they react has a ‘well that’s all that I need to see’ vibe to it.

(In a darker speculative turn, I do wonder if maybe Beard has mentioned some of his own experiences to Ted. If knowing about Beard’s own experiences with (what I imagine) was also an abusive upbringing may have given Ted the wrong impression about What Abuse Looks Like and how people react to it, and if that plays into his impression of Jamie’s dad maybe not being that bad if Jamie himself appears confident and well-adjusted. A sort of unconscious bias if you will, the kind of paper-thin reasoning that doesn’t hold water when examined but if Ted’s never had reason to examine it…)

Oh. You also asked about Rebecca. Honestly, unless Keeley is talking about him, they’re talking about him in terms of the club, or he is literally standing in front of her, I don’t think Rebecca thinks of him much at all. Not cruelly. It’s just- she mainly knows him as a player and through Keeley. She’s picked up a bit about him, she cares for him the same way she cares for all her players, maybe a little more because of Keeley, but he’s not really a part of her life, nor is she a part of his.

She’s does wonder sometimes, what might’ve happened if she’d never sent him back to Manchester, but that’s from the perspective of the club. I don’t think she knows what that cost him. I think she’d feel awful if she did know.

That’s the other tragedy of Jamie’s story- for any of this to get resolved, someone would have to talk about it. And no one’s talking.

tell me ur theories abt 100 epitaphs

had to go back to get screenshots bc i felt like i was going insane. so:

at the very beginning, during the lyrics "lay your emotions with them like a mourning wreath", there's a shot of kt's face on a headstone. which makes me believe she may have been terminated at some time during this whole thing and there's going to be a twist where yura gets into the facility with whoever the hell decides to join him only to learn she's been dead this whole time and all this was for nothing

my friend pointed this out when the video first came out but there's a shot of yura during the first chorus where he's surrounded by several mostly-unnamed characters when they say "another apathetic epitaph". iirc he's between kolya and nikita, both of whom are dead, and their faces are shown in frames, likely symbolising those photos that are displayed during funerals. which could very possibly foreshadow yura dying, probably during the mission to save kt.

olga being shown with flowers sprouting out of her does not give me hope for her. this is especially worrying considering the fact that she's shown in occam's razor during the line "but some ventures require a sacrificial lamb" - this could refer to her taking the fall for yura after the whole incident in the zone but it's still concerning. oddly enough i'm less confident in this than in my yura and kt dying theories bc it just doesn't feel like olga would die (wouldn't make sense or be satisfying from a narrative perspective) but it's still possible. if she doesn't die then she's definitely not coming out of this the same

this is not the last we've seen of sergei. this may just be wishful thinking (love that square......) and ik he basically just gave up on sanya. but anyone who's tried to help an especially difficult person will tell you it's not that easy to just let them go, especially considering that he's already done so much for her and still has skin in the game even if he does completely drop his sister (*gestures vaguely at that one drawing of him reading a book on "breaking your girlfriend out of jail" or smthn.... ik it's just a silly joke but i'd be fuckin hyped if we got sergei breaking olga out of prison). something tells me he's going to keep trying to influence things from afar without getting too invested; whether he'll keep trying to help sanya or just focus all his effort on olga, i'm not sure.

sanya is becoming another yura. she's getting more hopeless and desperate, not to save kt but to protect / help yura. she's doing crazier and crazier shit and has managed to stay in contact with him even though sergei tried to stop them from meeting. the shot of her laughing surrounded by candles, the shot of her sitting so nonchalantly against the wall talking to dima, the shot of her standing up to sergei to protect yura... she feels very yuracore and it worries me. also the shot of her strangling her past self, the one that was much more optimistic and bright yet sheltered.. any writer will tell you that having a character literally harm / kill their past self is the number one way of indicating that they're completely cutting off their past and moving on.

this is a very stupid theory but kolya isn't actually dead. he plays way more of a role in 100 epitaphs than he ever did before. and yes nikita has content too but there are just.. so many shots of kolya (the one that stands out most to me is of him sitting in the center of the screen with headphones on). he may not be the same person but like. what if the grinder didn't kill him?? what if he's alive, just far away from all this?? what if he comes back?? changed and injured but still kolya. ((god i hope i'm talking about the right person here if that isn't kolya i'm going to look like such a dumbass))

also the title "100 epitaphs" and the prominent presence of two (supposedly) dead characters.... it doesn't inspire confidence in a lot of these characters' chances of surviving.

sorry if some of this is incoherent or just downright weird, i've been up for a while. but i will always take up an opportunity to rant about this video it's had me positively ill. i was literally fucking shaking while typing this

wow so in the championships of fucked up batshit posts written by rhi✨, i do think this takes the title but i am really concerned that this might be the case... so,, hear me out

s2 = possibly clue? like, for real???? like alternative EP1 ENDINGS/SCENES???

so laure @theeminentlyimpractical and i had basically noticed at the same time that crowley's sideburns drastically change clip to clip, promo to promo, throughout the stuff we have of s2 so far, and this led us to have the, i guess, fairly insignificant theory that there is a falling out and a timeskip. now obvs this theory is quite old, very much in its infancy, and probably very inaccurate, but like 2500 people have at least seen it and we have reputations to maintain so we looked into it further

now pretty much ALL content released to us is either ep1 or ep2, or minisodes, or maybe the odd photo (e.g. i think the aziraphale/clipboard one is firmly ep5). but most stuff we have tbh can almost be chronologically traced and plotted. well - all except this:

the scene where crowley finds out about the naked man friend? short sideburns:

in the shop, finding out that it's gabriel?

long sideburns.

(not to mention that crowley's glasses change between ep1 and ep2 somewhere but that's a different story)

now i know that this could be an error with make up, or additional photography etc blah blah blah but one appears to be forgetting that this is amazon, and id put my money on every single person on that set wanting s2 to be nothing short of loophole free, continuity error-less perfection *😘👌*

so my Occam's razor is there is something we are missing between these two scenes in particular, or one of the scenes is not as it seems. from what we have worked out (and save this post because ill hopefully link in a sideburn timeline once laure and i have got our shit together and are operating on the same timezone again) most of ep1 and ep2 plot seems to feature crowley with short sideburns and predominantly the silver (not grey) sunglasses

whilst we have spotted a couple of confusing possible exceptions to this (example is below), it feels like overall that's basically right. bearing in mind that stuff that might say it's an official promo from e.g. ep4 may actually refer to events in ep2 --- there is nothing to say that the story has to be told in chronological, linear order!!!

so yeah overall; everything with crowley, present day, for ep1/2 is shortburns. now an interesting tidbit ive found from accounts of the nycc screening (and speaking to lovely people who gave me more info, not sure if they want to be named!!!) is that the screening

did not show an ending for episode 1.

that it basically ran straight through to the job minisode cold open, and then into the ep2 opening credits. for clarification, there was no ending credit for ep1, and apparently nothing to show that there was an end (e.g. no big gutsy 'well then... welcome to the end times' scene) ***and this is where i need input from sdcc people!!!

so apparently (and this may need further input), the last scene that took place before the job minisode is crowley returning to help with the miracle on gabriel to hide him... now im not sure if this is the same scene as the "I'm back"/apology dance scene (which btw we think is a shortburn/silver glasses scene, which is even weirder) but if someone could let me know that would be great ✨EDIT: CONFIRMED✨

👀 at sdcc viewers that only saw ep1 - WHERE DID IT END???

so in summary: the first sideburn loophole we have is the "ah gabriel!!" scene. obvs people have seen it so it's not a flashback, but i think potentially there will be additional scenes added to ep1 + an official ending upon the full release... or potentially scenes are replaced altogether to prevent spoilers from the screening? hmmm

does this remind anyone of clue lmaooooo wink wink

second, this is also an issue: so the first screenshot im pretty sure is late ep2 after aziraphale is talking to a rug salesman...? but features les longburns and possibly grey glasses:

but then this ep3 interaction with muriel? them burns are definitely short, which could obvs mean it is posed as a flashback, but those are DEFINITELY crowley's new grey glasses?

so yeah I'll be honest I'm not sure how far ill swing with this but ill keep updating with more info and link to the timeline etc etc, but yeah i think someone might have been writing a love letter to clue rather than writing s2 hahaha✨✨✨

but all nycc screening viewers pls come scream at me about this!!! and sdcc please tell us where ep1 ended??????

Do you have any Othello thoughts? I liked it all but most especially when unprompted and for no particular reason Iago constructs a lie about making out with Cassio in his bed at night. Like. He very very easily could have just said a slightly different lie that didn't involve an unconscious Cassio pulling him in for a smooch and then he lets it happen for? Minuets? I guess? Never pulls away? Like I'm truly floored by the sheer level of how unnecessary it is for Iago to construct this particular story. Just fucking tell the guy you heard Cassio sleep talking. Huh. Also why were you sleeping in his bed already in the first place that is never brought up by anyone, ever. Truly an insane scene to me

LITERALLY WHY DID HE DO THAT. WHY DID HE DO THAT!!! in general i don't love the directions people take gay iago (often, like, "he's jealous of desdemona for getting to have othello and thus decides to ruin their relationship because he's gay and twisted" or whatever) because i think it kind of ignores the occam's razor fact that iago is racist. like. he is a complex character with a lot of motivations but the prime motivation for the specific shit he does to othello is racism. HOWEVER. the WAY he acts toward cassio. there is NO heterosexual explanation for that what the fuck is going ooooooooooooon. othello doesn't even call him on it he's just like yeah okay that sounds about right he threw his leg over you and you guys made out

anyway i don't have a ton of thoughts on othello but i do like it! it is the only shakespeare play that makes me actively tense even when i'm rereading it for the third or fourth time. i've seen it compared to merchant & taming of the shrew as the plays with the most potential to do harm and perpetuate/create stereotypes, and i think that's true, but i also think othello has over merchant and taming that it is actually well-constructed and interesting. and i do think it's fascinating that it does have real points to make about the psychological effects of being forced into a model minority role, but also, like, it's a white guy writing in the 1600s, so how good can it really be and is it still worth performing today? (recommended reading on this: this article, keith hamilton cobb's american moor. please read american moor it's so fucking good it's a stage play in monologue format about a modern black actor trying out for othello and musing on his complicated relationship with shakespeare and it's SO good)

scattered personal feelings: emilia is a lesbian. i know it's important that desdemona is not actually cheating on othello, but i feel like if she and emilia kissed it wouldn't count because they're girl best friends. iago has gotta be one of shakespeare's best roles, actingwise, but it always strikes me as somewhat discomfiting that he gets more lines than and as much exploration as othello, the titular hero, because imo it again emphasizes that this is a play written by a white man, however hard that white man is trying, from a white society and a white vantage point. desdemona and othello make me really fucking sad. and cassio's fun i like him that guy's bisexual as fuck

It's kind of amazing how far out of its way 3-3 goes to unsatisfyingly draw things out.

I've bragged about how smart Miu is, but those moments of Miu constantly pointing out the obvious feel intentional on the part of the case.

As discussed in previous cases, Danganronpa V3 is a mystery story that sort of hates the concept of mystery stories and seeks to tear down Danganronpa as a concept. Each case is designed to sucker punch you in one way or another; Each Class Trial designed to deny the player any sense of catharsis for solving the case.

With 3-3, this comes in the form of Occam's Razor. This case is so obvious. It's so painfully obvious. That's precisely what makes it a slog to get through. 3-3 seeks to deconstruct the complicated affairs that these cases inevitably become. It lays out its killer right up front and goes, "Yo, he did it," and then makes you spend hours winding pointlessly in circles to the obvious conclusion.

Here, the obstacle isn't Kaito's unwillingness to accuse a friend. It's not Tenko shutting down conversation that might incriminate Himiko. It's not Kaede trying to lead the conversation in a different direction from the culprit in a chess move against the mastermind.

Here, the chief obstacle is Shuichi's desire to have a more interesting game to play. His determination to find the ultimate truth drives him to keep the trial going in circles even though it keeps coming back to the same unambiguous conclusion.

It eventually hits a point where we have to play the fucking team-debate minigame to defend Kiyo's innocence in Angie's murder, even though Kiyo obviously did kill her.

Even Tsumugi's so done with this shit and wants to wrap up. Like. I can't stress this enough. The goddamn Mastermind is playing the "Shut the fuck up and vote blindly" card on the actual culprit. That is how boring this has become. This whole Class Trial has been an utter slog, just for the sake of satisfying Shuichi's Main Protagonist Syndrome.

This case is revolutionary, in taking the "Find a single loose thread, then grab and pull" tactics of a detective game protagonist and portraying it as an obnoxious nuisance rather than the key to finding the real truth. We got the guy, Shuichi. Can't we vote already? Can't we fucking vote already, Shuichi!?

Oh my gooooooood

He wants so badly for something interesting to exist, some clever twist that will flip everything on its head. Like there always is. And it's. It's not there. The case is stupid and Shuichi's wasting everybody's time by endlessly needling at every possible detail and drawing things out. The complete and utter disappointment that is the facts of this case, is the sucker punch of 3-3.

We don't get to use the Necronomicon, we don't get to do the seance, we have the most obvious killer ever, and Shuichi won't fucking let it be over already. This case is designed to deny you enjoyment at every possible turn. And the worst part is still yet to come.

Which, of course, brings us back to the central question at the heart of V3 critique.

If something is badly written on purpose, does that make it clever? Or does an unsatisfying story remain unsatisfying all the same?

what do you think Steves relationship with his parents is like?? we don't really get much from the show and even what we do get is very vague?

i actually have many thoughts on this LOL!!

okay. i think like, occam's razor he probably just has a probably perfectly standard of the times, if strained, relationship, particularly with his dad and the little background we do get points to this and with that you can extrapolate more if you choose to. i think his dad expects things of him to make something of himself that are probably typical to most parents but as we are all people With Parents it's easy to relate this to a little more of a sympathetic interpretation especially considering we only DO have everything filtered through steve who is, fundamentally, a teenage boy to young adult who doesn't like his dad.

like we know that a) his mom doesn't trust his dad to not cheat so follows him on business trips and steve himself knows this and talks about it in sort of a flippant way so indicate he's both used to it and has probably complained about it before ("cuz like, y'know how she doesn't trust him") and b) his dad is an "asshole" LOL. i think this in particular lends a different light towards that whole st/ancy break up in a way that was definitely i would say, hand of god, intentionally. steve's father cheats on his mom and it brings strain to their relationship and steve finds himself potentially cheated on in season 1 which was the entire source of the tension there and potentially actually cheated on in season 2. i think it's significant!!! that the entire "love triangle" thing goes hand in hand with the pre-established oh You know how my mom doesn't trust my dad [to not cheat]?

additionally, TO ME, i also think it's significant just HOW stressed out he got about the very idea of even being caught by his parents (particularly underage drinking/"partying"). and i know it was probably only MEANT to be like a normal sort of "oh god my parents are gonna kill me!!!!!" thing that all teenagers do but all i CAN do is empathise with someone who just seems genuinely scared of the authority figures in his life to the point it's all that consumed his thoughts and he ended up sort of bulldozing over nancy's more pressing issue. like, speaking as someone with shit parents who has been in an abusive situation their entire life this can totally be normal behaviour for sure but it can also point to something larger beneath the surface.

by itself these little things are definitely just maybe a bit of heavy handed extrapolation but to fill in the spaces between the gaps, which is like the entire point of character analysis imo, steve is also someone who shows up every like 8 months to a year beaten and bloody and there has never been any indication of this being some sort of... issue? and how the only time we even see him like bandaged up and Taken Care Of is when the kids put those bandaids on him themselves. there is no throw away comment of "my parents would kill me" again, no indication that him getting a concussion like 3 years in a row had literally any effect on his life via his supposedly domineering parents. which no one is expecting!!! but it's the absence of it framed by everything else that i think people tend to see a certain narrative being told.

i also know plenty of people point out how after starcourt he's also by himself though tbf for that one so are like, robin and nancy but i understand the point people are trying to make due to the other context steve gives. it gets deliberarely established in season 3 when he overshare-complains to robin about not even getting into a technical college and his dad "made" him get a job at scoops, following season 2 where he tells nancy he could just get a job with his dad i.e. that wouldn't be a problem. i do think from my perspective this could again be a totally normal set of problems any young adult faces and your parents wanting you to get into college and have a nice job let alone any job seems to be a pretty standard thing for suburbanite usamericans. it could also definitely point to the profile they seem to have set up for steve's father where beyond being an assumed ted wheeler suburban type he has 1. an important enough job that it requires multiple business trips, 2. it pays well enough for a large house with interior decoration, a pool and a BMW i assume for steve's sixteenth birthday and 3. it's a job that includes "adult stuff" which i can't quite remember but was something along the lines of dental or insurance or something LOL. i think a certain kind of man tends to BE your average rich white CEO father and pressuring steve to like, come work with him get into college get good grades don't party be responsible ("how many times DAD it's not DRUGS it's only marijuana" being a funny enough throwaway line but also means it was definitely at the very least enough of an issue between them that they've argued multiple times about it 😭) and if all that fails having him get a job does come off a bit controlling and uneasy.

NOW!!!! on the other hand i think people do tend to just go absolutely insane with all this and both act like this is canonical knowledge when it is just an interpretation albeit one with i should hope a bit of nuance. like i've seen people claim someone giving him a nice & normal set of parents was "erasing abuse" like girl what!!!!! 😭. also not to make a sweeping generation cuz you can't really know but i do think it's fairly obvious when someone who isn't an abuse victim attempts to depict this kind of thing. and additionally the way it tends to come up in an uncomfortable, persisting way in st/eddie works in particular always frames steve as a poor little broken boy who needs a knight in shining armour to swoop in and save him but the infantilisation of steve harrington in fanon will persist until the earth crumbles away i fear!!!!

i think you can totally depict these things with complexity and care, in a way that is believable or nuanced and not just like an excuse to get them out of the picture so they can do the avengers house thing at steve's place LMFAO. i also think people tend to go suuuuper insane with the prescribed set of bigotry they give his parents to the point you just Also come off insane and homophobic ... like the way i've seen people time and time again BRAG about the homophobic hate crimes they're putting him through at the hands of his own parents is genuinely sickening. i just think u can tell when someone is doing this in a genuine way and when someone is doing it as an excuse for angstpain poor broken steve... <3 just my thoughts

following that i think it's sweet when people portray his parents in a more positive way!!! it makes me happy. i don't think it's callous or sweeping aside these important issues that crop up around it at all lol. i think the st/eddie fanbase in particular have a problem with creative stagnation that leads to people getting so frustrated to an overexposure of repeated tropes and mindsets and this is definitely one of them for me. parents are people and relationships are complex!!!! i think it's a far more interesting way to interpret his parents TBH!!!! or even his mother who seems to get looped into all this when, logically, she seems to be the secondary victim, and the only thing steve has said about her in particular is "she's well respected around town" while trusting her enough to put his MOM on his resume which i think is a sweet thing LOL. complexity is good!!!! and again this is all just my interpretation even though i do think i'm a little qualified to give it 😭

Tips and Tricks for Vetting

Tricks for not being tricked. One of the things we get asked a lot is how to avoid a lot of the misinformation that floats around the larger magical community. Here is compiled a few tricks and different ways to think about things that can make it easier to spot the problems. Hope some of these help!

Assume and Work Backwards Taking a baseline that it's probably fake, let the work convince you otherwise.  Take things with a grain of salt moving forward as most magic things that aren’t based in historical or traditional practice are ultimately someone’s opinion and what ended up working for them.  Something might check every red flag and still be honest, but these are things to watch out for.

Occam's Razor The simplest explanation is probably the right one.  This is where we see the concept of “mundane over magic”.  If something can be explained in a reasonable manner that is probably a much safer bet.  If someone is trying to convince you that something with an easy explanation is actually magic, it might be best to avoid that all together.

Sourcing This is going to be one of the easiest tells that something isn’t completely out in left field.  Well known or published sources tend to be fairly reliable (or at least their flaws tend to be well documented).  If you can source a document to someone who has been fairly well reputed, your job is usually done from here.  If it’s well received by the community at large, this is probably in good faith.

Charletons I contradict myself here because while sometimes things are well documented, there will always be people trying to make a grab for your money.  Often you will hear a mix of people lauding their work in proportion to people calling them hacks.  It can be hard to tell who is publishing in good faith and who is just trying to get your money or attention.  One of the easiest ways to tell is that, well, you’re being asked to pay for their materials.  Now people put time and effort into their practice and still deserve to be compensated, but if someone wants you to pay for easy answers to all your questions that’s probably not gonna be it.  These things tend to seem too good to be true, and often they are.  Make sure to find this out before you hand over your wallet.  There is often a person claiming to be a superior authority on the issue.  The figurehead might not even be a real person, though this is, admittedly less common.

Self-Awareness If the person is not self aware of how wild the shit they say sounds if you don’t have first hand experience and blame you for not understanding instead of recognizing that there might be a better way to explain it, this is a suspect source.  The person might even legitimately believe what they are saying, but having the mentality that only you can be right is a dangerous one to keep, and you’re going to see it more in people trying to take advantage of you than people trying to help you.

Wordiness This can go either way.  It can be a sign you’re dealing with someone who just likes the sound of their own voice, but it could also be an older book or document.  I’ve found that there are different styles of writing depending on the era they come from.  Early ceremonial magicians tend to be very dense and wordy, but if you pick one of those up you tend to know what you’re getting yourself into.  If someone is writing to try and imitate this style, in my mind, it’s a red flag.

Is it on Social Media? I only ever hear horrible things about witchtok, but let this be a lesson about double checking and cross referencing sources.  Sometimes misinformation gets repeated, but so does good information get shared. If you can find more reputable sources that’s always a good idea, but otherwise keep your wits about you.

Trust your Instincts If something seems wrong, it probably is.  This will get easier as you become more experienced, but if you find something that looks very sketchy, take a second look, try and find the author and where the information came from.  If all else fails, find a second source, ask yourself “What does the person who wrote this want?”, and know that even if the source is credible, what works for one person might not work for you.

i was chatting about this over messages and screw it, quick informal post re: why i think izzy could potentially find a narrative path to Not Being The Worst. (in ways that aren’t weird and hilarious. those select ones can stick around.)

so: my read on ed and izzy has always been this is an emotional sticking place for the both of them at the end of the day. izzy could find another captain, ed another first mate, but they have stayed in this spiral together instead.

occam’s razor says: so whatever keeping them in this weird toxic soup, it’s not about the things they can get elsewhere. 

my take on izzy has always been that once upon a time, ed looked at him and saw a spark of something bigger and better than the sum of his parts, and that spark is what keeps izzy from being chucked over the side.

because when you break down core motivations, izzy doesn’t want ed to suffer. he wants ed to be what izzy wants him to be, and to stay in place and never attempt to be authentic or change. that makes ed suffer; it’s not the goal.

and that’s not exculpatory! saying ‘i wish i’d let you die’ is basically the meanest fucking thing a person can say to a total stranger, let alone someone they’ve spent years with, and that’s not the only thing izzy has done that lands on ‘cool motive, still fuckin’ gross’. so i am not arguing for a version of this story that ignores past harms even a little bit.

my argument is that core motive is the thread they’ve left open that could lead izzy to potential change: he tells himself he knows better than ed, and if ed listens and does what izzy wants him to ed will be better off. and though he is very condescending and wrong, he believes he’s right.

so what happens when ed is not happy and better off, and izzy is forced to look at the collected evidence that he is so wrong about human interaction, all the time forever, and that ed is worse off because of his intervention? if this is the story i hope/think it is, a story about the possibility of people to be better, at a certain point izzy will look at a man who is fucking sadder than he has ever been in a long life of building up personal case studies in being sad.

and izzy will go: shit. i... huh. fuck. you’re supposed to be happy! i’m supposed to be happy! that is not happening! for either of us!!!! actually: for anyone! everyone around me is doing what i think they should, and we are all fuckin miserable! maybe... maybe i was wrong?????? maybe... i am part of the problem??????

and then he can move from there (slowly and crankily and probably not entirely willingly, but that is so often how it goes) into trying to made amends and get his emotional ducks rowed, realize his implicit biases, etc etc etc.

like: i think we make the mistake of assuming any storyline about izzy improving as a person would need to focus on izzy, or be about insisting the internal reasons he had to be such a little shit mean we should call a mulligan on his fuckery— my take is that if izzy starts to heal it gives the people he was a dick to a chance to be validated and have the kind of catharsis that often doesn’t happen in the real world, and makes ofmd’s fictional world a little warmer and more hopeful at once.

Wait, that Kanade from SDRA2 idea also makes me wondering (and yes, I love Kanade like I'm using her as a pfp 😂)

Like, what if the Teyvat Detective Club had to deal with a person like her? A legit genius serial killer

While they were snapped at the group, they also used logic to debunk their theories and evidences, and shit they're scary.

"I, WHO CAN NOT HIDE THE CORPSE!!"

"I, WHO CAN NOT GET NEAR THE CRIME SCENE!!"

"I, WHO WAS WITH YOU ALL DURING THE ENTIRE CONCERT!!"

"EXPLAIN TO ME HOW THE HELL DID I MANAGE TO KILL THAT PERSON DESPITE ALL THESE ALIBIS, AND MOVE THE DAMN CORPSE!! ANYONE?! ANYOONEEE???!!! HMMM?!! YES??!!!"

"SHIKANOIN!! RAGNVINDR!! CYNO!! YANFEI!! C'MON, LET'S HEAR IT!!!!!"

Like, would they be stunned because not only they're intimidating, but there are too many contradictions to point them as the culprit

Although I believe the group will expose their crime in the end, but were the group left speechless at first? Because I think they've never meet a person like this

So Again. I know nothing about Danganronpa.

But I do know how no-nonsense Cyno and Diluc are when it comes to this stuff. I also know how easily Heizou can connect the lines. And how much Yanfei knows about the law.

And personally, I can't see Diluc or Cyno being intimidated by a schoolgirl. Even if she is somehow cutting through Heizou's logic. Especially with how much faith they have in him. They would still know he's right, but something else is up.

So What I think would happen is that they could see that, most logically, it would make sense for her or someone like her to be the killer. Especially if there became a pattern where things pointed to her, but she has an alibi. And Again I don't know Danganronpa, but I feel there is a point Heizou, in particular, could use Occam's razor to cut through here alibi. Yes, she wasn't there, but she could have this or something like this.

And You do have to remember that Yanfei and Heizou are the more logical, and Cyno is more by the book. But Ummm, Diluc.

He's got a questionable relationship with the law. And he's not the type to go around in circles. So there would be a point, um. Where he would just get sick of her shit. And just... "Ask her," like he asked that abyss mage.

I will fully admit there is probably a lot I am missing. But Here is the thing I feel Diluc is probably very good a feeling people pick up when their vibe is off. And the moment he gets the "Psycho vibes," He knows it will be a pain in the ass.

Hmm. So.

How the fuck did they manage to create the RotF sparklings without the Allspark shards?

So, let's think of our options. Sexual reproduction, (which Hasbro continuously denounces), cloning (oooh! I get to talk about the different kinds of cloning!), budding in a way, protoforms that were stashed away on the Fallen's ship in stasis, maybe a previously unknown form of asexual reproduction!

Now, logically speaking, we know that sexual interfacing is probably not canon. Probably, perhaps. Bayverse is the continuity that makes the second most amount of implicating jokes. The first being Jro's work naturally. Anyways. We're temporarily going to forget about Occam's razor. Yes, sadly in bayverse Cybertronians experiencing sexual attraction is canon thanks to you wheelie you little heterochromic shit. But little known fact sexual attraction doesn't mean sexual reproduction, as demonstrated by the lesbian lizards. For all we know, Wheelie could've been ah getting off purely on the psychological aspect alone.

So, there are multiple forms of cloning actually. There's the typical cloning you might be thinking of, which is essentially mitosis but complex lifeforms. Well, errors can occur which allows unicellular organisms to mutate a little bit as a treat and mutation means adapting and evolution. Perhaps the terms eggs and hatchlings is a bit of a misnomer in this case?

There's reproductive cloning, where the genetic material of one creature's somatic cells (body cells) are put into the egg cell of another creature, that zygote is transplanted into a surrogate animal where it's gestated like average, and bing bam boom when it's born there's an almost perfect copy of the original! And, this method means the resulting clone technically has three parents! Though, some catches do occur here. All three individuals involved kinda have to be female, it needs cells, and well gametes have to be involved which are a major part of sexual reproduction. That's why you'll see it in species that used to reproduce sexually, or species that use asexual and sexual reproduction.

There's genetic cloning, which we have precedent for in canon considering Shockwave's predacons,, bayverse's introduction of Galvatron, the majority of the protoform stuff, and tbh tbh the scanning of altmodes in a way. The most popular example of such would be you guessed it Jurassic park, which as someone who plans to major in biology is Highly inaccurate to how cloning, DNA, and dinosaurs work. Less well known. This is how viruses work. The problems we run into is our favorite paradox, which came first the chicken or the egg. "Where did the first set of genes come from???" Exactly. You could argue that Cybertronians are technically derived from an altered genome of a species that sexually reproduced that Quintessa found, artificially creating a biologically asexual race. The catches? It's damn hard to do this kind of reproduction without a container for said genetic material. We see this with the human scientists using Megayron's CNA as a building guideline, and with the protoforms. Iicr, in bayverse we see that the autobots were essentially visually the same before scanning altmodes. This may very well be are most canonically compliant answer right here actually. But... again, this does not explain them being called eggs and doesn't explain where protoforms come from at all. You could say "But Riot, the protoforms are made of Senti Metallico (however you spell that lol) " and my answer is what technically is that and where does that come from? The movies also refer to it as Cybertronium which??? Is considered an element but it's clearly somewhat alive but anyways we get no answers.

Unknown form of asexual reproduction is goddamn unknown, making this category purely speculative. Perhaps as I've mentioned the terms eggs and hatchlings, and are glyphs that didn't have an Earth equivalent so the translators chose the next best options. Maybe cyberforming material is on its own self replicating, which raises questions of its own. Mayve it's extradimensional supernatural bullshit which i don't like this answer as it's equivalent to "suspend your disbelief' wHich I don't like i like answers.

Look I am as intrigued by the Missing 411 stuff as anyone. But as even the circumstances of it being called that make clear, a lot of this is just self-important whiteboy dickheads bothering the Government about stupid shit and then acting like that makes them heroes of journalism.

The US national park system is grossly underfunded and responsible for an UNFATHOMABLE amount of real estate. They do not have the resources or staff to send your between-jobs-at-the-moment ass photocopies of police reports they probably never even had, about some two year old wandering off from a campsite 70 years ago. Knock it off. It wasn't Bigfoot, it wasn't a white slavery ring run by the FBI and the Kennedys, it wasn't a wormhole. You idiots don't even have enough information about most of these cases to realize how little information you don't have. Not everything is an exciting case just waiting for you to blow it wide open.

Besides, you are making rather presumptuous leaps that you know what it looks like when someone freezes to death in 4 feet of snow, the snow starts to melt, bears yank off the head and torso, the rest of the snow melts, they lay against a log for 2 years as birds and bugs eat the rest, then a bored skunk plays with the rib bones. That is a whole process we don't perfectly understand. We don't know 100% what bears or mountain lions are capable of, because the Government won't let you feed bodies to wild animals and then film it with drones for later (I know, bullshit). How far can a 6 year old really go in freezing temperatures if they're desperately trying to get back home? We don't know 100%. Life is always shockingly unpredictable. And we're talking about living people getting lost in the living woods. The reason we have thousands of years of fairies and ghosts and skunkapes and Wendigoes is because weird shit has always happened in the woods, and we are always totally convinced it can't have a natural explanation...while we are gleefully ignorant about what kind of shit goes on out there.

Occam's Razor applies. Nature and people are creepy and weird enough on their own, then you put them together. No shock goofy shit happens. And all this is assuming the reporting of events is accurate in the first place, which it may not be. How do you even check that? Even if you get a report from the FBI, that's the one version of what happened. If someone wrote it down wrong in 1986, you're f*cked and you don't even know it.

Enjoy spoopy content. Just don't be an obnoxious little brother about it.

And pestering the Government doesn't make you cool, it makes you someone wasting my taxpayer money because you don't want to work in an HVAC warehouse. And that is the opposite of cool.

it resonated so hard, I'm polyam/aroace and it was just like. some twt users have permanent main character syndrome so bad, dnf in gay romantic love and other people using their brains to acknowledge the obvious is not oppressing us, please go read the wiki on occam's razor and then touch grass (okay sorry ty for letting me use your asks to vent 🫶)

no ur so right don’t apologize! i need to start just replying to silly shit with the occam’s razor wiki link bc like it simply does not ever need to be so fucking complicated lmao. but at the end of the day it doesn’t even matter bc we already won 😭💚 dnf in gay romantic love we did it joe

Whumptember 6: "I Didn't Do This"

Predictably, it took me less than a week to get to cults and blood sacrifices.

"I didn't do this," he insisted, slowly backing away from the detectives. "This is not their blood."

But it did look bad, didn't it? No matter how exhausted and feverish he was, he had enough grip on reality to imagine what they were seeing. Two vaguely human-shaped heaps of flesh in the middle of a ritual circle. Himself, very much outside of it. All that blood soaking his clothes down to the last thread, trails of it drying up all over his hands.

It was only natural they were going to jump to the easiest explanation possible. Occam's razor and all that.

He took a shaky step away from the detectives, then another. If he remembered correctly, there was a bathroom at the back of the basement. Maybe if he made it there and locked himself up—

Then what? Do you expect them to just knock politely a few times, realize you're unavailable, and go away? He gritted his teeth. There was no way out. Again, there was no way out.

He wished he hadn't had that moment of hope. When the cultists had made a mistake, when the ritual circle snapped. When the hellish energy that was taunting away his life turned instead into a protective cocoon around him. When he found himself gasping for breath and free to move.

Then, the detectives had kicked down the door, and now here they all were.

He took another, hastier step backward and watched one of those people in their dark coats raise a weapon. Maybe this was for the best. Maybe this would be quick at least.

Another detective pressed a palm over their colleague's arm, forcing the pistol down. Then, they stalked forward.

He froze. Was this hope again? Or the promise of a quick end getting snatched away?

The detective got close, too close. They reached out and tilted his face up to the dim light, their thumb and finger like pincers over his chin.

"There's blood all over your face," they said.

He swallowed. "It's not theirs."

"Given that most of it clearly came from your eyes and nose, no shit." The detective let go only to shrug off their coat and wrap it over his shoulders. "Come on. Hospital."

"He's a suspect," one of the others protested.

"It's more likely that he's a victim. Or perhaps both. At any rate, he has a right to medical treatment before we proceed with the questioning."

This didn't feel at all like hope, after all.

Few more things to look into.

Let's have a look at that chem lab.

If Kurane is our killer, she wouldn't need them. She has her own. A whole collection's worth.

We already suspected that but it's good to confirm.

A paintbrush could have been used to lightly dust the inside of a wine glass. The fact that this is in the chem lab, lying on the floor, gives it a stronger likelihood of having been used in the crime than the water gun.

I'm really liking Yoshiko for our killer. But it's not decisive yet. Not without understanding how she could have swapped the wine glasses, when she was in her seat for the five-second blackout and never left until Karen died.

I figured. But, again, good to confirm.

This could be what Yoshiko was returning from when we spotted her. Snuck away to the chem lab to prepare the wine glass, went through the underground to get backstage and swap the glasses before they were brought out, then dropped off the unpoisoned glass in her locker and came back around to the entrance.

She'd have to do it with less than thirty minutes until the duel, so she'd naturally be (uncharacteristically) late. But once it's done, she can kick back and wait for either Waruna or Karen to die.

Interesting. Waruna has a "Photo of just me and Aiko" cutout too. Something that stands out to me about these photos is that I don't think there's five people in them. Waruna on the right was obvious from her blonde hair.

Unfortunately, that's all that was lurking in Waruna's diary. No interesting secrets about Aiko's death. Let's look at Karen's locker.

Wait, the script that Kurane stole from her? Huh. I. Wonder.

If this version of the script has a different set of notes for which glass Karen drinks from, then that would be incredibly damning for Kurane. She may have used the spotlight trick to guide Karen to the poisoned glass.

Oh, that is a smoking gun. The fact that Kurane tried to conceal this from the investigation does not look good for her.

...and. Yet. It still doesn't mean she's the killer. Remember that weird shit she was saying to Yoshiko? "Your secret's safe with me."

Kurane tried to conceal these notes, but she didn't write them. Karen wrote them. These would have been based on instructions she was being provided with on-set. And Yoshiko was the production assistant managing everyone.

*deep breath*

But she couldn't have managed Kurane. "Yoshiko took advantage of the duel, instructing Kurane to shine the light on the cup that's supposed to have the fake poison in it and Karen to drink from that cup, then poisoning it for real" is a fine theory. But nope, that doesn't work either.

Yoshiko despised Kurane so much she refuses to so much as look at her, let alone speak to her. Waruna's the same. Neither of them could have directly conspired with Kurane.

So then, Occam's Razor would suggest that Kurane gave Karen those instructions, and Kurane poisoned the glass. But she wouldn't have had the opportunity. And would Karen take stage direction from the girl everyone hates?

“wherever you want to go, i promise i’ll be with you every step of the way.” climbing chrash but outlast au if you can manage it 💖

definitely more than six sentence sat(or)sunday!!!

When the riot had begun, there had been chaos.

Perfect.

Absolute.

As though a switch had been flipped in some executive office, the hospital had been turned on its head; when finally the dust settled like so much glitter in a snowglobe, shining in the middle of the wreckage wasn’t Occam’s razor but Murphy’s. What could go wrong had gone wrong.

Then, things had really gotten bad.

No one had ever let them in on what Murkoff had been doing to the rest of its subjects – because that’s what they were, no matter how many times they referred to them as ‘patients,’ no matter how carefully they tailored their clothes to make them look like prisoners – and now they didn’t need to. The proof was in the pudding, so to speak, only the pudding in question was of a meatier sort, slurried offal and skin spattered across walls or left on the ground in shapes that suggested the pile had once been a person. Murkoff had been making monsters, end of sentence, only they hadn’t anticipated losing control of their leashes.

The three of them had a little more experience with monsters than most gave them credit for. So there wasn’t any shock when things went sideways. If anything, there was a sense of something like relief that came with knowing shit had hit the proverbial fan. They’d survived something like this before, perhaps by the skin of their teeth; thing was, their teeth had a little more skin to lose now. The doctors had seen to that.

When the lights had gone out, Ashley had braced for the wave of fear to wash over her, the familiar terror that had risen up to greet her in the night since she was a child…but it never came. Instead, where that fear had once been, now there was only Chris’s cool nonchalance and Josh’s silent acceptance, buoying her in a way no nightlight or hall light ever had before. And that was good, because they needed her calm.

They needed her memory.

“Zombie ants,” Chris said, breaking the prolonged silence between them. “That’s what they’re like. You know, the ones that get the parasites? They climb to the highest point they can find, then let themselves be eaten by birds.”

“Take a pretty big bird to eat those lugs,” Josh murmured, the slow but sinister rot the Engine had started in each of them pulling his mouth (and therefore his words) into an unfamiliar shape. “Hate to see it.”

“Maybe we already have.” She didn’t like the sound of their voices down there in the tunnel, didn’t like the prickly feeling it set across her arms and the back of her neck. Once, all the way back in middle school, they’d snuck into the school after hours to get an assignment out of Chris’s locker. The whole place had been dark and empty and silent, and all at once so many of Josh’s dumb horror movies made sense – there was something terrifying about loud places going quiet, of crowded places going barren. It wasn’t right.

These hallways should’ve been full, too. Full of guards, of doctors, of the choked-off screams of people held with chemical restraints. But now there was only the three of them. The only sounds were the distant shouts of Murkoff’s mistakes far above them, zombie ants taking the time to tear through the doctors like crepe paper before finding a leaf to perch on and wait. That’s what everyone had done when the locks had clicked open: gone out, gone up.

Which was why they were going down.

She was the first to reach the stairwell, and so she stopped, turning her back to the yawning darkness to face them instead. “So here’s the thing,” Ashley said, pausing just long enough to confirm what she already knew, the buzz in her blood combing through the guys’ brains the same way theirs were moving through hers. “You’re not going to like where we have to go next.”

They shared a look, Chris and Josh, and even without the swarm behind her eyes, she knew what they were saying without speaking: That was something they’d usually say to her, and oh how the tables had turned.

“Not too worried, actually,” Josh said coolly, glancing down the darkened corridor from whence they’d come. “Pretty sure the worst of the worst’s playing out way up yonder. You know me, Ash…I’ve got no problem hunkering down in a dark, abandoned pit and waiting for the cavalry to arrive.”

“Yeah,” Chris piped in, the calm ebb of his voice at odds with the apprehension she felt blooming under his skin. “You’re the one who learned the map, Ash, you know we trust you to lead the way! I mean…wherever we gotta go, you know we’ll be with you every step of the way. No matter what.”

Her fear of the dark had shrunk to an unimportant thing, less than an itch at the back of her head, but even so the chasm of darkness behind her felt palpable as she looked between the two of them. It felt like its own sort of monster with its own sort of mouth, waiting for them to walk into it so it could chew, swallow, digest them piece by piece.

But it was the only way.

“No matter what?” she asked.

“No matter what,” they answered in unison.

“All right,” she sighed, and turned on her heel, taking the stairs slowly to keep from slipping on the blood. “Because the way down is through the basement. And I’m pretty sure we’re not the only people who thought to head that way.”

Behind her, Chris and Josh’s thoughts came zinging into her skull with all the force of buckshot. The man downstairs, one of them thought, a shapeless question; THE THING BELOW, the other realized, stomach sinking into Ashley’s feet.

“I’d like to rescind my earlier statement about following you anywhere,” is what Chris said aloud, though he was already following her down into the darkness.

“You guys take me to all the nicest places,” Josh drawled a moment later, his footsteps joining theirs.

From far above them, the screams continued. From far below them, a radio played.

There were no lesser evils in Mount Massive.