YAYY YIPPEE HII/silly
(Sorry I didn't get to this till now it was late when I saw the ask and I didn't wanna answer it while I was half asleep. Also apparently tumblr doesn't let you edit asks anymore?? )
Leaving this under a cut tho cuz I know this shit will get LONG
ANYWAYS. The. Big one related to that™ post came from a combination of me wondering how the FUCK Cedric got the yellow phosphor needed to rebuild proto + consequences of the revival of characters my beloved
And uh. Yea any yellow phosphor he does end up getting his hands on I. DOUBT WOULD BE ENOUGH.
So uh. Proto being rebuilt with less yellow phosphor then is probably even remotely adviseable and that causing a whole ton of issues™ . And Cedric not even knowing cuz of the whole just. Scanning the blueprints in.
Also this is proto we're talking about here. There's no fucking way he'd tell anyone until shit got BAD.
LEMME JUST. Screenshots from when I was brainrotting over this in my first OneShot fixation
And yea. The author probably would have had yellow phosphor stored in the lab somewhere just incase. (Esp with the head canon that. Proto predicted his own death a long time ago cuz. Prophet moment. And. Told the author and the prophet but never cedric and rue cuz everytime he went to he would get another vision of them trying to intervene and things only going worse)
BUT. since I want my angst goddammit. That part of the lab collapsed first and while Cedric was abled to salvage some yellow phosphor it ends up not being enough.
BUT LIKE. YEA. the way I always imagined Cedric and Rue actually finding out is. One of those moments where a bunch of errors and shit happens . Happens when him Cedric and Rue are walking in the refuge. And this one's bad enough that he can't just metaphorically grit his teeth through it like the other times this has happened in public. Once it's over Cedric and Rue are reasonably extremely concerned and. Fuckin rush him to the lab to try and see if there something they can do to fix this.
AND UH. That segways into another little detail of this headcanon. BECAUSE. he let this go on for so long with the damage all the errors and malfunctions overtime have caused. It probably would just be better to rebuild him and reuse the yellow phosphor they already have. BUT UH. since the situation around him being rebuilt made it so stressful the first time around, he. REALLY doesn't wanna do that again. I have. Such a vivid idea of a scene in my head for that. They're like. Talking with kip. And shes like halfway through saying the word rebuild and. She doesn't even get to finish he just cuts her off.
So what they end up doing is, in the meantime, using red phosphor to prevent any further damage until they can go to the barrens to get blue phosphor so said phosphor won't have to be replaced as often.
I ACTUALLY. made a dumb little chart of how. I imagined them looking different a few days ago
I imagine that. Actually having a normal level of phosphor would. Definitely HELP. But. There would still be some issues partially because it's not one uniform type of phosphor and partially because of the damage the issues caused. And you couldnt pry this headcanon out of my cold dead hands. Consequences of the revival of characters go brrrrrrr
AND THEN UH. Don't get me started on the night terrors as a result of the whole squares thing headcanons.
that whole thing. Came from me going. "do robots still need sleep?" and ultimately deciding yes when i came up with the other headcanon that. only tamed robots dream.
When I made this headcanon I actually hadnt played solstice in a while, and for some reason I always remembered it as, him handing Niko the disk while the lower half of his body was already in the squares. which. no he actually hands it to them while the squares are directly behind him BUT. I still choose to remember it that way HSHSH. anyways uh. Important and related to this headcanon. He remembers what that feels likeeee. and hes probably the only oneee because in the solstice ending everyone only sayss they remember the squares surrounding themm not actually touching themmm and even robots who have gotten caught in them and liveed probably dont rememberrr especially since most of them arent tameddd and uhh even if he only remembers the beginning of ittt hes probably really good at filling in the gapss with the whole prophet thingg (thanks @malwarechips for that last idea/silly)
ANYWAYS UHm. so the whole. tamed robots dreaming thing right. HIM. having night terrors about the fucking squares.
I always imagined it as like. about a week after solstice, once things are starting to calm down and return to normal, one night cedric and rue wake up to proto just fuckin screaming at the top of his (metaphorical) lungs. And. they fuckin burst into his room to him tossing and turning in his sleep and then fucking jolting awake. and like.this keeps happening like. practically every other night. he's losing sleep over this shit. Which probably isn't helping all the other issues from the whole phosphor ordeal which he still hasn't told Cedric or Rue about at this point. And I mean. I doubt the nightmares would be restricted to just. in the mines. cuz dreams are weird like that esp when traumas involved AND UH. With the whole prophet thing. That. PROBABLY WOULDNT MIX WELL. (once again thanks eve for that last part/silly)
(On a lighter note I did have the thought of Cedric and Rue sleeping in his room one night and him actually finally getting a good nights sleep and thus that just. Becoming routine for them. The thing about my angsty headcanons is 99% of the time there's hurt/comfort potential in there)
I DO HAVE. some more lighthearted not angsty headcanons, but i wanna save most of those for their own posts cuz theyre small enough that i can actually draw them and finish them.
I will say one more though. this one is 100% projection but *points at proto* chronic migraines
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been watching some infinity train video essays recently and come across a common criticism of book 2 that has absolutely floored me because it demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding about what book 2 even says about personhood and reality. i feel it’s relevant to point out that most of the people who have this criticism are also unaware or dismissive of the trans-coding of lake’s character, because like.... the critiques are a) ‘lake’s number being a reflection of jesse’s was a cop-out’ and b) ‘lake being a metal person in the real world doesn’t make any sense’. and it’s like.. you just watched an entire narrative about how arbitrary constructs of personhood designed to demean and marginalise people are Bad and Dumb and there will inevitably be people a system doesn’t accomodate for, who deserve accomodation on account of their existence, and your takeaway was ‘well they didn’t make the metal person a real person. they didn’t assimilate to the status quo in a bona fide capacity’. like what the fuck lol
to elaborate on what i mean; lake being a chrome person is an integral aspect of who they are and their journey is never a pinnochio-esque ‘i wanna be a real boy’ self-loathing misery-fest (book 2 said fuck your transmedicalism and also, hey, as a disabled person, nice). by book 2, lake is adamant that they are a person and merely wants to be treated as such. lake is treated as a second class citizen on the train because of arbitrary social structures designed to ‘maintain the balance’ between the prime and mirror world, as mace puts it. it’s a social construct presented as an innate, intrinsic truth of the world by corrupt authority figures; have i mentioned trans-coding yet? lake’s journey wouldn’t be anywhere near as impactful as it is if they constantly lamented the literal make-up of their being, if they had to relinquish a fundamental aspect of their all-important identity to ‘truly be a person’. like, lake is not Becoming a person; they are a person, and they’re escaping a system that falsely refutes that.
this is why lake’s number is actually a genius writing choice, and very definitley not a cop-out. lake’s number is created on account of their physical being, can literally only exist in the way that it does because lake is reflective. to be told ‘you are a reflection, so you can’t have a number’, and then get a number not in spite of being a reflection but because of literally being reflective..... trans-coding. and also the only way to do a meaningful narrative about personhood. any notion that lake is not already fully a person on account of.... you know, existing and stuff undermines every aspect of their character and it’s genuinely baffling to me that some people don’t get that.
like, it’s apparent that the train (an artificial construct) cannot give a denizen (social construct) a number (also a construct, but an important one in the social system). it literally starts collapsing in on itself when lake and jesse apparently invent t4t in the number car, because it has not considered how to accomodate for people who exist outside of a narrow scope or binary (haha). to have lake somehow (?? how would you even do this lol like tell me your alt ending if you’re gonna prattle this nothing criticism) Become a passenger and get their number that way undermines their incredibly powerful assertion, again and again, ‘i am a person,’ ‘i’m my own person who is getting off this train’. because that says that this fucked up social system is in some way objectively correct and lake has to assimilate to it, when it has been actively violent against them, and dehumanises every single denizen on the train. which we have been told the entirety of book 2 is innately bad.
and also, it adds so much to the jesslake dynamic that i think evidently goes over certain people’s heads. lake and jesse are both the titular ‘cracked reflection’, both attempting to establish a sense of identity independent from others, and that’s a big factor in their closeness and understanding of one another. jesse’s second number scrolls from irrational number to complex number back to irrational number (square root of two i’ll get to you) because his problem— which is in turn lake’s problem— has threatened and cracked the train’s rigid system. it cannot comprehend it. jesse and lake together essentially take a shit on the train because like yeah, lake’s number is ‘just’ a reflection, but that is literally the point. oh my god why can no one understand basic symbolism like throughout the show we see lake’s face reflected in their own hands and we go ouogfoghgou i seeeeee they don’t have a number on their hand so we see them instead, yes yes personhood and identity i see. but the second people see a reflection of a number they can’t grasp what is simple but powerful in its meaning????
lake is a person. because they are a person. number is ‘proof’ of personhood on train but the thing that we’ve always seen in lake’s hand is them, the reflection of a reflection, and that’s their personhood, and now they’re cheating the system with another reflection like hello!!!!!!!!! they’re not meant to assimilate into the system literally anyone who thinks that is stupid and shouldn’t be allowed opinions. i am so sorry but holy fuck book 2 was like ‘lake’s personhood is innate and has always been there and they do not have to assimilate into a cruel system to escape it nor do they have to relinquish who they are to obtain freedom because there is nothing objectively flawed about their personhood, only objectively flawed perceptions of them by others’ and some people were like ‘ok but. the gender binary is real obviously’ and it’s like did you miss the bit where we brutally murdered the two cops emblematic of... well, cops, and also arbitrary oppressive social structures that are peddled as fact. holy shit. book 2 sweetie im so sorry that cis people don’t understand you like i do.
just to expand on that point a little more analytically; i’ve seen some people say that they thought lake’s number was a cop-out because it was ‘cheating the system’, but you’re sort of meant to think that. the train’s system is innately flawed, this is something the show makes apparent throughout its books. lake is cheating a system they cannot legitimately win at. ‘well couldn’t any denizen just write a number on their hand and ask one-one for an exit?’ idk maybe. i hope some of them try it and succeed. the train is an arbitrary construct, it is conducted, its judgement is not objective or perfect. why the hell should lake play by the rules when the rules are literally ‘you aren’t a person lol <3′. you guys are spouting some alarmingly right-wing rhetoric if you posit arguments like these. ‘oh but one-one can’t be evil though :(’ i don’t think one-one is evil, i think he’s a mostly well-intentioned robot that doesn’t fully grasp the complexity of what he’s attempted to create a clinical system to ‘solve’.
final point: if you think lake should’ve like?? become flesh??? when they got off the train, first of all you hate comedy and second of all, read above. this is not pinnochio!!!!!!!! the only ‘problem’ with being a reflection is the artificial construct of what ‘being a reflection’ means, and lake has rejected that, and they’re made of chrome, and that’s a fact, and they consistently utiliise that aspect of their identity to further their journey to the point of their exit from the train literally being manifested via the reflective nature of their hand. they are disproving everything that everyone says about them not by rejecting that aspect of their identity but embracing it. ‘you’d just go into the prime world with your... metal skin and, what? high school? prom?’ yes motherfucker!!!!!! suck on it!!!!!!!!!!!! some of you need to work a little harder to um.... Understand what a text is saying, and Comprehend subtext. again, this is not pinnochio!!!! good god. fuck me.
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“”””condalbert”””” moments in this episode
- conrart being like “oh don’t worry adalbert won’t kill yuuri” and when gwendal asks why not, conrart, who has recently told adalbert that yuuri is the reincarnation of adalbert’s dead fiance, is like “...just a hunch”
- conrart catches yuuri after adalbert throws him off a cliff and then stares at adalbert in confusion
- yuuri saying “adalbert’s in danger we should help him!” and conrart going “actually let’s not”
- they show up to help adalbert and conrad’s immediately like “look adalbert this wasn’t my idea”
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