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biinarysttars · 7 years

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The Preston Theory (TM)

What’s up, my name’s Alhena, and here’s 12 pages of Theory that no one asked for, featuring everyone’s favourite Dan Dan the Cult Man and my favourite Stupid Theatre Boy. It’s got pictures

What is the Preston Theory?

The Preston Theory is something I noticed while watching S2E1 for the millionth times, and the gist of it is that Preston knows Daniel from somewhere. The theory doesn’t cover from where, and is thus incomplete, but has six pretty compelling pieces of evidence.

The pieces of evidence are organized in order that they appear in the episode, and each piece of evidence has at least one screenshot and corresponding quotes from the scene.

Evidence Piece #1: A Cinematic Choice

(3:33) Max: “O...kay?”

In the background of this scene, you can see Preston and Neil. If you look at the next screenshot, you can see that Nurf should probably also be seen here, and probably also a bit of Nikki’s hair. However, neither of those two are here, leaving instead Neil, the person to point out the scientific inaccuracy of Daniel’s Xemuug story, and Preston. But Preston is relatively irrelevant to Daniel, as far as we know, so why should he be there?

(Also, unrelated to the theory, but a thing I like about this scene is how Preston is in what we theatre folk call “neutral position”, or “theatre neutral”; his legs are roughly equal to his shoulders, and his arms hang down naturally. It’s interesting that he does this while in the background.)

Evidence Piece #2: Expression of Fear

(4:14) Space Kid: “(...)I know all sorts of stuff about space.” Daniel: “Well, did you know that all negative emotions actually come from space?”

This scene shows the campers reacting to either Daniel, or Space Kid’s story. Max and Harrison (and maybe Dolph) are looking at Space Kid, while Ered, Nurf, Neil, Nerris, (maybe Dolph,) and Preston are looking at Daniel. The latter group is looking at Daniel in confusion (Ered looks bewildered, actually), except for Preston, who looks... actually afraid. But why? Even before those lines exactly, he has the same expression on his face, and he’s even wearing it before Max calls him out (at 3:24, when he says, “Seriously, freakshow! What’s with the cult leader getup?”)

This scene poses the question, “Why is Preston afraid of Daniel?”

Evidence Piece #3: Flinch

(5:29) Daniel: “Doesn’t the world seem awfully scary?” Nurf: “It does!” Daniel: “Well, what if I told you it didn’t have to be?”

In this scene, when Daniel reaches his arm out, Preston flinches away from it. It’s odd because he was clearly not going to be hit by it, and at this point in his scheme, Daniel wouldn’t even thinking of hitting him. Also note that while Nurf looks intrigued by what Daniel’s saying, Preston looks afraid/concerned.

Evidence Piece #4: Last One Down

Part #1: The Factual Side

(7:07) Preston: “Please! Someone help me!”

The first thing to notice about this corresponds with the title: “Last One Down”. We know for a fact that Preston is the last camper (other than Max, Neil, and Nikki) to be brainwashed (Dolph, Nurf and Space Kid are in the Dining Hall at 6:52, we see Ered at 7:35 mixing some punch, and Harrison and Nerris are adding water and rat poison to the Kool-Aid at 7:38). As important as this is, it becomes more so when you ask yourself how much time Preston was in the purification sauna, which we can figure out thanks to the map in S1E1:

There’s a lot of assumption in this time part, and comparison to Camp Centauri, which I got back from a couple of weeks ago.

While I was at camp, I stayed in the Brant dorm, which was the farthest from the Dining Hall, and it took about five minutes to get there. Based on that, I’m going to assume that it’s the same distance from those farthest two tents from the Mess Hall. That’s not all, though! The counselor’s cabins aren’t even shown on this map, meaning that it’s probably fair to assume that they’re down that back path to the right. I’ll give this the benefit of the doubt and say that David’s cabin is the closest to the Hall (if it’s not, it only emphasizes my point), and only add on another two minutes, for a seven-minute total time. Considering that the trio ran, I’ll take off that two extra minutes for the trip there.

Once Max, Nikki, and Neil arrived, David basically disregarded their claims entirely, and so would be in no hurry back to the dining hall. Even with the campers pushing him, David’s strong as fuck (take him lifting the boulder in the intro for proof; not putting a screenshot because I’m on a roll), so they probably made it back at walking speed, if not, slower, for a seven-minute walk. That’s twelve minutes, so far. They stayed at David’s cabin for thirty-one seconds (I counted), so twelve and a half minutes (approximately).

Once at the Mess Hall, they stayed there for forty-three seconds. Thirteen minutes and fourteen seconds total.

Now, where is the purification sauna?

(7:33) Ered: “Oh, hey guys. You dudes are just in time to help prep for the killer party.”

It’s just past the activity center. You can see the science station, Ered’s skate thing, Nerris’ castle, and as the scene shifts over to Space Kid, Harrison, and Nerris making the killer Kool-Aid, you can see Dolph’s easel.

Since the Mess Hall apparently doesn’t have a back door, the campers went out the front. It probably took another five minutes to the back point of the activity center, and another added on thirty seconds to get around the Mess Hall, since at this point they were walking, for a total of eighteen minutes and forty-four seconds.

The kids lingered outside the sauna for another seventeen seconds. This totals to a minimum of nineteen minutes, and one second.

Preston was in the purification sauna for nineteen minutes. This is clearly way more time than any of the other campers (Neil and Nikki were in there for twenty-two seconds).

Part #2: The Emotional Side

Now, of course that’s not all to this piece of evidence. This piece of evidence starts with Preston’s pounding on the door’s glass, begging for help. This is weird. Why? Well, what is the purifying sauna?

(7:17) Neil: “I’d just like to point out the fucked up implications of specifically you putting specifically me into a gas chamber.” Dolph: “Oh, this is no gas chamber! We just use high-pressured steam and subliminal messaging to deconstruct your psyche, and rebuild you in a form that will please the Ancient Ones!”

(8:02) Daniel: “Brainwashed? No, no, no! I just appealed to their emotions, and showed them the light! People don’t wanna think, Max; they just wanna feel safe-- and feelings beat facts any day!”

So, first off, it’s obvious that the sauna doesn’t harm the campers. The sauna is, well, a sauna-- a place for people to go in and relax. The question now is, why wasn’t Preston relaxed?

The sauna is clearly a place where people don’t have to think, where they can feel safe, so why doesn’t Preston? The sauna is literally just a sauna with some subliminal messaging that fooled the other campers in, presumably, a matter of seconds, so why didn’t that happen to Preston?

An important thing to add on to this theory is that Preston converted almost immediately after Max, Neil, Nikki, and David showed up, when he probably felt a little more safe (or hopeful, at least, that they’d save him).

Evidence Piece #5: Small Smile

(9:22) Max: “Just look at him! In one day, he’s managed to get everyone happy, and working together! Something you and Gwen could never do! Everyone loves Daniel!”

Campers: “We love you, Daniel.”

In this scene, we can see that all of the campers are grinning widely, with their teeth showing, except for Dolph, whose mouth is covered by the table, and Preston, who has a small smile. However, Dolph is shown to be grinning with his teeth during the musical number, at 12:00 and 12:03.

Now, this piece of evidence can be shot down by this screenshot, where you can see Preston grinning in the corner:

(10:59) Daniel: “Why David, I thought you’d never ask!”

Except that I’ve thought of that already. This is just after David has decided that he’s going to fire Daniel, and even when Daniel came up with the excuse that he’s “successfully met every requirement listed in [his] job description, so [David] [doesn’t] actually have the legal to terminate [his] employment”, he doesn’t back down, and challenges Daniel to a camp song-off. The fact that he did this is probably reassuring to Preston, who was probably fighting off the brainwashing best he could (not good enough though, apparently, especially since most of his mind must have given into those thoughts already).

Evidence Piece #6: Better Than You

To finish the theory, I’m going to present you with the first thing I noticed: Preston isn’t in the entirety of the Better Than You number.

At first, I only noticed that he wasn’t in the “La, la, la, la”, and “ooh, ooh, ooh”--

(12:00) Daniel: “I know that might be hard to swallow.”

(12:03) Daniel: “This hurts you just as much as me.”

-- but neither are Nurf, Neil, or Max.

With Max, I thought it just made sense, considering that it was Max, and I thought it made sense with Neil, too, since he was the one that had called Daniel out on his bullshit earlier on. But what about Nurf? I reasoned it off as,

“I think I can assume for Nurf: because of his knowledge of why he is the way he is (a.k.a. knowledge of psychology), he is less prone to being psychologically manipulated”

But even then, I added,

“(That is super, super theoretical though)”

Recently, however, while I was rewatching the episode, I found that Nurf and Neil are both in the number:

(12:39) Daniel: “(...) Like keeping up this camp charade, (...)”

But Preston and Max are still nowhere to be found.

(And you can’t write it off as Preston just never wanting to be a part of a musical number no matter what, because he’s a theatre kid. That’s literally his entire personality.)

Bonus Evidence Piece #7: Reinforcement to Evidence Piece #2

(13:15) Space Kid: “Howdy, Jeanne!”

Notice that Preston is wearing much the same expression he was back at 4:14, and that now, everyone’s expressions match his (minus Space Kid’s), now that they’ve seen this, and know how to recognize it.

And that’s it!! That’s the Preston Theory!! If you like it, maybe you could reblog it, or just like it, whatever floats your boat!! If you want to debate it, that’s cool too!! If you want to add onto it, that’s even cooler!! Thank you for reading!!

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