#daylight theory

[artemisandhersilverbow]

OOPS I HAVE MORE

>> I don't think a lick of this will make sense without reading Pt. 1. << But there's also a relatively high chance it simply just doesn't make sense bc I'm half awake with the flu.

Watched the LWYMMD LV for the first time in many, many, many moons — low key it's the best one they've ever done? — and I actually chortled at this spooky familiar typewriter scene (top image above) for the line: "the role you made me play". Somehow this visual combines a typewriter AND screenplay.

Now I'm fairly certain this isn't the only typewriter imagery we get in our trove of MVs or LVs especially bc of TTPD. But I'm fairly certain this is the only other script 👀 we get.

Of course LWYMMD TV is on everyone's radar right now bc of the Handmaid's Tale ep. I didn't intentionally find this — I just remembered there were a few lyric vids from Rep era and haven't seen them in years. Anyway, notable because LWYMMD is the 6th song on the 6th album. Because that could just be straightforward Rep TV egging. But... the math... 6 + 6 = 12. This would take some Cassandra-like abilities to plan tho.

The thing I find v spooky are the words that glitch in The Manuscript LV are "And the actors" and then LWYMMD's lyrics are "The role you made me play." In fact, most of the imagery in this LV repeats itself... but the typewriter scene never shows up again.

This didn't end up being the only eerie visual similarity and I'm sure there are more. Feel free to indulge me if you wanna keep following the golden thread:

So the color scheme is predominantly grey, black, white, with red accents — or the whole scene is red (a spiral snake situation). But there are also very few pops of yellow and notably there are a few full frame yellow "glitches."

Obviously, my eye twitched a bit over the chess pieces because of Blank Space tour/LV visuals and the live chess game Mastermind dance on tour. The queen piece, which says "games" on it, also gets flicked off the board and immediately called the Queen's Sacrifice strategy to mind bc karma is a queen:

In chess, a queen sacrifice occurs when a player voluntarily allows their opponent to capture their queen, even though they could have defended it. This strategic decision is often made to gain a tactical advantage, such as a forced checkmate, a more advantageous position, or more material compensation.

BUT the VAULT KEY THAT HAS "KINGDOM KEYS" WRITTEN ON IT?!?!?? In the Rep era? This vault key being one of the few random yellow objects other than light itself?!

1. The eras stage/vault key game 2. Fearless TV vault key merch 3. Bejeweled MV

Imperfect matches, but again, TS isn't actually a seer. I think... I mean she did say there's only one key to her secret garden and she's got it.

I think she was already thinking quite deeply about the vault, her past + future work, and struggling in 2017... even if her Taylor's Versions idea hadn't manifested quite yet. Just look at the very familiar looking bank vault in LWYMMD MV (1:36).

Anyway, the scene that follows the Kingdom Keys is also familiar looking. In front of a spooky castle silhouette, a yellow crown falls onto ME! (out now) Did Taylor's pennies make them?

We've been getting castle motifs since Fearless (maybe earlier? don't quote me). But I feel like we really ramped up on the castle metaphor during Midnights with the Bejeweled MV, which also makes an appearance in the Karma MV.

At the end of Bejeweled, Taylor ghosts the prince, but gets to keep the Kingdom Keys and castle. We leave her, dressed in her golden princess dress, and smiling/smirking as dragons seem to be burning down the castle.

In Karma MV, you'll be able to spot the "same" castle to the left of Taylor, seemingly the natural end of the yellow brick road for (Friend of) Dorothy Taylor who's skipping in the rubies she gave up... also wearing a lil golden beret.

Now we have so many structure metaphors we've speculated could represent Taylor's body of work - for ex. the Lover House. I think that could still very much apply to her use of castles. It's just the sort of cold, elitist, patriarchal, impenetrable nature of castles - and her smiling as it burns down - that makes me feel like it could better represent her former record label, the industry, or even the contract she signed at 15 for the first 13 years of her career.

She's leaving it worse than she found it for the powers that be, to rubble even, hopefully paving a brighter road ahead for artists like herself. Or is at least getting tf out of Emerald City and following the yellow brick road far, far away. Home, maybe. We all know The Emerald City ends up just being a corrupt farce propped up by machines, gears, cogs, and a heck of a lot of exploitation. Not magic.

Anyway, three last 👀 stills from the LWYMMD video. Folks, we got a clock! A clock in a room that looks suspiciously like TTPD? Idk it gives me the vibe...

So first, when this door opens it smashes the lightbulb - plunging the room into darkness and scattering glass on the floor... which I'm sorry is just gonna remind me of Karma...

But we've also got this clock. We have so many mf-ing clocks at this point. But what have most of the clocks been doing? Pointing to midnight... or 12.

This one might not look like it is, like it's tilted then, but look at the wall in the wider shot. I think it is actually tilted. It also makes sense chronologically because "time" is the last word in the sentence. And my, my, my what a word to pick.

Now you might also point out that the red hand is the minute hand... but it's also the red object here... so it draws the attention? Tbh I'd just go with it personally. BUT whether it's 12 OR it's the minute amount... which would be 0... frankly, that would fascinate me too much...

She's never dodging the mastermind allegations (speaking of a really cool clock LV). To leave so many clues in your last stolen work (an odyssey that would only get worse from there) to be uncovered almost a decade later... I just keep finding Karma/12 everywhere I go.

Anyway, I've just been seeing what "Karma" or even a TS12 means in my head as a possible liberation of her work in a more complete way, but also liberation/freedom on many levels kinda vibe. I think she's been fighting the shackles of the industry/her contract, while communicating it covertly as she could, for longer than we might think... which does not surprise me considering the other subtext I - and my side of a fandom -believes that could apply to as well.

[ghostie-goo]

welcome to the fog king 🙏

[junocandraw]

ive noticed the pride flags on the hooks in dead by daylight and i think theyre so funny. like wow i just got hooked by demisexual lesbian michael myers. transgender freddy krueger just stabbed me. fml.

[argumentativeantitheticaldrmgrl]

We can only hope 🌈🌈🌈

[madcourtjester]

How it feels to have both dead by daylight lore autism and fnaf lore autism watching fnaf YouTubers who are unfamiliar w dbd talk abt dbd when they don’t know about the HORRORS AND ALSO watching dbd youtubers who are unfamiliar W fnaf talk abt fnaf when they don’t know about the OTHER HORRORS

[tdaywasamaritale]

i don’t know if anyone else has done/noticed this yet BUT

taylor singing daylight in the surprise songs last night after changing her rep bodysuit

‘i once believed love would be burning red’

‘but it’s golden’

thoughts

[godlygivenanxiety]

I gotta say.... I LOVE the idea that the entity has favorites???? ESPECIALLY that she loooooves how Dwight just never loses that jumpy state of anxiety, he's one of the most experienced and can lead the survivors pretty efficiently... but he's always easily swayed by his fear, clinging so tightly to the sudden rush of survival instinct they experience in trials.

Dwight's made for cooperation and repairing, not sabotage or blinding, nor stunning or hexing- and although it often doesn't guarantee survival, he never gives up on hiding inside the lockers... he's refreshingly consistent. So defenseless.

She enjoys watching him whimper, gives Ghostface, another one of her favorites, some extra trial time when he manages to slug the survivor so both her and Danny can watch poor, helpless little Dwight crawling towards the loud humming of the hatch, choking and gurgling on his own blood, stubborn but losing all that delicious hope at every slow step of the killer towards him, struggling to focus on the hum when his heart's beating so loud in his ears...

anyways, the Entity's Dwight's number one fan and Danny's fighting for the title in my head.

[slyandthefamilybook]

...And here we come upon a problem as basic as the nature of knowledge itself: all of our prodigious cognitive and computational abilities are inadequate to a full comprehension of our complex world. As humans, we remain heavily dependent on certain tools of perception and conception that our cultural and biological heritages have taught us are useful. These tools–such as language, causal logic, religion, mathematics–are indeed powerful, but they are powerful precisely because they reduce complexity to intelligibility by projecting our mental concepts onto the world. One consequence of this is that our recognition of significance is always what some philosophers call "theory laden," meaning that it is shaped by what our theoretical framework and cognitive tools encourage us to recognize as meaningful. Anti-Judaism, as I have argued throughout this book, is precisely this: a powerful theoretical framework for making sense of the world.

...

After all, no matter how overrepresented the Jews may have been among the European "bourgeoisie," they remained a tiny minority of that class. How could that tiny minority convincingly come to represent for so many the evolving evils of the capitalist world order? More broadly, how could untold millions of Europeans (and not only Germans) come to believe–or act as if they believed–the claims of the Nazis (and not only the Nazis) that Jews and their conspiracies so threatened the security of the world that they needed to be excluded, expelled, or exterminated? According to Horkheimer and Adorno, the liquidation of the Jews of Europe was not grounded in "reality." It took place in the vast gap between and explanatory framework ("anti-Semitism") that made satisfying sense of the world to a significant portion of its citizens, and the complexity of the world itself.

They set out to explore that gap in a philosophical history of modern thought they drafted in 1944 and later published as Dialectics of Enlightenment. Their final chapter, "Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment," suggested that what gave anti-Semitic ideas their power was not so much their relation to reality, but rather their exemption from reality checks–that is, from the critical testing to which so many other concepts were subjected. "What is pathological about anti-Semitism is not projective behavior as such, but the absence of reflection in it." In their terms, the problem is a heightened resistance to reflection about the gap between our ideas about Jews, Judaism, or Jewishness, and the complexity of the world. From their point of view, anti-Semitism provides adherents with a cognitive comfort: the fantasy that the gap between our understanding of the cosmos and its fearful complexity does not exist.

...

...[A]cross several thousand years, myriad lands, and many different spheres of human activity, people have used ideas about Jews and Judaism to fashion the tools with which they construct the reality of their world. The goal of my project, like Horkeheimer and Adorno's, is to encourage reflection about our "projective behavior," that is, about the ways in which our deployment of concepts into and onto the world might generate "pathological" fantasies of Judaism. And my choice of method owes something to Auerbach's conviction that the study of a given moment, problem, or even a single word in the distant past can teach us something about a much longer history, extending even to our own.

Selected excerpts from Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition (2013 Nirenberg, David)

[polillamielera]

another miscellaneous page!

[beargyufairy]

Time, mystical time

Cuttin' me open

Then healin' me fine

Were there clues I didn't see?

And isn't it just so pretty to think

All along there was some

Invisible string

Tying you to me?

[thoughtspresso]

Aqua plans to die.

And his death will be necessary to take Kamiki down.

While the full details of Aqua’s revenge plan isn’t entirely clear to all of us yet, his intention to place himself in danger as he tries to take Kamiki down is a very clear, and very crucial part of the plot that he anticipates.

Before we can dive into how Aqua is going to achieve his revenge, we need to back up a little bit and understand who he is as a person, how he makes decisions, and what he personally wants.

What is Aqua’s Goal?

From a top-level view, Aqua has a singular emotional goal:

Aqua wishes to take responsibility for the deaths of his mothers.

Aqua/Gorou absolutely believes that after two lives of the same thing, that he was the common denominator. He was the fault his mothers both died, because he was useless and helpless. Had he never been conceived, and more crucially, if his mothers did not have to lie about his existence, they would have both stayed alive. If Gorou’s mom didn’t have to conceal the pregnancy from her parents, or did not have one at all, she would have lived a long life. He believes that perhaps his second chance at life was to save Ai, but he was paralyzed and helpless during her murder. He blames himself for Ai’s death too.

This is a driving force in Aqua’s character, and informs all of his decision making, even to the detriment of his own plans most times. It leads us to his supplementary goal:

Aqua wants to keep the people he loves safe.

Whether it was shielding Ruby from entertainment or making sure she’s in a safe agency with good group members, or Akane not going too far in enacting his revenge plot for him, or Kana from steering clear of a career-ending love scandal, Aqua’s key traumas has led him to feel compelled to take action and do whatever it takes to save people if he had the power to do so.

Here is a breakdown of Aqua’s plans, and some key questions we have to ask about each one.

1. Why make a movie called The 15-Year Lie? And what is “Ai’s true wish”?

I have reason to believe that Ai’s DVD for Aqua would have either been a message about wishing to be loved truly and be hated with full honesty for the person she really was, that she wanted her actual self to be revealed to people. In line with that, I think Aqua’s DVD included Gotanda’s original documentary for the B-Komachi dome event. Which is why Gotanda tried to defend Aqua's decision to reveal her secret in chapter 112, and why in chapter 108 Gotanda says about the script that “this is finally my time to fulfill that promise.”

2. What does he mean by “using Arima Kana”?

There were theories circulating that the person who texted Frill Shiranui could have been Aqua, trying to get her to encourage Ruby to play the role of Ai in the film. However, that couldn’t be any farther from the truth. As we know, Aqua was saying that Gotanda should “grow up” and understand that the most important thing for a movie is to succeed commercially first before we talk about artistic value. 

If Aqua had full control over the situation, he would have just straight up casted Akane. After all, that was what he initially proposed, and even contacted her for it despite saying he’ll never have anything to do with her again. What he needed, more than anything, was for the film to succeed commercially. And with the headlining actress no longer (a) the most famous celebrity of their generation, or (b) the heralded genius of their generation, Aqua has no other options.

Except: Arima Kana.

I think the aspect of him using her or manipulating her is mainly to encourage her publicity activities. He’ll be encouraging her to do well in her work to garner more star power for the movie to really be a success, and for her to help his sister be the perfect lead for the show. He’s also going to bank on the idea that Kana will do things for him because she has a crush on him, which he only realized in Chapter 102 after Mem-cho points it out, that he can pursuade Kana to get out of the way of his revenge plot if necessary to keep her safe or place her in the spotlight to attract people’s attention for the movie.

While unlikely, he might even encourage her to stay on a little longer until Ruby gets to the Dome performance.

Or, and maybe this is my shipping delulu talking, but it can also be that he’ll try to just be around her frequently to garner media attention about their relationship. In this way, keeping her close without actually dating her could serve a dual purpose: get people talking about them and the movie, but also make sure that Kana stays safe and nobody makes a rumor of pairing her up with anybody else.

Lastly, also not super likely but another option could be to convince her to headline the show, and play Ai in Ruby’s stead.

3. Why does Kaburagi say that the film is bordering on illegal?

This is a truly crucial piece to unveiling Aqua’s plot. We know Kaburagi likes producing shows that include good-looking young people, and that seems to be his main strategy for raking in young audiences and cashing out.

So why would he have hesitated, even for a second, on a plan to cast the top talent of this young generation, on the biggest news Japan has been talking about, handed to him by a first-hand source--the son of Ai himself?

On all accounts, this would have been the perfect formula for a smash success. So why would Kaburagi say things like, “do you have enough evidence”, when everybody already knew about the University student stalker that murdered her? What was so controversial?

Unless, when they said Aqua will play the culprit, they didn’t mean the Ryosuke.

They meant he was playing Hikaru Kamiki.

Here’s what we know about the film, and what I think Aqua is trying to do:

1. Portray Kamiki in the worst possible way and destroy his reputation.

The 15-Year Lie will be a biopic about Ai’s life from when she was starting out as an idol.  Ai will be portrayed as a poor girl abandoned by her parents, searching for the true meaning of love. We know that this framing will be part of Ai’s characterization because of the scenes where Ruby struggled the most:

In the search for love, they will show her falling for a young man and talented actor at Theatre Lalalai--that being Hikaru Kamiki. Once he gets Ai pregnant, he abandons her, and she runs off to the countryside to hide from the press. When Ai asked him to come visit her, Kamiki, in wanting to protect his career, attempted to send out a stalker. A few years later, seeing his kids wotagei on social media, he manages to find them again and kill Ai.

It is a complete and utter character assasination of Hikaru Kamiki, and while revealing Ai as a flawed person, draws for the sympathy of the viewers to love Ai for who she truly is. Which is exactly why Gotanda keeps insisting for Ruby to play the role, even when Aqua and Kaburagi have sensible recommendations for Akane and Frill.

At that moment, when Ai dies, Aqua will reveal his face, and openly declare that it was his father who orchestrated it all. Then he might even portray his father murdering Ryosuke himself, instead of the suicide that was reported in the media.

2. Aqua will use himself to bait his father out, and force Kamiki’s hand to kill Aqua.

The main reason why Aqua finds it necessary for the film to be a commercial success is because he needs the general public to be one hundred percent in agreement that Hikaru Kamiki is an evil man that deserves to be jailed. (Whether or not he reveals his name in the film, which he could but doesn’t need to.) This public lynching is his first control.

But here’s the thing: Kamiki didn’t directly murder Himekawa Airi and Hoshino Ai himself. At this point in time, Aqua is not aware of Katayose Yura’s murder either. And there is no evidence that connects Uehara Seijirou and Ryosuke’s suicides as murders by Kamiki’s hands.

And on top of all that, when these things happened, Kamiki was fully a minor.

Akane’s fears and interpretation was that Aqua would murder his own father because it’s the only form of revenge he could enact himself. 

But she’s wrong, there’s one more thing Aqua could do: make Kamiki commit murder again. If he kills Aqua, there will now be a murder that the public agrees without a doubt was done by Kamiki himself.

He can go to jail once and for all, or he can also get stabbed by an angry fan--Aqua doesn’t care. All he cares about is that it’s a sure win, and it’s over forever. He launches his sister’s career into the spotlight, he keeps everybody safe, and he atones for the death of his mothers with his own life.

In summary: Aqua plans to get killed by his father, so that an actual murder has occurred for which he could be jailed or publicly ostracized or even killed.

And here’s why I think Aqua will fail:

Aqua’s assumptions about his father are incorrect.

He believes that Kamiki’s reason for killing Ai was because her pregnancy would ruin his reputation and career as a rising actor. That’s why Aqua tries to hit him there. And he believes defaming him might provoke him to get killed.

But I don’t think Kamiki cared about his reputation at all anymore. He left his career as an actor behind after Kindaichi kicked him out of Lalalai, and went on to graduate from Faculty of Science. He never went back in front of the spotlight, instead opening a talent agency around the exact time he believed his kids might be joining the industry.

I have reason to believe that Kamiki thinks murdering Airi and Ai was to protect his children or some other great act of justice against his rapist(s). And that even killing Katayose Yura was done because he didn’t want a liar like her to take the spotlight that was supposedly for his daughter Ruby.

I don’t think Kamiki will harm Aqua.

But I do think he will come forward and expose himself and his twisted justification, and he might even openly give interviews to the media.

Instead, I do believe Kamiki might pay attention to Kana’s honest acting--something he’s never seen before in a person, and try to get close to her somehow. And if Kamiki’s name is not revealed, and if the theories are true that Frill works for Kamiki’s agency, he might recruit Kana to join him.

All this is to say, get Kana out of this manga. Somebody, please save her.

[caskaded]

The DBD x FNAF collab's Hidden Lore Implications

In this video, I explore the number of ways in which the new Dead by Daylight x Five Nights at Freddy's collab contributes to and expands on the established lore of the games. By heavily revolving around and contextualizing "Follow Me", detailing Springtrap's unique origin, as well as truly acknowledging his significant longevity, the DBD collab presents us with a question hardly pondered and long left unanswered by theorists: What exactly was Springtrap doing in the safe room all those years?

In the seemingly obvious character description for Springtrap in Dead by Daylight, we find what may very well be the to key to answering this question. This is precisely what I explore in my "DBD x FNAF Lore Implications" video and I do so by working off of my previous one, "Nightmare Theory". In that video, I proposed that William Afton experienced a "long sleep" between his initial springlocking and his much later debut to the world as Springtrap at Fazbear's Fright. Dead by Daylight appears to back up this claim since shortly before the black fog finds and envelops Springtrap, he is said to awaken disoriented and unsure of how much time had passed since the night the springlocks tore through his flesh and "everything went black".

With Nightmare Theory, I further proposed that Afton's "coma", which he spent trapped in a vulnerable position and at the mercy of the angry spirits of his victims, was not just an uneventful period of rest for him, but instead the perfect opportunity for his wildest nightmares to manifest a curated torture for him to endure within his mind night after night after night, year after year after year... I believe Dead by Daylight backs this idea up in the collab as well: Springtrap slowly comes back into consciousness again, "his body a pillar of agony", and before he even begins to process the world around him, he immediately makes note of the peculiar fact that... "The ghosts that had tormented him were gone..."

Click here to watch "DBD x FNAF LORE IMPLICATIONS" on Youtube!

[argumentativeantitheticaldrmgrl]

I was looking for more clues to the gaylor coming out theory and I couldn’t help but notice the singular time she’s played ME! 🌈 on the eras tour she wore all EMERALD GREEEENNNN like Vancouver the emerald city and the yellow brick road wizard of oz coming out theory I’m just so excited… she has already admitted to hinting to things years in advance 💚💚💚 I also can’t help but notice she looks so happy when the crowd says “spelling is fun” considering she was bullied into removing it from the song entirely and that song is supposed to be her original coming out😊 daylight is comingggggg

[doctorbunny]

Mahiru's birthday flower tweet

(Tweet Links)

I'm terribly sorry for being a few days late again, there were several project updates coming out around the same time...

Happy Birthday to everyone born on the 17th of January. Today is also the birthday of Mahiru Shiina from #MILGRAM. Her birthday flower is Capsella bursa-pastoris (Shepard's Purse/Nazuna). It is one of the seven spring herbs. For aeons, Shepard's Purse has been an invaluble source of food and medicine to humans, because it is able to flower and fruit in all sorts of inhospitable environments, as long as there is sunlight. It's hanakotoba is "I will devote everything to you."

色んな更新で漏れてしまって。数日遅れで大変申し訳ないですが改めて… 1月17日お誕生日の方おめでとうございます。 #ミルグラム では椎奈真昼の誕生日でもあります。 誕生花はナズナ。春の七草のひとつ。陽当たりさえあれば、どんな荒地にも花と果実をつけ、冬の貴重な食糧としても生薬としても古くから人々に重用されてきました。花言葉は『あなたにすべてを捧げます』。

[Yay the task I put off for months was completed in one evening! Between me and Maristelina, I think this is all the birthday tweets translated, I'll try to compile a masterpost of links some time]

[daisyswift3]

The Secret of Us 💛, Midsummer ☀️, and Dec 13 ✌️

So I was gonna point this out a while ago but I kinda forgot until I was reminded just now but I think now is a great time to bring it up anyway.

I’ve previously talked abt all the connections to Midsummer/Midsommar (x)(x). I learned abt a lot of these connections from this excellent twt thread and in this thread Melissa points out sth very interesting:

Taylor emphasized the number 174 during one of her eras tour speeches meaning it must be important (see this vid). The 174th day of this yr is June 22 which is Midsummer. This makes June 21 Midsummer Eve and obviously Gracie just released her album today that Taylor is featured on. Midsummer celebrates daylight so this lines up w the lover era failed coming out happening at the end of pride month and lover originally being called daylight. Plus the secret of us is very yellow and Gracie has been highlighting this w the yellow hearts lately 💛 which means yellow = daylight/sunshine/summer (Taylor uses summer as a metaphor in the same way she uses daylight as a metaphor).

Now if you double (✌️) the number 174, you get 348. And what is the 348th day of this yr?? OH IT’S FRIDAY, DEC 13 🙃

This date was displayed in the Spotify Library Installation. And as this account points out, Taylor was not born on a Friday so this Dec 13 is likely referring to Dec 13 of this yr which aligns w my theory that sth really huge is probably going to happen around Taylor’s birthday and New Year’s Eve this yr (see this post).

(x)

I believe that the end of this yr will be when Taylor (and probably several other celebs too) will finally step into the daylight and return to the 1989 era. And to add even more evidence, the literal meaning of Midsummer is “the middle of summer.” So you can also interpret it as being midway to summer. Half of 348 is 174 which means summer/daylight will happen Dec 13 so we are halfway there.

I’m not sure if I did a good job articulating that so I also drew a diagram explaining my thought process lol.

[wearmyjumperlarry]

“The queer – always already the exceptional, the odd, the outsider, the outcast – lies at the heart of circus’ practices and meaning." Charles R. Batson