#(that's her theory. as we all know it's not /quite/ accurate to what really happened but it's pretty close!)

[anthroposeen]

tmagp 13 relisten notes!!

there are spoilers for episode 13 below the cut!

celia:

- admits to sam that she asked alice for advice and general information about him. this implies she has a pretty friendly relationship with alice (evidenced by alice buying her a mocha) and seems relatively unthreatened by her past with sam so far.

- "no one, im mysterious" -> evidence for her not being from this dimension, if no one can give a lot of information about her

- reveals jack is her baby! (not followed by a glitch)

- says the past couple years "since the move" (between dimensions?) were weird for her

- believes the incidents they work with are real, and im certain shes in the same boat as the audience rn, trying to categorize them with background knowledge that isnt accurate anymore

sam:

- easy to make blush, doesnt know how cute he is, is an overachiever, obsessive, a but repressed, nosy, kind of a recluse, and very easy to wind up

- gifted kid syndrome poster child; he seems to view being turned away by the magnus institute as the beginning of his rejection streak (not admitted to oxford, didnt get first, got fired from his legal firm). i think this will be a major point in his motivations and a fear of rejection and need for validation is going to drive him to receive the greatness he wants (and believes he has earned). i can already see a corruption arc brewing for him, poor thing

- did NOT tell celia about his experiences in the institute or what his "incident" was (referring to lena's interview where she asked him what the worst thing he's seen/experienced was). this isnt super sketchy considering its a first date, but is interesting since he was the one who wanted "all the baggage" out early

- he doesn't want to accept that the incidents are real, but i think he does believe in them. he brought the topic up to celia and has asked alice about it before too, so he may be aware that the incidents are real, but is unwilling to fully conceptualize what that means for himself and his world view

- says that alice doesnt love the idea of him seeing celia, which means he may have picked up on her feelings for him

gwen:

- feels guilty over instigating the mr.bonzo incident -> whats really interesting is that she doesnt threaten to quit or not be involved, she accepts that she gas another email to look through and another external to interact with, but it seems to upset her

- she asks lena why this (externals and mr bonzo murder) is happening, implying that she can stomach the work if its for a reason

lena:

- gives gwen the ABCs of genre-awareness:

- this dimension also has "opposing forces- most of them meaning to be harmful.

- these "forces" need to be "balanced" and controlled in order to maintain order in the world/system -> still working off of a smirke-esque theory that retaining balance will keep the world secure. i dont know if she means balance between forces of good and evil or forces in the supernatural sense

- says the OIAR is managing the bad guys, as in monitoring their actions and directing externals to "balance" things

alice:

- actually offended that sam doesnt want to share information with her and isnt having a good time knowing sam and celia are seeing each other

- tells sam "he cant prove anything" about the cases being real, but doesnt tell him hes wrong

- i would fling myself from a sky scraper for you, miss dyer, but please never say bussin or fire again

- "stop trying to make an impact" -> the more she tells sam to cut the x-files shit out, the more she stops protesting his suspicions. her scolding has gone from "nothing is going on, chill out" to "sure, theres a conspiracy, but we are paid to ignore it"

-

alice/sam's past:

- dated at uni, previously stated they were together for several years. it seems to have been a decent split since they stayed in contact afterward.

- sam was there for her when her parents died, but lost contact after

- she contacted him w the OIAR job details after he made an exceptionally pathetic vague post

incident:

- centered around gambling and self harm to achieve success- this draws ties to episode 2 (self harm) and episode 9 (luck). i expect this is more aligned with ep 9, as the self harm seems to be in the interest of changing his odds/luck, and the incident is primarily about gaining external success, not physical change. though, ep 2 could be a personal experience with ink5oul that is not representative with their "force"

- the narrator of this statement was quick to actively sacrifice his own well being to achieve better luck, which is a pretty stark contrast to other people who looked to harm other people in their own interest (violin guy and dice guy, i forgot their names sorry!!)

- zorro trader may be a reoccurring organization in relation to gambling

- the narrators options for his debt were to either pay it back or have a personal adjustment, once he completes the voicemail he is transferred to the adjustments apartment, which was not an option on the original call log and something he did not request

- he is promptly adjusted :)

- i think this could be related to the theme of keeping balance, since the incident narrator claims it isnt wrong to play with the loophole, and it ends with him getting what he owes, which is a nice connection to lena's explanation of the OIAR's purpose

glitches/lies:

- "im happy you're happy", alice (she is not happy that sam is with celia!!)

extra comments:

- i really didnt expect an explanation of the OIAR and its position in this so early, and im surprised lena was the one to reveal it. this exposes that shes pretty open with the staff she feels are on a need-to-know basis, and it also changes my expectations for how we'll come across a big reveal in this series, since information is being given in a more open way

- i think alice and celia definitely know something but in opposing ways- acting as foils to each other with sam (information seeker) in the middle. celia knows about how the fears work in the tma dimension, and alice knows why and what the OIAR are really doing- together, they solve the puzzle that sam is trying to piece together.

[thewertsearch]

Let's kick things off with a mega-giga ask compilation!

I've spent the last couple of days working through the backlog, and I've been able to answer some quite old asks that were spoilers at the time they were sent.

@kintatsu asked: So, I was rereading your blog, and got to the post where you determine that John's 13th birthday was a Monday, and complain on his behalf that he couldn't really relax due to having the whole schoolweek ahead of him. Well, I checked, and the previous day was the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox, i.e. Easter Sunday. So it might have been a holiday week.

John entered the Medium shortly after Easter Sunday, and he did so by biting into an apple. Forget about the god tiers – his most powerful transformation is clearly Catholic Beast Mode.

Anonymous asked: The thing about knowing your Aspect, I think, is that it's the Aspect you most GET. I GET Space and Light, I understand them completely, they are suffused in my bones and my blood, they are writ large upon my brain and every base in my DNA. What aspect do you just GET?

To be honest, I don’t think I know enough about any Aspect to ‘get’ it.

If I had to choose, then I'd probably feel the most natural affinity for Life and/or Doom – and if was forced to pick one, I’d say I'm very slightly more drawn to Life, just based on vibes.

@mhafanlol2000 asked: I think the horrorterror’s plan (or the closest thing we can comprehend) is CHAOS-by which I mean LIFE. Skaia is order. If it can want, then it wants its players to follow the script it has written-the Alpha. It wants propagation, the snake to eat it’s own tail, blah blah blah. That is order. That is perfect servitude. That is NOT life. The gods, meanwhile, want chaos. It wants its servants to live. It does not tell people to do anything. It simply gives them the facts, and says “here is what you should do. You can not, you can do whatever the hell.” It wants romance, conflict, CHAOS. that is life.

And if this theory is accurate to the canon Life aspect, then I feel justified in my affinity for it. It falls fairly closely in line with my own philosophy.

@necrowyrm asked: When searching your blog I always type "thew" before Tumblr autocompletes your URL. That has become who you are to me.. Thew, Glorious Liveblogger, navigating the treacherous seas of Homestuck

Sally ‘Thew’ Ertsearch, reporting in. 🫡

Anonymous asked: there's actually another arthurian joke to do with dave's land/quest. have another look at the disc platform that bro stabbed. how would you describe the shape of that turntable?

Ayy, Dave's a Knight of the Round Turntable! Honestly, that'd be a pretty great name for his theme song.

@caliquill asked: kanaya vs rose would be absolutely hilarious but. kanaya IS the original "I Can Fix Her" girl for a reason.

Anonymous asked: the only real requirement for a name suggestion to be picked was that the firstname was 4 letters. but by really cool coincidence strider and lalonde are 7 letters, and egbert and harley are 6, and if you add those together its 4/13! similarly, both the trolls names were required to be 6 letters (i think hussie mixed and matched them actually, some of the firstnames were suggested as surnames and vice versa) so theres a similar case to be made for 6/12. but just doubling the same number i think holds less water than adding together two different numbers

Number symbolism is just very flexible in general. All Hussie really had to do was introduce a few 'important' numbers, and the fandom could start finding them everywhere!

Anonymous asked: This may be the wrong place to ask, but have you deleted your post of analyzing the Let the Squiddles Sleep song? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

Here it is. Hopefully you're able to see it now!

Anonymous asked: Will the Mega-Ask-Compilation and Liveblog Recap also happen? ~LOSS (19/2/23)

The former is currently taking place. The latter was planned, but after skimming my blog for a bit, I realized I didn't have as much to say about it as I thought I did. Plus, it's been ages, so I'm really excited to look at some new pages. We can leave the old ones for later - I'll probably do some sort of blog retrospective eventually.

Anonymous asked: i figure the trolls' battlefield went through a full set of dnd dice/platonic solids, plus maybe some other notable johnson solids like a truncated icosahedron (aka a soccer ball or buckminsterfullerene), before becoming a sphere. maybe the outer ring went through stages like simple torus, mobius strip, borromean rings or other fun knots, before becoming a mobius net. (not really sure what a mobius net is, mathematically, but that's apparently what the thing around the final form of the kid's battlefield is called.) or maybe something weird happens with that many prototypings, and the battlefield turns into a tesseract or a klein bottle or a menger sponge or a mandelbulb.

If you so much as look at the Battlefield created by the Gigasession, your brain will leak out of your ears.

@manorinthewoods asked: <3Dave, >3>John, >3oJade, <>Rose (by process of elimination) ~LOSS (5/6/23)

I don’t think either of the girls have worn a playing card symbol. The leaf on Jade’s Wardrobifier does kind of look like a spade, but John’s already got that quadrant on lockdown.

Anonymous asked: Reading stuff about skaia on this blog reminded me of madoka, and made me consider that skaia might be like kyube and the other incubators and sburb is skaias way of keeping the unerverse from decaying

Reading this ask makes me realize that Rose is a near-perfect mark for Kyubey.

There’s only one way to save your session, Seer. Form a contract with me, and become a magical girl.

Anonymous asked: man. i dont know what i expected to happen when you found it. but for The Baby Is You to be liveblogged in less than 20 words during a post was not the way i expected it to go

I know it’s not technically part of Homestuck canon, but it really feels like Homestuck canon to me - at least to the same degree as Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, and I liveblogged that.

Anonymous asked: begging (lightheartedly) for you to add posts like LOLCAT and "this guy's an orb" to one of the liveblog tags. they're pretty funny, and it's nice to see off-the-cuff reactions like that, haha. imo it'd be a shame for new readers to miss those kind of posts

Done! I sometimes forget to tag posts like that, because I usually just fire them off and forget about ‘em.

@captorations asked: “Give me a set of rules, and I'll analyze the hell out them, every time.” hello fellow doom player. hope you like the color green

Based on ~ATH’s association with curses, as well as Sollux’s programming hobby, I think there’s a decent chance that Doom relates to coding in some way.

Coding is all about rules, so perhaps Doom, is, in fact, the aspect of rules and logic. I'm not sure why such an aspect would be named 'doom', but it's been obvious for a while that these aspect names aren't always literal.

Anonymous asked: I’d just like to clarify some terminology because it seems relevant, but Aradia isn’t a red blood, she’s a rust blood

[The blood colors all have canon names: Aradia = rust blood Tavros = bronze blood Sollux = gold blood Nepeta = olive blood Kanaya = jade blood Terezi = teal blood Vriska = blue blood (I like cerulean better tho) Equius = indigo blood Gamzee = purple blood Eridan = violet blood Feferi = fuchsia blood and Karkat has no official blood name, but people usually call him mutant blood or candy-red blood - C ]

Oh, there are official names for each color? That’s going to be helpful to disambiguate each blood caste, especially when we really start digging into troll culture and biology.

Anonymous asked: I do believe the top-left ship on the wall - no, Karkat doesn't have red eyes. […] It's probably Vrisrezi, yes, but it could also be Vriskat.

Yeah, I’m still not sure who this ship is supposed to represent.

They have Terezi’s eyes, but the hair and symbol look like Karkat’s. Plus, Nepeta hates this ship, which would make sense if it’s between her crush and someone other than her.

Honestly, my best guess is that it was meant to be Karkat, and the red eyes were just a mistake on Hussie’s part.

Anonymous asked: something I never thought about… is the blue blood sourced from equius or did he get a stock.

Aradia has real blue indigo blood in her veins, and it almost certainly belongs to Equius himself. He could have got it from a donor, but I personally doubt there was anyone else he could ask. Equius feels like he'd be an outsider, even to other indigo-bloods.

Anonymous asked: vriska would be a good strider

Vriska Serket raised by Bro Strider would be the most terrifying character imaginable. I don't even want to contemplate what that upbringing would do to her.

Anonymous asked: Any piece of lore hussie writes needs to contend with the fact that hussie is resolutely committed to the bit. Hence all the words on how different trolls are being entirely blasted aside by 'and then they're just grey humans anyway lmao'

That's the price of admission into Homestuck, for better or for worse. Hussie quite clearly enjoys screwing with us, and we have to take everything we see in the comic with a huge pinch of salt.

Anonymous asked: I'll disagree a bit on the phrasing that Eridan forces Feferi to <> him because firstly she doesn't even seem convinced that he would commit genocide and secondly she dropped him super easily once the lusus-feeding is no longer necessary. While understandable, that doesn't suggest to me someone who is obliged by Eridan's aggression to pacify him. I think she has much more agency in this relationship (or lack thereof I suppose) than that.

Feferi definitely had her doubts – but she must have believed that Eridan was dangerous to a certain degree, because that’s the basis of a moirallegiance.

Forced might not be the right word, but she certainly felt some amount of obligation to pacify him. She sure wasn’t in that relationship for the good of her health.

Anonymous asked: So, Vriska has a conversation with Karkat, where he says she seems to have blackrom feelings for Tavros, but that he doesn't think Tavros can even feel blackrom properly. Then she has another conversation with Tavros in which she antagonizes him, and he notices, but just kind of ignores it and doesn't respond emotionally. Then we see her make a huge dramatic redrom gesture and kiss him. She vacillated because he wasn't into her… incel behavior.

Yup. I’ve always held that Tavros never wanted anything to do with Vriska. He doesn't want to love or hate her - what he really wants is to live in a world where she doesn't exist.

Vriska’s refusal to accept this basic fact is one of the main reasons she’s decided to make his life a living hell.

Anonymous asked: I headcanon that troll blood is analog, but the empire culls non-digital colors because they make the troll race seem like a joke or something. Lol

If there were minor variations in blood color, the Empire probably wouldn’t want to acknowledge it, since the stratification of blood classes forms the basis of their society.

We haven’t seen any trolls besides our twelve (apart from Troll Will Smith) so we can’t compare the blood of two members of the same caste - but we can speculate. Human blood color is known to vary depending on its oxygenation level, and I imagine troll blood would reflect its current chemical composition in the same way.

Anonymous asked: Vriska must be seething while Karkat introduces the concept of quadrants to the reader. Imagine this basic and important facet of troll life, and you're just getting schoolfed it. (This message was sent on 20/10/22.)

This was a fun bit of weirdness from early Hivebent, wasn’t it? In retrospect, it's kind of hilarious that Karkat decided to infodump to Vriska about the obscure, niche topic of… dating.

@sanctferum asked: According to his formspring, Hussie's self-insert's classpect is Waste of Space. He also briefly considers Huss of Lips. This is obviously not meant to be taken seriously but. since you asked @absinthe-and-alabaster asked: i believe hussie said somewhere that FedoraFreak's classpect was "Gent of Piss" Anonymous asked: (not sure if this is technically a spoiler but) hussie has jokingly said that fedorafreak's class is a gent.

If Dad Egbert was a Player, then the Gent class would be forced into canonical existence, as the only class that could possibly define him.

Anonymous asked: If Vriska's control does require the victim to on some level want to do the thing, then Sollux's insistence that you do not under any circumstance eat the mind honey could be something he developed in response to that incident. So that if she ever controls him again, she won't be able to make him eat it.

Wow, I never considered that. That’s a very good (and tragic) take, and I think I'm at least locking it in as a headcanon.

Anonymous asked: the official extended zodiac actually has… 288 signs, if im doing my math right? and also probably hadn't yet been conceptualized when that page was posted (the earliest known evidence comes from 2015). i don't know if any thought was put into the number or if it was just pulled from their ass, but there was a running gag in hussie's q&as where he repeatedly threatened us with a 10,000 page intermission focused on 48 squiddles, each representing a sign from the alternian zodiac Anonymous asked: I believe the troll zodiac is one of the few things in HS lore that was truly retconned, there’s actually 288 signs.

Move over, 48 Squiddles. I want to hear about the 288-player clusterfuck that actually gave rise to Alternia!

@manorinthewoods asked: wheee, you got to the first god tiering! this probably opens up a load of new things to say, so, first off: do you think you need to have a full echeladder to god tier? vriska implied so.

She never outright stated that it was required, but I still think it probably is. You generally need to max out your class levels before you can prestige.

@morganwick asked: Believe it or not, you're still in the "Homestuck could have updated RIGHT NOW" phase of the comic's release schedule. The break after the Equius-Aradia kiss aside, the hiati you've heard horror stories about didn't start becoming a thing until the end of Act 5.

[this was around page 3000. still true at this page though - C]

Hussie’s sheer productivity at this stage continues to astound. Could you imagine having that much creative energy?

Maybe Hussie just drinks twenty coffees a day.

Anonymous asked: as someone who is Normal about aradia it's an absolute delight to see someone dig into her character. she's so fascinating to me. (also, fun fact, a while ago tumblr voted her the coolest character in all of homestuck. so there's that)

Aradia’s awesome, and I still don’t think her death is going to stick.

Her ghost was perfectly capable of existing without a body, so there's no reason she can’t survive her new body's destruction.

Anonymous asked: feferi hasn't just woken up, she won't be stuck asleep until 3 hours and 14 minutes into the future! timestamps, yo

Consider this the first mark on my otherwise impeccable record.

Anonymous asked: does cat have a troll/kidsona? itd be interesting to see a full 4 player session in art

[No kidsona, yes trollsona, but even a picture of her would spoil stuff from Act 6 😆 - C]

What she said. It’ll be a while until we can meet KATYAA SCRENR.

@mhafanlol2000 asked: Hey! You can just call me Fan. In all honesty I’m just some guy who likes your liveblog. He/him. I’m gonna list some fan aspects, and I want to see what you think they’d represent, and what abilities they’d give Law Dreams Might Shape Flow

Ooh, more fan aspects! These were a lot of fun to puzzle out the last time.

Law would be the aspect of command, instruction and agreement. An example power would be giving someone a simple rule they're compelled to follow, such as 'don't turn around'.

Dreams would be the aspect of ideas, motivation and symbolism. An example power would be the ability to detect people's idle thoughts - the things they're not even aware they're thinking about.

Might would be the aspect of growth, conflict and evolution. An example power would be the ability to temporarily enhance someone's Aspect abilities, at the cost of making those abilities harder to control.

Shape would be the aspect of form, encapsulation and topology. Shapeshifting is the most obvious application of this aspect, but it's appropriate.

Flow would be the aspect of persistence, momentum and continuity. An example power would be the ability to 'continue' something that has recently stopped. For example, if your PC ran out of power, they'd be able to keep it running for a while. The longer it had been previously running, the longer they could keep it running.

@martinkhall asked: I think Bro might have been raised entirely by shonen anime and My Little Pony Friendship is Magical (the version that existed only in the heads of the worst examples of Bronys). And puppets. Puppets were definitely involved in raising Bro. Anonymous asked: "He has no known relationship with any of the other parents, but was definitely getting foreknowledge of Sburb from somewhere. I’m not even sure I want to know what sort of childhood produces Bro Strider." well. i mean. he grew up with Lil Cal didn't he? the clearly haunted puppet from the sburban dreamscape of derse? it was what he dropped to earth with. i feel like that might explain at least a small part of, like, whatever he had going on.

That’s true. I don’t trust that puppet one bit, and we don’t know what it was up to before the start of the session.

I still suspect that the thing’s still just as alive as it was on Derse, and is just choosing to play dead.

Anonymous asked: I imagine you might've already been told this, but when checking out your FAQ I noticed you described PS/PQ/FS as "not exactly canon" and that you're less interested in liveblogging them because one of your favorite parts is watching all the story come together -- without spoiling anything, I find it pertinent to mention that Pesterquest & Friendsim definitely contribute to the wider "canon" even though dubiously canon themselves. Definitely "part of the story" so to speak.

Yeah, we’ll have to see what comes of this. The problem is that I’m still fuzzy on what ‘dubiously canon’ actually means.

Hopefully that will become more clear as I’m actually liveblogging these tie-in materials – which I am planning on doing. Only time will tell how in-depth the liveblog will actually be, though.

@manorinthewoods asked: In my Sundered opinion, Bec Noir is the best character design in Homestuck. I can't think of any other interesting designs at the moment, other than some which don't beat him and are spoilers anyway (like LE's). Which design do you find most interesting, out of the ones you have? ~LOSS (22/9/23)

I definitely agree that BecJack has one of the best designs in the comic. Plus, Scratch is so weirdly intimidating for a cueball-head.

Anonymous asked: My favorite part of PKWU is just how pointy Gamzee's chin is. It's so… Defined.

iT’s ToO lAtE, ErIdAn! I’vE AlReAdY DePicTeD MySeLf As ThE ChAd, AnD yOu As ThE SoYjAk >:o)

Anonymous asked: i need you to know ag canonically ripped off the sleeves on all of her shirts just to show off the robot arm

I believe it. I don't even need a source; this is just so true to Vriska's character that it's obviously correct.

@bladekindeyewear asked: If you and your ask screener decide that literary/external-media hero title examples without any details or explanation are alright to pass on unless they're too obviously revealing -- and those in and of themselves are usually in heavy dispute by classpect theorists -- I've long been of the opinion that Monkey D. Luffy and Peter Pan are the best possible literary examples of a Page of Breath.

All Pages of Breath must be associated with pirates. No exceptions.

Anonymous asked: unfun fact: the reason rose and jade dont have a lot of pesterlogs with eachother is just because their text colours were kinda eyestrainy together. thats it thats literally the whole reason!! god damn

Hussie: "I don't write Rose/Jade conversations because they’re hard to read."

Also Hussie:

Anonymous asked: you have officially passed my second favourite flash in literally all of homestuck. it's all so well hinted at beforehand but it still comes to punch you in the gut nonetheless Anonymous asked: My favourite thing in this flash is how the name of the flash isn't John: Rise Up, it's JOHN. RISE UP. it's WV sending a plead to John to not die. My second favourite thing is the way the music remixes Doctor (The theme for LoWaS). Anonymous asked: [S] JOHN. RISE UP. is one of my favorite flashes in all of Homestuck. Savior of the Waking World is some of Toby's best work What are your thoughts on our first taste of god tier? @violetsquare111 asked: So glad you liked Savior of the Waking World! One of my favorites in the comic for sure. It takes a lot of ideas from another of Toby's songs, Penumbra Phantasm, a song that… never actually got finished or officially released. There's still various renditions of it though, and the HS collection links a couple of em. (Some people have speculated that Penumbra Phantasm itself was never supposed to be a Homestuck song, and might end up being used in Deltarune, which would be cool as hell) Anonymous asked: It's crazy to think that just about 12 hours ago John was wearing silly disguises to fool his dad and now he's dying to become a god.

God time!

I do think it was the most emotional flash we’ve had, on the strength of the music alone. Savior of the Waking World goes hard as all hell.

Honestly, when WV started calling John a hero, and telling him to rise, it did start to give me some mild chills. Like, yeah – we know John’s a hero, but it feels extra special when it’s coming from someone who’s normally so irreverent.

@elkian asked: Welcome back, hope you're feeling better! I am losing it a bit over you IMMEDIATELY understanding how this coin flip sitch works, something about the narrative and reasoning doesn't match my brain so I've reread it multiple times with total understanding out of grasp and watching you dissect it halfway into the page is truly wild (delighted). Also feel like I understand it a lil better with your analysis.

Thank you! This message was actually sent the last time I returned from a pause, so apologies that I’m one hiatus late in answering it.

@royalvorpal asked: I just reread your entire blog in anticipation. Anonymous asked: This is such a good liveblog, I'm rereading it again and you are really letting me relive the pleasant parts of my middle school years. Reading this blog makes me feel like I'm back on the school bus talking to my friend about the newest update. Thank you for doing this 💛 Anonymous asked: That return page didn't have any sound, so misleading! (I jest, nice to see you're back.) ~DJ @manorinthewoods asked: Hahahah, we are BACK! Lovely, I've missed this liveblog. Most in-depth Homestuck liveblog I'm aware of, looking forward to the restart! ~LOSS (29/3/24) @popcornsalty asked: So excited to see you back!!! :D @chaosorchestrator asked: welcome back! It's good to hear that you're planning on getting back into it! I hope things have been going ok for you in the meantime! @necrowyrm asked: HAPPY 4/13 (OR AS THE ENLIGHTENED KNOW IT: 13/4) AND WELCOME BACK!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for your votes of confidence, and happy 13/4 to you all!

@rippledphysique asked: Just found this blog and devoured it in a few days. I am selfishly wishing you the best in health and life so that it may return one day… @elkian asked: Hey Sally! Just wanted to wish you well on the recovery, the plague is no joke and I hope you've been able to enjoy some kind improvement. And that 2024 will be kinder, as well. Anonymous asked: wishing you the best in your interim, hopefully you can get a better position where you're not prone to burning out! Anonymous asked: Hope you're doing ok!! I miss seeing your cool liveblog on my dash @kittycatttmattt asked: Poor girl… Got killed by the schedule

Thanks for all the well-wishes, as well. Really, it wasn’t the schedule that was the issue – I just had a lot going on in the background last year. That’s all over now, though!

Anonymous asked: yeah, Homestuck's back babeyyyyy - the site was crashing because of traffic and everything @calamitascalliope asked: You coming back from your break resurrected Homestuck's corpse hggfffdd Anonymous asked: i think this actually is the first time homestuck has updated since you started liveblogging lol - homestuck 2 has been inactive assumed abandoned since december 25th 2020. also happy slightly belated blogiversary btw - you've been delighting us with your journey for two years now! @heliotropopause asked: New Homestuck upd8 just dropped. Apparently. Anonymous asked: what are the odds that you start liveblogging again the same exact day that postcanon comes back from the dead? Anonymous asked: crazy news. so literally just today, october 8th 2023, hussie has officially given complete free license to the newly formed "homestuck independent creative union" (HICU) to create content and monetize it with the homestuck brand however they see fit, with zero creative or financial control from any corporations or even hussie themself, though hussie has said they're available for consultation whenever the HICU wants their input. the HICU seems to be made up of people the community largely has respect for, and the person heading all of this up is James Roach, who is one of the most widely respected individual who has been inolved in homestuck "post canon" (ie. after homestuck itself ended). nobody was expecting any of this, it's completely bonkers. hopes are looking pretty high for homestuck compared to where they were merely a day ago.

Throwback to the day I personally resurrected Homestuck.

Has anything come of this since, actually? I haven’t heard anything about this new comic – although I do scroll in the opposite direction any time I see a reference to Homestuck, so I guess it makes sense that I wouldn’t.

@corporalotherbear asked: What’s your favorite Pokémon?

Contrarian, that I am, I’ll instinctively gravitate to Missingno., if only for the nostalgia factor. Gen 1 glitches were my first real experience with pulling back the curtain of a game’s code, and taking a look at what lies beneath.

My favourite official Pokémon are Porygon-Z, Shedinja, Reuniclus and Metagross!

@heliotropopause asked: Breath/Light is an interesting one, because the ‘Mixolydian’ implies a musical theme, and I thought Time was the musical Aspect. Maybe it’s not that simple. They've all got a musical reference in the name- they are called fraymotifs, after all. Anonymous asked: The Fraymotifs are all musical references actually. E.g. Breath/Time is "Ivories in the Fire", the ivories in question being John's piano keys. A fraymotif is a battle theme. Anonymous asked: ivories in the fire is a musical theme, especifically a Rap term used by Snoop Dogg. So yeah it's connected to Dave Anonymous asked: re: fraymotifs: you pointed out "mixolydian", but that's not the only musical term there. feather "cadence", pneumatic "progression", even fray "motif" itself! hell, the building where you buy these things has an emblem with a crossed sword and music note! so i think this might be less a situation of "need to rethink time aspects association with music" and more "fraymotifs have a musical association also" Anonymous asked: if you look a bit closer at those names, (including the one "fraymotif",) you may realize that "mixolydian" isn't the only musical term referenced…. @galaxa-13 asked: You say the breath/Light Fraymotif implies a musical theme, but they all do! Fraymotif is a portmanteau of "fray" (to fight) and "leitmotif" (repeated musical phrase). Each Fraymotif name implies a musical theme.

Dang it. Yup, they’re all pretty obvious references to music.

I wrote that post the day I was trying to wrangle our family PC into running the Homestuck Collection without lag, so I was a little distracted at the time. Please direct all complaints to Windows XP.

[tornrose24]

Rewatching ‘the many lives of Scratch’ TGAMM is…. Ah, quite an experience after the series finale and knowing what I know.

-first off, there’s the whole ‘I don’t remember my death day, but I’d rather forget this moment’ line is…. Uh… well… Ouch. 

-Also the irony of Scratch never remembering his death day because he never really had one.

-And apparently his reaction to hearing about Geoff’s death day involved hiding in the doll house and shut himself off from the others…. which parallels how he reacted to certain things as a human.

-side note: I love how Dana delivers Scratch’s ‘Oh…. No,’ line when he first sees the death day party everyone throws him.

-When the McGees and friends sing that one song, there’s a line where they want to know how Scratch left his body and became a ghost. And I’m all ‘Oh… yeah… that’s actually true. But it’s not a happy tale.’

-Just the fact that everyone’s guesses were so wildly incorrect. I’m sure we all had our theories and guesses and yet the truth ended up being so average sounding (as well as sad).

-Geoff’s story kind of hurts now. Though I like that he also imagines Libby to be the president and Darryl is her body guard.

-As Libby told her story, I’m thinking ‘why does the cow remind me of Todd? It almost has the same hair and eyes.’ Also I think it’s sweet that she imagines Molly being like a little sister to Scratch, though I bet that detail would have been altered if she knew how old Scratch actually was.

-Also, I can’t get over the fact that Libby had Scratch AND Molly both die in her story. It’s a bit morbid, but I’m guessing she couldn’t imagine them being separated. That or she wanted to create an insane ending. 

-I liked that Libby imagined Scratch to be someone who’d be willing to be brave enough to take on danger for someone close to him, which is what he is now… but actually wasn’t when he was human.

-Scratch kept insisting on having an appealing body type in the stories. The poor guy has no clue what he looked like as a human and is desperate for a more idealized version of himself. And yet the truth is… his real appearance isn’t that bad looking, and it actually IS a perfect match to what his personality is like, but it’s not one he’d be thrilled about going back to, even without the memories of what happened. (And this fuels a belief of mine that Scratch was more than likely insecure about his appearance before he lost his soul.) 

-Scratch complaining about nobody making him human is now an interesting line. I think none of them ever imagined it because they are so used to Scratch looking like a ghost. Molly was the only one who had a hint of what he looked like as a child and yet… when she makes her guess, we don’t see her imagining anything. Was it because what she imagined would be too accurate/close to the truth since she knows Scratch so well?

And it’s also ironic because by that point he and Molly have actually seen his true appearance and didn’t even realize it at the time. And then coincidentally come the very next episode, we actually see his human form once more in two specific moments. One of which draws specific attention to him. As if to remind us about someone….

[leantailean]

Izumi being Toph’s daughter could be the reason for her glasses.

No, really.

Okay just follow my crazy for a moment.

No one in Zuko’s family wears glasses, right? And Mai throws knives which requires sharp eyesight to do accurately. So why does Izumi have vision problems?

Let’s consider what probably caused Toph’s blindness. She says she was born blind, so we know it’s congenital. Her eyes appear opaque which sounds like cataracts. Toph mostly likely has congenital catatacts.

Predispositions to congenital cataracts do run in families. If Izumi inherited this condition, she would need immediate surgery to save her sight. Delaying surgery results in the eye never developing properly due to missing out on sunlight, which still results in blindness. But if Izumi’s was caught earlier, they could’ve surgically removed the cataract.

It may sound too advanced but there have been rudimentary catarcter surgies in India since 5th century BC. In ATLA they could even use bending to improve the prognosis!

If all goes well, the only long lasting side effect would be the need for corrective lenses.

Like glasses.

Hello! And thanks for the question!

This is a very interesting theory, but I believe that Izumi is Mai's daughter. She and Mai are practically look like the same person. She also resembles her grandmother.

Unfortunately I don’t know much about  hereditary eye problems, (but if happens that someone who reads it knows some factual information about it and can give some links I would be very grateful.)

I don't consider the comics and LOK to be a canon (in fact, you're talking to someone who doesn’t even consider the atla third book to be completely canon because of some terrible writing decisions or how the writers treated some of the characters in the third book, especially Zuko , Iroh and Aang, lol🤓). I like to think about LOK as of some sort of AU. And in general, I have almost no doubt that Toph and Zuko actually have a common child in LOK. Like, just look at Lin. She looks like someone from the FN. Her facial expressions, movements, her stubborn, strong personality. Do I at least doubt that Lin is Zuko's daughter? No, for me this is the canon. It's possible that Toph and Zuko got together around the time he and Mai had broken up for a while, or it's even more likely that Zuko widowed and after that he could have got into a long-term relationship with Toph. I don't want to think about Zuko being a widower, or that Mai died - I adore Mai, she's my best girl, my second favorite female ATLA character after Toph. And I LOVE maiko. But we know that in LOK Sokka died early, and Aang died quite early, so anything is possible. But, in any case, Zuko and Toph could have had a long relationship, nothing in LOK contradicts that version. As I recall, Toph mentioned that Lin's father's name was Kanto. Imagine: Zuko secretly dating a woman who doesn't want to be drawn into FN court undercover games, so he sends her love letters and sign them as "Kanto", and there is someone who reads these letters to Toph. God, I love that.

However, Izumi is definitely Mai's daughter.

But this is a very interesting theory, thanks for sharing it!

[i-have-not-slept]

Less than a week til Chain of Thorns is released!

To keep myself entertained I’ve decided to examine and review the official character art by @nicole.deal.art on Instagram to see if the clothing fits with the Edwardian period. I’ve always been interested in historical fashion and I thought this might be fun and interesting for people to read. I’m reviewing the girls’ outfits first and the boys later in the week.

Cordelia

We’re off to a good start with Cordelia! She’s wearing what looks like a very period-typical walking dress. Compare it to this one from 1903:

Most day dresses had high collars and long sleeves, so this looks good. My only quibble is that her hair should really be pinned up, but since this picture is obviously set during a fight it’s entirely possible that her hair just came loose. It’s not a major issue.

Accuracy: 8/10

Lucie

Also pretty good! Hair looks great, compare it to the Edwardian hairstyles below:

and the cut of the dress is period accurate. I wasn’t sure at first if puffed sleeves were a thing for the Edwardians, but then I found this dress, also from 1903:

which has very similar sleeves.

The only non-Edwardian thing is the steampunk collar-type thing she’s wearing, but that could be part of Shadowhunter protective armour.

Accuracy: 9/10

Ariadne/Kamala

This one’s not quite so accurate. Her hair is perfect— in fact, the headband looks like it was directly inspired by this picture of actress Lily Elsie from 1908:

The dress, however, is more Victorian than Edwardian. It has a very square neckline, which wasn’t common during the period— day dresses generally had high collars, and evening dresses had wide, scooped necklines, often draped.

The skirt isn’t quite accurate either. It looks like she’s wearing an apron skirt with a bustle, which is a style that was popular in the mid-to-late 1880s, around fifteen years before The Last Hours is set. Compare it to this one from 1889:

and you’ll see that the draping in front is very similar. It’s a lovely dress, but it’s not at all Edwardian.

Accuracy: 4/10

Grace

When I first saw this one I was disappointed because it looked like a major historical blunder. Her hair is good, but the dress isn’t Edwardian at all— the neckline is too low, sleeves are too puffed, waistline is too high.

BUT THEN. I did some digging and found this dress from 1810:

Grace’s dress is very obviously inspired by this one. The two are almost identical. But it’s such an obviously Regency dress that I don’t think Grace’s dress is meant to represent the Edwardian era at all.

TLH isn’t set during the Regency era, but who lived around that time and is relevant to the plot in Chain of Thorns?

Annabel Blackthorn.

Grace is a Blackthorn, at least by adoption. We know that at the end of Chain of Iron, Malcolm wanted to use Lucie’s powers to resurrect Annabel. My theory is that this art shows Grace in a situation where she’s linked to Annabel somehow, maybe through time travel or a dream or vision. She’s wearing similar clothes to what Annabel wore when she was alive, and I am so excited to see if this really does happen in ChoT.

Accuracy: 3/10 for Edwardian, but 10/10 for Regency.

If you bothered to read all this, I hope you found it interesting and maybe even a bit informative. Can’t wait for Chain of Thorns!

Image sources: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Brooklyn Museum, House of Worth Archives, Manchester Art Gallery.

[vandelopa-x]

Hiii guys! THEORY TIME

So um I've been thinking quite a lot about the new DS2 trailer, I rewatched it like 20 times and also the first trailer again and I wanna make a theory about the possible timeline of the second game + some other ideas in the middle. It probably won't be accurate at all cause Kojima's brain works in mysterious ways but hey, I wanna try cause I just keep thinking about it night and day.

So! The scenes in trailers aren't really in any order (duh) so I tried to figure out the timeline. 

This scene. A lot of people were worried that there's no Sam here and is Fragile the one taking care of Lou? I would say that she's just babysitting. Maybe Sam had to leave for something (Go to town grab food, supplies, who knows, maybe it was all planned and someone orchestrated the whole situation so Sam would leave the base so he wouldn't be a threat.) Since Fragile is a person he trusts, he might have asked her to come by and take care of Lou. The place where Sam was cooking food in the 2nd trailer and the place from the 1st one looks similar, so I would say it's the same.

Listen, I don't know anything about little kids, so I used the internet. The measure here is in inches, and the first smallest handprint is at 18 inches. According to an article I read, newborn girls measure at around 19.4 inches, and Lou was still a fetus when she came out of the pod, so it makes sense she would be a bit smaller. The biggest mark it at 28 inches, and the same article stated that babies can grow 10 inches by their first birthday, so I would say Lou is around 1 years old when the whole attack happened. Is it relevant? Who knows.

Then we have the whole this situation. By the look of this person, and the color of the gun, it appears to be red. Who else has everything red?

Higgs' lovely cult friends in black masks. I don't think its Higgs himself, it might be someone he send, but also it could he Higgs? I don't know.

I mean, the hood, the everything, the golden shine on the hands that reflects in the light, his hands appear to be more smooth than fully robotic like the other guys? If you look very hard the crimson color is still there in the first photo, it just appears dark.

No clue what the hell happened here 😭 But there we see that Lou is on the ground and then she dies? I have a theory that Lou could be a repatriate like Sam. Sam became a repatriant because Amelie/Bridget ressurected him on the beach. If I remember correctly, Sam did the same to Lou when the crater exploded at the beginning of the game. That's why they both "survived it". It could be possible that because of that, Lou also gained the ability to become a repatriant. But what if something went wrong?

Here we see that Lou "appears" in the pod. But her silhouette looks very similar to a BT. BT's don't age. What if little Lou tried to repatriate by herself but by accident she split her Ha and Ka. Her soul ended up trapped in the pod, or near Sam, and her body was taken by Higgs/to Higgs. He wanted ravage from what was said in the trailer, and what better ravage than taking his beloved kid's life? It would hurt Sam way more than actually doing anything to him directly.

This is when Sam notices that Lou's soul is trapped in the pod perhaps. See the red lightning? It could be when Sam got back to his base.

Since after the attack the lights in the base turned red.

If we look at the 2nd trailer more, we can see that Sam I walking with an empty pod, so he is aware that Lou's soul is in the pod, thanks to it Odradek can still detect threat. This is so interesting!

When Sam and Higgs meet and Higgs takes the empty pod in his hands, touches it and feels something, he's like, kinda in awe?

Then there's the big red cyborg ninja (lmao). It has Odradek's face and we already figured its "possessed" by Lou and tries to protect Sam. I've also seen a theory about Higgs calling himself a ghost and the Ghost in the machine thing, I forgot the user but y'all are genius 🙏🙏

If Higgs is a ghost in a machine, so his soul possesses the cyborg suit, then Lou also can posses a machine, right?

Also I wanna talk about the whole puppet thing and control stuff here because I have thoughts. I don't know if I remember everything correctly 100% so feel free to fix my mistakes, but in the first game Higgs was sort of Amelia's puppet, right? He was the tool she used to get Sam to her, a tool that would push Sam to go thru America and connect it, to connect all the beaches together so she could destroy the world, as it was her destiny. She have Higgs these crazy DOOMS powers. That's why I keep wondering if in the second game Higgs is still a puppet, or did he get tired of it and decided that this time he will be the puppeteer? We see the strings that are on older Lou, we see the strings of the robots that Sam fights with a gun, I'm wondering if Higgs is also pulling the strings of something much bigger.

What if Higgs is responsible for APAC? The private corporation, the patron that gave Fragile the money and tech for the ship? They apparently never saw face-to-face (Higgs' mask), Higgs has a factory with tech, he has all kinds of robots, weapons, he has to have money, and in the 1st trailer it's said that APAC made the final decision, whatever it means. If Higgs sponsors the whole thing, he can also make the decisions. But that's just the thought that I had.

Also the "chrysalis" in which Lou'a body was in kinda reminds me of the sarcophagus in which Higgs was in, just a thought.

Also these weird ass trypophobia inducing things on Lou's arm remind me of the octopus' suction cups on their arms. It's quite similar to the octopus arm in the pod in one of the photos above.

Alright, that's it for now!!! I have no brain cells left, I probably didn't write everything that I wanted cause I forgot, but tell me your ideas if you want, I would love to read your theories!! Does any of it make sense? I don't care because it's a Hideo Kojima game so common sense or any other kind of sense doesn't apply 😍😍

I love analysing this shit it's like crack with some other good stuff

[milkiedimitrescu]

yall I just had a whole shadows of rose dream of alcina helping rose in a way during her journey 😭❤️(i wrote this as a fic before but never finished it. But I may rewrite it in the future to look onto that 👀)

(slight long post warning btw)

ANYWAYYYSSS!!!

This dream was quite short so it starts off with Rosemary running from one of those faceless monster things and there is this orb (alcina) that is roaming around helping rose with her every need. Then the dream cut to Rose about to be attacked by this big ass dude right here:

But THEEEEN, orb alcina comes in to save the day and swarms the monster, uses some sort of sketchbook (using some sort of telekenisis), draws HER arm holding a damn glock AND THEN THE THING COMES TO LIFE WHAT THE FUCK??? Naur cause alcina was swarming the monster at the time just to distract it and she even went as far as shooting the thing with a damn drawing and the drawing was shooting damn bullets. Alcina the orb tells rose to Run and get out of here or something. Rose does just that and thats when the dream cut off and I woke up.

To give more detail on how Alcina looked as an orb, it was basically this photo right here. I tried to find a more accurate one.

Now, my thoughts and theories!!! Because now i have lots of thoughts about this dream and whether or not I should bring this idea to life.

What I am theorizing is that the lords are all little balls of energy that can go invisible and visible. Similar to ethan in the original Shadows Of Rose DLC, they are able to write messages on the walls leading whoever is in the megamycete with them in order to lead them to the right direction. They are able to manifest themselves into their normal human walking type forms whenever they please. They can just basically do anything as an orb. The Lords can also speak as an orb also as shown in my dream, (alcina telling rose to run even though shes a fuckin ball of energy flying around).

My thoughts are plain simple. I'M INTERESTED AS FUCK AS WHAT MY BRAIN HAS CREATED WHAT. The storyline of this dream was so god damn interesting like i swear to god I might write this shit.

Possible??? Fanfic remake of "How Shadows Of Rose Should Have Been" storyline???

Alright... I know I mentioned this a million times already but I still cannot get this idea of my dream of shadows of rose being a fanfic. I will just write out how the storyline would play out only in the beginning, since I do not want to spoil anything.

The story begins with Rosemary walking to the dude on the bench like the original game and they start talking and stuff and then she mentions how she wants to get rid of her powers. Rose even went as far as calling herself a freak and the man assures her she is not a freak and we will find a way to make that happen. And now cut, they are now at the lab where this tiny piece of the megamycete is stored inside a jar glowing on and off as to show it is still alive.

The man explains that the megamycete might be the key to getting rid of her powers. That she may have to go INSIDE the megamycete in order to achieve that. Rose asks how she should do this? Well, the man explains to her that maybe she should close her eyes and focus on the jar while reaching her hand to it. He comments that this is only his guess as he does not really know if this would even work or not.

She did just that, and it worked. Her whole vision went white and she woke up in that one place in the original DLC where she was surrounded by windows of memories of people. She even saw her mom and dad arguing over something. She heard voices, lots of voices getting louder and louder as she fell through the atlantic void that is under the ocean. She couldnt take it anymore and told the void to SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! Yes I will make her curse here just for shits and gigs

Now... She wakes up inside the same lab. But there is catch. This wasn't the same lab as the previous one. It was a copy of it. A more dim light version of it. She called out for the man and she was only left in silence so she went through the door that was in front of her.

The door led her to the dungeon and remember how Alcina was the one to be behind those closed doors?(If you had read the fic before ofc. If not, that is alright. Just take this as a spoiler.) How when Rose found the key to help the supposed woman who was trapped in a room and even going as far to go inside the room and nobody was there. Well is is more different in the remake.

There was also a giant puddle of mold in which a giant hand grabs rose by the feet and then....

Her vision goes black. She begins to wake up and she was in a white void... Not just any white void... She was in a field of white flowers with grey grass surrounding her. Rose realized she was laying down and got up and now looked everywhere. There was no end to this black and white field of grass and white roses. She went on to explore until she came across a strange orb floating in mid air. She literally asks herself what is this and touches it and suddenly it explodes. White light everywhere to the point Rosemary had to squeeze her eyes shut.

When she reopened them... the orb was gone. And her reality began to crumble before her eyes and she was now back in the dungeon. She was in the same room she found herself in and was right next to the giant puddle of mold. When she turned around to leave, guess what was there?

The same orb. Now it was talking to her. Telling her to follow it. Rose only stared in awe.

AND THAT'S ALL!!! hope ypu had fun on this journey with me yeah💀👍 Milkie out.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Stumbled upon your master list of SW meta you wrote, and enjoyed reading through some of them, especially the ones that examined and defended the jedi order. I point to the jedi order in particular because when you pointed out that the number of jedi in the galaxy are proportionally smaller compared to a planet with a population in the trillions, it reminded me of a bad take regarding the order (which is conflated with the whole "the jedi are actually the bad guys" in SW): that the jedi are eugenicists because their adoption of force sensitive children. This never sat right with me given that the jedi never seemed the type to be concerned with propagating their numbers in some form of "purity" (genetic or force sensitivity wise). Any chance you can gleam into the nitty-gritty of this take's unsavory implications?

OOf, that's an old ask, and that reminds me that I really need to update that masterlist 😅 (and me saying that is an even older draft, oops 😂)

Okay, the idea of the Jedi being *eugenicists* is SO out of left field that I feel like it doesn't even deserve to be really addressed so much as mocked, because words mean things.

To be quite fair, I don't think I've ever seen anybody seriously use that word. (It may very well have happened tho, I just can't remember somebody seriously making the claim and sticking to it.) Even the infamous KT rant (see below) doesn't call them that - the extremely weird and frankly absurd take is that they embody supremacist ideas and that people who are into them believe there is such a thing as an inherently superior person. She does use the word "Nazi" (just wow), but I don't think she was going for the eugenics part, just the run of the mill white supremacy theories. People on both sides of the argument may have misquoted/misinterpreted her on that though.

(Seriously woman, why were you even writing for Star Wars?! YOU DIDN'T EVEN LIKE IT!)

Now, eugenics? (This post is so weird to write, I can't even) ⇊

It is LAUGHABLE to use it in relation to the Jedi Order, because as you accurately put it, the Jedi just aren't interested in... making babies.

Do they force their members to procreate, even artificially? Absolutely not.

Are they seeking to improve the Order by only taking in the healthiest, strongest, most powerful children? No. They were ready to reject Anakin, for one thing.

Are they studying how to arrange reproduction in the rest of the galactic population? No.

Is there a ban on non-Jedi Force sensitives having children of their own? No. Are they forced or even strongly encouraged to have children of their own? No.

Do Jedi control who Force-sensitives are allowed to have children with? No.

Do Jedi test for Force-sensitivity and keep records of it? Yes. But they don't seem to keep genealogies - there's nothing that says the list in the Holocron is a permanent one either - rather, the way it's phrased and the way there's only babies on it, names are probably erased eventually. And the purpose of the list has nothing to do with increasing the occurence of Force-sensitivity.

Are non-Jedi Force sensitives forced by law to give up their kids? No.

Do Jedi automatically take in Force-sensitive children anyway? No. Bardotta and Dathomir are right there and nobody's bothering them.

Is the Order ableist? No. We even see plenty of disabled Jedi and nobody is throwing them out. (Amputees like Anakin and elderly people like Yoda and Tera Sinube, for starters. Also Prosset Dibs, or Tahl in Legends).

The Force isn't even proven to be reliably 'transmissible' from one generation to the next - the Force 'being strong' in particular families may just as easily be for more spiritual reasons depending on how you want to look at it. Because, you know, Star Wars isn't all literal.

IT'S JUST SO DUMB.

NOTHING ABOUT HOW THE ORDER WORKS HAS ANYTHING TO DO WITH WHAT THAT WORD MEANS.

(I'm sorry I'm not dissing you for the ask I just don't get how anybody could ever have said that 😂😭)

[quicksilverlightning]

A Theory on Cogita

Some Discord dialogue left me theory crafting about Cogita, so let's jump in shall we? Thanks to @praazlwurm for help with the conclusion!

It's been common speculation that Cogita is long-lived/ immortal, and that she may have written the Ancient Verses. This round of conjecture relies upon the evidence of two things:

That Cogita has been around a While

That Cogita did indeed write the Old Verses

I will spend an eternity… until the one with the mission appears Old Verse, Number 11

It seems I'll be able to fulfill my duty at long last, thanks to you Cogita, during the first meeting

Alongside a claim that we have no evidence of:

That the Old Verses are true.

This is not to say that the Verses are wholesale falsehoods - much of them are certainly accurate, or as accurate as one can be when dealing with gods and events before recorded history. However, from the very beginning, Cogita has a... let's say ambivalent relationship with the truth. Even as the end of the world looms above, the truth has to be finessed out of her. At no point in our journey did she seek us out, not when people were being hurt, Pokemon were suffering in their frenzy, the various groups were on the edge of a peace that could break at any moment - why?

(I've heard any number of theories, but lets set them aside for now - the point is, Cogita had the ability to help at several points, and chose not to.)

Looking at the Old Verses, a number of them are concerned with either the existence of various beings of legend (1, 6, 7, 8, 16, 17), the Ancient Hero and his retinue (3, 4, 10, 11), or the writer (2, 9, 14). Cogita clearly knows quite a lot - yet, there are only two verses about the Celestica people (5, 20). Why does she seem to know more about ancient events than more recent ones? Or, at least, why are the ancient events written down, but not whatever tragedy befell the Celestica?

Which brings us to the only other known descendant of the Celestica, Volo.

The very first thing we hear from Cogita is not directed towards us, but to Volo:

Shirking your work to come pester me again? Even beneath a bleeding sky, you never change.

Cogita has no reason to distrust Volo pre-reveal, yet consistently treats him dismissively at best, numerous times over:

"Kindly spare me your doubts, young man. I know the old words and what they bid us do. How true they are isn't mine to know

How nonchalant you sound. How confident of successes to which you contribute nothing

"Watch"? Is that all you really do?

So what's her deal? Why is she so callous towards the only other member of her lost people? I believe the answer is in her very first line - she believes Volo has come once again to ask questions that she doesn't want to answer. Which of course leaves us with a different question: why doesn't she want to answer? Why is not only so accepting of the Celestica being forgotten, but actively hiding any information about them? Especially from someone with who she shares that culture?

And now, we leave hard-evidence-based hypothesizing and jump into the craziest thing I could come up with:

Cogita is responsible for the downfall of the Celestica.

Let's take a look at a Verse that I find very puzzling, Number 16:

"Heaven's crown, nearest to almighty Sinnoh… "Power of almighty Sinnoh, gather as stone at heaven's mount. "Stone, let your power flow— distort and bend the world around you."

This is not a verse describing something that already happened. This is written in present tense. This sounds like a summoning ritual.

And who is being summoned? Is the word "distort" not ample clue?

Now tell me, if this Giratina desires more than anything else to challenge almighty Arceus... where do you think it might appear?.. Exactly! Where one is closer to the heavens than any other place in Hisui! ...And where the space-time rift first opened!"

I propose that Cogita lost someone, as we read in Verse 2:

My own beloved is now gone from me, departed to a place I cannot reach.

And in her grief, she did something Unwise in an attempt to reclaim them. The Giratina statue in the Celestica Ruins was destroyed because, when they tried to stop her, Cogita turned its power upon her own people.

Still to my breast I clutch this hopeless dream, a futile wish for us once more to meet

And thus:

Once it shone upon us all, with all the warmth of welcome sun. "But now we weep, to grief we fall, starved of light now it has gone. Old Verse, Number 20

Further, I propose that is was Cogita who, however unintentionally, set Volo upon his path. She kept him distant from the only person from whom he could learn about his culture - herself - leaving exploring the ruins as his only option. One of these ruins, the Sacred Plaza, is where Verse 16 is found by the main character; Volo found that Verse at some point, and managed to infer enough to take the first step. Giratina once again manifests itself at the behest of a Celestican.

Enter the Player.

[mikmiho]

Uhh hihi tumblr, this is a an essay on David chiem’s personality, I hope you enjoy. (Please keep in mind that I haven’t watched drdt in a while so there may be some mistakes idk though) anyway^^^^

Ever since episode 11, I’ve been thinking about David and his personality. He begins as an optimistic and friendly person, in episode 11 it then turns out that David was really manipulative and lying throughout the series, being a cold-hearted, pessimistic liar. But this ‘true’ david, I believe that is a lie.

David has always seemed suspicious ever since the beginning of drdt because of his sudden changes in behaviour only see for a few seconds before reverting back to normal.This can also make us conclude that the majority of his actions were made because of his ulterior motives, occasionally getting tired of pretending to be such a nice person. But most people would probably just tell me that I’m reality he was always a bad person as he bad mouthed arei even before he received suspicious during the second trial but beforehand the single time ( at least of what I remember) he broke character was in the prologue saying ‘Ugh, am I done with these dumb introductions already?This really sucks. Damn, why’d I even come to this ridiculous school? I hate talking to people anyway…I wish I were in bed…’ These lines were said whilst forgetting Teruko was present, being the most accurate example of his personality prior to chapter 2. You may think this sounds quite similar to how David is currently but I disagree. He speaks here without swearing, despite how visually annoyed he appears contrasting to when he had been in episode 11. In my opinion, I interpreted these lines as David still being a (manipulative) liar but only doing that on the outside as it’s what’s expected of him, getting irritated that due to his popularity he can’t act with sincerity. I base this theory (?) mostly off of this artwork.

David in the art is seen as happy being praised by an adult or an inportant figure in his life. I regularly believe that praise was something David enjoyed receiving as a child repairing in his wanting to act a certain way to be someone that could be admired.This would have eventually spiralled out of control to the point whereas all David ever said were lies to make people happier.

This is why I believe that David’s personality is not what he had shown in episode 11.

Now I must cover the topic of why he had acted differently during the trial.

Well, despite how I’m covering his personality shown in the second trial, i need to talk i about another scene first, David and arei’s (+ teruko, she doesn’t say anything) scene in the playground (ep 5 of chapter2).

This scene is what I believe is the second (still not sure if he broke character between chapter 1 and 2 so I’m still not sure whether I’m right but) scene where he breaks character, this time being much more subtle.The scene I’m referring to begins after arei breaks down in-front of David (+teruko), being calmed down by David afterwards, ( what David said ,I don’t currently have an opinion on whether he meant it or not as it probably was he default reaction to this sort of scene) David is then surprised by arei hugging David back and possibly also her line,‘You’re nice too’. I believe that his reaction is his real self in the scene, this is something I believe because David is bashful, sweating (slightly) and even stutter which had never (probably) happened to David before in drdt.His reaction tells us that it was something not part of his ‘calculation’, making his very bashful, not getting to react as he would in any other circumstances.

Now, when comparing the behaviour i had talked about previously to David (post reveal), David swears very frequently in speech, he is cocky, he is easily irritated and casually lies; this being the complete opposite of how we all know David. David even acts in a way which makes him seem much more different from the prologue David which was irritated and tired and would be much more likely to swear in those circumstances.

This may be me jumping to conclusions but I believe that the prologue David is the real David whilst the other two versions are personas made to create an image of himself. The prologue David is someone that is tired of putting up with being such a optimistic person and just wants to act casually, letting his guard down once it’s slightly quieter, implying that even within those circumstances that may have been calmer that his average day. And Optimistic David was someone that seemed both perfect and normal all at once, being someone that was truely perfect, being relatable and a figure of inspiration. Finally there is our ‘true’ David which is cocky, rude, manipulative and an liar.

This ‘true’ version of David revealed in episode 11 can be explained simply by being an extreme type of prologue David, one that patronises, looks down on and makes fun of everyone regardless of who they once were to him, David continually pushes this cocky personality with a foul mouth so much to the point whereas it just seems he’s doing this just to push this agenda of how awful of a person he is.So much so that I can say with certainty that this ‘real’ David is a lie.

Some wouldn’t believe me after than, well I haven’t provided any evidence to back up my theory, well I’ll be analysing the moment whereas David ‘admits to killing arei’. During the chain of events leading to this ‘reveal’, there’s an evident change in his mind, that changing from being defensive to admitting his ‘crimes’, having to refer back to his speech about min ensuring that everyone is keeping in mind that this David is the ‘real’ one.Although this act does break briefly once he ‘admits’ that he killed arei. It’s easily notable that David appears to be in lots of pain saying ‘I killed arei’ even stuttering beforehand. His sprite is covered in sweat,squinting his eyes even having to grab onto his opposite arm for support.Evidently he’s suffering greatly from saying this, only ‘confessing’ this to keep up with the character he’s attempting to portray.

His story also changes consistently throughout the trial to match the current conversation topic, I we can assume that david’s beginning to lose hope in his lie and began spouting out downgrading statements and claims just to act as someone who’s confident with the current situation despite his real mental state.

Of course even after everything there’s a reason why David began to portray this fake version of himself during the trial rather than revealing the truth. The only possibility currently is guilt. The guilt of having someone’s blood on his hands, not just one person but two. Naturally you would say that David was not the cause of either of Xander and Arei’s deaths but in David’s eyes, he would believe otherwise. In chapter 1 episode 5 David was present whilst Teruko and Xander discussed meeting in the computer room and yet did nothing and then in chapter 2, David was one of the last people to see Arei alive aside from her killer. All of this guilt could have pushed him to a point whereas he feels that he must atone for his crimes by becoming this awful person we know David as now. Maybe even continuing this act so much to the point whereas he wants to be executed for his ‘crimes’. An illogical route leaving everyone aside from the killer dying just because he can’t stand still living with ‘his actions’ never backing down because david just can’t carry this burden any longer. The burden of Xander, Arei and all of the people he’s ever lied to and manipulated, all just too much for David.

[not-so-mundane-after-all]

Dick & Rachel and the Invisible String theory (part 3)

Let's continue with season 2! (You'll find part 1 and part 2 here) Good news is, I fixed the problem of the image limit (silly me didn't know I can put up to 30 images in a post on my laptop). Also good news — season 2 has so many clues that I had to give ONE ENTIRE EPISODE a separate post!

Season 2 is interesting when it comes to the Invisible String because it all seems to be very chaotic and all over the place, which is kind of reflecting the state of both of Dick and Rachel's minds this season. Dick, quite literally haunted by his past, is fighting hallucinations of Bruce Wayne, while Rachel is trying and failing to rein in her newly upgraded powers and struggling with her sense of identity. Their problems are pulling them in different directions, making them deal with stuff separately rather than together. The String becomes frayed and loses some of its integrity. Until, finally having enough of the bullshit, it takes the matters into its own hands (ropes?), so to speak.

And in episode 2x11 "E.L._.O.", sends Rachel a dream.

It's a blaring alarm. A wailing siren. Code Red, it screams, he's doing something really really stupid and it's going to get him killed. It urges her to go, now, before it's too late.

But first a little reminder how we got there.

Dick revealed the truth about what really happened to Jericho. Mad that he kept it a secret and blaming him, everyone (including Rachel) leaves him and goes their separate ways — except for Kory, who leaves to deal with her own stuff but promises to be back, and Gar who ends up the only one staying at the Tower. Dick leaves as well, packs a bag and goes to visit Jericho's mother. After a confrontation with her and Slade, he heads for the airport, a plan to go somewhere remote and away from everyone on his mind. But once he's there, he experiences something like a psychotic breakdown, gets himself detained and sent to prison, being convinced that this is what he deserves for all his fuck ups and mistakes.

Rachel originally goes with Donna but ends up ditching her as well and finds her way to a homeless shelter, where she meets a girl named Dani. Dani invites Rachel to an abandoned house where she and her friends have their place, and tells her she can stay with them. This is where Rachel has the nightmare.

It's all very symbolic this time. A cemetery, a funeral, a gravestone with Dick's name on it. Rachel's reaction to it is heartbreaking to watch. Then Dick appears behind her, dressed in a suit and tie as if attending his own funeral, and begs her not to give up. On him? On Titans? Rachel grabs his hand to look into his mind and find out what's going on but all she sees is some place called Elko diner in the middle of nowhere, which at the time doesn't make much sense. She wants to ask, but a sword is driven right through Dick's chest, Slade standing behind him, and she watches in horror as Dick chokes on his own blood and dies. She wakes up screaming, tires to call him, but his voicemail box is full.

When she doesn't leave immediately, the String tugs at her again. Dani gives her a reading from Tarot cards and the reading is terrifyingly accurate:

"Your past. The Tower. Upheaval. It leads to a period of darkness." — fighting amongst the team, Titans breaking apart.

"Your present. The Moon. The realm of dreams. Your unconscious knows the way back to the light. You have to trust your intuition. It will guide you to your purpose." — THE REALM OF DREAMS!!! GUIDE YOU!!!! TO YOUR PURPOSE!!!! Do I even have to explain?!

"Your future. The hanged man. Brutality is coming your way. You must prepare to make a great sacrifice or... suffer a great loss." — explains the meaning of the vision and predicts the future. The hanged man is Dick, his life is in danger. And as if that wasn't bad enough, Rachel gets another scary vision:

Something insane hit me while I was rewatching this scene and making these gifs. Something that made my jaw drop to the floor.

Dani could be the personification of the Invisible String.

She's only in this one episode, we never see her again. Rachel doesn't get the vision of Dick's death until she's at her place. Her only purpose seems to be to have this scene with Rachel, read her from the cards and help her understand this dream. She's literally guiding Rachel on the right path, a path that will take her back to Dick.

Rachel leaves right after that and heads for the bus station. This is another example of the String working in mysterious ways, because it's a direct callback to the moment from the pilot where Rachel decides to go to Detroit. This time it's a little more intentional — Rachel picks Elko because she recognized the name of the diner from her dream — but the two scenes are done nearly shot for shot to remind us that neither of the instances is coincidental. Just like the previous season, the String is leading her to Dick.

On the bus she has another dream. She's in the same cemetery, sees Dick standing over his own grave. Deathstroke emerges from behind the trees with his sword in hand and Rachel tries to warn Dick but she's unable to move and he can't hear her. Deathstroke kills him again and Rachel jerks awake just when she's about to miss her stop.

Meanwhile, weird things start happening with some of the others. Donna gets a strange call from Rachel, but the static cuts off her voice. Kory, who ended up in Vegas, sees a commercial of the Elko diner on TV. Dawn hears Rachel's voice on the radio as she's driving. All three get the same message: get to the Elko diner.

When they get there, though, Rachel is actually shocked to see them all there and claims she didn't do anything. Then none other than Bruce Wayne walks in and has a nice little chat with them. (Btw Bruce is preaching in this scene. Amen to these words!)

He gives a speech about putting the gang back together despite all the hurt that broke them apart, then simply leaves. Kory, Donna and Dawn aren't too convinced, the latter two deciding to leave. But before they do, a small TV in the back of the empty diner turns itself on and shows news footage informing that Dick is in a nearby prison and apparently helped two men escape. Convenient, right?

All of this is so weird, isn't it? So random. You watch it and immediately claim it "shitty writing" because the way these events happen is so goddamn ridiculous. It feels like it doesn't make much sense.

Or does it?

Because it's not really Bruce. Because in the season finale, when Kory thanks Bruce for coming and his advice, Bruce tells her he doesn't know what she's talking about because he was never there.

But if it wasn't Bruce, who or what was it?

At this point, Dick is having hallucinations all the time. While locked in solitary confinement, he has no one but his mind's projection of his adoptive father for company. They talk, they argue, even fight. Bruce has been appearing to him throughout the entire season, most of the time uninvited (as hallucinations do) and Dick couldn't get rid of him. But the one time when Dick actually does want Bruce to appear, he doesn't.

Bruce doesn't show up, but a large bird appears in a window of the cell and catches Dick's attention.

The only way I can describe Dick's face when he sees it is relief. Man nearly looks like he could cry. He immediately jumps to his feet, eyes never leaving the bird, and softly calls to it, but the bird flies away and doesn't come back even when Dick is shouting after it. Left alone again, Dick hangs his head and drops back to the floor, where he curls, crushed and defeated, as if the last glimmer of hope he had just died.

Bruce comes back shortly after that, and at the question "Where did you go?" he ominously replies that Dick needed to rest, and then changes the topic.

Okay but why pay attention to some bird? It's just a random bird, right? Wrong.

It's Rachel. Her "soul self" as she calls it in season 4. Still linked to Dick's subconscious even after leaving the dream, she "borrowed" Bruce's projection to bring him to the diner and sent the Raven as a replacement. Even Kory and Dawn came to a similar conclusion in the finale:

What's more, Dick must have recognized her in the bird. Otherwise, why would the bird catch his attention? Why would it cause such a range of emotions on his face? The bird doesn't stay for long, it flies away almost immediately, but I'd say this way Rachel now knows where to look. The bird comes back, the tv turns on and now they have the location.

One extra clue that proves it is that the scene in the cell happens right after the scene at the diner, which implies that the two moments might be happening at the same time.

How did Rachel do all of that? Found her way to some random diner in Nevada, brought the girls and Bruce together, sent out a projection of herself to Dick and did it all unconsciously ? Is it her powers or is it the String pulling her forward? Or both? It could be her instinct, her fear, her helplessness and desperation because she's just a kid and she's alone, and she just had a premonition of Dick's death. There's not a lot of time and she needs help. Outside of the diner, she's begging Donna and Dawn to stay, tears shine in her eyes and her breath hitches while she explains to them how she saw Dick die, but ultimately only Kory stays by her side. She gets some of the help but not all, and Dick eventually finds them before they get to find him, but all these weird things didn't stop happening until the threat of Dick dying went away.

As for Dick's end of the String, it kind of only makes a cameo. In his last hallucination, after Dick and Bruce exchange a few kicks and blows, Dick finds himself standing in front of several screens showing some important, pivotal moments from his life, moments that shaped him into who he is. There's many different things here: Robin's violence, his parents' killer's death, cutting Bruce's tracker from his arm, Jason falling from a building — and two memories of Rachel. The first meeting in Detroit and the moment she appeared in Trigon's dreamscape to save him (which also proves something I'll be talking about in season 3, so remember that detail).

And honestly, I can't think of an explanation to this other than the String's mere presence. It doesn't do anything — the scene's purpose is for Dick to figure out a clue left by Jericho. But I find the choice of picking not one but two important memories of her for this scene a really interesting and thought-provoking detail. Especially that the way this entire section is constructed draws your attention to it. We hear Rachel saying "It's you, you're the boy from the circus" in the background and her voice doesn't drown in the cacophony of others from different memories, but it's distinct, standing out from the rest — we as the audience are meant to hear it and recognize it. All the memories on the screens change, some appear on different screens at different times, but everything, from the camera angle and blocking, to editing and effects, made sure these two memories were seen at the same time. They're not the focus of the scene of course but you can tell there's been a lot of thought put into making sure they end up where they ended up.

You know, it's funny how I used to not take this episode too seriously — like most of the fandom — because of all the stuff at the diner and how there's seemingly no explanation to it and it feels so random. Because of how stupid some of the characters decisions seem. We always blame it on the writing, shit on the writers for leaving plotholes and making retcons, and 99% of the time we are right to do it. But maybe we just have to look deeper. Maybe we're supposed to look deeper. Because after looking at these events through the perspective of The Invisible String, this episode will never not make sense to me again. It's not dumb anymore, it's not random. It's actually fucking brilliant. I think it speaks of something that I had to give it a whole separate post to explain it — and that was something I did not plan when I sat down to write this theory.

Now we move to seasons 3 & 4. And check out Part 4!

[thelonesomequeen]

You people should've went with the pr theory , because of that you are being hated, people still think Chris is someone who wouldn't date 25 year

Oh, we know. But here’s the thing, this is our blog and when we’re asked, we’re going to give you OUR opinion and not cater to the masses and simply say what everyone wants to hear. Is that the popular thing to do? No. And we know that. But we aren’t here to run a weird popularity contest. We’d like to figure out what it is that’s actually going on even if that means having to wait for that clarity. Yes, we know the popular thing to do would be to scream this whole thing between Chris and Alba is PR, make up excuses and stories for every little thing, and drag her straight to hell and back. It would sure get us a lot of likes and follows. But is that an accurate description of what’s really happening between them? We don’t know that for sure. And we aren’t going to claim to know either. Some of you need to understand that that while it’s frustrating to be unsure about this entire situation, it’s also okay to be unsure. There are no rules that say YOU HAVE to take a side on this whole thing on whether it’s real or PR. I wish people would stop making this so two sided and allow for nuanced discussion to take place. It’s also okay for an opinion to change when you’re presented with information you didn’t previously have. Read that sentence again.

From day one of this entire fiasco we weren’t ready to believe Chris and Alba were together even after knowing they were obviously in the same locations around New Years. Likes and follows was enough proof for a lot of the fandom to believe something was going on between them, but we didn’t personally feel like that was enough evidence for us to get on board with a relationship being real. Especially when so much time was passing and the two of them had never been photographed together and were both working quite a bit during the first part of the year. You can look back in our archive to see that was a constant and consistent opinion here. We wanted to see actual evidence of the two of them together outside of social media movement. We kept hearing “well she’ll definitely be at his sister’s wedding!” She wasn’t. “Just wait! Alba will be at the Lightyear premiere!” She wasn’t. “Alba will be at The Gray Man premiere!” She wasn’t. “Chris will go to her NYC events and premiere for Mrs. Harris goes to Paris!” he didn’t. “Chris is going to visit her in Vancouver!” Still waiting on proof of that one! Add in the anon from over the summer who told us Alba had a boyfriend and provided a photo as evidence. Did it confirm a relationship with this guy? Not exactly. But they were way too cozied up together to be appropriate for someone in a relationship with a different person IMO.

Then fans kept screaming about all the trolling Alba was doing. Was she? I don’t know. It felt like regular posts to me after living through an era of Jenny and her blatantly obvious fandom targeted posts that very clearly let you know exactly where she was and who she was with. In comparison, Alba’s posts that fans feel like are trolling felt like a joke when thinking back to the stunts Jenny would pull. But that’s just my opinion. If you feel differently, that’s fine.

Fall is when things clearly started to get really interesting. That’s when my eyebrow started raising and some things started catching my attention. The first was the pumpkin posts. I don’t think I need to go further into detail because I’m sure we all remember it. There was a solid debate about whether it was done intentionally to “soft launch” the relationship or if it was trolling by Chris. Then the Sexiest Man Alive article drops woohoo! That’s fun for all of 24 hours. 🙃 Then enter Alba’s Instagram story from Wicked followed by Chris and his Instagram story from The Book of Mormon 24 hours later. At this point things were feeling a bit too similar to be simply coincidental. Then boom. Relationship announcement via People (a go to source for Chris for anyone who may have forgotten). A relationship article with…a nearly year long time line? YEAH RIGHT. Where’s the proof of that?! A tip off that a pap walk is coming. It does right as we get thrown in tumblr jail! (Seriously tumblr, that was trash. Yes there’s a post limit, but that was SO rude as drama was finally unfolding.) We all saw the pictures. We commented on how awkward, off, and unnatural it looked. How quick he was to let go of her hand and walk in front of her instead of with her. The article coming right after the SMA article paired with a planned pap walk really yelled PR. And at that point we felt like maybe it could be PR. We then later stated that those photos were still the only ones of them that existed and we still weren’t quite ready to admit that they were a couple. It looked and smelled like PR. We had mentioned that if they were in fact a real couple we’d see more pictures of them and pictures that felt more natural and organic than the pap walk did.

Then here comes Disney and the Disney picture leak. Hey, finally, the “more pictures” we’ve been talking about. There was, and still is, debate about whether that moment was real or PR. At that point we were inclined to believe “hey maybe this could be real?” It kind of started feeling real to us at that point and we said so. Others brought up the concept that this could be a real relationship that is co-existing with PR and we felt like that was a good point. IF the relationship is real and they’re pushing it for PR, they’d hardly be the first couple to do so. Yes, other things also happened this fall, but Disney was the thing that made us go “Oh shit. This really might be real.” Again, if you don’t agree, that’s fine. I’m sharing OUR opinion and thought process with you.

So where do we stand now? Well you’re going to hate this one, but we don’t know. We just don’t. I know, it probably has some of you rolling your eyes, but trust us, it annoys us too. We’re to a point where we’re just sick of WHATEVER this is. It’s why at times we’ve paused (never banned like some like to claim) the Alba talk here at the blog because it just becomes redundant and gets old fast. At one point, Disney kind of felt like the clue that things were real. But then they went right back to not being seen together or around each other again and that made us question their actual status again. Was Disney real or a flash in the pan moment to make this all look real? No matter where you stand on this, there’s a lot about this entire situation that we can all probably agree on that feels off and weird.

Do I think Chris would ever engage in a PR relationship? The short answer is yes. He’s done PR dates and weekends before, so I don’t think an entire PR relationship is out of the question. What I fail to understand is WHY he would participate though. What does he stand to gain from this? Really, the age gap discourse stands to make him look bad more than anything. It’s clear Alba stands to gain a lot, but Chris doesn’t. And that’s the part that doesn’t make sense. That’s the part that makes me wonder if it might be real. Why else attach himself to her? Do I think he’d do a PR relationship for purely money? Honestly? He doesn’t need it, so why would he? Do I think a PR relationship can help his chances of getting a future project made? No, not really. A studio is going to be interested in his work and talent, not his girlfriend.

Do I think Chris would really date someone 16 years younger than him? While he normally dates women of a similar age, yes, I do. Why? Because he’s a man and nothing inflates their ego more than snagging a PYT. It might scream midlife crisis to some, but it wouldn’t be a stereotype if it wasn’t a thing that happened. And I highly doubt her little video bothered him one bit. It was stock full of the type of shit men love with the wet clothing that’s white and see through that gets stripped off. She played right into the tropes a lot of guys like.

After learning about her cultural appropriation pictures and racist friends, do I think dating someone so awful would bother him? Not really. He’s looked past a lot of questionable things from friends in the past, he’s said and done his own questionable things, he was able to look past Jenny’s questionable issues when they were brought to light, so I don’t doubt that he’d look the other way when it comes to Alba and her friends too. Sorry if that’s harsh, but it’s just my honest opinion. I don’t think his moral compass is as strong as fans like to think it is. As we often try to remind you all, Chris isn’t Steve Rogers and never has been. That’s his PR image at work.

Do we like Alba? No. We really don’t. We didn’t say much early on because we didn’t know much about her. As others here have said, everything we’ve learned about this girl has been against our will. But the more fans started digging and the more we saw, the less we liked. But apparently if we don’t drag her non stop that means we love her and we’re being paid according to others? Ok? We might not drag her as hard as others do, but that doesn’t mean we like her. We just don’t feel like shit posting the same things 24/7 when there’s other things we can discuss. And honestly, every time someone douses this dumpster fire, it gets immediately relit. Look how much has come out in the last couple of weeks.

Do we believe the pap walk that was rumored to happen this weekend will happen? No. It became clear a troll was running around the fandom with this one and we said to take claims with a grain of salt because we have no way of verifying who sends in information or if it’s true if they don’t provide evidence.

Do we think they’re engaged or an engagement announcement is coming? NO. Sure we briefly discussed the visa process and how that can affect marriages and citizenship status, but it doesn’t mean we believe they’re engaged. We said so last night when asked. We aren’t sure if the entire relationship is real or not and you expect us to buy into engagement rumors? (The same rumor that dropped the same time as it did for Jenny?) Use some common sense there.

So what’s going on here? We don’t actually know for sure. I know that frustrates some of you and I’m sorry for that. We’re in a place where good, solid evidence could convince us in either direction at this point. Honestly, any time something happens one way or the other and I start leaning towards real or PR, something in the opposite then occurs and has me questioning and wondering all over again. Some actions feel legitimate, but others feel so calculated and planned. If anything, I think we can all agree that this situation is weird AF and has felt off from the beginning. And whether you personally believe it’s real or PR, I’m sure we’d ALL love to know what the hell Chris is thinking. Why is he involved with this specific woman, especially after all we’ve seen and learned lately?

[raptorsaurusmelain]

Let me show you... Youtube - chapter 21

My oh my... Do we have the birth of a future yandere ?

Warning : no proof reading, English is not my mother tongue.

If you are interested in reading this fic, the tag "#twst lmsyy" will give you all the chapters.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

The woman went outside. In the ambient noise, the whispers seemed to have stopped. Finally a calm day.

She got a waft of all the stand food smell. It made her hungry. She just hoped that they can take credit card because she had 0 cash on her… Or maybe she could negotiate an advance on salary in cash ? [Good idea, let’s pester the bird.]

Once she found Crowley, she had to wait a little before pestering him. He was with important investors from what she understood of the conversation.

Crowley spotted her from the corner of her mask. “What can I do for you Mrs Devi ?”

Victoria batted her eyelashes, hoping it would make her seem innocent. “Can you lend me some cash ? From my salary, so I could join the festivities… Please Headmaster Crowley ? You're so generous after all…”

Crowley was weak to those words. He laughed, his beak seemed to elongate. “Oh yes of course ! I am so gracious after all !”

And that’s how Victoria got half her monthly salary in cash. [He he he life is good when you butter people.]

Crowley tilted his head. “What are you going to do today ? Are you going to watch the match ?”

Victoria plastered a smile on her face. “I am going to roam a bit before making my way to the stadium ! I can’t wait to see what it looks like IRL !”

Crowley blinked. “I…RL ? What’s that ?”

Victoria was caught off guard. [Of course he doesn’t know, he is like a billion years older than me.]

Trein arrived at that moment with Crewel. “Oh ? Who do we have here ?”

Crewel, seeing Victoria being deep in her thoughts, asked. “What is happening ?”

Crowley asked wholeheartedly. “Do you know what IRL means ?”

The two men also blinked. They all turned her head to face her, ready to listen to her explanation. [Oh dear, even Crewel ?? He is my age !!]

It took all her inner control not to laugh at the three men. “It is an acronym, mostly used by gamers to say ‘in real life’. It became quite common so I thought you knew, sorry for assuming you knew !”

Crewel was the first one to speak. “That explains a lot about Shroud way to speak… Do you play video games ?”

Victoria tilted her head innocently. “Yeah I do, it is fun to kill zombies when you had a bad day where a colleague proves that your theory is wrong and you need to redo your whole month of research.”

Trein was taken aback. “It is quite accurate for an example.”

Crowley understood one word : ‘research’. “You… were a researcher ?”

Victoria smiled widely, proud of her accomplishment. “Yeah, I used to be a researcher for a ‘true luck’ algorithm. It is used for gambling. I’ve patented it.” 

The two older men were shocked. This little girl had a PATENT ? Crowley spoke. “But… You’re too young to have a patent ! You are what ? 23 ?”

Crewel and Victoria laughed at this. Her ? 23 ? “That’s quite a compliment thank you, but no. I am 29, with a master in applied physics and a thesis in artificial intelligence under my belt.”

They both blinked her eyes. Crewel raised an eyebrow. “In applied physics ? I didn’t know that ! So you really are a jack of all trades !”

It added another layer of laughter. “Yeah, I can do anything that is math related.”

Crewel smiled. “We should try alchemy together then, you will have loads of fun.”

Victoria's eyes became full of sparkles. “Really ? Really really ? I can teach you about… erm… Video games ? I like to play chess, if you are up to it.”

At that moment both of the older men felt a bit of jealousy. They, too, wanted to spend some time with the woman.

Crewel smirked, at this sudden advantage he got. “Of course, Dr Devi. Let’s play together. Why not enjoy the festivities together ?”

The brunette was over the moon. “Oh ! Yes, it would be fun to spend some time with someone who knows his way around the festival. Let’s go !”

She grabbed his hand under the glares of Crowley and Trein. Crewel only smiled. He already liked her and her way to subtly show off her intelligence. Who could have guess that it was hidden in such a small woman ?

While waiting for her breakfast order -loads of pancakes-, she asked the fashionable man. “You are sure that you don’t want anything ? I can pay it for you…”

Crewel was astonished. “Young lady, do you think I am poor to say that ? I have way more money than you think.”

The woman looked at him. “I am sorry, but you smell rich. Rich like someone without cash on him.”

It made the man laugh. “I still have some change on me, I am just watching my figure.”

Victoria nodded. “To not have to tailor your wardrobe ? I understand that.”

Crewel looked at the woman from head to toe. She asked. “What ?”

He smiled earnestly. “You look great today. I like it. We also have the same shoes.”

She looked at his black and white derbies then hers. She laughed, happy that he noticed such a small detail. “I haven’t noticed… Quite a funny coincidence !”

That woman was like the Sun. She laughed a lot, she was optimistic, she smiled despite having a run down dorm, she was doing a job that wasn’t in line with her studies…  She needed to be protected at all cost from the bad of this world.

Tag : @boba-tea-fish @hipsterteller

[valeriefauxnom]

Ah, Doomsday Getaway. Probably quite a few people's favorite events, for the combination of music, story, etc, even if the freebie ultimately ended up a wash for quality.

But amid all the things going on, I just found this exchange a little bit funny even if what's being discussed isn't.

Everyone else has largely been crossing their arms and going 'nu-uh' to Carmen's claim and refusing to play the game.

Elisanne, though, quickly decides to start playing for the worst-case scenario that Carmen's words are 100% true, and then starts eyeing to try and set up a mass-murder/suicide scheme with Ranzal to force the game to end up with Euden as 'winner' since, well, it's pretty obvious Euden wouldn't play the game if his life depended on it (literally). As an aside, Elisanne definitely chose her prospective partner-in-crime well, as among the main 5, Ranzal as the more gritty, realistic, 'willing to get dirty for the boss' is probably the most likely to agree to do such a thing.

Ironically, even if they did team up to do this and pulled it off, Euden would then likely be the only one to die or otherwise suffer a horrible fate with the whole 'psyche, would-be winner, d'ya want to bite the bullet to resurrect all your pals' twist thrown in last minute. Funnily enough, though, this is probably like the singular time Euden expresses any hesitation at the notion of sacrificing himself for everyone:

However, I'll throw in a bit of a wrinkle to that initial scene. While that first scene ends with Ranzal's comment and is only implied what Elisanne was proposing it does return for a brief part in the next scene in more explicit terms.

...However (part 2), this scene turns around into this:

...which quickly is simply revealed to be just a nightmare Euden was having.

This is a minor conspiracy theory, but if Euden was dreaming that last part, was maybe the first part ALSO a dream?

Was Euden maybe fearing somewhere deep in his mind, that his friends were secretly starting to plot the murders of everyone besides him given their protectiveness? I might also point to the fact that Dream!Amane being able to guess so accurately what had happened the night before without actually knowing what they were discussing.

It just feels a bit too convenient, especially combined with Dream!Euden immediately being able to start 'taking action' and gaining a presence in the dream right after it seems like it might be too late, the kind of 'helpless nightmares' that a lot of people have. It also seems like the kind of nightmare he would have, as between actual events like Fractured Futures where he's helpless and forced to watch a Zethia die, to his overall character of 'having to save everyone/do everything' tendencies, I'm thinking Euden really doesn't like being caught feeling helpless to fix things.

Admittedly, I don't really have evidence either way, nor is it very important to the broader story. It's entirely possible that the first initial conversation with Ranzal actually happened, Euden overheard somehow, and then had nightmares of the second. The one piece of evidence to suggest part one happened is this tidbit, which implicates there was at least one time where the two of them were talking alone about something:

Even then, they might have had a private conversation wherein the trusting curse was triggered (since what we saw of that conversation, it wasn't triggered) that Euden saw but didn't hear, later had a nightmare imagining what was going on and then had Nightmare the Sequel later with Amane and Elisanne, trying to re-contextualize the nightmare with Ranzal dead instead of everyone else around them dropping.

So yeah, minor, inconsequential food for thought. With the cliffhanger at the end, though, I do wonder if they were plotting a sequel-style event or other followup later on. Wonder what that would've been like!

[thosewildcharms]

AMEN TO ALL YOUR RECAP FROM EPISODE 3. So so amazing. I cannot wait for the crying, yelling and makeup loving in episode 4. I just saw a theory that had me freaked out a little. Saying the phones don't add up and that Judith is more grown up in the sketches could mean he took helicopters and kept an eye on them over the years?? And that the reference to Carl was actually RJ and that is why he couldn't get it quite right? I doubt that though. He has no idea about RJ. Secrets coming out?? ARGHHH I need to know! What do you think? Also, do you think there will be another season? I need them :'(

thank you so much, I'm so glad you enjoyed it! I think we're all excited for episode lol this show has me wishing away my saturdays smh

well. personally I don't think you need to be freaked out by that theory because (respectfully) I don't think it makes any sense lol. I'm putting this under a read more because It's gonna get kinda long

I don't really see what doesn't add up about the sketches, honestly? because I think the simplest/most logical explanation is likely the accurate one. rick is (painfully) aware of how much time is passing, so every time he asked for a new sketch he'd say how old judith would be at that time and the artist would have adjusted her appearance accordingly. as for carl - I did see one person say they thought the "not getting it right" line implied that rick was starting to forget what carl looked like, because it's been a while now since he died. I think that's plausible, but personally I think part of it is that a parent who loses a child never really stops grieving, and no sketch can ever live up to the memory of that child no matter how objectively accurate it is. maybe it's a little of both? either way, I don't think it's supposed to be RJ.

I think we have to consider that while rick was never ever gonna stop trying to get home to see his family ("I'm getting home or I'm dying. That's it.") okafor played the ultimate and final trump card when he told rick his family would die if he ever escaped the CRM and went back home. as we saw in 1x01, that was it - the lights went out, and rick basically immediately became suicidal because he knew that he would never, ever put them at risk, so his only option was to die (again, "i'm getting home, or I'm dying") and short of actually killing himself he decided to metaphorically die instead.

all of this is to say that everything we've seen from rick on screen since the end of the first episode specifically shows us that he is resigned to never seeing his family again. for a brief moment when okafor died rick thought he maybe had a chance again, especially with michonne there, only for jadis to show up immediately to remind him that she has the SAME trump card as okafor only worse because she set it up so that if she dies his family will be killed anyway. and his only goal at this point is making sure michonne gets out. there's no indication that he has ever set eyes on any of them.

but even just logistically like. do we think the CRM is letting rick 'cut my own hand off trying to escape' grimes fly a helicopter unsupervised? do we think CRM security is so lax that he'd be able to steal one? if it was, wouldn't that be the first thing he did to try to escape, once he enlisted? ALSO the first thing rick did after he and michonne reunited was ask if judith was alive. why would he ask if he already knew? like, he's shown to be pretty decent at lying under pressure but why would he lie to michonne, at that moment? like, I'm sorry this just does not track as a theory to me lol

as for a season 2. well, season 1 is doing extremely well so far, so it wouldn't be a matter of the network not wanting more seasons. I do think an issue would be danai's availability because her schedule is insane. personally, I have my own feelings about whether or not I even want a season 2, but I guess we just have to see what happens!

I hope this answered your questions :)

@ricksmarlene

[thinkin-bout-milgram]

All Knowing and All Agony: Initial Thoughts

T/W: Mentions of murder, suicide, child neglect, animal death

I’d initially intended to write out a full theory after the drop, but there’s enough happening here that 1. I want to give myself enough time to fully dissect it and 2. I feel like I want to see more about the interview questions and such before making official calls/theories for the record books. So, for now, this is going to serve as a short little thought diary from the MV where I discuss all of the things I think are especially important.

I’ll be referencing my previous theory on Haruka, so if you haven’t seen the trial 1 theory or want to read it again, it’s linked here.

Anyways, there are a few things from the MV that I want to look through.

1. This better shows how Haruka got started in killing, as well as a more accurate kill count. 

While before, it seemed like the only murders were the girl and the dog and the girl probably happened first, this MV challenges that. Here, it seems like the first violent act comes in a time where he’s frustrated from not feeling like his parents love him enough, and he smashes his fish tank with a tree branch. As the fish die out from lack of water, we move onto the next scene. However, it seems this spreads to many other animals: butterflies, cats, dogs, pretty much anything he has access to. They all seem like animals that people generally like, too; no one’s going to call Haruka a murderer for killing a mosquito or something.

We see many of these corpses in a shot at 2:07 where Haruka stands atop his chair:

There are three main things here: the dead animals, the brownish liquid, and the other inanimate objects. The brownish liquid, whatever it is, represents blood (Mercury thinks it’s just straight up blood, I thought it looked too orange and looked more like amber or something, but I don’t know what that would mean). It’s my belief that the other things are his “murder weapons.” We see him swing around a lamp at 0:48 in his initial burst of frustration; the tree branch falls into the fish tank and breaks it at 0:59; the frame in the background looks like one the butterflies hung in. I think all of the items relate to the animals he killed. 

I also want to point out how he’s standing on the chair in this shot. It reminds me a lot of how cinema tends to depict people setting up to hang themselves. If my Haruka attempted suicide theory is right, it might be a hanging attempt rather than drowning. It’d still fit with the whole stress around the neck thing, and it would explain why the chair got so much focus in the MV when it doesn’t really seem to have any other plot meaning.

2. This video ends before the first one did, chronologically speaking.

I think that the murder at the very end of this video is the girl. Looking at the face shape, it doesn’t look like the mom’s.

But you know who that girl does look like?

This girl, from the first video, who I theorized Haruka killed. If I’m right, then everything that happened in this video with the animals led up to the moment here in the first MV where he kills her. Whether the dog he killed happened before or after that doesn’t really feel like it matters to me. What does matter, though, is the fact that whatever happened with Haruka strangling his younger self probably happened after the end of this MV. For the sake of constructing a timeline, I think the second MV (this one) happened basically entirely before Weakness with a small bit of overlap.

3. I’m still not quite sure what Haruka’s setting out to accomplish. 

His motive is obvious; he wants attention. However, I struggle to figure out exactly how he’s planning to achieve it. Right now, my best theory is that whenever tragic events surround him, his mother comforts him (”there there, my good boy!”). Thus, by creating tragic events, his mom shows him love again, fitting with his goal of “I will definitely make you love me again” (and emphasized by “I will keep on killing to be a good boy”). 

The root cause is obviously parental attention. I still do believe that, before any of the killing started, he wasn’t given enough attention/love by his parents because of some developmental disability he has. However, it’s clear that things spiraled after that, and towards the end of this MV, we see his mom reject him because of what he’s done, not what he can’t accomplish.

4. For voting, we DEFINITELY need to be cautious of how he interacts with Mu.

That much was clear from the moment they started hanging around each other, though I think it’s interesting that the Milgram writers seem to be giving us an even clearer hint than before.

I’m certain this “misspelling” of dream was intentional. That’s leaving Mu’s name in the lyrics, highlighted, clear as day. We really need to think about how she’ll be impacted by this vote, as well as everyone. It’s a pretty big concern. There’s also how Haruka wants to stay in the Milgram prison, and the worries about betraying his trust...

5. I’m still holding out on my official verdict.

Anything I say about the verdict is subject to severe change, and I’m not fully decided yet. Still, here are my thoughts thus far:

PROS FOR GUILTY:

1. Yikes

2. Would be telling him that what he’s doing isn’t okay, he needs to get help for his killing

3. Would restrain him so it’s harder for him to flip out and kill another prisoner

PROS FOR INNOCENT:

1. Wouldn’t betray the trust we’ve created with him

2. This is mad specific, but it seems like he killed because he felt he lost favor with his mom and wanted to get it back. I do not want Haruka to feel like we favored him (innocent verdict) then stopped favoring him (guilty verdict) and then to kill in order to get us to like him again. That ain’t how it works but like... it seems pretty clear his thought process is off

For right now, I think I’d lean guilty, but I’m really hoping some new insights will give me more clarity soon. Let me know what y’all think!

UPDATE: after further consideration, I’m leaning pretty heavily towards innocent. I hadn’t previously considered the possibility that Haruka could attempt suicide within the Milgram prison. From a meta voting perspective, I think innocent is the safest way to go in terms of maximizing survival.

SECOND UPDATE: just in case people are still seeing this rather than my main theory, I’ll link it here! It explains Haruka’s whole trial a lot more cohesively and explains my verdict change (I’m now on the guilty side as well).