#In theory of course

[plexiart]

Kuras, being almost 2m tall, makes me wanna draw my MC asking him for uppies. 👀

[shittyness]

how quickly do you think you can like, change your center of gravity?

not like permanently

but if i were to, say, carry at least 10% of my body weight on my back

how many days/weeks do y’all think it would take for my body to fully adjust to the weight

in theory that is

[the-faultofdaedalus]

magic system where “dark magic” and “light magic” are literal terms - dark magic consumes photons, making an area around the spell visibly darker, sometimes to an Extreme extent, and light magic releases photons.

because of this most dark mages tend to work in very brightly-lit areas (either artificial light or outside in the daytime) to fuel their spells and wear and use lightly coloured clothes and tools so that they’re easier to see in the dimness their spells create, whereas light mages wear heavy, sometimes leaden robes (depending on the work being done) and the magical equivalent of welding masks to protect themselves from what can be an extreme amount of light, and sometimes other kinds of electromagnet radiation!

needless to say this is incredibly confusing for anyone unfamiliar with the culture

[svndvn]

Hey there ! In one week the sign ups for my online course at the Underpaint Academy will open ! If you wanna learn more about composition and colors, join me ! https://underpaintacademy.com/

[nenoname]

It's still interesting that TBoB called more attention to Stan's control over his mindscape (And if you go with the interpretation that the lost pages are partial truths that are heavily influenced by Bill, then he's the one insisting that only someone with training should be able to have that much control over the mind.)

Meanwhile we have a memory!Stan. Someone who apparently knows too much and is rather aware for being a simple memory.

From the Wheel of Shame, we know Bill was able dig up all kinds of dirt on Stan but... that wasn't why he was there in the first place, was it?

Bill couldn't find the code immediately despite a memory of Stan opening the safe being a few hours old at most and decided to have Mabel try find it for him (The original concept of the ep had it far more hidden but this was likely cut because of time constraints)

Ford did experiments on Stan's mind which likely meant using Project Mentem and actually looking around his mindscape, and his only reaction was to comment on his jokes-- despite what little we the audience know being enough to render us sobbing wrecks

(yes I refuse to shut up about this part cos the book's intro is extremely underrated)

Stan was able to replace his memories of Ford with the swingset instead and managed to hide Ford in his Bar Mitzvah memory. And that's not even mentioning the lack of visible Portal and Stan o' War which noticeably show up in Ford's dreamscape (the broken swingset manifesting anyway pains me tho)

He subconsciously has misdirects for his secrets that are both silly and manages to disturb everyone too

And while Bill-as-Soos being bored by the vending machine memory is a joke that's basically the crew's way of going "hey remember the thing way back in the first ep that's going to show up in the next one?" and in-universe appears to be Stan slipping up, it's interesting that they had Stan input the wrong code when it's consistent literally every other time its inputted (especially when it shows up correctly in the very next episode)

It's even possible that the safe code that Bill found could have been a misdirect too but we'll never know since the safe got blown open by dynamite.

Stan was able to buy time by making his mind blank despite being genuinely terrified when Bill enters his mind (to the point that he breaks character and uses his own voice to yell), and could conjure up his living room (in colour opposed to his mind's regular greyscale) to make sure Bill didn't have enough room to flee, slamming the door in his face before the effects of the memory gun kicked in.

(EDIT: Random door analysis here)

And maybe the twins eventually told him that Bill had already been inside his mind after their W3 reunion, but all we know was that his conscious self was left in the dark for ages and wasn't really aware of Bill until Weirdmageddon.

TBoB showing McGucket's dreamscape also brings up the idea of the effects of the memory gun manifesting differently to each person. To Stan's mindscape, the memory wipe manifests as blue flames which immediately brings to mind Bill's powers but it's a far lighter shade (maybe to more closely match the memory gun and its eventual fade to white?)

The end of TBoB and the website poem also firmly reminds us about Stan's connection to fire but there's also the question if Stan himself is actually aware of it...

[pencildragons]

[rolls over to face you at the sleepover] bro do you think any of the lyctors ever used AD (alecto's dead) as a way to reference the passage of time and nearly gave john an honest to god heart attack because he thought they'd suddenly somehow remembered the christian calendar system. no hey wait stop pretending to be asleep this is important dude

[rainfeather13]

I see your eldritch Elrond head cannons, and I raise you: Elrond stealing the features of people he likes (his first victim; Maglor’s moles)

[koebi-channnn]

No matter what people say about Trey, Ace is The Most Normal Character. He plays basketball. He's good at card tricks. He likes eating hamburgers. He's used to getting a lot of attention because he's a youngest child. He teases everyone constantly but sometimes he can be nice. He's 5'8". He had a girlfriend in middle school and the relationship failed immediately. He could transfer to my school and I wouldn't blink an eye.

[sunn-mechanic]

[ID in alt]

Guess that makes me Evil

--

I could not stop thinking about how Vex is probably dead in DR, that shit makes me so unwell

Also, version without the lyrics below, bc I like both:

[ID in alt]

[amphibious-thing]

Too many people on this website don’t seem to understand the difference between a boycott (a form of protest) and their deeply unhealthy fear that engaging with problematic media will forever morally taint them.

[cspcrashing]

bleach au in which mydei is phainon's zanpakuto but they both live in oblivious bliss (+ a written snippet of what they were like before it all went to shit)

[brennan-lee-mother]

You ever think about how the Rat Grinders represent what the Bad Kids could have turned out to be if they hadn’t found each other freshman year?

Fig, the depressed rocker, all performance

Riz, the highstrung control freak who never found Penny

Fabian, the asshole jock who looks down on dancers

Gorgug, the uncommunicative loner

Kristen, the chosen

Adaine, the unwilling participant in her rich evil family’s plots

Because I do, and now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go scream into my pillow

[bad-system]

hansry/isterik theory #47: —"...and I'll rip out his heart!"

what if we interpreted the "heart ripping" as not literal in the sense of murder, but in the way that he'll rip out henry's 'heart' aka hans capon.

what if, in the end, erik gets his revenge in 1419. at the battle of Živohošť because hear me out: revenge is a dish best served cold

[elene78-blog]

Hey…

What if what's happening with Jeremy is that Bryson's drugs are discovered?

Something happens, and Bryson's drugs are discovered in his room, and Bryson says they're Jeremy's because he's cornered.

Jeremy, outraged, furious, says, "Are they? Let's do a drug test right now, this instant. A blood test, whatever you want. We can do whatever you need to corroborate who's taking drugs, who's been taking them for years, who gave them to me in the first place like I told you once. Let's finally clear up any doubts."

But…

But…

Bryson is straight, a law student, and the face of the Wilshires. He is, perhaps, his "grandfather's" future heir.

And the Wilshires have to choose between a drug addict who hasn't yet been exposed as such, and Jeremy, a gay former addict, who failed once and could do it again. Jeremy, who also seems unable to let go of that French boy, the son of mobsters, who has many friends from a community foreign to the image the Wilshires want to portray.

When the police arrive, Warren says NO to Bryson's drug test. It's not necessary.

The drugs are Jeremy's.

But the worst part… the worst part of all this… is that Mathilda knows they're Bryson's (everyone knows because Bryson doesn't want to take the tests and Jeremy begs them to), and when Jeremy calls out to her with a pleading look and watery eyes when she doesn't say anything ("Mom… they're not mine… Mom, you know it… Mom, please…"), Mathilda looks at him, absentmindedly fixes his hair, and says:

"We'll fix it, Jeremy, but you have to do this for your family. You owe us, honey. You owe us, don't you think?"

And the police take him away.

And this is Jeremy's breaking point: knowing that everything he's done has been worthless because it wasn't about "drugs" or "Noah." It's always been about "who Jeremy is."

[alwaysless]

yes okay that's the last one.

We can clearly see that Will created his clones from his own blood, but when the dogs rip them apart, they melt like wax. Does this mean that Will himself is partly made of wax? Not completely, because obviously he can bleed normal red blood, but at least partially. That would explain how he uses his spectre abilities without a full spectre form.

will. what kind of chthonic shit are you will.

[cube-cumb3r]

part 2: What's the deal with Manneq- SIMULTANEOUS PARALLEL REALITY THEORY IM CRAZY IM CRAZYIM CRAZY IM CRAZY

This is the second part of me trying to make sense of the Mannequins in ENA. Read pt. 1 here, if you want. Or don't!

I'm not entirely satisfied with the explanation of "Mannequins are spawnpoints" because it doesn't really explain how the Mannequins got there in the first place. How did so many Mannequins coincidentally end up near locations where it just so happens that Ena is likely to respawn?

I pondered a little bit about the role of Mannequins in the Youtube series as well, and if I could tie that into their role in the game. To my knowledge, there's only one episode where the Mannequins make an appearance, and that's Temptation Stairway.

I don't think about Ulysses often. The most I think about him is the fact that the song that plays when Ena talks to him is such a peculiar banger. But, given that he's the first character in the Youtube series to mention Doors before their existence got fully elaborated on in the game, perhaps more of his dialogue isn't just ominous and strange nonsense.

One of his lines is (paraphrased) "But heed this warning: desires are never fulfilled, nor quenched. You will fail. Like the rest of them."

So who is the rest of them? (other than Moony?) Taking the video at face value, the answer seems pretty simple, it's the Mannequins. They can be seen climbing the Great Runas in the beginning of the episode, and then later on her way, Ena walks past some lifeless ones in various places in a similar manner they are found in Dream BBQ, or they're... lamenting? In this strange space?

Other than that, without any further context, there doesn't seem to be that much to say about the Mannequins in Temptation Stairway, they seem to just be Mannequins. They're these sort of anonymous and ambiguous figures that also seem to have the same goal as Ena, reaching the Great Runas. All of which are failing, it seems.

After Ena meets Ulysses, she of course meets the Shephard who says her infamous "Arghh... another ENA troublemaker." line, which has of course been interpreted to mean millions of things. That being said, literally moments after this scene, we see other Enas when Ena enters the holy code. It seems sensible to assume these are the Enas she's talking about. (Because of Species Theory TM, no one ever really asks how they got here, why they look nearly identical to our Ena, and why they're unmoving. But that's besides the point.)

Most importantly for the purpose of this post, for some frames, they glitch into Mannequins.

(I would be remiss if I did not mention that right after this sequence, there's a data matrix on the wall that when decoded says "FORGET YOUR PAST". Make of that what you will.)

We already know there are multiple simultaneous instances of Ena in some manner, given that the Shepherd has met multiple of them. Given where the Shepherd is located and based on her dialogue, it's likely too that the Enas she met were also attempting to reach the Great Runas as well. That's another set of individuals that are attempting to reach this divine being, other than the Mannequins (and Moony).

So, when Ulysses says "You will fail, like the rest of them", maybe he's talking about the lifeless Mannequins that Ena walks past on her way to the Great Runas. Or, maybe he's talking about the other Enas that can be seen in the holy code. Or you know, both.

Or, perhaps, there's no difference between the two.

Time and reality seems to be a bit weird in the world of Ena. When talking to the remnants of the former Genie, she will offer her memories, to show Ena a reality where Ena did succeed. And this "reality" is (presumably) the reality where Ena had successfully reached the Bathroom, and the events play out the same as if you had done so.

This seems to imply that despite the fact that the sequence of events that led to Ena successfully reaching the Bathoom was not something the Ena you're currently playing as ever experienced, given that the Genie describes it as "her memories", from her perspective, it still happened. Both realities seem to co-exist.

What does that have to do with Mannequins? Well,

Here's my crazypants Theory. Rather Mannequins being a "spawnpoint", they're rather sort of... glimpses of other realities or timelines.

This Mannequin is found on the path that Ena was quite literally walking on before she stops, and she nearly gets caught under the falling structure from above. Perhaps in another alternate sequence of events she didn't stop, and kept walking. And that's what that Mannequin is.

Or this Mannequin found on the other side of the bridge, underneath the floating platforms leading up to the Orb. Perhaps in alternate sequence of events, Ena did end up falling while attempting to ascend to the Orb.

In fact, you can even experience this in-game. If you fall while attempting to climb up, you will "teleport" back to various checkpoints at different points of the ascent. So what if it's not "teleportation" that is happening, but rather you are being "transported" to a version of reality where she didn't fall. Whatever you just experienced did not happen to this Ena. But, you can still see evidence of this having happened, in some version of reality, when you look at the tops of these buildings.

(edit 5/5/25:) A new patch came out today which added a new interaction with the file compressor, where you can compress files more and more until they explode, causing Ena to stumble backwards after which you "respawn" in the center of the roundabout again.

Interestingly enough, with this new interaction they also a new lifeless Mannequin, which can be found dismembered exactly where Ena would've been blown up by this zip bomb. Even more interestingly, this dismembered mannequin is already there even before you've interacted with the zip compressor. As if it's already happened. But not to you. (Yet.) (end of edit)

(Now, I am aware that it's an absurd claim to suggest every single Mannequin here is parallel Ena. That might not be plausible. But I think it's sensible to assume at least some of the Mannequins we see across the series and game may be.)

When the broken Genie shows you a different reality, if you talk to Unforgiven Frank next to the ship, he will still recall your earlier interaction, despite the fact that in the reality where you succeeded in reaching the Bathroom, you would've never encountered him in the Lost Village.

So, it seems these are not distinct and separate realities, but somehow both true at once. Similarly to how the realities where Ena fell in a river or a pit, and the realities where she didn't, are both simultaneously true. And similarly how the Shephard has already met Ena, even if this Ena has not met the Shephard.

Does she retain anything across iterations? Does she collectively experience all of them at once, or just one at a time? It seems for the most part, Ena does not have information that she would've obtained in any parallel iteration of herself, because she needs to ask for it, this is the case in both Temptation Stairway and Dream BBQ. But it seems in some cases she does have information from sequences of events she herself has not experienced, like how she can aspire for Frank's forgiveness despite never having met him (though of course, maybe they already met prior to the events of Dream BBQ.) Perhaps it's as the Shaman said, while perhaps she can, if she were experiencing all of them simultaneously, she would be lost in her own mind.

This theory is not rock solid, there's some things that still don't quite make sense. If you're up on the Orb Island after ascending, you can quite literally jump down all the way to the bottom and be fine, so why would another iteration Ena not make it from falling during her climb? Or, if Mannequins are supposed to represent Ena from other versions of reality, wouldn't you expect lifeless Mannequins to be found at, say, the bottom of the rivers and pits, rather than hanging off the edges? Though, since the Mannequin "inside" Ena seems to be able to "emerge" from her body, perhaps that could be the explanation for this conundrum.

With all this said, there seems to be a natural conclusion to this theory. Under the assumption that the Enas we see suspended in the holy code in Temptation Stairway are Enas that "failed" in their task, like the rest of them (like the rest of them) like the rest of them... What does that actually mean for Ena at the end of Dream BBQ?

I'm sure everyone has noticed the shot we see at the end of the game is nearly the exact same as the one in Temptation Stairway. There's other Mannequins as well, also suspended in the holy code. The conclusion of this theory seems therefore to suggest that the Ena we see at the end of Dream BBQ never actually made it out of Uncanny Streets at all. She got stuck behind the Lonely Door. Failed, like the rest of them, alongside the other Mannequins we see floating in that space.

It's a sensible assumption that the hand that reaches out and grabs this Ena-Mannequin is "taking" her and "placing" her back in the body of the Mannequin in the hub. But what if even that isn't true? What if the Ena "emerging" out of the Mannequin in the Hub isn't her "respawning", but rather, she is an entirely different instance of Ena that never left the Hub in the first place? Whatever happened to the Ena in the Lonely Door still happened, but not to this Ena.

Which seems to prompt a question that no other theory would need to ask. Where is that hand taking this other Ena?