#and i have no idea how the timelines match up here (they probably don't) but either way. interesting. interesting interesting

[accirax]

Danganronpa: Despair Time Chapter 2 Episode 14 Dissection

I can't think of how to introduce this dissection other than just saying "god damn??". This chapter-- especially its second part-- has been a wild ride, and one that it appears we're nearing the end of. However, we still have one important question left to answer, which I'm sure I'll talk about here. So, let's chat.

SPOILERS for Danganronpa: Despair Time Chapter 2 Episode 14.

Also, I will be discussing Ace and Eden as equally likely blackened candidates in this post. If it will upset you to hear about the prospects of either or both of them being the killer, you might want to sit this one out.

Given what happens later in the episode, it's very interesting that the episode began with (more or less) Ace "admitting" that he has no idea how the murder mechanism worked. A truthful method of disqualification, or a masterful play by Ace to ask Teruko to ask him about the murder method only to pretend that he has no idea what it was? Time will have to tell on that one, because I honestly have no leads.

Similarly, is this Eden being genuinely shaken up and not remembering what transpired in the Gym, or trying to play the helpless innocent card to get out of having to help Teruko explain the murder method that she stole? Spoilers for my thoughts later in this dissection, I guess: they're so evenly matched that it's crazy.

I've always thought that Hu is the prettiest DRDT character, and this episode did nothing but prove me right. Hot damn, ma'am.

The insistence that this questioning is "traumatizing [Nico]" makes me think that Hu could be projecting her own experiences on to them. Perhaps she was once an innocent in a situation for which she kept taking the blame? That would be interesting as another connection between Hu and Nico, of both of them having taken the blame for someone else's follies.

This was a hilarious comeback; never change, Ace. Or, maybe you do need to change slightly, to become a less cowardly and impulsive person. Or maybe I should at least be rooting for you to have the chance to change in the sense that you live long enough to have that work out for you.

Yet another instance of J being the one to say that murder is bad. I wonder if this has to do with her character/backstory in some particular way (although given what we know about her past I have no idea what that would be), or if DRDTdev just needed a judgmental and confrontational person who would snap back at anyone to take over these kinds of lines.

(That's not me dunking on J's character btw she's valid for this)

This was a really clever way for Charles to phrase this to make Hu listen and settle down. I appreciate the out-of-the-box yet logical thinking. (Also I missed hearing Charles' voice :,D)

Woah, I was not expecting to get a Closing Argument comic for the Gym murder, but I am obviously delighted that we have one! Also, OH MY GOD, THE CEILING GRATE. How did none of us even think to consider that as part of the murder mechanism?

However, there are still some aspects of the state of the Gym that haven't yet been accounted for with this version of the murder timeline. I don't really think it's anything that would stop Nico from being Ace's would-be killer at this point, but I'll list them out here in case they are or in case they turn out to be relevant to Arei's murder. I'll also be trying to debunk them, though.

Moved Benches: Some of the benches near the pullup bar were knocked over. These probably fell either in some sort of struggle while knocking out Ace, or when Ace's body fell from the fan.

Moved Weight Rack: The weight rack was moved closer to the bench press and flipped on its back. I guess this really was also knocked over in the same fashion, no matter how unrealistically difficult it should have been to move due to its weight? Or it really was "workout preferences"???

Nico's Missing Cowl: When Teruko and Eden found Nico at the scene of the crime, they weren't wearing their typical dark cape thing. I have no clue why. You could say that Nico was trying to look less instantly recognizable, but it's not as if anyone (other than maybe Teruko) who saw a dark-haired 5'5" individual in a blue shirt instead of a gray cowl would think it was anyone other than Nico. There's also ye olde theory that they might have used it to soak up blood somewhere, but 1) Ace seems to have lost less blood than it may have seemed, and 2) the cowl was still not seen anywhere in the crime scene. I think I remember speculating that after Nico hypothetically used it to soak up blood (or, on second thought, maybe used it to gag Ace with the turpentine), they then stuck it in the fridge to hide it for the time being, at which point MonoTV discarded it and Nico got a new cape from their room. Maybe if it was used to apply the turpentine, Nico also could've put it away to prevent themselves from being affected by the fumes? I guess that's what I'm going with.

Lack of Tape on Pullup Bar: So, this one is obviously relevant to the murder already because Rose not being able to do a pullup is part of what tips off Teruko to the fact that something is off with the tape. However, I have no idea why the tape actually got removed from the bar. I still maintain that I don't think anyone could have stolen the tape off of that bar and repurposed it elsewhere-- most online sources seem to agree that kinesiology tape isn't reusable, and the fact that it was already wrapped around the bar in such a tight spiral would make it difficult to conform to any new specific shapes. My best guess is that Nico might have tried to use the bar instead of the light grate at first, determined that the tape was preventing the wire from sliding properly, and then removed the tape before determining the bar still didn't work. Or, Nico could have tried using the bar before settling on the broom, and thinking that it wouldn't work with tape on it... for some reason? Kinda scratching my head here.

I wonder how long ago it was. It's been four days since the Chapter 2 motive was revealed, although Ace was attacked only two days after the motive. Furthermore, Ace had started bullying Nico to some level already by the end of Chapter 1. I'm sure that Nico must have known what their secret was and probably didn't want it to be shared. My guess would be that they probably started cooking on murder pretty shortly after the new motive was released. That would also work with Charles-via-Whit letting everyone know what the custom weapons were in the first Class Trial.

This was the perfect response for Nico's character. They don't understand why an untruthful "sorry" would actually serve as a courtesy for most people, so they try to say what they feel and get ostracized for it.

Gotta say though, Ace, that was a pretty aggressive reaction from someone who said he "didn't need other people to tell him lies just to keep him happy" ;) (/j)

Damn, way to throw Levi under the bus. I can see why, for someone like Nico, they would want to assert themselves as not the most abnormal person here, though. I just want them to be neurodivergent buddies :(

If that's the case, then I'd have to imagine that we won't be seeing Nico as a killer again down the line. However, they could also just mean "getting caught"/"going in without a solid gameplan," so it's still possible we will. There's also the possibility of them doing something more like a sacrifice kill, although it would take a lot of character work to make something like that feel within Nico's nature.

Sorry to keep screenshotting every little thing Nico says but they keep saying really interesting things. The fact that Nico specifically mentions their father as opposed to "parents" or "family" makes me think that we'll hear more about their father specifically sometime in the future. Or, who knows, maybe their other parent left or died.

Nico: I don't expect you to forgive me. Very few people ever do. So I don't see the point in acting sorry.

This was very interesting as an addendum to the above screenshot. What exactly did Nico "ask for" forgiveness for in the past? Was it just more social blunders, as they described in ch2-e2, or did they get into more trouble closer to this level than we realized? It could also be an indication that Nico has spent time with people who believe that being nonbinary is a crime that Nico needs to feel sorry for. Fascinating stuff, indeed.

Points for Ace being the killer. We know that he went into this trial looking to suspect Nico ("[...] I'm pretty sure I know who the murderer is. It's not David, it's Nico"), so if Ace is the killer, it would make sense if he'd want to make the crime scene resemble Nico's to make his bait more credible.

Hey, it's the aforementioned T A P E T I M E, motherfuckers :D (still /j) Personally, it's quite gratifying to hear that it wasn't just a visual malfunction or a minor detail blown way out of proportion.

You're, uh... getting to this point much faster than I expected, queen. I don't think she's now going to go down the exact same distrustful rabbit hole that she was in before, but there's definitely still potential for her hopes to be crushed by the end of this chapter. Or, maybe she will accept some people as genuine friends, and instead in the future have to confront how she feels when she loses a genuine friend, or not blaming herself for the effects of her luck, or something along those lines. I like that Teruko isn't a static edgy protagonist, though. Like, don't get me wrong, I've always known and appreciated that she has depth, but it's refreshing that she isn't someone who's so stubborn about her own way of thinking that she refuses to admit when she's in the wrong. Teruko really wants friends, guys.

TERUROSE REAL??????

(Also Rose's speech was excellent as well I just didn't have anything in particular to say about it other than "wow" at the moment)

Yahoo, lockdown logic strikes again! Also, a quick

Is Teruko Correct In This Assumption?

Personally, I fully think yes, only Ace or Eden could be the culprit at this point. MonoTV confirmed that it tried to restore the Gym to the best of its ability but couldn't return the tape, which means both that there was no tape in the Gym to be taken and that there was never any spare tape in the Storage Room that MonoTV could have used to replace the roll. I guess you could say that there was an extra roll of tape in the Storage Room that someone else took before the murder took place, but that level of coincidence seems implausible at this point in the Trial.

No, for anyone other than Eden or Ace to have acquired the tape, they must have either stolen it from one of those two or asked for it from one of those two. Asking them seems very unlikely-- for starters, if it was Ace who took the tape, I don't think he'd be giving free hand-outs to anyone. And, if Eden isn't the killer herself, that means all of her fright regarding stumbling upon Ace's body was genuine. I don't think she's naive enough to then hand over what was used in Ace's murder to anyone asking... or at least not without bringing it up now. Beyond that, anyone who would ask either of them for the tape would have to know that the tape was used in the murder attempt, knowledge of which was very limited. This episode went to lengths to establish that Nico was the sole culprit behind the attack on Ace, and while it's still possible it could all be an elaborate lie, the explanation Nico gave felt very in character and important for their characterization moving forwards. So, while Nico would obviously know it was used, if Nico asked either of them for the tape, surely neither Eden nor Ace would trust them. Otherwise, I think Rose is the only one who could have found out it was gone, but even so, given that neither Eden nor Ace have tried to argue that Rose asked them for the tape, I don't think that happened.

You could also say the same of neither Eden nor Ace claiming to have had the tape stolen from them-- but I could see either of them feeling like claiming to have taken the tape at all right now would be a death sentence, so I understand why they wouldn't say it. Still, I don't know if the narrative is there to support the tape having been stolen from them. On the day after the Gym murder (Day 7), Eden isn't seen in the daily life at all. If someone stole the tape from Eden on that day, I would think that DRDTdev would at least want to show us who Eden was spending time with on that day (given that he put in the effort to make the tape sprite disappear from the Gym at the time it did), so that we would have any idea who might have done so. Ace is seen once in the Day 7 daily life, arguing with Hu, Nico, Levi, Veronika, and Arei. However, having just been attacked, I imagine he'd be hyper-aware of anyone getting close to him, and therefore would be more likely to notice if someone was rifling around in his pockets (if he has pockets?).

Really, I think the only possible candidates for who could have stolen tape from Ace or Eden would be Levi (mostly just for Ace) and Arei (from either of them). Levi might have had an opportunity to take the tape from Ace on the night he was attacked, the night of Day 6. Eden said last episode that Levi "kept trying to help him" after Ace was attacked, which could imply that Levi was the one to put bandages around Ace's neck. Furthermore, he does have a criminal past, which could make him better at stealing. Similarly, Arei is confirmed to be a good pickpocket, stealing Min's pen without Min noticing at all. I think she's the only one with the proper buildup to have taken the tape from Ace at that breakfast, and would be the most likely to have spent time with Eden when Eden was off-screen. (Although, it would have to have been before lunch, because Eden says the last time she saw Arei was at lunch.)

However, I don't think many people think that Levi is the killer anymore, and if Arei stole the tape from Eden or Ace only for the killer to then steal the tape from Arei, I would start to wonder why DRDTdev even made the tape such a scarce resource in the first place. Remember that, if the killer was purposefully trying to recreate Nico's idea, they likely knew in advance that they would need the tape to pull off their plan. It was used in enough places that seizing the opportunity to take it off of Arei seems unlikely, as it was too fundamental to the plan's inception. Besides, for the killer to replicate Nico's plan in the first place, the killer likely needs to be Nico, Eden, Ace, or Teruko, who are the ones who could have most easily taken the tape on their own.

I've already seen people accuse this Trial of being bloated, and while I strongly disagree (I only think cases are bloated when they're stalling for time and have nothing of interest to discuss, and we've still had PLENTY of interesting stuff to discuss), if we spent a whole 'nother who-knows-how-many episodes reversing all of the progress we just made to say that either Nico wasn't actually the one to kill Ace or that someone who didn't see the crime scene killed Arei, that bloating problem would only seem worse to those people.

I understand if you don't want to believe that Eden or Ace has to be the culprit for whatever reasons-- whether that be that they're your favorites and you don't want them to die or you really like your theory and don't want it to be false-- but I really think that this episode cemented that either Ace or Eden will be voted for as the blackened for all of the reasons above. Therefore, I shall be proceeding accordingly.

She was WILD for this. Hilarious line of reasoning.

What's Up With the Body Discovery Announcement?

The "reveal" of this line of logic was no surprise to me. As someone who's believed that Eden is the culprit for quite a long time, we've had to figure out ways to get around this thing before, and besides perhaps "not witnessing the murder," someone else seeing the body before the BDA rang is the most obvious way to cheese it.

However, in order for this to be a thing, we have to ask ourselves-- who would have actually seen the body first?

David claims to, but he has an alibi starting at 7:30 AM with Veronika and J. Both because Arei theoretically wasn't dead before then and because we've been operating off of the assumption that a meal takes about 30 minutes to eat, I don't think any of the three of them could have stumbled across Arei in the morning. Nico and Hu both have an alibi, which I'm going to consider solid enough to remove them from possibility-- one of them spotting the body would be helpful to make Eden the killer, and I think the only people who believe that Hu and Nico are lying only believe so under the condition that one of them is the killer. Whit is out, because him seeing the body beforehand doesn't actually accomplish anything, and so is Charles, because we can assume that, if he saw the body, he would be out of commission. I'm also going to strike Rose from seeing the body before breakfast, both because she's very likely to have been asleep and because if she had already seen Arei's body in the Playground, she probably wouldn't have refused to draw a diagram. That would leave only Ace, Levi, and Arturo as non-blackeneds who could have helped facilitate culprit!Eden from not being caught by the BDA.

However, we also have to consider that "before 8 AM" isn't the only time someone could have stumbled across Arei's body. They also could have seen it before Teruko, Eden, and Whit did while everyone was looking for Arei. So, what do we know about what happened during the search for Arei? Not much. Hu says that they should split up, while J says she's going to check Arei's room. Teruko says that most people are probably searching the first floor, an assumption that's supported by Teruko, Eden, and Whit not seeing anyone else while they check the second floor. You might think that would eliminate the possibility of anyone else seeing Arei's body during the search, but Teruko did say most people, not all. There's also what MonoTV said when Teruko and Veronika were investigating the Gym.

MonoTV: It's too high! If you stood in the movie screening room on floor one and started punching through the walls, you'd fall into the playground.

This not-yet-addressed piece of evidence got me thinking about the possibility of someone seeing Arei's body from above, standing in the Motive Screening Room. It still probably couldn't be Teruko, Whit, Charles, Rose, or J, but anyone else would theoretically be back on the table if that were the case. That being said, I can't find any visual differences in how the Motive Screening Room looks between the beginning of Chapter 2, when the search for Arei begins, and when Teruko goes to check the motive secrets (other than a curtain being added over the screen in the third case). So, unless there was already a heretofore unmentioned hole to peek through in the room, I wouldn't count on that being the case. The connection between the Motive Screening Room and the Playground will probably just be relevant to a different chapter.

Therefore, that leaves us once again with Ace, Levi, and Arturo. The main problem with believing that any of them could have seen the body beforehand is why they wouldn't have brought that up at this point in the Trial. Here are my best guesses as to why:

Ace: I have genuinely no clue why Ace wouldn't have brought up that he saw the body in the morning (assuming that he actually did) to defend himself at this point. It's not like it would make anyone more suspicious of you.

Levi: Levi does seem to be a bit dense regarding what is and isn't helpful behavior in a Trial, so the most likely possibility to me is that he just didn't realize that confirming he saw her was helpful. Like, "oh, I didn't realize that me confirming that I saw Arei would help us pin down Eden as the killer. I was just trying to figure out how David and I both saw Arei's body this morning and I didn't see him." "Wh-- David was obviously lying!" "He was?" "I already told you he was lying before..." "Levi... we talked about this..." Bonus points for it not being out of character for Levi to be unfazed by seeing a body, though.

Arturo: In Arturo's case, I think it would have to be that he'd still be worried about people seeing him as suspicious for saying he found Arei's body in the case of accusing Eden specifically. They already have a past history of conflict, and I could see someone brashly accusing Arturo of throwing Eden under the bus just to get revenge on her for the secret thing (even if I don't think he would actually do that). He also made an enemy out of Arei, so I don't think he would be particularly fazed by seeing her corpse either-- similarities to Felicity's cause of death notwithstanding. However, I also find it likely that he trailed after J in going to check Arei's room.

So, what's our conclusion here? Does this mean that Eden is basically fully cleared by triggering the BDA? I wouldn't count her out just yet, but the evidence isn't looking great for her. It's quite possible David only brought up this argument to A) hold out suspension of disbelief that it's not just Ace for a little while longer, B) drop this logic as foreshadowing for a future killer's plan, C) characterize the kind of logic he uses in a Class Trial, or D) bring up this argument in canon so that the people who theorized that the BDA might not clear Eden or Whit wouldn't be like, "wait, but what about...?" However, it's also possible that one of the possibilities I listed above, something I might have missed, or the "see no evil" idea (as FF put it) could keep Eden in contention. That dynamism is part of what makes Ace and Eden feel so evenly matched.

See, this is what I assumed David was getting at after Nico reminded me of his early-morning alibi. But then he just kept talking...

I'm not going to delve into what David was thinking here too much, because I already have an anonymous ask about what I think David's rationale was that this will almost certainly come up in. However, as a short version, I imagine that David is trying to get everyone angry at each other in the hopes that it'll incite another murder that he can get the class to fail? Or to cause enough discord in the group that they just fail this one. That would be why he also rags on Rose for not remembering the tape, and insults Arturo's sister-- he wants no one to trust anyone so that the murder-solving process will be as un-streamlined as possible.

The fact that he targets Teruko so specifically is probably because he (accurately) assesses her as the only real threat there. Charles and Rose can help, sure, but their mental struggles make them easy enough to eliminate if you play your cards right. Teruko's main flaw is her lack of trust, so if David wants to weaken her, it makes sense to go right for that jugular. Furthermore, by stating his plans so plainly and publicly, it might incite other people to fight back against him and say that Teruko should trust them. However, that kind of olive branch might make Teruko even less inclined to get close to them, if what Teruko said to Eden at the end of ch2-e03 can tell us anything. Didn't stop Eden from trying at the end of this last episode, though!

After taking some more time to think about what David was up to this chapter, I might change my mind on those being his goals. But, this post does serve as my initial thoughts of sorts, and that's what I initially think about this scene.

I wholeheartedly agree.

Does Ace Have Nothing To Do With Arei?

What Ace has to say is more or less true-- barring the breakfast in which Arei didn't talk at all (AKA, no conversation), Ace has literally never been in a small group event with Arei. However, although they didn't talk to each other, Ace did overhear the conversation between David and Arei, which does give him a connection to Arei. Quite relevantly, Arei did say this to David during their conversation:

Arei: You said that sharing our secrets would help fight against the motive. But when I think about it, not a single good thing has come out of that. Eden was stupidly naive, as usual, and tried to talk to Arturo, so now I have to protect her.

From this, Ace could probably surmise that Eden had Arturo's secret, she talked to him about it, and that Arei stepped in to save her from Arturo. He was one of the few people who could have known that Eden and Arei grew closer before the murder occurred: another connection Ace had to information about Arei.

However, before you use that evidence to call Ace the killer, let me remind you that he still doesn't have enough information to write the note from just eavesdropping on this conversation alone. As I outlined in this theory (same as the one I just linked above), whoever wrote the note had to specifically know that Arturo's secret was about his sister, which Arei doesn't divulge (quite possibly because she didn't even know) to David. Therefore, although Arei mentioning Arturo and Eden in this conversation is interesting, it doesn't actually make Ace any more likely to be the killer, because he still would have needed to find some way to spy on Eden's secret and/or Arturo and Eden's conversation to write that note. (Unless mentioning the sister specifically was an oversight plot hole, but I never want to use that as my reasoning.)

So, do I get what Arturo is getting at? Yeah, Ace and Arei were never particularly involved, and Eden clearly has a greater connection to the victim. However, there is more to the Ace/Arei bond than it might first appear, and it's possible that could come up in the Trial moving forward.

This distinction-- between "Arei was my friend" and "Arei could have been my friend"-- could be very telling down the line. Eden pauses mid-tear-filled rant to distinguish that Arei is not her friend, not because she's dead, but because they hadn't reached that point yet. Arei is not Eden's friend in death. What can that possibly mean other than that Eden killed Arei?

... BUT THEN HOW THE FUCK CAN EDEN GO AND SAY ALL OF THIS, BE THE KILLER, AND THEREFORE PROVE DAVID RIGHT???

AND THE "BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT FRIENDS DO" REFERENCE??? AT THIS HOUR????? I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF THAT MAKES HER SEEM MORE OR LESS SUSPICIOUS!!!!

OUGH AND THE MIN PARALLELS TOOOOOOO

MIN WAS TERUKO'S FRIEND BUT ALSO A KILLER. DOES THAT MEAN EDEN IS GOING TO BREAK THE CYCLE OR DOES IT MEAN THAT WE'RE STUCK IN A DOOMED STORY IN WHICH TERUKO IS THE PROTAGONIST? IT COULD GO EITHER WAY!!!

Jumping back in time for just a moment...

A Piece of Evidence That Lines Up to Them Only

I thought about making this its own separate post, but decided not to. If you guys want me to make this part it's own separate post so it's easier to find/comment on directly, let me know, and I'll set that up.

But before you can make your decision, I suppose I have to explain what I aim to do here. Basically, Teruko has told us that she's still torn between Eden and Ace (mood), and that, while she'll start off attacking Ace, she's looking for any pieces of evidence that could prove that only one of them could have committed the crime. Problem is, we have no indication of what that specific piece of evidence could be, and, trust me, it could be a lot of them. Thus, what I'm going to do in this "mini" theory is list out every piece of evidence that I can think of, and say whether it points to Eden being the culprit, Ace being the culprit, or it can't point to either of them. Perhaps once we're done, you'll see why I'm so conflicted on which of them it would be.

I'm going to tier these pieces of evidence in terms of least likely to be the missing piece to most likely to be the missing piece, starting with all of the aforementioned unexplained gym evidence. The knocked over benches and weight rack were not part of the replicated crime scene, and I have no idea how Ace or Eden would have wound up with any version of Nico's cowl. The missing tape on the pull-up bar has the greatest likelihood to be relevant, but as we're already suspecting both of them for having the tape, I don't think it'd be a decision maker. Any of those pieces of evidence would be likely to come up in proving that Nico wasn't the one behind Ace's murder, but this theory is operating under the assumption that Nico is the one who tried to kill Ace, and either Ace or Eden killed Arei. If you want the answers for your own theory, do your own homework. (/lh)

Ace or Eden will get a point for any evidence that I think would better be used to accuse them as being the culprit. Therefore, winning points is actually a bad thing if you want to be innocent. For convenience of "scoring," Eden will be purple because of her shirt and Ace will be pink because of his "maroon" hair... and because I needed red and orange for the likelihood ranking.

UNLIKELY FINAL PIECES OF EVIDENCE

Arei's Body Swinging: This evidence has already been used to establish that Arei was killed in the morning, not at night. Either Ace or Eden could have killed Arei at 7:30 AM, so point to neither of them.

Ace Trying to Assign Himself to Guard Duty: This one is obviously a point for Ace if it were the final piece, but it's such a minor happenstance that I doubt Teruko would think to bring it up as the main thing against him. Like, she could bring it up in general, but I don't think it'd be her crowning jewel. Still, it's a piece of evidence we haven't discussed yet, so credit where credit is due.

Arei's Bound Wrists: Bound by the grippy tape that either of them could have stolen. Point to no one.

Broken Playground Lights: The lights in the Playground are broken, likely from the mechanism being hung up through the ceiling rafters. You could argue that this is a point for Ace's strength, but I don't think throwing a ball that high requires so much strength that Eden couldn't do it, especially if you might be able to use the see-saw to launch it somehow. Point to no one.

Dried Up Puddles: This has nothing to do with either of them. Point to no one.

Carousel Wrapped in Tape: Again, either could have had the tape, so point to no one.

Two Pieces of Rope: Either of them could have taken the rope from Storage and cut it; point to no one.

Food/Utensils/Napkins in Trash: Probably David's dinner. Possibly evidence of Eden and Arei having breakfast together, but that's a stretch. Point to no one.

Cups/Tissues/Palette in Trash: Rose says these were hers. Point to no one.

Incense in Trash: I know thebadjoe had (has?) theories about this being used to conceal the scent of Arei's body being hidden in the Relaxation Room a day earlier than anyone thought, but I find that to be too much of a stretch to accost Eden for it here. I think it's just filler. Point to no one.

Grippy Tape in Trash: I should just stop writing out tape evidence. Point to no one.

Broken Jugs: The killer used jugs of water to make Arei heavier, which broke when she fell. They probably had the fish water in them, but we're not talking about the fish themselves at the moment. I'll say point for Ace because the jugs are probably from the Gym, and we've seen Ace in the Gym far more times than we've seen Eden.

Needle and Black Thread: This evidence... might have to do with the ball of clothes, which we'll get to later. However, if this is relevant to the murder, it's probably from the Dress-Up Room, in which we've seen Eden but never Ace. Point to Eden.

Construction of the Note: After a bit of internal debate, I'm going to call this a point for no one. Why? Well, it's because Eden would have reason to help construct the note whether she was the killer or not. If she is the killer, she might have wanted to guide the discussion that followed its reconstruction, to urge to Rose and Whit that she's innocent and that someone must have framed her. It would also give her reason to come into the Trial already having a handwriting sample on her. However, if Eden is innocent, she also easily could have just wanted to help out. Most importantly, Eden already brought up the note being constructed in her initial defense, so I doubt Teruko would reuse it as the nail in someone's coffin.

Splashing Arei With Water: Either of them could have thought of this and accomplished this. Point to no one.

SOMEWHAT LIKELY FINAL PIECES OF EVIDENCE

Body Discovery Announcement: While this may very well play an important part in solving the case, I don't think it'll be the final smash, so to speak. That's mostly because we already talked about it a lot in determining whether Eden could have done it. In the end, I think we'll either have to come up with a way to justify Eden having cheated the BDA-- by Levi or Arturo having seen it or via see no evil-- or we'll accuse Ace without the BDA being a problem. I guess I have to call this a point for Eden because if the BDA were to be the damning evidence, I think it'd have to be for her. However, in my heart, this is totally evidence supporting Ace being the killer.

Arei's Broken Neck: I'm using this as a stand-in for the strength of the killer, in the sense of lifting Arei up and being able to stop the carousel. This is a point for Ace, because he's a professional athlete and Eden is generally the weakest person in the cast.

Scratches on the Ground: This evidence certainly seems to indicate that there was a struggle at the Playground, but is there anything more to it than that? I'm more willing to believe that Ace could have beaten Arei in a fight, but does that point to Eden because there would've been more of a struggle, or Ace because Eden wouldn't have wanted to fight Arei at all? Ace also normally wears heels (while Eden and Arei don't), which is what Hu cites will naturally scratch up the floor. This evidence is vague enough that I don't think it'll be used to point to either of them, but if it did, I think it's more likely to be Ace.

Ball of Starched Clothes: For starters, I'll share (I think it's) thebadjoe's theory that the ball was adhered together using starch from the Relaxation Room that's sprayed on the plants at night, because I saw some people questioning how the clothes could have been stuck together. Anyways, the ball of clothes itself is definitely a point for Eden, because we saw her in the Dress-Up Room specifically looking for Teruko's clothes. Although, Ace certainly saw Teruko and Hu's new fits, so he could have figured it out for himself.

Actual Acquisition of the Tape: I don't think this will be used as the final piece just because I feel like the narrative is pointing towards the damning evidence relating to Arei's actual murder as opposed to Nico's. However, it's relevant to discuss, so I'll list it here. Although Teruko says that Ace and Eden had equal odds at the tape, on the surface, it really makes much more sense if Eden was the one to take it. Star explained it well here, but I'll add my own recap: in the moments when the tape must have been taken, in between when Nico leaves and when MonoTV kicks everyone out, Ace is recovering from unconsciousness, covered in blood, full of rage, and has all eyes on him. Meanwhile, Eden is scared, sure, but she had a clear moment to actually examine the scene of the crime and is also knocked to the ground-- potentially right next to the tape-- with all her wits about her. While it's not impossible to believe that Ace sleight-of-handed the tape, Eden had a much clearer path to taking it. Point to Eden.

MOST LIKELY FINAL PIECES OF EVIDENCE

Arei's Missing Glove: To my memory, Arei's glove hasn't been brought up in the Trial at all, which is definitely strange, because it must be missing for a reason. If DRDTdev is crafting so much detail into the BDA that the swinging of the body is plot-relevant, there's no way he would have just missed giving Arei her glove. The question is, what was this used for? Those who are familiar with my theories should know that I've never been a fan of dress-up theories, so I'm going to discount that possibility. The thing I thought was the most likely was that the killer donned the glove so that their hands wouldn't get super scratched up from grabbing the grippy tape-d carousel bars, before gleamingtempest reminded everyone that both Eden and Ace already wear gloves. Still, looking at them, Eden's gloves are probably made of something more like cotton while Ace's gloves likely have some sort of tougher grip on the inside. So, Eden would probably be more likely to need something else to protect her hands. Also, given that both of Arei's wrists have marks on them, the glove was likely taken off before her wrists were tied. I can't figure out why Ace would have taken off Arei's glove before restraining her or how he would have gotten Arei to take it off otherwise, while for Eden, at least, I can imagine her asking Arei to take off her glove. Therefore, I'm going to call this one a point for Eden, while also throwing out that it might just be missing if Arei didn't bother putting on her glove for the early morning meetup.

Fish on the Playground: You've heard it from me before, Eden has an alibi through the entire time the fish could have been taken. With seemingly no accomplices (other than possibly Arei) in sight, I don't know how Eden would have gotten her hands on those fish. Meanwhile, Ace had a great opportunity. Point for Ace.

Pieced-Together Note: This evidence is very confusing, because I don't see how/why either of them would have implemented it. For Ace, I wrote that entire theory (I'm not going to link it a third time) about how, based on the information in the note and the layout of the first floor, it really seemed like eavesdropping was impossible, and the person who wrote the note had to be Arturo or Eden. Then there's what thefandomenchantress pointed out about Ace's pedantry making it seem like he wouldn't misspell "responsible" in the note, and that he just doesn't give me the vibes of someone who writes in cursive. By all accounts, it really seems like Ace can't have written that note. But then again, why would Eden have written that note? Okay, bad phrasing; she wrote it to get Arei to come to the Playground. But still, why would she sign it? Or if she were to sign it, to make sure that Arei knew it was her, why include so much detail about what Arturo's secret was? More importantly, why wouldn't Eden have just stuffed the ripped up note into her belt, or her pockets, or her room if it would serve to incriminate her? Put it wherever she put that glove! Hell, why not eat the note, if it's a life or death situation? There's the "reverse psychology" argument, but similar to what Teruko said this episode, it would have been much simpler for Eden to have pretended that Arei came to the Playground for some other reason without the killer planting some sort of note meant to frame her. And it's not like I think Eden is really the type to misspell "responsible" either. So, I'm kind of at a loss. It's such a major piece of evidence that I feel it has to come into play again somehow, but I'm not sure how. I think I'm going to call this one a point for Ace because at the very least I understand why he would want to leave this evidence here, even if I don't know how he created it. For Eden, I don't get why she'd leave it lying around, even if in pieces. You can call it revenge for Eden getting the point on the BDA, if you wish.

So, what are the results? If you add up all the points together, you wind up with 6 points for Ace and 6 points for Eden. Funny. If you tier the points, however, with 1 point for unlikely pieces, 2 points for somewhat likely pieces, and 3 points for the most likely pieces, you get 12 points for Ace and 10 points for Eden. Of course, that's using my tierlist of which pieces of evidence are most likely and on top of that, assigning the BDA and the Note the way that they are (if you flip them it's 11-11), but still. If you're invested in my findings, these are the results.

Needless to say, I hope you can understand why I'm having such a hard time determining which one of them will turn out to be the killer. Although, I must add...

If we're suspecting Ace first before we've done our Debate Scrum, that's not a good look for Eden never being suspected again in this Trial.

Concluding Thoughts

What? A conclusion? I've never done one of these on a dissection before?!!

Yeah, well, this time, I have stuff to say that I couldn't really correlate to one image in particular! And also I ran out of images, so this is what you get!!!

I spent that whole "A Piece of Evidence" section talking about the physical evidence that could support Ace or Eden being Arei's killer, but in it, I really didn't get to talk about the narrative implications of either of them being the killer at all. I know that Narrative Defenses are typically Venus' thing, but I have my thoughts on this, too. Namely, that both of them are riddled with narrative problems for being the killer at this point.

(Note: I don't mean "problems" in the sense that DRDTdev has written anything poorly. What I mean is, my own perception of how the characters are conveyed has me currently raising red flags about how either of their stories will pan out as a killer or how the rest of the story will pan out without them. At the time the answer comes, I have full faith that I'll be satisfied with the results.)

Let's start by looking at Eden, the spotlight character of the end of this episode. After that whole heartfelt speech with the CGs and the tears and the brilliant voice acting and the everything, how could Eden possibly be the killer?! I'm the one who was trying to defend the possibility of her still being the culprit after her little rant last week, and while I could probably do that again with this speech, it just felt so... I dunno, sincere. You can really feel Teruko's reluctance to put her faith in Eden, but her choice to do it anyways. Teruko already showed signs of growth this episode by admitting that she can't always solve mysteries by herself, so could that be a sign that she might come around on the group faster than we initially anticipated? If Eden was the killer, it would crush Teruko so hard. Is there any recovering from that? Can we really prove David right?

On the other hand, Ace is, quite possibly, one of the most intertwined members of the cast. He's probably Levi and Nico's #1 correspondent, and he's up there for Hu as well-- assuming they both survive the chapter, I'm sure their animosity towards each other will only grow in Chapter 3. With Ace just having given up on Levi, having just been the target of Nico's battery and Hu's verbal lashes, can the story really work without him in it at this point? Eden hardly has connections with anyone other than Teruko-- Hu's probably next, but Eden probably ranks, like, fourth on her list after Nico, Ace, and David-- which should make her more expendable. Is it really Ace's time already?

However, despite my complaints, I also think that both of them could be really good options as the killer here-- the two options I prefer over anybody else.

Eden is the character who's most connected with Arei. She plays into the chapter themes of being a good person beautifully. She's a good person, a tragic figure, that killed not because she wanted anybody dead, but presumably because she had something back at home that she had to get back to at all costs. Killing her off would break Teruko-- would break everyone. With the reveal of everyone's secrets, next chapter is going to be a living hell, so why not make that hell worse by removing the biggest conflict de-escalator here? It would force other people to step up to bat. It would give everyone a chance to change, what Eden wanted for Arei most of all. Eden's development isn't an arc, per say, but a fall-- a reminder that even the "most good" people can do the unspeakable.

Meanwhile, Ace has perhaps the most obvious reason to kill someone: he literally almost fucking died himself. Ace's execution would be a reminder of the physical reality of the killing game. That actions have consequences. Even if the guy who started all those fights is dead and gone, you can still feel his presence lingering in the arguments between the others. The guy you underestimated most of all-- not for being kind, but for being dumb-- can send you into a multi-hour spiral in which you accuse even the sweetest of participants. Ace's development isn't an arc, per say, but a fall-- a reminder that reveling in your own distrust and anger might lead you to do the unspeakable.

For someone who's spent so long believing that Eden is the culprit of the chapter, it's really amazing how down-to-the-wire DRDTdev has made the end of the case, where either option feels so believable that it's like you can picture the rope in their hands. Whether my theories, old or new, were right or wrong, I am highly looking forward to watching next week's episode and discussing it with you all. See you on Friday-- just try not to freak out too much before then, alright? (/aff)

[itwoodbeprefect]

i'm revisiting sunflowers, the amsterdam episode of ted lasso, and it's tiny and only on screen for a second or so, so it's hard to make out, but-

this is at the very start of the episode, when the richmond team is playing (and getting their asses handed to them by) ajax, and the time stamps and scorer names of ajax's five goals are listed on that screen:

and again, hard to make out, but i'm pretty sure the text in the middle reads "52' REGENBOOG", and if so. rainbow??? i don't know anything about football, but i think i WOULD know something if a player had that name, and it would be that there is a player who has that name. but fictional ted lasso universe ajax has a player whose last name is dutch for rainbow? in the episode in which colin comes out to trent in amsterdam??? in THAT episode, there is a player on the field...... a rainbow player.......... and it's not even colin. homophobia. (obviously i jest, this is actually the greatest thing ever.)

[six-eyed-samurai]

Hello!! I saw ur taking requests, so u wanna know if you’d do a Giyuu x reader with koji and his little sister (if I remember correctly in the last fic, koji had a baby sister) where the little sister becomes bestfriends with a little boy at daycare but koji and Giyuu are being overprotective even tho she’s a baby😭😭 I thought this idea was so cute!! I’m really hoping you’ll have time to make this, make sure to drink water and thank you!!🤍🤍

-💽

SUMMARY: Like father like son - Giyuu and your eldest boy Koji are not happy at all your baby girl's made a new...ugh, boy friend. A/N: KYAAAAAAAH I can't believe you remembered, usually people only read 1 and 2. I'm so excited about this, it's so cute and TYSM for being my first request! Be sure to drink water too lovely! You can read this as a standalone fic, or part of: I, II, III WARNINGS: Fem reader, mentions of sex education. Post-war timeline SUNNY'S TAGLIST: @abadonkori @therabbitthatpostthings @ezekieleen (lemme know if you wanna be added or removed) MASTERLIST/PREVIOUS FICS My inbox is still open if you would like to request for the event!

Man-eating demons. Comrade deaths. Yet nothing was as scary to the stoic Water Pillar when his firstborn suddenly appeared behind him whilst he was polishing his sword on the engawa and announced the dreaded six words.

"Dad, I have something to ask."

Giyuu froze, brain momentarily drawing a complete blank. The sword clattered to the ground, forgotten as Giyuu slowly turned his head around. Dear Kami-sama, he did not think this day would come so fast. He was just almost six, for goodness' sake; he'd been praying it would be another six years before he'd have to answer. Where were you? Crap, crap. You had gone to go pick up Sumire from daycare and now he'd have to deal with this himself.

Alright, he could do it. It's been six years as a dad. He could pull it off.

Koji waited for his father to nod before continuing, the serious face he shared with Giyuu creased with a frown. "How do you know-"

"Koji, it's a normal part of puberty everyone goes through, so naturally you'd be curious, and I'm very happy you trust me enough to come talk to me about it, but whatever sex jokes Uncle Sanemi has been making you want explained you should go ask your mother because I don't think I'm good enough at explaining what adults do at night or how babies are made at this stage," Giyuu blurted out. Exactly like how he had rehearsed it - Giyuu privately congratulated himself for not messing it up.

Two dark blue eyes blinked at him. "What?"

"What?"

"I-" Koji shook his head in confusion. "I dunno what you're talking about and I don't care how babies are made."

"Then..." Giyuu wanted to sink into the ground. "What...did you want to talk to me about?"

"Sumire." Koji wrinkled up his nose in a disgusted expression when he said his sister's name, padding up to his father and plopping down next to him.

"...is she asking you about these things then? I'm not too sure how to explain the jokes to a two year old either but I can try. Or you could just tell her babies come from storks," Giyuu offered helpfully.

"Wait - what? No, that's not what I was going to - what?"

Ah, for the days when Giyuu didn't open his mouth to talk much and eventually embarrass himself. "...sorry, go on."

"Yeah sure." Koji seemed a little distracted, even for a six year old. "Y'know the daycare? She made a new friend."

"That's...nice." At least she isn't taking after Giyuu? What was the problem here and how could he stop his ears from burning red at his not once but twice blunder?

"It's a boy. They keep playing together, sharing meals, nicknames and stuff. She even gave him -" Koji shuddered, narrowing his eyes. "A matching bracelet."

"A...boy?" Giyuu had long retired from being a slayer after the war and he probably wasn't too good with fighting with one arm, but hey, he was polishing that sword for a reason. He couldn't believe how he never spotted it before: Sumire had kicked up a huge fuss at being sent to daycare originally but recently had seemed almost...ecstatically eager to go. Too eager.

His own eyes narrowed. "Tell me everything."

***

"How's Sumi?"

At the sudden question you glanced behind to where your husband was pressing his forehead into your back, one arm wrapped around your waist as you cooked dinner. Not unusual behavior, but didn't Giyuu just see his daughter a few minutes ago?

"Fine, pretty happy at the daycare all things considering." You slid the salmon onto a different plate, unable to keep the suspicion out of your tone. "At least we don't have to keep fighting another war just to get her out the door like last time."

"Koji says she's making friends there."

"Was he supposed to say anything else?" You rolled your eyes. Now you knew where this was coming from. Of course.

"I don't like her friend," Giyuu said plainly. He let go of you to help carry one of the dishes out of the kitchen with you, doing his one-armed best to assist you in setting the table.

"And why is that?" You nodded along, as if you didn't know why. How long would it be until Giyuu cracked? "Koji! Sumire! Time for dinner!"

"He's a boy. Someone trying to steal her away from us. He already gave her a bracelet!"

"Yuu. Yuu, look me in the eye right now." Once your husband finally turned to meet your face he could clearly see you were struggling to hold in your laughter. "One, you're a boy yourself. Two, she's, well, two. Three, Sumire gave him the bracelet."

"Yeah, but I'm her dad! So what if she's two? It's too early for her to fall in love. And a bracelet is basically an engagement jewelry already."

You couldn't help yourself anymore, doubling over in laughter at Giyuu's quiet whining. "Koji put you up this, didn't he?"

"He told me," Giyuu admitted. "But no boy's allowed around Sumi."

"Shion's not that bad of a kid," You countered. "It could be worse."

Giyuu nearly spat. "Wh-what? You know his name?"

"Obviously, Sumire won't stop talking about him."

"And not me?"

"Yuu, look at how overprotective you're acting right now and say that again." You bit down your giggles watching your husband scrunch up his face and attempt to find a way to defend himself as your two children ran in and took their seats.

"I'm not overprotective!"

***

Perhaps slightly protective. Nothing more.

At least Giyuu wasn't being as openly hostile as Sumire's elder brother, who was sitting judgmentally from the corner, glaring at Shion over his book. Giyuu wasn't glowering per se, but you would probably have to save the poor boy soon from under the weight of two penetratingly unnerving stares.

Sumire didn't notice, beaming with literal stars in her eyes at her playmate (Giyuu had been the one to invite him over, which was extremely fishy, which was why you had decided to stay and watch as well). "Hi, Shion-kun! Mama made mochi, wanna go eat?"

"Sure." The freckled face boy stepped through the doorway, following your baby girl into the kitchen. Giyuu eyed him from behind the steaming cup of tea. "Hi Tomioka-san! Is it true you used to be a samurai? Sumi-chan told me a lot about you!"

You strategically interrupted right then before Giyuu could say something awkwardly honest by dumping the plate of sakura mochi onto the table. "Help yourselves, there's plenty to go around!"

So on went the playdate, Sumire suggesting games to her new friend who did his best to act normal and not nervous under Koji's sarcastic quips and Giyuu's pointed stare, oblivious to the fact her brother and father weren't ready to give her up yet (a trait she clearly got from Giyuu) - despite the fact you had spent half an hour before this drilling into their heads Shion was not here to go kidnap Sumire.

You made the mistake of leaving to go clean up the mess in the kitchen later on, however, under the relieved thought that maybe Giyuu had gotten over his little temper tantrum over the boy. Big mistake, because next thing you knew-

"GIYUU WHY ARE YOU HAVING A DUEL WITH A THREE YEAR OLD-"

"He wanted to learn how to use a sword," Giyuu said blankly, pausing in his movements. It certainly seemed innocent and safe enough, seeing as they were using wooden swords and were outside. Sumire excitedly stood by Shion's side, ever the cheerleader.

But you knew your man and son a lot better than that. There was no way they hadn't planned this, not when they were sharing a look.

"I wanna try be like Tomioka-san! Sumi-chan said he used to fight demons and even fought their king. That's so cool!" Shion piped up excitedly. You were going to murder your overprotective husband for this later...if Sumire didn't beat you to it.

"See, Ma? It's all fine," Koji smirked from the sidelines. "Begin!"

***

Predictably it ended with Giyuu slapping Shion with the flat of his blade, causing a scraped knee as well as Giyuu muttering to the fallen "Don't you even think about doing anything to her" when Sumire panicked and rushed over to her friend.

Luckily you managed to usher Shion out to be picked up by his dad in a flurry of apologies, pleasantries and assurances that it was lovely having him over while Sumire burst into tears and asked him not to go yet (you heard Giyuu's almost inaudible "Hmph" when Shion too cried and said the same thing).

Giyuu and Koji were feeling pretty good about themselves, sharing a victorious glance at each other - Team Tomioka 1, Scum Boy 0 - until you slammed the doors shut, calmed down your precious Sumire with the promise of all the leftover mochi in the kitchen before bedtime and then turned around to fix the both of them with your intense glare.

"Koji! Grounded, now!"

"What did I do?!" Koji threw up his hands but stomped off to his room.

"I saw you push Shion, don't act innocent!" You grabbed Giyuu's arm and began to haul him off to the privacy of your bedroom. "And don't think I forgot about you as well, Tomioka Giyuu!"

Damn, you did forget how pathetically kicked puppy-like Giyuu could look when he was playing innocent. "I didn't intentionally beat him up, you know."

"I know you didn't, Yuu," you said sweetly. "But I didn't know you were into fighting with little kids as well!"

"I just don't want anyone taking away Sumi."

You groaned. Once again Giyuu has melted your heart into a slushy mess with his blunt sincerity and expression. You leaned into his hold, grudgingly allowing him to pull your head into his chest but hit him with your fist still. "You're still not supposed to pull that kind of stunt, alright? No one's taking Sumi away from us. You and Koji are really idiots sometimes."

"What if I told you Koji likes a girl too?"

Your head snapped up. "WHAT?!"

"Yeah. He met her at school. Someone named Yuma," Giyuu said casually, as if he didn't know you would be reacting this way. He hummed, playing with your hair. "That's why he took your mochi, by the way, to give it to her."

"Why didn't he tell me?!" You wailed, suddenly forgetting how you had scolded Giyuu for this exact behavior. "I'm his mom! He's growing up so fast!"

Giyuu attempted to continue with his revenge plan but ultimately failed: you both wound up cuddling the rest of the night disappointedly lamenting how fast time flies.

***

BONUS:

"Onii-chan, what are Mama and Daddy doing in there?" Sumire pressed her ear close to the door, munching on her dessert.

Koji froze. "Uh...babies come from storks, Sumi."

[novembermorgon]

After Aerion died, does Myrielle re-marry? And if she does, and her new husband already has kids, how would she, Maegor, and Aenys feel about them? If Myrielle gets pregnant, how do the twins feel about their potential half sibling?

think smarter not harder . have an affair with your brother in law so you can cash in later

i always kind of liked to think that in a scenario where aerion dies vaguely in line with how+when it happens in canon myrielle does remarry but more for a sense of security than because she's especially enthusiastic at the idea . she likes to feel as if she has something or someone to fall back on i think, and when aerion dies she kind of has the rug pulled out under her in that she doesn't really know where to turn or what to do or where to go . she has a place at court only through her sons then and when they marry she feels as if they too begin to slip away from her . so she scrambles to find that security again by remarrying

& the easiest most comfortable option for her is daeron - she's known him for more than half her life at that point and knows that they're fond of each other (maybe not in any super deep passionate soulmate way but there's a fondness there regardless) and so she locks in on that instead of trying to gamble with other men at court when she knows that it'd be tough to find someone that could avoid making her miserable. not to mention given that he'd be heir at that point he's kind of a step up from aerion just in terms of political value LOL . on a purely personal level i don't know if she would want to marry daeron . she doesn't think he matches her passion and she doesn't find him super attractive and she can't stand the drinking & whoring & general nothingsauce attitude he has towards everything, but again at this point she kind of just needs to settle down again so she can feel secure the way she did being married the first time

i ermrmmmmm . i haven't thought all that hard about daeron's timeline of events in this little universe so subject to change but i imagine he does marry kiera of tyrosh like in canon and she dies in childbirth (which seems kind of likely even in the canonsphere given her miscarriages + never being mentioned again + grrm's love for letting women die giving birth) so he does have vaella hanging around . which is funny because this means myrielle gets her princess daughter technically but again it's WRONG because she isn't hers biologically & vaella ..... hummm ... well in canon she's described as simple and as a fellow part of the club ☝️ i hc that to mean that she had some degree of autism which i don't think myrielle would be very equipped to handle . she doesn't have the patience or understanding so while she's not unkind or dismissive of her the way she is towards aerea i don't know if they'd really bond in any significant way . maybe vaella gets attached to her given she doesn't really have a mom here but myrielle wouldn't know how to give that energy back and so there's always a bit of a wedge inbetween them there .

maegor i feel is probably the most agreeable of the three here . both him and aenys are older than vaella would be so i don't think they'd really be friends in the traditional sense but maegor to me is very open and willing to really make that effort to be agreeable and to make things work so him and vaella are definitely the closest ... takes on the older brother role without any complaints .

unlike aenys who would probably just disregard the whole marriage & daeron & vaella altogether . i imagine he looks up to aerion so much and so strongly that the idea of myrielle remarrying, especially someone like daeron, really kind of peeves him off . it disturbs that already existing family dynamic and he already has a hard time handling aerion's death so it all just kind of piles up and he doesn't make an effort at all . you're not my real dad!!!!

not sure if they'd have any more kids though .. i talked about this in one of the latest asks i answered so it could either go the horror movie esque trapped forever as a wife and mother route or it just doesn't really go anywhere and they end up settling as is . i think given theyre both a bit older at this point it'd be a bit of a struggle but i don't know enough about pregnancy to say . <3 regardless the previous points stand for this potential half sibling . maegor is happy aenys is mad and has to go off and hit something really hard every time he thinks about it

[autisticlalna]

okay ive managed to get some sleep, let's try and explain this in a way that makes sense outside of my brain

so Viking and Ruby both have like. extensive multiverse going on. and all of how it functions is established in a different series, but is still relevant to Skyblock Kingdoms because of whatever the beans Cherruby is up to.

the most basic gist is: they have shared lore where Viking is the manifestation of space and Ruby is the manifestation of time, although i guess only when they're in the same world together? there's also an infinite number of Vikings and Rubys throughout the multiverse, and we have this info because of a version of Viking that has space powers and a version of Ruby that has time powers on Twitch SMP. this is also all connected to the clock and compass that Ruby has on Skyblock Kingdoms, so that's why this is getting upgraded to "oh god this is relevant and i need to explain it" rather than me going "HEY THIS IS WHY I CALL THEM SPACETIME SIBLINGS BTW :D"

for the more complicated explanation, I HAVE DRAWN SOME DIAGRAMS.

behold: a basic Rubyco and a basic VikingPilot. they're siblings! they're also universal constants, seeing as you can't have a functioning world without time and space and these two dinguses represent those foundational aspects. we have no idea how this happened, and 99% of them dont know either, or even know what their roles are. they're just hanging out.

also, like, if one or both of them permadies, stuff presumably explodes. so far this hasn't been like, relevant, but it's been brought up so i should probably include that tidbit somewhere.

along with Ruby and Viking, there's also the Clock and Compass-- the Clock belongs to Ruby, and the Compass belongs to Viking. if neither of them are in a universe together, then the Clock and Compass show up as separate entities. (also they're labeled Tempus and Locus in galactic when we saw them in Twitch SMP, but there was also a bit where the fandom was nicknaming a Ruby and a Viking Tempus and Locus so it gets a bit confusing.)

however, if one of them is missing-- like, say, there's only Ruby and there was never a Viking in that universe-- then the other sibling gets demoted from "load-bearing pillar of the universe" to "normal guy" and the job of stabilizing space and time is instead done by the Clock and Compass, just like if they were both gone. i think.

for any situation where it's only Viking or only Ruby you can disregard this chunk of their lore as "not relevant" - they're a pair, do not separate. this was also the part i was confused on before, and to be honest im still not sure if im getting it right because the phrasing was vaguer than i remembered. we'll see what happens when i start transcribing tsmp lore again.

ANYWAY. we know this because of these dorks:

...specifically the bottom two, but tRuby and tViking are also important here.

Sapphire and Navigator are... sort of a matching pair? Navigator's a mess, let's pretend he's paired with Sapphire. (Sapphire's actual counterpart Viking is missing in action.) they're also the only two we know of so far that a) know about their roles and b) have the powers to prove it.

Sapphire can reset the timeline at-will (mainly to bring tRuby back to life, but has also used this to drag Navigator back when he swapped out), and has knowledge of past and future. Navigator can swap himself and other people between universes, and has knowledge of things going on in other universes involving his counterparts. Sapphire can't leave the universe he's trapped in, and Navigator is bad at anything involving time.

however, neither of them are native to the Twitch SMP universe! we don't know where they're from, but Sapphire got put there as gay baby jail and Navigator pops in to check in on her. tRuby and tViking are also not native to that universe; they were originally from TwitchCon SMP, but Nav felt bad that they're from a short-lived world and transplanted them into TSMP. they're also the only other matching set we know of besides Nav and Sapph, which might be why tRuby is able to remember past timelines and why tViking is aware of things other Vikings have done. also removing them from their home universe was probably a bad idea for that universe's continued survival but it was literally about to end anyways, so,

Nav and Sapph also can't manifest a body outside of their home universe (???), so for gay baby jail to work there needed to be a Ruby for him to possess and, uh, there kinda wasn't one in TSMP. before Nav's intervention, there was the Clock and Compass keeping things stable. (probably a good thing, because tRuby dies a lot and tViking exploded. he got better.)

but out of the Vikings and Rubys we've seen so far, Nav and Sapph are kinda the outliers in category of "actually knowing about and being able to do stuff with their powers". god wait shit fuck this raises even more questions about Navigator but im not going to get into that right now. ANYWAY

so now we've got a mismatched pair! Cherruby isn't from SBK, but we don't know how it got here or what the world it left behind was like. there's a possibility that Cherruby has a corresponding Viking back home (bc she did mention missing family), but there's also moments pointing towards her being solo. also somehow they found the Clock and Compass and has been holding onto them, and they're under observation for reasons probably related to that.

Summertime, meanwhile, presumably has No Fucking Idea. without there being a Ruby native to SBK*, he's been demoted to Normal Guy status and therefore doesn't have to deal with any of this. maybe. it's, uh, getting kinda fuzzier now that the whole "had a flashback to Dominion" thing happened. god i have no idea what's going on with him

(* Cloneby got brought up, but i don't think ze qualifies considering ze was created partway through. and also i don't know if Avid can, like, do that. especially with Cloneby being an imperfect replica, and cc!Ruby drawing attention to the fact that Cloneby doesn't have the clock despite it being part of Cherruby's design.)

you can now see why i decided to include drawings bc otherwise this is an absolute brick of text. TWITCH SMP IS A SERIES WHERE SO MUCH HAPPENS IN IT.

[imthepunchlord]

Need Some Help with Miraculous Rewrite

Ok, so, spoilers for the future Miraculous rewrite, though probably not that surprising giving my preference and what I've talked about before. And I don't think it's going to spoil that much of the rewrite, so I think it's going to be ok for me to roll out this post and get some help.

Thinking on the Miraculous Rewrite, working on the timeline and future ideas, one thing I am torn on is on the secondary lead.

Probably unsurprisingly, it's going to be kwami swaps. There will be a few canon matches that do happen, either as they work or narrative wise need to stay, but a majority will be Miraculous with different people.

Marinette for sure will have the Cat. Partly because her and Plagg are going to be so fun to write, and it's one of my favorite kwami swaps for her; but mostly I do think it's going to offer her the most growth and it's going to be different to explore the different guidance Plagg can offer Marinette and how they work off each other. Even more so as, Plagg is THE foil to Marinette in terms of who he is, and both can play a part in how either grow.

Now the issue I've been struggling with is who is the Ladybug going to go to.

For this, working off Emilie and Amelie, Felix and Adrien are twin brothers, with Felix being older of the two, and is going to primarily work off his PV self (and how I perceived him). Adrien in turn will primarily work off his s1 characterization (that want for friends and being a little more sociable, a willingness to openly rebel and resist against his father, and being torn between what's right vs what he wants). Also neither of them (or Kagami) are sentimonsters. There are no feather babies here.

Now, my struggle is which Agreste should get the Ladybug, as both have their own pros and cons.

Felix would work off his old PV set up, from reluctant to be a hero to coming to embrace the role. And you got someone who's skeptical and pessimistic paired with a kwami who is optimistic and bubbly. Which can set up Tikki to be Felix's primary foil, and both can grow in how they work off each other. Potential cons, it would be a more clashing pair, which can have some comedic potential, but I can also see a lot of tension. And hero partnership wise, it won't be an immediate, easy click. It will become a solid partnership and an effective team, it's just going to have a rougher start with Felix's reluctance to be there, and Marinette will pick up on that quiet frustration even if he hides it. I also will say, I am going to explore that bad luck curse concept, only it's from Tikki forcing a spiteful Felix to get out there. So this is going to be a tenser start with a more flawed lead.

Adrien I would work off what I thought his initial arc and set up was going to be, with Adrien starting out treating the Miraculous for freedom and fun, but gradually getting more serious as a hero. In contrast to Felix, it'd be a more pleasant start over all, Adrien easily clicks with his partner and they become fast friends and work off each other well, and he clicks with Tikki quickly and easily. Even more so as Tikki fills the void his mom left, being affectionate and supportive of Adrien, though she does push for his growth and change in character (take initiative to help others, be more considerate, stand up to his father and have an actual conversation with him). The cons are more of a reverse of Felix, where despite the pleasant start, I would explore a sour path later, working off the fact that Adrien struggles with pressure and exclusion and has a tendency to quit. And Tikki will be another who adds pressure and expectation to his life. It will be an exploration of how much does Adrien genuinely want to be a hero, and at this time, I cannot promise that he would stay as one. That end is up in the air.

If it helps in the choice making, both are planned to get a Miraculous either way, it's just one will be a more major lead character and will get a Miraculous sooner. The other has to wait for "S2" at the earliest. To add to it, there is a potential plot bunny I have of the other twin discovering their brother is the hero, and the shenanigans of that discovery which will lead to their future Miraculous involvement. And depending on who's the civilian, that can have some polarizing responses (Adrien would be over the moon while Felix instead would be stressing about it), so this can be a factor to consider too.

I also need to stress, Adrienette will not be endgame in this Miraculous Rewrite. There may be initial crushes, but that's it. They will just be good friends. Picking Adrien thinking Adrienette will happen will not happen. This is more about the characters and how they will grow and work off each other than the ships. At this time, I'd say romance would just really take a back seat, I want it to be more friendship focused initially.

As I see the potential in both options as leads, working off Tikki, and as a potential partner for Marinette, and it needs to be decided before I can take things further, it'd be a big help to get others opinion/preference on the other major lead to follow.

[thewertsearch]

EB: i'm sorry karkat, i didn't realize we screwed up so bad. CG: ALRIGHT WELL CG: I WASN'T EXPECTING YOU TO MAN UP AND APOLOGIZE FOR IT, SO OK I'LL GIVE YOU CREDIT FOR THAT. [...] EB: i just feel kind of bad i fell asleep, i don't know what came over me. [...] CG: HEY, INOPPORTUNE NAPS HAPPEN IN THIS GAME.

I love that even at this early stage, Karkat keeps forgetting that he's supposed to be 'mad' at John.

CG: I MANAGED TO STAY AWAKE FOR SEVERAL WEEKS STRAIGHT, I DIDN'T WANT TO LET MY GUARD DOWN FOR A SECOND. [...] CG: AFTER IT WAS ALL OVER, AND WE RETREATED IN FAILURE CG: I FOOLISHLY DID. CG: AND THAT'S WHEN I SAW HIM. [...] CG: JACK.

Poor Karkat probably thought he was back from Alternia with a vengeance - which would be doubly painful, since Karkat liked Jack, and was completely against Exiling him.

CG: HE WAS WEARING A RING I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE, CERTAINLY NOT ONE BELONGING TO OUR QUEENS. [...] CG: HE WORE IT ON HIS ONE HAND, WHICH WAS COVERED IN OUR MUTANT BLOOD.

If Jack had got that blood from the troll session, we'd have a pretty good idea who it belonged to.

But Jack arrived with that blood. It came from the human session, and could have belonged to anyone there.

The narrative is giving it a lot of focus, though - even in Jade: Enter, the camera kept lingering on Jack's arm. This is 'important' blood, which will be shed in a pivotal moment later on.

Move over, Bilious Slick - there's a new god in these parts.

CG: I PRETTY QUICKLY DETERMINED THAT HE WAS FROM YOUR SESSION, NOT OURS. [...] CG: AND I WAS SORT OF RELIEVED CG: RELIEVED BUT ALSO ENRAGED CG: I'M SURE YOU KNOW THE FEELING. [...] EB: not really.

This is how you can tell John's not a programmer yet.

Get back to me when you've been debugging for two hours, and you realize you missed a free(). Then you'll know exactly what Karkat is feeling.

CG: I'VE GOT TO REWIND THE TAPE ON THIS CLUSTERFUCK AND FIGURE OUT WHAT WENT WRONG. EB: yeah, i should get going too. EB: my friend is pestering me, and i doubt she likes to be kept waiting. EB: (she is sort of the bossy type!) CG: WHY WOULD I CARE ABOUT YOUR DUMB HUMAN FRIEND AND HER PETULANT, MEANINGLESS DEMANDS.

'What went wrong' is the girl who's messaging John right now.

I cannot wait for Karkat to figure out who actually caused the Mistake, and confront Vriska directly. It'll be cathartic, I think, for his rage to be directed to someone who's deliberately responsible for their problems.

Karkat is no match for Vriska, of course - but he doesn't necessarily have to be. He's a leader, and once he starts yelling about who actually got them trapped in the Veil, the other trolls are sure to take his side, no matter how annoying he is.

Vriska is extremely resourceful, but if Karkat rallies all the surviving trolls against her, her victory is far from guaranteed. She'll be up against Terezi, Kanaya and Sollux - not to mention Feferi, who's recently proven she's not as much of a pushover as you'd expect.

This is all hypothetical, of course. Before we can talk about Vriska's plans, we need to understand what the fuck she's playing at here. It's possible that this was ultimately for everyone's benefit - but I think it's more likely an act of hubris. Vriska seems bent on fighting Jack directly, so I think she's messing with his timeline to make him vulnerable in some way. That's not how the Alpha works, Vriska!

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Okay, a good amount of time has passed, and after having seen this post by @weretiger-be-my-horse , I've been turning it over and over in my brain going absolutely feral over this concept. I need to expand upon my thoughts on this idea and all the evidence there is pointing towards it, whether that be actual tangible things, or purely strong vibes I have.

First of all, full disclaimer: I did not like the season 5 finale, and how it wrapped up the DoA arc. To say that I "disliked" it is putting it extremely lightly, in fact -- I absolutely hated it, and I am still, to a degree, in disbelief that I actually even watched those 24 minutes with my own two eyes, and that it somehow wasn't a complete fever dream. While I'm not going to go in long-winded detail into all the ways that I feel like the finale almost completely bastardized all of its featured characters and destroyed any and all buildup we've had going on in this arc for 50 some chapters now, because that's not the main point of this post, I will not make any attempt to hide the fact that the theory-crafting I'm about to pose here is partly influenced and prompted by how much I hated the finale, and how much I desperately hope that it will not end up being manga canon. Therefore, if you enjoyed the finale — and that's fine! — and don't want to read any negativity about it, then I would not recommend reading any further (I mean, you've probably already left by this point, which is fair lol), While obviously it's important that I be as objective and unbiased as possible when explaining my thoughts, some of my negative feelings about the writing will be a part of this analysis, even if this isn't going to be a full-blown rant. Just know that if you proceed.

With that out of the way, let me continue.

So. In the aforementioned post, the theory presented is that the anime may be operating on an alternate timeline, and that this will become evident once we read the upcoming October chapter, wherein things will go completely differently post-chapter 110 than they do in the final episode — probably for the worse, with the s5 finale intending to lull us into a false sense of security and make us assume that everything in the manga arc finale will wrap up as smoothly and consequence-freely(? lol) as it did in the anime one. It also suggests that the Fukuchi we see at the very end that sskk are fighting came from the manga timeline, where he won, and that he used the Book to jump to a timeline where he lost, the anime one, proven by the fact that this Fukuchi is wearing a mask with the same design on it as the mask Fukuchi is wearing on the chapter 110 DoA color spread/title page.

First of all, I want to note the fact that it's not just the mask design that's the same: the entire outfit is roughly more or less the same as well. It's not completely 1-to-1, because the anime can never fully match the intricacies of Harukawa's beautiful outfit designs, and the Fukuchi in this scene has the kimono half-off because of the... super saiyan mode he's in, but most all of the main pieces of clothing are there. Any small inaccuracies could also be attributed to the fact that Harukawa probably didn't have this finalized art ready back when this episode was being made, so the animators wouldn't have had the complete design to work off of. But in general, because it's all so similar, I think we can quite confidently say that the ending episode Fukuchi is meant to be the one from this manga art.

Also, people have pointed this out, but it's worth mentioning that the mask Asagiri wore at Anime Expo in July was referencing this Fukuchi. It's not a crucial detail, but it just proves more that Asagiri is a gigantic fucking troll, and that he clearly wanted to draw attention to this Fukuchi design. It's important. He describes the mask here as made in the motif of an ellipses inside a speech bubble... could that perhaps be referencing meta aspects, like the Book?

Next, I want to talk about the even bigger elephant in the room, which to me is the most damning and undeniable piece of evidence there is of the anime operating on a completely separate timeline from the manga:

This Fucking Hand™️

As we all know, in the anime, Fyodor injures his hand when the password input device blows up, and as we all know, this does not happen in the manga. In the last episode, Dazai claims that the final nail in the coffin of his impromptu plan to kill Fyodor relied on this hand injury: because Fyodor couldn't pilot his escape helicopter himself, he would ask one of his Meursault vampires to do it for him, unaware that Bram and thus this vampire was now on the ADA's side, and said vampire could kill him while his guard was down.

Ignoring how utterly stupid and contrived this plan is when you stop and think about it for more than two seconds, the fact of the matter is that something that initially seemed like nothing more than an odd but inconsequential anime original addition ended up snowballing into being the entire reason one of the big bads was brought down. If Fyodor hadn't hurt his hand, he wouldn't have needed another pilot, and so the traitor vampire wouldn't have had an opportunity to get near him and kill him without him expecting it even though said vampire was presumably with him as they were leaving Meursault, and was probably already a traitor by then, so there was plenty opportunity for him to still die. not to mention by Chuuya's hands at literally any time he wanted to, because Chuuya was coherent the whole time. Also there's absolutely no way Dazai could have known exactly what Ranpo would do, no matter how smart he is and how much he trusts him. idk it's fucking dumb, just roll with it. Therefore, putting aside all other variables for now, we can conclude that, on the most basic level, this signifies that no hand wound = no death.

And let me tell you, this hand wound bothers me. It really, really does. Because they focus on it a LOT — they go out of their way to draw attention to it MULTIPLE TIMES, from the moment it first happens to the end of the season. Fyodor even talks about it to himself, about Dazai being able to cause him tangible, visible, bodily harm, (something that, again, as far as we've seen, has never happened in the manga). Hell, even after Fyodor's death, they're still drawing attention to it, because his right arm is all of him that survives, and Dazai picks it up and gives it to Nikolai to do his hilarious sad little gay fondling of it played completely straight even though there's nothing straight going on here at all! It's like it's a big red flashing sign at all times going "you see this injured hand? This is important. Are you picking up that it's important? Are you taking note of it?" Why is that? Obviously, it serves to give us the lore crumbs about Fyodor and "that man", but that's hardly the main, much more glaring reason, as I've already mentioned.

Fyodor doesn't hurt his hand in the manga. Fyodor won't die here in the manga. I am so dead serious by this point about this, and it's not just simply the fact that this was absolutely not at all the time for him to die, or the fact that his hand is the reason for his death in the anime in and of itself, but how much EMPHASIS they place on this, and on the hand in general. What would be the point of adding something like this, if it's not meant to alert us to the fact that it has a major impact on how the story plays out? We all know Bones: they struggle to get right and include everything that's already there in the source material; they would never go out of their way to add something this noteworthy if there wasn't a very good reason for it, if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I've seen a few people bring up the fact that Fyodor gets shot in the shoulder by Sigma and that that could lead to the same outcome in the manga, but I disagree: although he has blood on his shoulder in the manga, it seems like the bullet just grazed the top of it, because his arm and hand appears completely functional afterwards (not hanging limp by his side or anything). But that doesn't even matter, because this isn't even about the semantics/logistics of how the hand wound caused Fyodor's death because again, it's a stupid outcome, or what could serve as a substitute in the manga — thematically, this is a textbook example of the butterfly effect. Countless parallel universes exist within this series, ones where even the most minute differences lead to a majorly different outcome: this just happens to be one of them. There's no reason to think it isn't, and there's no reason to not think that the anime wants us to clue into the fact that things only went as smoothly as they did on the Meursault side because of this wound; in other words, that things will go very differently in the manga thanks to the absence of said wound. They wouldn't have added it in the first place and put such clearly deliberate emphasis on it otherwise.

Things are going to happen very differently in the manga, at least when it comes to the Meursault crew (but then, if you assume that, you then naturally assume it all will be very different). This is the only conclusion one can come to with the presentation of this anime-only wound, combined with the fact that parallel universes are a very real thing in BSD.

I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent, so bear with me. I play a lot of visual novels, and although such concepts aren't really as original now as they were a while ago, some of my favorite and some of the very best VNs out there are the ones that break the fourth wall and make the visual novel branching route format directly intertwined with the story: you know, the ones where the characters go "if only I had done things differently, maybe everything would have turned out better...!" in a wink wink nudge nudge moment, and the ones where the characters are aware of the different timelines, even, or even have the ability to gain information from their selves in said alternate timelines to influence events in their current one (I'm intentionally not naming the games I'm thinking of for the sake of spoilers, but if you know, you know lmao). It gets very meta in this regard, and this is how I started viewing BSD through the lens of ever since I first learned about Beast: like a visual novel with many branching routes, and only a few routes that feel entirely "right".

When I first read Dazai's Entrance Exam, I was struck by how unnerving the ending sequence in the abandoned hospital felt. Obviously, Kunikida's internal struggle over Sasaki's actions and motives is him still desperately clinging to his ideal world that does not exist, but the specific type of phrases he uses — "who is wrong?" "[who is] the cause of all this?" "there has to be an ideal world" "there has to be something, I'm sure of it" "There must have been something we could have done!" — and the framing of the scene in general, is eerily reminiscent of a bad ending in a visual novel, to me. There's a haunting, looming, bleak sense that a different outcome could have been achieved, if different decisions had been made, or if things outside of anyone's control had been different... and we know that this is true, because in Beast alone, Kunikida never goes through the Azure Messenger incident, because Dazai doesn't have his entrance exam. Hell, you could even consider the anime's version of the Azure Messenger arc an alternate timeline in of itself, if you really wanted to, long before we even arrive at season 5.

When it comes to Beast, this timeline has almost the opposite feeling of what I described above, that I've also encountered in visual novels: the idea of a "good route" or "good ending" that still doesn't feel quite earned, or as perfect as one would expect. Beast is presented as the "ideal" timeline purely for one sole reason: Oda is alive. It is the only timeline where he's alive, and keeping Oda alive is the ultimate goal Dazai wants to achieve, the only reason this timeline exists; therefore, disregarding all else, Beast should be the best timeline, because Oda's death is the greatest devastation in the series to date. We all want him to live, so why wouldn't the timeline where he does be the best one? And yet... of course, it isn't. Dazai is alone, and steeped in darkness and loneliness without Oda, and dies by the end of the story for Oda's continued living. Atsushi has Kyouka still, but he's suffering and more traumatized, and unable to heal while stuck in the mafia, and neither can Kyouka. Akutagawa is living a much better life in the ADA... but without his sister, and without what he has from his bond with Atsushi in canon, that isn't replicated in Beast. And Oda... Oda is alive, and he has his children and his novel, but there is a feeling that he is aimless, that something in his life is missing. He has everything he ever wanted, but all that means nothing without what he truly needs: Dazai, and his time with Dazai and Ango at the bar. In this way, things going well and us getting what we want — in this case, Oda living — goes against how it's supposed to be, the natural order, which is why it feels so hollow. In the specific visual novel I'm thinking of here as a comparison (again, shoutout if you know), there's an alternate ending that involves you inputting information you gain at the end of the game very early on in the game, wherein the protagonist now has memories of the future and is able to bypass and prevent all of the events that take place normally. This means that people who die or are hurt somehow in general are saved from that fate, and nothing bad ever occurs; everything wraps up neatly and nicely... but again, there's an undeniable, unsettling feeling of emptiness, of a victory that rings hollow, because what's the point if everything is simply handed to you easily, where's the sense of accomplishment, without any struggles to achieve said victories, or any growth along the way? How can it feel earned if one doesn't have to, in Dazai's words, "scream within the storm of uncertainty, and run with flowing blood"?

You can probably already see where I'm going with this.

This finale feels weird. Really, really weird. It feels too cheap, too simple, too unsatisfying. So much so, in fact, that for almost the entire runtime, as I was bombarded with resolution upon resolution one after another, I kept thinking "There's no way this can be real. Where's the catch? When is the "gotcha!" moment gonna happen? The "it was all a dream" reveal?". And this isn't just because I hated the writing, and that it really did feel like a fever dream watching fanfic levels of bad (actually, that's an insult to fanfic writers, tbh; they could do better) — no, it genuinely feels so incredibly fake. Even upon rewatching it and already knowing what happens, my brain still naturally keeps expecting some kinda of "sike, you THOUGHT!" moment to suddenly appear. It just.... feels "too good to be true". Dazai and Chuuya come out unscathed, and it's revealed that they were never in any real danger to begin with. Fyodor, one of our biggest threats, is dealt with supposedly for good (I say "supposedly" only because of the Jesus line, but if anything imo, I think that's just a hint that this won't be the canon ending in the manga, so in a sense he's going to "come back to life"), and Nikolai seems somewhat at peace with his death. The other biggest threat, Fukuchi, is also dealt with, and he and Fukuzawa get their final moment together of closure. Yes, Sigma is left in Meursault don't even get me started on how angry this alone makes me, and Fukuzawa loses Fukuchi, but overall, everything is portrayed in a positive light, and any negatives or losses are quickly glossed over. Everything is tied up nicely, neatly, and smoothly. ...And that is exactly what makes it feel so wrong, and hard to trust in.

I'm not sure if this will make sense, but to me, the finale is so incredibly poorly written that it almost feels.... intentional. It's so bad to the point of feeling self-aware in how bad it is, how unrealistically happy and convenient an ending it is. It had to end this neatly in order to rush to wrap up this arc for the season finale and not leave the last episode on a cliffhanger — which imo is chiefly the main reason it turned out this way, and, if this whole theory is true, Asagiri just used it to his advantage — and I'm not saying this was probably an effect Bones had in mind intentionally, I'm sure they just threw shit at the wall and went with whatever stuck, maaaaybe with some suggestions/approval from Asagiri, but the result is that you have a conclusion that contradicts so much of what was set up before and goes against so many character arcs, making some characters so out of character and even regressing in their development Dazai. I'm talking about Dazai abandoning Sigma, because he would never; hashtag #NOTMYDAZAI. Also Nikolai, Nikolai for most of that is so ooc I can't even begin to describe it oh my god. Everyone is OOC to a degree though lmao, and opens so many plot holes, to the point that it's impossible not to watch all that and get the feeling that it is subtly saying to you "did you really think it could be this easy? It feels wrong, doesn't it? It doesn't feel satisfying. It feels unearned." I find it incredibly interesting and suspicious in particular that they confirmed multiple theories people had about soukoku in Meursault: that Chuuya slowed the elevator's fall so that Dazai wouldn't die from it, that Chuuya slowed down the bullet so that it only penetrated Dazai's skin and not his skull, and that the both of them used Fyodor's camera angle to their advantage because they knew he wouldn't be able to see certain things from his view. I'm not saying that Asagiri trawled BSD twitter and tumblr after those chapters dropped for the most popular theories before the final episode was made lmao, there was no time for that (imagine though lol—), but I do think it's highly likely that he already had in mind exactly what theories would be made about these parts (I mean, the evidence for the gun scene was all there), and that Dazai rattling them off in his long monologue to Fyodor at the end is essentially him speaking to the audience and going "yeah, that's what you would predict, right? Those are the clichés, after all", much like him suggesting earlier that he can maybe bring Chuuya back to himself with a few moving words and the power of friendship, and Fyodor using the split personalities trope to fool Sigma. We expect these tropes to be true. Of course we'd fall for them, as Fyodor tells Sigma, especially if the evidence is right there. But Asagiri himself has explicitly said that he likes doing the opposite of what people expect. And so just because people predicted correctly with the three things I mentioned in this timeline... doesn't mean they'll be true in the manga's. Things happened how we wanted and expected it to, and everything turned out happily. So we can relax now, right? Everything will work out just as easily in the manga, right? Or... is the reason most of this finale feels so fake and unsettling and unsatisfying because it's meant to lull us into a false sense of security before all our heroes lose in the manga? Because deep down, we don't want an ending that's this simple, because we'd rather have a conclusion where our characters have struggled more and grown more and come out the better for it, and we know it?

After rewatching the episode a lot, and watching some other videos, and doing a lot of thinking, I am pretty confident in suspecting that the only part of this finale that is actually from manga canon, aside from Aya jumping off the building of course, is Fyodor and Nikolai's exchange after Fyodor leaves Meursault — specifically, them talking about Fyodor leaving Sigma behind, and their "new game" and Nikolai being excited at the prospect of it. This little conversation actually feels in character for them, and it's easy to tell this when contrasting it with everything that happens immediately after, wherein Fyodor is fatally stabbed, and Nikolai, completely at odds with what he was just talking about, just... stands there and watches Fyodor die while Dazai monologues lmao. I'm not sure if the helicopter is still a factor, but I would bet good money on Fyolai getting out of Meursault being manga canon, and that Dazai and Chuuya getting out as well and killing Fyodor + everything with FukuFuku, is part of the anime original ending, in order to wrap up everything positively. It makes much more sense if you think about, in reality (aka in the manga), Dazai and Chuuya still being left behind in Meursault (where they can eventually try to get Sigma), because none of it was an act and things did not go according to plan, and Fukuchi having an entirely different goal that doesn't feel so stupid and contradictory to his character, and Fukuzawa possibly dying — everyone seemingly loses, with Aya still being the last hope, perhaps by awakening her ability like we all speculated.

There's a youtuber I watch who covers BSD in-depth, despite being an anime-only (she reads the respective manga content after each season, though). Going into this finale, she knew about the fact that the anime had overtaken the manga, though she didn't know where the cutoff point was; despite that, however, she made predictions about what was from the manga so far and what was anime original, and it was almost entirely spot-on, based mostly on what she basically described as "anime original dialogue." She talked about how you can always tell when dialogue is veering into the realm of anime-original, because the sentences are very short, choppy, and slightly out of character, but generic enough to not be TOO out of character, and so that anyone can easily write said lines, even if they're not extremely familiar with the character like the original author would be. And when I heard this explanation, everything clicked — because so much of this finale has dialogue like that. The Fyolai scenes just feel peppered with it, around the lines I mentioned earlier, the Dazai dialogue does too, and ESPECIALLY shit at the end like Fukuchi and Fukuzawa exchanging the cliche death lines to end all death lines: "Are you there? I'm a little tired." "Rest up." That just isn't Bungou Stray Dogs. That isn't Asagiri. BSD is cheesy at times, yes, but it isn't like this; it's smarter. The dialogue is smarter, the explanations/plot twists are smarter, Asagiri is smarter, and the aforementioned youtuber I watched agreed. She's a pretty casual fan of the series, so if even she could pick up on these things, I think it speaks volumes.

I mentioned this briefly earlier, but this theory makes sense if you consider that this situation probably came about because of Bones wanting two seasons back-to-back when they did, and this arc being as long as it is. Season 3 aired in 2019, and I imagine Bones would have wanted season 4 in 2020, and might have then been willing to wait a bit longer for season 5 in order for more of this arc's manga chapters to come out — but then covid happened. Because of that, season 4 was delayed to 2023, creating the longest gap we've had between seasons, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the delay made them want season 5 right together with it, after getting so far "behind", so to speak. S4 was announced in November of 2021, and roughly around that time, Asagiri was finishing up writing the plot of the DoA arc. If Bones came to him sometime in late 2021 and said they wanted two seasons now (so basically, one giant two cour season), Asagiri would know that not only of course would this arc not be finished publishing in the manga for a very long time yet, but that roughly 20ish episodes would not be enough to cover it all to the end, with this arc being longer than any arc the anime has adapted to date. Because of all this, and the arc manga chapters being nowhere near fully drawn to completion, he'd have to make a decision about what to do, and what to give Bones. Without ending season 5 on a massive cliffhanger that wouldn't be resolved for years until an eventual season 6, the only other option would be to rush towards an anime-original ending for the DoA arc.... and for Asagiri to take advantage of that, and integrate it into BSD's lore. Thereby creating a truly unique cross-media experience that utilizes the different mediums to create multiple timelines, that could make both the anime and manga interact with each other and become part of a bigger picture (not that you'd need to see both to get the full experience, mind you, just that it'd provide a little bonus if you did).... and would without a doubt be Asagiri's biggest surprise yet.

...I feel like at this point I'm starting to ramble, and my evidence become more and more incoherent and less substantial lmao, so I should probably end this post. 💀 Thank you if you've read this far, and hopefully it made some semblance of sense, despite not being structured very well; I know I promised at the start to try to be as objective as possible and curb my negative feelings, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded in that regard. If it weren't for the Fukuchi thing and the Fyodor hand thing, I probably wouldn't take how wrong and strange and bad the finale feels to me as serious evidence about it being an alternate timeline, especially since I seem to be one of the only people who actually hates all of it.... but combined with everything else, I am just so convinced of this theory being true. It started off as pure copium, but as more time has gone on, I fully, 100% believe in my bones (ha) that there is no way that finale is the same Bungou Stray Dogs I know and love, for so many reasons. It just isn't. It can't be. I know BSD better than this, I know Asagiri better than this, and I know that it's absolutely in the realm of possibility for him to cook up this whole scheme to completely blindside us with in the upcoming chapters, because that's exactly the kind of shit Mr. "Please Be Surprised!" himself would pull. If I end up being completely wrong, I guess I'm wrong, and you can laugh at me all you want then.... but I just know that ages ago people were teasing the idea of the anime operating on a different timeline from the manga, and I truly do think that only now are we finally seeing that idea come to fruition, as a setup for Asagiri going full-bore insanity with the Book in the upcoming arc(s). if I and the OP of that theory end up right, this will be the wildest time in the BSD fandom's history.

Like. I cannot even emphasize how hard they are trolling us at this point. Something is going on. Something is being cooked over there, the likes of which we've never seen before... and I don't think any of us are ready for it.

Oh yeah, and one last thing of note: both Fyodor and Nikolai here have their right arms hidden from view. Is that alluding to anything? I'm not sure. I also think that since chapter 110 was so short, next chapter will likely be 110.5 instead of 111, and if that's the case, this title spread could still technically be associated with the next chapter... wherein we might see this Fukuchi, who ends up wreaking havoc, right before he jumps to the timeline in the anime, as we see him at the end of the s5 finale.

I guess we'll find out on Tuesday.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hey Raven, how are you, ask, what do you think of the theory that Yuu and Silver are siblings (I had read this theory but I don't know which user was) that when they were babies they were separated,

Lilia found Silver and Yuu went to another world, somehow they must have met before as Silver said that he felt like he had met Yuu before

Hi hi! ^^ At the time of writing this response I’m actually feeling a little sick but I’m sure that I’ll have recovered by the time this post goes live! As for the theory… I don’t have any particularly strong thoughts on it other than, “it’s a fun idea, but probably unlikely in the grand scheme of things”.

I think the devs wouldn’t go out of their way to give Yuu any big components to their backstory (as they would interfere with the “self insert” nature of Yuu as a vessel for the player character). Making Yuu a sibling to a main cast boy would be major since it would recontextualize many relationships (particularly for Silver and/or Lilia yumes), and that wouldn’t be a… good move to say the least 💦 I maintain that the devs wouldn’t want to jeopardize the relatively “blank slate” or OC-friendly appeal of Yuu’s role in such a way. (Yes, I realize this is an answer that I give very often. The reason I repeat it so much is because I strongly believe this is a core part of the TWST experience.) It would also potentially call into question the backstories we’re presented with of other interpretations of Yuu in the manga and light novel adaptations.

It’s true that Silver says he feels like he has met Yuu before! The conditions of his UM also stipulate that he can only enter the dreams of people who share a bond with him. Since Silver appeared in Yuu’s dream in book 7, this this would support the “they’re siblings” theory. What’s unclear here, however, is where Yuu’s dream ends and where Mickey’s dream begins (since it’s implied their dreams are linked). Mickey has dialogue at the end of book 6 stating that he has seen a boy with silver hair around before—but Yuu has never mentioned seeing Silver wander in their dreams.

It’s possible that maybe Yuu saw Silver around campus before, and that’s where their recognition comes from. The issue is that such a thing wouldn’t form a super strong bond (certainly not a bond that matches Silver’s relationship with Sebek or Lilia, two people whose dreams they do enter), though I guess the strength of the bond wad never specified as a condition for Meet in a Dream. If the “Silver and Yuu are siblings” theory was true, then the same logic still holds, no? Assuming they’re separated at birth (because Yuu has no memories of Twisted Wonderland), Silver wouldn’t have any real bond to speak of with Yuu to establish a solid dream connection. If Yuu and Silver were siblings separated far later in life, why wouldn’t Yuu remember Twisted Wonderland and why wouldn’t Silver (or Lilia, for that matter) recall growing up with/raising them?

Just. A lot of logistical or timeline details would come into question 🤔 Maybe I’m not getting the full scope of the theory since I’m being asked about the concept alone rather than to look at any evidence or implications provided which support the theory.

[likeadevils]

Inspired by @youareinlove's blog today: timeline wise, which songs could be about Harry?

obligatory i don't know anything, i'm just a guy, most songs are inspired by emotions more than people, etc etc

red (and like all of these are controversial for one reason or another):

treacherous: written-- not just recorded, confirmed to be written, like. 12 days after they met and like the day after she got back from a trip to new york with him. so.

ikywt: okay so this one's complicated-- the first draft (which was just the chorus, iirc) was written around january 2012, months before she met harry, and probably about jake. then, in april, her and harry have a month long Thing that ends with him making out with another girl on tour. in june, taylor brings trouble to max martin and shellback and reworks it. then, in fall 2012-2013, taylor and harry both heavily imply it was about harry a few times. so i think it was either outright written about him, or the irony of writing a song called i knew you were trouble, then a couple months later writing "this slope is treacherous, this daydream is dangerous, this slope is treacherous, and i like it" was just so similar to the plot of ikywt that they both called it a wash

come back be here: again written-- or at least finished being written, we don't know the date she got the first idea-- right after she got back from a trip to new york with him, which left in him leaving for tour and her going back to LA. i also think that trip to new york was a last minute plan because he needed to be in new york for work and she just decided to go along with him-- to my knowledge she didnt need to be in new york for any reason aside from like, having a crush.

babe: this was either written at least a month before they met or a couple months after that first fling (that ended with him making out with another girl). i lean towards summer cause pat monaham (her cowriter) tweeted about being surprised she liked one of his songs the night before her and harry met, but that's like wishy washy

the very first night: no idea when this was written, but probably around the same time as babe.

honorably mention to message in a bottle that i assumed was about him on first listen, but then she makes a reference to it in this interview that was probably conducted before they met. and to everything has changed, which was written after they met but probably not about him, and run which was also written after they met but like a month after they broke up and probably not about him.

1989

style: ✅

ootw: ✅

ayhtdws: written like 10 days after they broke up

iwyw: ✅

wildest dreams: could be about harry, could be about some hookup in 2013, could be about matthew gray gubler of all people, almost definitely not about alexander skarsgard though-- selena said she was there when taylor wrote wildest dreams and selena and taylors schedules just didnt match up around that time.

hygtg: so they first got together in april 2012, and then they got back together in october 2012, which is 6 months. also it was recorded like two weeks after they broke up which makes the bridge just so funny. remind me how it used to be 🔪 pictures in frames of kisses on cheeks 🔪 and say you want me 🔪

this love: written like. 2-3 weeks after they got back together. maybe a month tops. we don't know exactly when they got back together but it seems like late september/early october-ish and this was written oct 17

i know places: so like. it was written a solid year after they first dated, taylor was very much seeing other people, she had just called things off with the founder of snapchat and his team was writing nasty articles about her being clingy or whatever. so like, it could very much be an imagined prince. but the prince does have green eyes. and she did wear that fox sweater on the central park date

clean: i mean harry thinks its about him but ten months before feb 2014 isn't really anything for any muse. i still lean towards harry but the jake thing isnt insane

wonderland: ✅

slut: i think this another daydreaming song, and it was written at least a year after they'd broken up because of public scrutiny. but one of the first times they hung out was at a pool party in LA (at justin bieber's house funny enough). and everyone wanted him, that was her crime. so like his ghost is definitely there

say don't go: ✅

now that we don't talk: ✅

suburban legends: i mean it could be about a high school love that kinda set her on the path to get into all these on and off again relationships. but its probably about harry.

is it over now: ✅

onwards:

idk man theres shades of him throughout folklore and evermore and midnights, but those have become a bit murkier with the matty of it all. but notable songs:

either harry thinks gold rush is about him or the location scout for his satellite mv is the funniest person on earth

question samples ootw so he is the most likely muse, but again theres the matty of it all.

[hannahhook7744]

Rise of Red Rewrite Brainstorming;

I'm rewriting Rise of Red to make it fit into my version of the disney descendants and am at the brainstorming phase. But I'm stuck on a couple of things and need feedback.

Here are the differences first:

1. So first off, Bridget and Ella didn't go to school at the same time (because I'm trying to make it fit up in the timeline and match the other things we knew previously).

This is because I'm pretty sure it was mentioned the heroes went to school together at some point and if Alice is old enough to have a teenage daughter in the same high school as Ella's oldest son then she's likely around Ella's age. Which means they probably went to school around the time, either together or a few years apart.

(Whether that be college or high school doesn't really matter).

It also fits Bridget having three kids instead of one in my au too.

Right now I'm figuring out if her husband was at school with her and was her only friend in Ella's place or if she was friendless in school, and ended up marrying him so she could obtain the throne.

Either way she'll have her siblings but I'm not sure how they become strained as of yet.

2. Uliana's gang still exists at the same time as Bridget.

Did the math to figure out if this would work and it ended up working.

Peter Pan takes place in 1904 from what I can tell (going off the movie that is).

Alice in wonderland takes place sometime in mid to late 1800s.

The little mermaid takes place mod to late 1800s.

And Morgie's mom, Morgana Le Fay is a part fae in some tales. Fae live longer than humans so it's entirely possible for her to have a young child around the same time.

Assuming Maleficent, Hades, and maybe Persephone were de-aged around that time the group can both exist and go to school around the same time as Bridget.

They also all still go to the old version of Merlin Academy (it still exists today, it just split off from Auradon Prep and is now a Camelot exclusive school).

Also Hook is still a pirate, after getting kicked out of his Naval School, and has been to the Neverland but he doesn't have his Hook yet.

This is possible because his mother, as shown in Jake and the Neverland Pirates, was a teacher at Neverland Academy. So he's been to Neverland and is a somewhat feared pirate (not too much so though because he's still a teenager and Peter Pan won't exist for another few years yet).

Also Hook has a brother here because I remember somewhere he had one and I thought it would be fun. He also is friends with the three Smee brothers (one of which isn't a pirate since Smee has a great nephew in Auradon in 'the school of secrets' web series) but isn't as close with them as he is with Uliana's gangs (because they and the few other pirates hanging around are mainly just lackeys to him atm).

3. The girls (and their friends) don't just travel to one time period.

Did this so they could both still see teen Ella even though I have no idea what to do with that plot point just yet.

4. Chad is missing for a few years (cause I started my rewrite idwa with that plot in mind ages before the flim even came out).

5. Glass Hearts is canon (it could be pre Glass Hearts or Glass Hearts happens in the middle or epilogue).

6. The characters are slightly redesigned and they were friends before the QoH's hostile siege of Wonderland.

7. Either Chloe and Red (and friends) are eighteen or Wonderland has been under control of the QoH for only six years timeline wise. Haven't decided.

8. Queen of Hearts was on the isle.

9. Ace and Chester and other Wonderlandian next gen members are mentioned/maybe saved at some point (doesn't affect Glass Hearts outcome at all).

Now. On to the point/points where I'm stuck:

1. I can't decide whether they fix things with one go around of the past or if they have to go back to fix an error they made.

I don't want Bridget never having turned evil to be the permanent outcome because yes, while that seems like a good outcome it really isn't.

For Red anyway.

I don't know how many of you have seen back to the future and I guess even if you had it doesn't really get dwelled on for long but....

Marty remembers changing the past.

He remembers the original timeline only.

His first one, the one he grew up in.

He doesn't remember this new great timeline where his parents never fell out of love, his siblings are successful, Bif is kept in check by Mr. And Mrs. McFly, and everything in his life is great.

Everyone else does except him.

And I think the same would probably be true for Red based on what we saw.

She doesn't remember her mom being loving growing up.

She doesn't remember her mom baking her cupcakes or being nice to the people of wonderland.

She doesn't remember a mother who never transfigured her friends (happened in the book) and who never would stage a coup at her daughter's soon to be school.

She doesn't remember a mother who shows love a healthy way.

She remembers the QoH.

The woman who had strict out of pocket rules and even stricter, harsher punishments like transfiguring people into mindless beings and chopping off their heads.

She remembers the woman who told her _love wasn't it'. That it didn't exist. A woman who, whether she realized it or not, was basically telling her own daughter that she didn't love her or her daughter's other parent.

So while Red now has a loving mother its not everything she imagined. Because Red can't forget her actual mother and all she did, and in this new timeline where her mother didn't do any of that, will never get the apology she so desperately deserved and wanted.

She can't remember this nice woman as her mother. Just as Bridget, the nice girl she went to school with briefly.

She can't remember all the lovely things they supposedly did with the rest of the family.

And it's driving her up the wall.

Red knows it's not fair to be mad at this Bridget for the stuff her real mom did.

She knows it's not fair to lash out at her for what the other her did.

But she's angry and scared and can't remember any of the things she wanted and now has.

And she hates it.

She hates that she finally has what she wanted. She hates that she hates this nice woman for things she didn't do (because Red and Chloe stopped it before she snapped) and she hates her father for being different too.

(I based her dad entirely off the one from the animated movie even though Bridget is the same as in ROR so bare with me).

She hates that her cowardly father who was her favorite parent in the other timeline before she got older and started to resent him is happier and a better dad here.

Hates that this one doesn't cower away from her mother.

That this one is just as happy and perky as the new adult Bridget and that he never stood by while she and her older siblings were worked to the bone, and yelled at and stripped of their joy as their mother became a tyrant.

She hates how he's happier here and louder, and just..

Red hates how unfair it is that this wasn't her life all along and that she can't enjoy it now that it is.

But she's stuck.

Not literally but mentally.

She's stuck on what to do.

She should be happy.

She was never ripped away from her friends or abused here.

And now she has the family she always wanted.

A loving mother who indulges her interests and loves her as a person, and who doesn't yell all the time and hurt their people. A mother who was never hurt and who never turned evil enough to be sent to the isle.

A father who isn't too afraid of her mother to do right by her and her siblings, and their people.

Aunts and uncles who were actually in her life and not against her parents.

And a no longer depressed older sister (named Quinlynn) who, since she's never even been to the isle, isn't depressed over having lost two people she thought were the love of her life and friends she never should have had to outlive so young.

It's only after she realizes that her family is so different from what she remembers that she realizes it isn't complete. Someone is missing.

Her older brother is missing.

It takes one question to her parents for her to realize why he (Hart/Hardy) is missing and why he hasn't been home in the weeks (or less) she and Chloe have been back.

It's because she doesn't have a brother. Not. In. This. Timeline.

Her annoying conflict-avoidant-when-it-came-to- their-mother-only pirate of a brother didn't exist.

Her family didn't know his name.

Uma and her crew didn't know Red (hadn't watched her grow up), and didn't know who she was talking about it.

Why this is, she doesn't know.

Doesn't know whether it's because her parents were happy and off the isle.

Doesn't know if it's because the rumors are true and her brother's REAL other parent is on the either (she heard that he was her mother or father's affair baby but had never believed it before now).

She doesn't know or care why it is. Just that it is.

So now, she's already in a dilemma.

Either she goes back with or without Chloe and allows whatever prank that broke the camel's back to turn her mother evil again and gets her brother back.

Losing this happy, carefree version of her sister and the happy, loving parents (and extended family) she'd always wanted.

Turning her back on teen Bridget, who was so nice and kind and the adult Bridget who thanks to her stayed that way.

Or she turns her back on her brother. Accepting this new loving family and this strange happy version of her sister and life that will never be hers.

Letting go of her mentors (the Badun Detective Agency in my au) and her non-Wonderlandian friends who weren't with her and Chloe and the others when they time traveled.

Accepting a world that isn't truly hers and basically killing her brother.

(Sorry for the ramble).

So either:

1. They only meet Bridget (and no one else) and stop the prank—only to see that she still turned evil due to something that happened after they left.

But they arrived just in time to steal her cards and stop her coup, and the qoh is arrested. Allowing for Red to be placed in her siblings custody and for her to be deemed a hero, ensuring that what would have been a rough time at school had the coup been staged before it could be prevented doesn't happen/isn't as bad.

Fixing the present on one go without any need to go back.

It doesn't solve the problem of Chad's disappearance or allow for Chloe to meet a slightly disillusioned version of her young mom.

It doesn't include the above mentioned angst but includes the angsty idea that nothing could have been done for her mother without removing Uliana's gang from the equation (which, given who exactly is in the gang isn't really an option).

But it's a quick fix with a mostly happy ending. One even better if you figure in that maybe what QoH did to Ace and Chester isn't permanent and can be reversed.

Red will have her friends and siblings back, get taken away from her parents, have an actual social life in school, and get to fall in love with Chloe.

Chloe's saved her parents. Saved Auradon Prep. She doesn't have her brother back but it's maybe starting to heal from his disappearance, and maybe with Red and their friends by her side she can find him.

It's not perfect but it's bittersweet. A mostly happy ending.

Or

2. They met Bridget, stopped the prank, and then met Ella.

Either making her life worse somehow OR intervening a little too early.

Getting Ella out of her abusive home situation and of course, not thinking anything of it because it's the right thing to do. Thinking instead that now the future's gonna be the best because now Chloe's mom has a little less trauma and didn't have to deal with her stepmother's wicked meddling with time this time around.

Only they get to the future.

And Bridget is still nice and loving (which, again brings its own angst that mentioned before) to her (now two instead of three) kids, husband, and siblings as well as her subjects.

Meaning Maddox didn't lose his father to a transfiguration punishment and that his job is now easier.

But things are now worse for almost everyone else who went back in time.

Danny Darling's mom is even more traumatized because somehow something THEY did ended up with one of her brothers dead and doesn't let him or his two older siblings out of her sight.

Shan Deja's father is meaner because Hades and Maleficent, and several others give him a harder time than they did in the original time line on the isle.

Snow White, having now no longer gone to school with Ella and having lost that connection, is more anxious and paranoid than before and stopped her daughter Sophie (Glauco's older sister) from becoming Yen Sid's apprentice. This somehow leading to Glauco getting turned into a tree sooner and not being turned back, unlike the original timeline.

Which means his parents don't recognize his teen self and refuse to believe he isn't pulling some cruel prank on them.

Edith, Hadie's cousin and Eris' daughter,'s mom is now apathetic to her existence when before she was loving because now Hades isn't her friend.

And, as for Hadie and Chloe?

Simple: they, like Red's brother, don't exist in this timeline.

Why?

Well, because since Chloe and Red intervened and got Ella away from the Tremaines sooner it changed things.

Like: Drizella and Anastasia never got redeemed, never made up with Ella just to get sent to the isle anyway, and never met their husbands ( a redeemed Hans Westergaard for Drizella and the baker for Anastasia). Which means their children never got to exist even when they got sent to the isle earlier.

Lady Tremaine's reputation was publicly in ruin and the house was seized and held until Ella turned 19.

By then, instead of Ella having met her Fairy Godmother and getting to meet her Prince Charming she instead received her house.

Getting an education and a pseudo family in the form of the baker's family that took her in but never finding love.

Prince Christopher, unwilling to marry someone he doesn't love, ran away never to be seen again. Leaving his father heartbroken and the kingdom in disarray after he dies.

Chad is no longer missing and he still exists but he was never adopted here.

Meaning he never went to Auradon Prep and never met his friends or the vks. Never became a prince, never became disgraced, and never disappeared into the night never to be seen again when Chloe was ten because she didn't exist and he wasn't a Charming.

He wasn't anyone important to anyone.

Because he'd never been adopted and had found the birth parents who didn't want him, and was turned away.

Because he aged out of the orphanage (the one that was no longer named after their mother's story) and now is nothing like the boy Chloe remembers. Any version of him.

He isn't the kind, excitable struggling boy who loved her to death he was before their grandfather died and before her heart condition got worse and their parents got busier fighting for their step-aunts and their children to be released from the isle.

He's not the teenage Chad little Chloe had built up in her head during the times he rarely came home and avoided her like the plague. The cool one who did no wrong who everyone loved and who found and sat with her under the table she'd hidden under after Dragon Maleficent attacked during Ben's coronation when she was eight.

He's not the heartbroken, cries himself to sleep Chad that he was after Audrey broke up with him.

Or the healing (becoming less of an asshole) Chad that went to Jane's birthday only to come back a cowering, heartbroken mess that could hardly stand to be around Audrey anymore, falling into depression Chad who Hades dumped water on less than a year later at Bal's wedding (the same night Chad would disappear).

And he certainly wasn't the Chad that Chloe had only gotten to know after her brother had vanished into the night.

He wasn't an asshole or a bully, or a cheater who was slowly becoming a more tolerable person.

No. This Chad was none of those.

No, instead... This Chad was quiet and broken. With no friends, no family. No job and no home.

And Chloe, despite very much still being alive and breathing and not disappearing doesn't exist by any records and can't help him because he doesn't know her, and no one would believe her if she tried to tell them anything.

A problem which Hadie is also having.

Because in this timeline instead of a de-aged Maleficent, Hades, and Persephone all growing up and their poly three turning into just Hades and Persephone when Maleficent grew more power hungry...

Well, instead of that, a de-aged Persephone saw the aftermath of an even CRUELER prank that they were involved with and broke up with both Maleficent and Hades like her mother had always wanted. Cutting out their friend group as well and turning her backs on them, going back to her mother and begging to be aged back to her actual age.

Leaving Hades and Maleficent to never break up, and to only get meaner. Ruling the isle together with their friends and raising Mal.

Mal, who despite having no reason to, still comes out pretty much the same. She still chooses good. She still has the same friends and still marries Ben. Only now, she has two lizard parents who let her down and no little brother.

Because Persephone and Hades never had Hadie.

Sure, they had his three oldest siblings before they got de-aged and sure, Maleficent and Hades still had Mal.

But because Persephone and Hades didn't out last Maleficent and Hades, Hadie wasn't born.

Which of course, means they have to go back and fix both of the things they messed up and live with all of all of that knowledge.

Now after that, I'm not sure if I should end it with them just fixing all of that and nothing else.

Or if I should go into my other idea which I combine with this one.

Which is that after they fix whatever they did to mess up their parents stories, they end up landing somewhere in the past and discovering that...

Chad is somehow there.

A grown up version of Chloe's original brother.

A grown up version of Chloe's brother who should not be in a Wonderland bar, serving drinks and several years older than he should be.

They find out that he disappeared into the past on purpose out of shame and because be didn't wanna ruin their family's good name and maker things harder on Chloe than they already were.

They somehow convince him to come back to the future with them.

Only for their meddling to send them smack dab right in the middle of the Queen of Hearts hostile take over of WONDERLAND (six to eight years in Chloe and Red's past).

A couple of months before their Chad ended up in Wonderland.

There's a battle, someone gets hurt, and after some more meddling with the past, the group ends up in a better future.

Red's friends are all human again.

Red and Chloe are apparently dating.

And so on.

(This is probably headache inducing but I wanted to brainstorm and this was fun).

[knickynoo]

hello!! so i'm a little confused about something: it's established that doc and marty met around, what, 1982? if marty was 14 at the time like i tought.. but would their meeting be changed in any way after the events of the first movie where he met 1955 doc?? would they meet 30ish years later but already know eachother? and would the way they met change at all?

i considered this being a weird timeline thing and i remembered i read a fic once where marty gains memories from the lone pine timeline once he gets there and now i'm wondering if he has different memories of doc (including how they met). does he even know doc in that timeline (or is supposed to know him?)?? probably a stupid question but i don't know, i'm lost. help me out (if you want to)

sorry if this is a long ask i just don't know what's going on (ever) and time travel is especially confusing

love your posts btw <3

Hey there!

So, generally, I think we're supposed to assume that they ended up meeting in the same way in both timelines (or at least very similar ways). After the events that week in 1955, Doc would have likely been very careful once the time rolled around for Marty to be born and those years he was growing up. I'm sure as curious and eager as he was, he would've been mindful of doing anything that might skew the circumstances their original meeting occurred in.

Which makes me wonder if 1955 Doc asked Marty how they met at some point. I know he was very adamant that he not know about the future, but this detail might've been one he made an exception for. After all, how could he make sure everything was on course if he had no idea what to look out for?

But, yeah, officially, it did happen in the same way, with Marty breaking into the garage due to pressure from Needles. In the IDW comics, Doc tells the story of how he and Marty met to Jules and Verne, which solidifies it as their Lone Pine Meeting Story. And Doc includes the same story in a journal entry of the DeLorean Manual. Perhaps there were tiny little details that were different between the two timelines, but overall, it was the same. The big main difference was that Lone Pine Doc would already have spent the previous nearly 30 years anticipating their meeting and then having to keep his mouth shut about already knowing Marty until AFTER the time traveling happened. I'm sure that was an interesting conversation to have at some point.

As for Marty's memories, one of the comics "Who is Marty McFly" deals with Marty's struggles adjusting to a timeline where his memories don't match. If I remember correctly, the comic picks up several months after his return to 1985, and he still doesn't really remember anything from the "new" timeline. I honestly can't recall if the comic implies he's going to gain any memories or if that's just a fandom headcanon thing, but he spends a lot of time staring at photos and home videos trying to find things he can remember. He talks to George about it a bit (leaving it vague and not mentioning time travel) and George tries to help by giving advice and even taking Marty to speak to their parish priest because he can tell Marty is struggling with something.

Also! The DeLorean Manual does have an interesting section in which Doc mentions that he gains both sets of memories. Basically, when Lone Pine Doc sits up in the parking lot (after being shot) he says he was flooded with memories of his life from the Twin Pines Timeline. Does this mean Marty eventually gains memories as well? I don't know, and honestly, it leaves me with several questions. Why did Doc gain his instantly while post-trilogy Marty has none months later? Is it because Twin Pines Doc was murdered, so he gets the memories from his counterpart? This Doc hasn't even time traveled yet! Why does he get the memories, and what does this mean for other people like George, Lorraine, Biff, etc? There's...a lot to think about here.

Anyway, I've rambled long enough. Thanks for the ask!

[charlidos]

I feel you linger in the air episode 9

There's so much to unpack in this episode! I've been home sick all week, so I've had time to obsess a little more than usual and have far too much to say. So here's a very long review. Forgive me.

First, Yai takes care of Jom in the most loving way. He can't stand to be away from Jom for even a second at this point, I think. Up until they became intimate, it was always Jom taking care of Yai, and Yai didn't really stop expecting to be served. I like that they haven't tried to make Yai more modern than a man of that time could possibly be. He's young, upper-class and doesn't know any other time or system (he's not been to France, after all) and while he might want change, his perspective is very limited. But I think Yai is gradually changing his mindset, because of Jom. And taking care of him like this is part of that.

I'm also struck, again, by how natural, warm and intimate the interaction between these two seem. Obviously two actors who are an acting match made in heaven.

I also believe that is why Yai doesn't protest more against the engagement. He was obviously already sad and frustrated over his current life (before Jom turned up) and lack of choices. But he also seemed to have resigned to this fate, and doing what he was told. I always think it's presumptious of us modern day people to expect people in this time to rebel. Because I don't think we really understand the cost. He risks losing everything he has; family, money, job, security, position etc. What would he do? What choice does he actually have? So how could he protest against his dad's decision when it comes to Jom? Jom made him dream again, but it's still just a dream.

I think the saddest scene in this context was with Yai's mom. He felt so betrayed by her, getting no comfort, no understanding. My heart broke for Yai right here. She also has little power over events, but surely she could have given him something.

Yai talks about how he's loved Jom since before he even met him. And we already knew this, since we've seen another version of Yai already, in the very first ep (will they have time to get back to him in this series?). So I gather that Yai is reincarnated through the times, and always loves Jom, his fated lover. But how about Jom? So far, we only know he's travelling in time, and we don't know if there's any reincarnation going on with him. Does Jom have to jump through time in order to meet Yai in all of his lifetimes?

However, I do feel like the creators are a bit more interested in telling the story of what it was like living in Thailand in 1927 (or 1928?) for women, queers, servants etc, than the time travel and reincarnation bit. Because there's only three eps left, and so much to explain! I really have no idea how Jom's time travel works here; it seems like some kind of loop, or parallell timelines, since he meets himself both in the present day and in 1927. So does these events happen continously, over and over? And where is Jom right now in 2023? Is he in a coma, or is he missing? Is his physical body in 1927 or in 2023? So many questions, so little time.

It does bother me that Jom is still keeping his biggest secret from Yai. I understand why but still, it such a big thing. Yai knows he's hiding something, but he doesn't know that it's potentially the most heartbreaking thing of all: that Jom doesn't belong here, and might soon be gone forever. Jom at this point probably doesn't think he's ever going back to his own time, so maybe he doesn't feel the need to tell Yai. Particularly considering how strange it would sound. Still, when you hear Yai talking about his dream of just being able to spend his life with the one he loves, it's so epically sad that he doesn't even know that being forcibly engaged isn't even the worst thing.

This whole scene was so full of sadness to me; all those crushed dreams of his. His longing for more, freedom, love, the world. So many people now and in history who have had to live like this. It's always worse when you know there's more, when you get a taste of it, but can't keep it, than not knowing it existed at all.

Jom's first reaction to this engagement was devastating. How he immediately resigned to his fate of having bad relationships which end with him being alone. It's like his previous break-up forged a path in his head which he immediately went back on, interpreting it as betrayal. It surprised me at first, because I thought he would understand how Yai was pressured. But somehow, in this moment, he just saw the pattern in his life instead. And since he's started to accept his life being in this time for the rest of his time, he had already built it up around being with Yai. Even though he, with reason, must know it was a pipe-dream. But I suppose he needed something to hold on to. He only has Yai, after all.

At first, I was confused by why Jom then was being so cold to Yai, and maybe I don't fully get it even now, but I think Jom wanted Yai to be able to let go. And therefore had to give him a stronger push away by being the one making the decision. But what does he mean "I can wait"? Wait until Yai's dad is dead? Until Yai has his own money and can decide his own life? I suppose his previous experience of being betrayed steeled him. But I think he also realised that Yai is not like Ohm, that this is the real thing, that Yai is worth the wait. It's just that for the moment, they have to wait. (Oh, but it's so sad that they don't even know that Jom will be gone soon! Yai will have to wait for his next life... )

Finally, this whole engagement event was surely the cringiest event ever seen. You'd really have to be completely blind, psychopathic or ignorant to be happy seeing Yai being so miserable. He wasn't even trying to pretend, he just went through the motions, all lifelessly. The only ones smiling at this event were the three men who've done nothing but cause misery to their families. And then there's the fiancé herself. What is up with her? If she likes Yai, surely she must at least notice something is bothering him? But she seems completely oblivious. Like she and Yai are attending completely different engagement parties. Maybe she trying to keep a brave face, but ugh, it looked cold and weird.

All the while Yai was looking too handsome for words. And so, so sad. There's really nothing sadder to me than resignation. When you've given up, when there's no hope left.

But Jom to the rescue! Gosh, this ending took me completely by surprise! I didn't see that coming at all. (Despite it giving some comfort, I think it was a mistake airing the trailer for ep 10 directly after the end, this time. Because it really spoiled a little too much.) What is Jom going to do? I had a fleeting thought that he was actually going to do a performance, like sing or rap or whatever. That would have been so weird! But I guess it's something to do with revealing something incriminating against the jolly men responsible for this charade.

This series really deserves a lot of love, it's so beautiful and full of heart and history. I think they may be trying to take on a few too many issues at once to fit in these 12 eps, but we'll see how they manage to tie it all together in the last three eps. (Pleeeeaaase let there be a season 2!) But I also feel they take their characters' plight very seriously. And Bright and Nonkul take their characters love for each other very seriously too. It's been so long since I've been so convinced that two people love each other in a drama. It sucks you right in. Can't help but being obsessed.

[aylacavebear]

She Thought She was Normal

Story Summary: Maria really thought she was normal, for most of her life. It was normal for people to have natural talent, she would tell herself the older she got. Many things came easy for her, and that was probably how their rivalry began when she was five and he was seven and she met the Winchesters. Little did either of them know that it wouldn't stay like that forever, both having a far larger destiny than they could imagine

Word Count: 4403

Please don't take my work. I'll post warnings for each chapter. May have future SMUT 18+!

Warnings: (SPS), Angst, Fluff (some)

----------------------------------------- Chapter 24 - Apple Pie

“It’s been a while,” Mari told her.

Maria looked around. She was at the lake again and, for a moment, confused as she turned around to look over at her. She’d completely forgotten that she had read the last line in the book or why she was back here.

“You had a question for me?” Mari asked her, seeing her confusion, “I’m guessing you found it, the necklace.” She couldn’t tell her that she had guided Dean to find the box with the file in it.

That brought the things from earlier in the day flooding back to her mind. Dean had completely distracted her, and she blushed a little, “Uh, yeah. My uncle, he wanted me to talk to you before I put it on. So, um, what is it, other than just a necklace?” she asked, sitting on the rock she usually did.

Mari joined her, and the two looked at each other, “It’s my necklace. I made it a long, long time ago, putting half of my grace into it. Kind of like a safe where people put money. I did that so I could hide easier. Dim my light, so to speak,” she explained.

She tilted her head a bit as Mari spoke, “So… it’s safe for me to wear?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

Mari chuckled a little, “Yes. It’s safe for you to wear. Just know, though, that once you put it on, you’ll absorb the grace that’s in it,” she warned.

“Is that bad?” Maria asked, now wondering if it was such a good idea.

Mari sighed but smiled softly as she looked at her daughter, “Bad, no, but…,” she paused momentarily, “... it could cause your powers to happen easier, faster than they are,” she warned.

“Oh, so it’s kind of like, wear it at my own risk, sort of thing?” she asked, and Mari nodded. Maria thought for a moment and looked down at the ground. So many things ran through her mind and she had no idea where even to start.

“I’m glad you and Dean are together,” Mari told her softly, a smile to match.

Maria blushed and looked up at her, slightly shocked,” How do you even know that?” she asked, somewhat worried how much she’d either seen or knew about.

Mari chuckled, “I told you. I looked through the timelines a long time ago. Don’t worry, though, I didn’t look at the intimate stuff.”

She sighed, relieved, and looked around the area, thinking, “So, what’s manipulating them, the boys?” she finally asked.

Mari sighed and looked out across the lake, “I’m not one hundred percent sure. I could only look so far in the timeline without risking being noticed. All I know is that whatever it is, it’s strong, and powerful,” she paused for a moment, “Your hunting days aren’t over yet, neither are the boys, and Jess isn’t safe yet either.”

Maria groaned a bit before she stood up to stretch a little. Then she looked out across the lake. There was that peaceful feeling again. She watched the small ripples in the water that the gentle breeze brought, “How do I save them?” she asked quietly.

Mari smiled a little, still not looking over at her, “You already are. When you let Sam and Jess help you and be there for you, then when you made amends with your Uncle. Letting John move in and helping him and Sam bridge the gap and let things go,” she explained softly. Then she looked over at her, adoration in her eyes, “The biggest one, though, was when you let Dean in, let him get close to you, let him love you.”

She felt goosebumps run down her body. Maria knew Dean liked her, a lot, but the thought of him loving her hadn’t even crossed her mind. Mari saw the wheels turning in her mind and let her piece the puzzle together on her own. Moments from the last week played through her mind as she stared off across the lake at nothing in particular. His kindness, his patience, and then there was the way he looked at her. She inhaled a shaky breath.

“You really have had him since apple pie,” Mari told her.

Maria looked down at her, furrowing her brow in confusion, “I still don’t know what that means,” she replied, frustrated.

Mari just smiled as she stood up and placed her first two fingers on Maria’s forehead, and the entire scene changed. They were standing beside each other on the far side of her uncle’s kitchen. Her father, uncle, and John were sitting at the kitchen table. She looked around the room, puzzled at the site, then saw herself, only she was younger, and Sam was by her. Then she saw Dean standing in the opening between the kitchen and living room.

“Who’s memory is this?” Maria asked her.

“Deans. Just watch,” she replied.

Maria focused her attention on Dean. He was sixteen, just standing there, staring at her and Sammy. The adults were talking, but the topic wasn’t important. He was watching her younger self interact with his brother. She saw what he did and almost felt what he was feeling. There was the light and how it danced over her features, the smell of the apple pies that her younger self turned to put on the counter. After she set them on the counter, there was a moment where he saw her almost as an angel with how the scene framed itself for him. Maria felt her heart pounding in her chest.

“Apple pie…” she whispered as a small smile formed, her expression soft.

“He loves you, you know. He has, for a long time,” Mari told her.

She saw it in his eyes in the memory, and she took a shaky breath before Mari returned them to the lake. She quickly sat down on the rock again, not trusting her legs to hold her upright. Mari sat down next to her and put her hand on her shoulder, smiling a bit, “Are you ready, to work on your powers?” she asked.

Maria took a deep, shaky breath, then let it out slowly, “Thank you, for showing me that. The last couple of weeks make more sense now,” she told her, needing a moment. She took several moments to come out of her thoughts before she looked over at Mari again, “What kind of powers do I have? I know you said I could do anything. I was just wondering if you could narrow it down a little, give me something to focus on,” she told her.

Mari smiled a little, “You can do all kinds of things. Flying, but it’s probably easier if you think of it as teleporting. You can create things out of thin air and take things out of existence. Heal not only yourself but also others and so much more,” she replied.

“Wow, that’s a lot,” she replied, a bit surprised, “Can I think it over? So much has happened, I just… I need some time.”

She smiled at Maria, “Then, it’s time to wake up,” she replied.

Her eyes opened to the room's darkness, “Cheater,” she mumbled under her breath as she stared at the ceiling. She felt Dean’s warmth against her and how his hold tightened a bit around her waist, causing her to smile a little. Maria looked up at him, setting her hand on his chest. He was still sound asleep and looked peaceful, “I love you too…” she whispered, almost inaudible, feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat under her hand. The fear she had before was completely gone now, seeing what Mari had shown her. It had also allowed her to tear down the wall completely she’d put up to keep herself emotionally safe around him. A blanket of contentment washed over her as she snuggled up against him, nuzzling her head against his chest, under his chin. She felt him shift a little, getting more comfortable.

She lay there just taking in how it all felt, being in his arms, the warmth of his body, how he held her, how he was still sleeping peacefully, and then how she felt. Maria felt safe, and the more she thought about it, and let herself feel it, she felt loved. She drew invisible circles on his chest as she smiled softly. It was like she felt more at peace than she had in a long, long time before her mother had been killed.

Dean slowly opened his eyes. She was still there, in his arms, and he smiled a little. He slid his hand over her hip and to her back, breathing deeply, “Morning, sleepy head,” she told him softly.

“How long have you been awake?” he asked sleepily.

She shifted a little so she could look into his eyes, “A bit.”

He brought his hand up and gently moved some of her hair behind her ear as his eyes took in her appearance, “You seem fairly relaxed this morning,” he mused softly, gently caressing her cheek.

Maria smiled, a giddy schoolgirl sort of smile, “I am. I slept really well,” she replied.

“I’m sure you did,” he smirked.

“That’s not what I meant,” she giggled, remembering their night together, “No, I saw Zamariel last night in my dreams again. It went really well, and… I feel good this morning,” she explained.

“Oh,” he replied, his smile fading a little.

She realized how what she had said sounded and felt terrible instantly. “Dean, no, that’s not what I meant,” she said quickly, and then she just kissed him. 

Maria knew he wasn’t the best with words, so she just showed him. The kiss was gentle, intimate, and loving as she touched his cheek. He had felt like she had dismissed the night before, like it hadn’t meant that much, or her dream somehow meant more. But when she kissed him like she did, it all washed away, and he kissed her back, closing his eyes and pulling her close. It wasn’t heated, demanding, or needy. It was intimate, saying more than words either of them could speak. When the kiss broke between them, he leaned his forehead against hers, breathless but for a different reason.

She bit her lip as she looked into his eyes, “If I had known then… I would have gone to you when my dad passed. I wouldn’t have run and gone off on my own,” she told him quietly, yet softly, “Just know, I’ll never run like that again.”

His heart pounded, and he could only kiss her again. He wanted to tell her he loved her but let the kiss say what he couldn’t and knew she’d understand. Dean finally pulled back and smiled down at her, his hand still on her cheek. 

“You’re adorable,” she told him, smiling.

Dean blushed a little and was thankful the light was off, “So are you. We should probably get dressed, even if I could stay in bed with you all day,” he teased her playfully.

“Well, I can’t be quiet, and your room isn’t soundproof. That might be awkward later,” she giggled.

“How did I get so lucky?” he asked softly as he looked into her eyes.

She fought back another giggle, “You really should thank Jess for that one.”

“I’ll remember to do that,” he smirked.

Dean kissed her one more time before he finally got out of bed and turned on the light. It was only after eight, luckily. They both thought that it was later. She watched him as he dressed, admiring how his muscles moved, remembering the night before, and she bit her lip. He chuckled when he looked back over at her, then tossed the clothes she’d pulled out for after her shower the night before at her. She barely caught them before they hit her in the face. The energy between the two was playful and lighthearted. Both of them couldn’t stop smiling. 

She put on the sweatpants and t-shirt, leaving her hair a mess since her brush was in her room. They shared a few more kisses before they held hands and made their way to the kitchen for coffee, finding the others already awake and sitting around the table. 

“Don’t you two look adorable,” Sam teased them, causing Jess to chuckle a little.

“Thanks,” Maria said happily, still smiling as she went to grab her and Dean's cups.

He took them from her and poured them coffee before he handed one back to her. Bobby and John just looked at the two, raising an eyebrow. Bobby leaned back in his chair, wondering if he would ever get used to them being in a relationship, although he could see there was something special between them. John could see it, too. It reminded him of how he felt toward his deceased wife, Mary, and it brought joy to his heart to see both his sons experiencing that feeling. He thought neither of them would get it because they were raised as hunters. Dean and Maria sat down at the table, next to each other this time.

“So, did Mari say anything about that necklace?” Bobby asked her.

She looked over at him, “Yeah. She told me that it holds about half of her grace and that it’s safe for me to touch, but if I wear it, I’ll absorb her grace,” she explained.

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” Jess asked, slightly confused.

Maria looked over at her, “Grace is what celestial beings have. Technically, I have grace, but it goes beyond what angels have. It’s how the angels are connected to heaven and can use their powers. If their grace is stolen or they cut it out, they become human,” she explained.

“Sounds kinda painful,” Jess replied.

Maria looked down at the table, “From what I read in the book, it is.”

“So, what’s the drawback of you absorbing her grace?” Bobby asked, still worried about his niece.

“She said my powers might come out faster than they already are,” she replied, then sighed as she looked over at him. Dean set his hand on her back, gently rubbing circles with his thumb to comfort her.

Jess and Sam noticed their closeness and that she didn’t flinch or shy away from him. She gently squeezed his thigh, hopeful for the two. This time, though, John spoke up, “Will that put any of us in danger?” he asked her.

She looked over at him, “No,” she replied, then looked down at her coffee, smiling a little, “With how Zamariel explained it, everything I’ve done thus far has been helping. I couldn’t hurt any of you.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Sam chuckled.

Bobby sighed and almost didn’t ask, “How is she, Mari?” 

“She’s good. It’s been nice to get to know her. She offered to let me practice my powers in my dreams with her if I wanted to,” Maria replied, feeling a sense of happiness remembering the interactions with her.

That made Bobby smile a little. He remembered how kind she had been all those years ago and how she’d wished she could have been there while Maria grew up. Dean couldn’t help himself, seeing the softness in her expression. He moved his chair, so he was a little closer to her, wrapping his arm around her waist, to which she leaned into him. There was no denying how the two felt for each other.

“It’s about time,” Jess teased the two, making them smile like teenagers.

Dean looked over at Jess, “Oh, I was told it was you that I should thank. So, uh, thanks,” he told her, still smiling like he was the happiest man on the planet, then kissed Maria on the top of her head.

Maria giggled quietly, and Jess was a little confused for a moment. Then, a look of realization crept onto her face, making her smile again, “Anytime. Glad I could help,” she replied, giving Maria that look of, ‘We need to talk, and I want all the details.’

Sam and Jess had online classes. They’d both decided to continue college, even with all that was happening, and the others were proud of them. Bobby and John wanted to look into more of what the bunker held. It was like every time they looked around, they always found something new. Both were fascinated with the place. Dean only had plans of hanging out with Maria with whatever she was going to do, just wanting to be near her. She brought him a peace that he hadn’t felt in a long time, and it calmed his entire soul. 

There were no more awkward, angered moments between Sam and John. John had even been getting to know Jess, the woman who had stolen his youngest son’s heart. Bobby was enjoying the feeling of safety the bunker had given all of them and the feeling of family with them all living together. They’d helped him set up an area in the library so that he could still help other hunters with different cases that came up.

Maria was sitting on her bed, looking down at the necklace in the box, Dean behind her with his arms around her waist as he leaned against her headboard, “Still debating it?” he asked her, gently setting his chin over her shoulder.

“Yeah,” she sighed, “I just don’t know if I’m ready for things to happen… faster,” she replied.

“Well, whatever you decide, I’m here, okay? I’ll be there every step of the way. What are boyfriends for?” he replied with a smirk.

That made her smile. She took a deep breath and moved her hair out of the way before pulling the necklace out of the box. Dean leaned back a little, wanting to give her some space. He knew how dangerous that necklace was to him. Maria knew that once she had absorbed the grace, the pendant wouldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, hurt anyone. She reclasped the chain behind her neck and fixed her hair. Dean noticed the slight white/blue glow that emanated from the pendant before it dissipated after a couple of seconds.

“How do you feel?” Dean asked, raising an eyebrow.

She hadn’t felt anything, “Like I did before I put it on,” she somewhat mumbled, looking down at the chain when she noticed the mild glow from the book on her nightstand, then groaned, “Uhg.”

He looked at her, a little confused, as she grabbed the book, barely noticing the glow before it disappeared. Dean watched her open the book and flip through it till she stopped at a chapter. He wished he could read Enochian or that she’d read it to him, but he didn’t want to interrupt her. For now, he just watched her. Her eyes moved back and forth as she scanned each line of the chapter, the occasional glow the pendant would give off, and even the slight change in her eyes, which got a light blue glow around her pupil. She flipped page after page as Dean held her, and when she set the book back down, he counted almost twenty pages. The pendant and her eyes had stopped glowing, and he tilted his head a bit, waiting for her to say something.

She slipped the necklace off, placed it on her night table, and sighed, “I, uh… it doesn’t have her grace in it anymore,” she told him quietly.

Dean leaned over and kissed her on the cheek, “Your eyes glowed,” he told her, having found it making her more alluring when it happened.

Maria looked over at him, scrunching her face in mild confusion, “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well, uh… they glowed a little, light blue around your pupil,” he told her, smiling a little.

“Weird,” she mumbled.

He pulled her close to him, and she laid her head against his shoulder, her back against his chest, “You uh… it was… beautiful…” he told her, a bit shyly.

She couldn’t help the smile his words brought, “I’ll see if I can do that more often then, if it makes you stutter like that,” she teased him a bit.

Maria felt the chuckle rumble in his chest, “Don’t get used to it,” he bantered back before he kissed her on the cheek, “You feel any different?”

“Not really. I mean, I still feel like me,” she replied, then sighed, ���I wonder if this place has a safe place I could practice my powers so I don’t have to do it in my dreams or accidentally mess something up in the bunker.”

Dean thought for a moment. They’d only explored so much of the bunker, and there were several levels to the place, “You could start with something small, like you did with the dime, at least until we can find a place,” he suggested.

She thought for a moment, but again, her mind went blank, “I hate it when that happens,” she grumbled.

“When what happens?” he asked her, furrowing his brow in mild confusion.

“When my mind goes blank,” she replied.

He chuckled a little, finding her adorable, “Well, what did that, uh, angel lady say you could do?” he asked her, feeling a bit bad for forgetting her name, again.

“Zamariel said I could do anything I wanted to, like, literally anything,” she told him.

That made Dean think, “I could always go for an apple pie,” he mused with a slight smirk.

She rolled her eyes a little, finding him adorable, and the memory Zamariel had shown her flooded back through her mind, making her smile, “Apple pie, huh?” Maria thought for a moment about the pie she’d made that day. Exhale before you pull the trigger, she thought to herself. Exhaling slowly, she pictured one on the bed in front of them, and it appeared, out of thin air, hot and steamy as though it had just come out of the oven.

“HOLY SHIT!” Dean exclaimed, utterly surprised.

Maria wasn’t quite sure what to think, seeing it sitting on the bed in front of them. She sat forward and looked at it for a moment. Before she could react, though, Dean stuck his finger in it, then into his mouth.

“Mmmm…” he hummed, closing his eyes, savoring the flavor momentarily, “I need a fork.”

She found him adorable and chuckled as he got up and quickly headed out of her room like a little kid. Maria figured it was for a fork and shook her head in amusement. She could have created one for him. He was back in her room quickly, plopping down across from her and sitting cross-legged, digging into the pie faster than she thought he’d be. She giggled, watching him bounce a little as he made happy sounds while he ate.

“This is amazing,” he told her with a mouthful of pie, making her giggle again, music to his ears.

Maria wanted to tell him she knew, but she could only smile softly as she watched him, “I’m glad you like it.”

All four of the others had seen Dean run into the kitchen and then run back down the hall, not even having a chance to figure out what he had grabbed. Sam and Jess were in the library, doing their schooling online, while Bobby and John had been doing their own research. Now, though, all of them were standing in her doorway to see what the reason for how Dean had acted was. They looked somewhat puzzled, seeing him sit on her bed, eating a pie they knew no one had cooked.

“Everything okay in here?” John asked, pushing the door open the rest of the way as Maria looked up at him.

“Uh, yeah. We’re good,” Maria replied, somewhat confused about why they were standing there. They glanced from her to Dean and then back to her with questioning expressions. “Oh, that’s well, it’s just pie,” she told them, unsure how to explain it.

“We figured that. Where’d it come from?” Bobby asked her.

“Oh, right. I uh… I was just practicing, and when my mind went blank, Dean suggested pie,” she replied, feeling a little shy as a blush crept into her cheeks.

Dean swallowed his bite, “It’s amazing too. I’d offer you guys some, but there’s not enough,” he told them, not even looking at them, then took another bite.

Maria sucked her lips between her teeth, attempting not to giggle at how adorable he was being. Sam raised an eyebrow, “Your powers huh? Did you get another breakthrough?”

“Kinda. Zamariel was somewhat helpful last night in my dream,” she explained, watching Dean out of the corner of her eye. She really loved this side of him. She loved all of him, but this was just too adorable for her not to watch.

Jess motioned discretely by pointing at herself and then at Maria, mouthing the words, “We need to talk,” to which Maria nodded a little, as discretely as possible. John spoke, though, “Don’t spoil him too much. Wouldn’t want him getting soft,” he partially joked.

Maria rolled her eyes a little, “I’ll try not to Uncle John,” she chuckled.

“Well, we’re all here for you, if you need anything,” Bobby told her, and he was proud of her and how she seemed to have healed emotionally.

The four of them headed back to what they’d been doing. Maria and Dean spent the day together, laughing, talking, and getting to know each other on a more personal level. She also practiced some of her powers. He really liked how she could create things out of thin air, giving her all sorts of fun yet weird ideas, most of them causing the two to laugh more.

That night, she and Jess talked. Maria shared with her all that had happened between her and Dean. Jess was so happy for her and hugged her tightly. She planned on telling Sam that evening, which Maria had said was okay. They didn’t know that Dean had his own conversation with his brother, too overjoyed not to act like a happy teenager. Sam was also delighted for the two. That was when Sam spilled the beans about wanting to propose to Jess. He just hadn’t found the ring that said “I love you” or that felt right.

----------------------------------------- Chapter 25

Tag List: @deans-spinster-witch @kazsrm67

Link to the master list for this story.

[mourning-star-daily-comet]

UPDATE: the offical police report of the wilson/claire case has finally been released. i'll link it here, but i don't think it explains everything, since a good amount of the details have come from witnesses and locals that havent been contacted by the authorities regarding the story. so, for continuities sake, i'm gonna give a final summary on here before i close out their case on this blog.

the timeline i've put together relies partially on an official statement released by claire (who still refuses to provide a last name to the public, and has no official documents connecting her to any identity living in mourning star), who has initiative to lie. however, i matched her story up as many other sources as i could, so i'm pretty confident on this being correct but just keep that in mind.

after meeting him in september at a party, she and nicholas began spending a lot of time together. claire states that he faced severe struggles with his mental health including attachment issues- he was "so sad, all the time. he couldn't stand to be alone. i didn't know why."

claire had always had many dreams of what she calls 'a bigger life', which she often told him about but he did not share. but due in part to his anxious attachment disorder, she was eventually able to convince him to run away with her so they could be 'together, away from their small town', as she claims.

the details are fuzzy at this point, as she seems to contradict herself often in regards to the actual murder, but she claims she had reason to believe that Sears was attempting to attack her, and that she alone acted on self-defense. there are no witnesses to this other than nicholas who is not providing a statement; however, the lack of a murder weapon points to the idea that it was not premeditated, as the death was caused by sudden blunt force trauma.

she then claims that, very soon after the murder, Wilson started to fall sick and needed lots of treatment. this allegedly led claire into a cycle of systematic robberies, which she used to 'care for him'. this is also proven by the fact that he was found to be suffering from an unknown illness, in addition to his various injuries, upon rescue. she also claims that she stole a car belonging to a local, who does not want to be named at this time, because nicholas's had been crashed and the winter was too harsh for them to survive in the cold.

her story then details their living in the woods and how he was "barely concious through the whole thing. like- [she didn't] even think he realized he wasn't at home". this leads officials to believe that the entirety of their time spent running from the police was planned and carried out by claire, without wilson's discreton at all.

when questioned about his injuries, she states that she returned to the car they had been staying in to suddenly find him in his current condition. from there, she tried to drive him to the hospital, but he alledgedly attempted to climb out of the moving car. "he had been hallucinating the past few weeks. i think it was from fever, or dehydration? something. probably a mix of things. but he'd been really sick. [...] i think he saw something and left [the car], i found him away from it. i really don't know what happened." she never mentioned any plan of hurting him in her confession.

nicholas, however, has refused to speak on his side. he has recently been discharged from the hospital, but despite being questioned he has not made any statements.

so there you go, that's all i know. if you have any last questions, you can ask me, but i'm not sure how many more answers i can give.

[lordelmelloi2]

I haven't finished reading the event TLs, I'm on like partway through day 4, but so far my thoughts:

Aoko has no idea what she's doing as a magician right now. I feel like she's actually in way over her head. I don't know if the intrinsic and carefully considered/acknowledged weight of humanity is something she fully comprehends.

But as things are that's why she's so isolated from the other Magicians. Because of the huge mana costs of True Magic + how carefully you have to calculate everything, you can't just frivolously use it. I admit that I haven't fully and entirely read Mahoyo bc of computer constraints but I know that her stint with borrowing experience/time from the future was a risky and crazy stunt.

I made this pic years ago prior to the TL being released LOL:

What I figure is that we are at 10+ years in the future and she still has not gained the experience she needed. So the debt remains unfulfilled.

We see in this event Aoko has this habit of just using her True Magic capabilities without thinking of the debt she's incurring or how to fix it. In other words: she really doesn't fully comprehend the scope of her own abilities or the mana balance she is running up. She's using mana, but where is the mana coming from? So she's racking up a debt that's growing.

So each day she ends up dead at the hot springs - she says in the first one she took the killer and threw them somewhere else where they're harmless (another debt incurred). It's already implied that they have to be a sizable foe to take out Aoko.

Fujino states the following: "Good and bad people alike contain something so scary that seeing it qualifies as a sin. Aozaki must have seen what the living musn't. A glitch in the boundary between life and death. The bottomless abyss born of human society. That which can only be escaped by being killed."

Sidenote, given that we have KnK characters here filling in roles, but the KnK timeline doesn't match up with this time period (Mirai Fukuin takes place in 1998), I'm inclined to believe that Fujino and Shiki being here is meant to be significant -- it's also possible they were summoned to this singularity, that's not unusual for them to be here in this place, and Fujino even states that Shiki's room is quiet as hell even though supposedly she's with her family (and we all remember Mana being loud and curious af), I have reason to believe Shiki might just straight up be here. Fujino might just straight up be here too. Fujino is already part of the Counter Force, which we know is chasing down Aoko for her True Magic. Shiki being connected to the Root being here at all... I have full reason to believe this isn't roles being filled in here, and that Fujino and Shiki are just Actually here.

So what I figure is going on here is: Aoko's debt for her magic is catching up with her -> that's the calamity of the star. Her achieving the fifth magic and doing what she did in Mahoyo was a lot of fucking magical energy and she needs to pay it back or figure out what to do with it or Something. Something tangible and real and not just a "I'll figure it out later" immature short-term solution. She hasn't reached the experience necessary to make up for it --> she has to either speedrun it, but she probably fails -> she gets flung into the Abyss (shorthand term I use to describe the concept of humanity's depravities/you could say it's similar to the concept of Angra Mainyu but I feel that Angra Mainyu (the guy) is different than this. This is more akin to like a Lost Will type Garden that Morgan has, hence Oberon being the Insect of the Abyss....etc. etc. maybe need more elaboration) -> she's inexperienced and she dies.

OR given that older Soujuurou is mysteriously gone, she meets Soujuurou and he kills her because that "five minutes of Soujuurou's death" has to go somewhere... God idk.

I think overall what we know is: Aoko's magic fuckup is coming to a head now, the Counter Force is literally here, I think the will of Gaia is literally here also because she fucked with the balance of mana too badly, she doesn't understand the weight of humanity fully either and is maybe being made to understand it so she can take better responsibility for her actions... and she's also engaging in her own sort of time loop nightmare that she isn't even fully comprehending because she doesn't recount memories effectively enough. God. Lol