#but rather that that person was arguing about canonicity and plausibility/support in canon and in terms of that. they were wrong

[alyimoss]

!!!!!!!!!!!

Biggest psych nerd pet peeve is when people use mental discorders inaccurately. For example people saying a character has DID without looking into it (ie. the only trauma they’d ever experienced was an adult, which is not grounds for being diagnosed with DID) instead of any of the other dissociative disorders that very well could fit this character. I mean what

[now-you-sound-like-a-jedi]

Satine and the Resol’nare

Okay, I will warn you in advance: this is an entire essay complete with introduction and conclusion, feel free to scroll on if you can’t be bothered listening to me ramble :)

So, one of the criticisms of Satine and the New Mandalorians that I see quite a lot is "but what about the Resol'nare?" This is a difficult question to answer because much of Mandalorian culture, including the Resol’nare, is found in the Legends Extended Universe, and was discarded along with the rest of that canon after Lucasfilm’s complete overhaul of the Star Wars canon, so much of it is not relevant to a discussion of Satine because she exists in a separate version of the universe. But let’s put that aside for the purposes of this debate

In the Legends EU, the central tenets of Mandalorian culture could be found in the Resol’nare. According to this, the core of what it meant to be a Mandalorian is to wear armour, speak Mando’a, defend oneself and one’s family, educate one’s children as Mandalorians, be loyal to and support one’s family, and to obey the Mand’alor. So let’s break this down piece by piece in regards to Satine.

First of all, she obviously does not wear armour. However this does not necessarily mean that she has disregarded this element of Mandalorian culture altogether. Beskar’ta emblems can be found throughout Sundari, from Satine’s own throne room to the tunnel leading from the docks into the city. Furthermore, beskar’ta emblems are prominent designs on the clothing of several Mandalorian characters: the shirts worn by Almec, Korkie, and others feature them in the same position on the chest as they would be on a breastplate, Ahsoka’s dress in the Siege of Mandalore is patterned with them; and Satine’s own dress in the Clone Wars episode ‘Corruption’ appears to have a beskar’ta-like pattern sewn into the very fabric. Essentially, the most recognisable feature of Mandalorian armour is everywhere in her city even if the armour itself is absent, indicating that, far from being erased, the heritage of their armour is fundamental to Satine’s Mandalore. While we’re on this point, there is an assumption that Satine banned the wearing of armour on Mandalore, but there is nothing explicit in canon to confirm or deny that accusation - it simply never comes up. It is possible to argue that she did, because no one on Mandalore wears it, but it is equally plausible that no one wears armour on Mandalore simply because they no longer need to.

So, we have established that, while Satine does not exactly follow the first of the Resol’nare, she cannot be said to have wholeheartedly disregarded it either. But what about the others? Let's move onto speaking Mando’a. Satine is the only named character in the Clone Wars to speak any dialect of Mando’a onscreen (specifically Concordian), something that none of her opponents ever does, and Mando’a script can be seen across several episodes on screens in Sundari. This demonstrates that Satine's Mandalore continues to utilise Mando’a in day-to-day life.

In the Clone Wars episode ‘Voyage of Temptation’, she asserts that ‘just because [she’s] a pacifist doesn’t mean [she] won’t defend [herself]’, which covers the third tenet of 'defending oneself and one's family'. Satine has no children, so we have no information with which to assess the fourth on a personal level, and we also don't have enough information about the New Mandalorian school curriculum to examine this on a city-wide level either. In terms of loyalty to one’s family, the only example we have is of her and Korkie, most notably when she was willing to concede to Almec’s demands rather than allow her nephew to be tortured.

Finally, we come to obeying the Mand’alor: there is no indication that there was a Mand’alor during Satine’s rule, as “Mand’alor” by definition means “sole ruler of Mandalore”, a position Pre Vizsla did not achieve (despite his possession of the Darksaber) until 19 BBY, and which he subsequently lost to Maul.

What we see here is that Satine follows three of the Resol'nare, doesn't follow one, and we simply don't have enough evidence for the other two. From this, we can deduce that Satine isn't actually as far from being a textbook “good Mandalorian” as she is often portrayed. The no-armour thing appears to be the exception rather than the rule.

Furthermore, based on canon evidence, we cannot confirm that any other Mandalorian adheres to the Resol'nare any more than the New Mandalorians do. We don't see anyone in Death Watch speak Mando'a, not even Pre Vizsla, nor any character in the Mandalorian (except the Armorer). Which of course is not to say that they don't, only that we cant confirm it either way. Sabine Wren does, and she wears armour, but she certainly doesn't seem in any rush to rally to the Mand'alor and struggles a lot with how far loyalty to her family should actually go. Bo-Katan doesn't speak Mando'a either, she refuses to obey the Mand’alor when Maul takes the title, and she sure seems to pick and choose when to follow the "loyalty to one's family" part.

Essentially, when it comes to the Resol’nare, Satine is no less a Mandalorian than any of her opponents are.

[elyvorg]

So… I was talking about aspec V3 headcanons? Well then, let me lay down the facts.

Maki Harukawa is on the aromantic spectrum. Yes, even though she explicitly develops a crush on Kaito, and no, I’m not trying to dispute that part.

This is basically canon. Let me tell you why.

Maki is aro

For this, we need to consider the conversation Maki has with Shuichi in the first training session in chapter 4, while Kaito has temporarily disappeared to the bathroom. On one level, this conversation exists to be the only actual meaningful indication* that Maki has romantic feelings for Kaito until she goes and confesses them. Someone like Maki wouldn’t care about asking Shuichi if he “liked” Kaede (in that annoying loaded meaning of the word “like” that specifically refers to romantic attraction) unless she was trying to come to terms with the idea that she also “likes” someone else in the same way, and the only plausible candidate for that is Kaito.

But even more striking about this conversation, far more so than the general implication that Maki would only bother asking this if she happened to be crushing on a certain spiky-haired space dork, is the way Maki approaches and thinks about this whole topic in general. Take a look:

Maki:  “Well… I assumed you didn’t, because that would be weird. […] Liking someone you just met… especially in a situation like this…”

Shuichi:  “… Then tell me… under what circumstances is liking someone *not* weird?”

Maki:  “…Huh? I… don’t know. I don’t… really understand what that is.”

I, as an aromantic person myself, fully agree with Maki that it just seems weird to start romantically liking someone you’ve only just met, especially in a life-or-death situation where surely there’s way more important things to be focusing on. But apparently, most people do not find this thought weird at all – love at first sight is supposedly a real thing that can happen, and something something dangerous situations can bring out more hormones and passion???? sounds fake but okay – and so opinions like mine and Maki’s here are very much outliers.

And not only that, not only does the thought of crushing on near-strangers bewilder Maki to the point of disbelief, but she also can’t even come up with an answer to when crushing on someone would ever not be strange and bizarre. Like the whole concept is just alien to her. She can barely even wrap her head around how “liking” someone in that way even works. The very reason she’s even asking Shuichi about this is because she doesn’t understand why she’s feeling this way about Kaito.

This is how an aromantic person would view this kind of thing. It doesn’t sound even slightly like something an alloromantic person would say in this situation. That’s not up for interpretation – that’s just the truth about these views that Maki is expressing. Again: I’m aromantic. I would know.

Even from a character who then does turn out to nonetheless have a crush on someone, these statements are pretty much as canonically confirmed arospec as you can get short of them straight up using the word "aromantic" or a variant.** And, well, obviously Maki isn't about to go calling herself that. From the way she’s questioning this, she clearly doesn’t realise that her perspective is the outlier, so she’s probably never even heard of the term. Besides, she most definitely has way bigger hurdles to be getting over first in terms of her self-acceptance before she's ever going to particularly care about figuring out labels for her orientation of all things.

Aros with trauma are still aros

Now, granted, I severely doubt that Maki being arospec is what the writers intended to convey. Haha, deliberate aro representation in mainstream Japanese media, especially something more complex than vanilla aro, that's a funny joke. What the writers probably meant by writing this conversation I just discussed is to suggest that Maki is viewing things this way a result of her trauma.

But hey, guess what? Even if it is because of her trauma - and I'm not denying that it probably is - that doesn't make Maki any less aro. Some people are arospec because of trauma, and that's equally as valid a reason to be arospec as without. Maybe Maki would have grown up alloromantic if she hadn't been scouted as an assassin, but that's irrelevant, because that's not the Maki who exists now.

In writing this conversation, the writers were presumably attempting to communicate that Maki is so messed up by having been manipulated and abused and moulded into a soulless killing machine that she can no longer comprehend the idea of how or why anybody (especially not herself) would fall in love with someone when they'd only just met, or even really in any circumstances at all. …And in doing that, the writers unintentionally wrote a character who, as a result of her trauma, is aro(-spec). This is an objective fact about the canon story that does not change just because the writers probably weren’t aware enough about aromanticism to actually realise this.

Aros who feel romantic attraction are still aros

So, of course, Maki does in fact come to romantically love Kaito despite this. That fact becomes very important to her, and me lengthily explaining here that she’s actually arospec is not remotely trying to diminish that. But it’s also very important to me that people realise that Maki’s romantic love for Kaito comes from an aromantic perspective. She eventually chooses to embrace those feelings not remotely because it just feels to her like the natural way things should go, but despite every single conscious part of her insisting that this is weird and illogical and doesn’t make any goddamn sense to even be happening at all. She is not going to suddenly fall into all the boring romantic cliches and stereotypical alloromantic approaches to love just because she does in fact happen to be experiencing romantic attraction. There’s nothing alloromantic about Maki’s crush on Kaito.***

As for the specific flavour of arospec that allowed Maki to fall in love with Kaito anyway? This part is somewhat more up for interpretation because there’s no real explicit indication of this in particular, but I personally like to go with the idea that Maki is demiromantic. It feels appropriate for Maki’s character and trauma to imagine that she can only begin to potentially feel romantic things towards a person when she has an emotional connection with them – when she trusts them and knows that they trust her. It doesn’t necessarily have to take very long – she’d only been friends with Kaito for a handful of days before that telling conversation with Shuichi – and she may not even have to have consciously admitted to herself that she trusts them, but she needs to have that bond. She’s normally so guarded and has such strong automatic barriers up during her interpersonal interactions that seeing most people in a romantic light literally isn’t even an option in her brain.

Maki’s confession of her feelings for Kaito does read as rather strongly demiromantic, I think. She makes a point that this is about who Kaito is and what he’s done for her, before even getting to the part where she admits to having fallen for him. And she says she “fell for” him, not that she was always in love with him or anything to that effect. This happened somewhere along the way during their friendship, because of their friendship, and because of Kaito being his incredible trusting supportive self towards her when she needed it most.

Maki Harukawa is demiromantic, and she’s wonderful.

  ---

[some grumpy Amatonormativity and Aro Erasure 101 footnotes, can you tell I am bitter about this kind of thing]

(* When I say “actual meaningful indication” of romantic feelings, I mean something that isn't just the narrative infuriatingly pointing at things that are actually perfectly platonic in nature and going “ooh look how romantic~!”. Newsflash: worrying about somebody and wanting to rescue them when they're sick and injured and have been kidnapped by someone you think is an evil sadistic mastermind is not somehow proof of romantic feelings. That is a thing that friends do. And on the same note, teaching somebody how to build a crossbow is not some kind of deep metaphor for romance; it is literally just a lesson in how to build a goddamn crossbow. Maki would have done both of these things in exactly the same way if her crush on Kaito didn’t exist.)

(** It's exactly like how characters can be considered canonically confirmed same-gender-attracted when all they've done is show attraction to the same gender****, without them actually needing to explicitly refer to themselves with the word “gay”, or “lesbian”, or “bi” or whatever else. Anyone who tried to insist that was necessary in order for it to “count” would instantly be written off as homophobic. So if that’s the case, then a character explicitly saying something such as “I don’t understand what it means to like someone that way” equally constitutes them being confirmed aro, and trying to argue that it doesn’t “count” without outright hearing the word itself is, guess what…?)

(*** This also inherently means that there’s nothing straight about Maki’s crush on Kaito either, since societally-expected “straight” attraction is allo as well as hetero. I gather that some people in this fandom like to devalue and erase Maki’s crush (and potentially also Maki herself) because they feel that it’s an Obligatory Forced Straight Romance and don’t like that, or something along those lines. Well, good news! It’s literally not that, actually, because Maki isn’t straight.)

(**** …This only applies so long as it actually is very clearly romantic or sexual attraction and not just people deciding platonic affection is totally romantic thanks to the disease that is amatonormativity. Because, you know. That happens. Literally all the time. (Even from V3’s narrative itself; see footnote 1.))

[hunterxloser]

Here be rambling regarding Kite and the ending sequence of the chimera ant arc. I call it Seeing Double: a new alternative to the ‘fetus theory’ of Kite’s resurrection

I’ve seen people suggest that the #3 wand that Kite draws - presumably the weapon that Ging implies allows Kite to avoid death - works by having Kite’s consciousness piggyback on, and eventually override the consciousness of, the nearest fetus, in this case, the ant queen’s last baby. While nothing in canon explicitly precludes this theory, I find it unlikely for a few reasons:

Nothing about Kite’s reincarnation suggests that it is different from other cases of chimera ants who eventually regain the memories and personality of a person whose genes (i.e. body) were consumed by the queen. In the absence of other evidence, we should assume that Kite’s ‘resurrection’ follows the rules of the other cases, and consider how Kite might have been eaten, given that his puppet body is not visibly missing pieces.

I doubt Kite “forced to take another life” McPacifist-Until-Forced-Into-Violence would be comfortable choosing a hatsu to keep himself alive that comes at the expense of an infant creature. Perhaps he could justify taking over a fetus on the grounds that he is not killing it because its body remains alive, but this is hardly a compelling stance. Other things being equal, I find a hatsu which permits Kite to survive beyond death at the expense of another inconsistent with what we know about Kite’s character and values. (Though an argument could be made that this violation of Kite’s usual moral code would act as a powerful restriction/covenant to power the ability.)

Even if Kite decided that taking over another organism were morally acceptable, in designing this hatsu he would have had to specify that his consciousness would take over the nearest human fetus; otherwise he would risk being reborn as, statistically most likely, a fly or cockroach. Kite has lukewarm passions, and makes his decisions carefully. His hatsu would be well-designed (as crazy slots is, despite how annoying it is), and would explicitly preclude the possibility of being reborn as a nonhuman animal. Therefore his hatsu could not have resulted in his consciousness being transferred to the ant queen’s last baby: it isn’t human, and thus would be invalid as a potential host.

The fetus-hijacking theory, while not conclusively ruled out by the canon evidence, has no direct textual support and appears incompatible with Kite’s personality, and therefore this theory ought to be rejected if any other plausible mechanism for Kite’s resurrection is found.

I propose an alternative theory regarding the conditions of Kite’s ressurection and the manner in which the wand and its concomitant hatsu function, a theory which accounts for several otherwise unexplained odd textual features. We see that Kite’s formerly-dismembered puppet body is whole, if not hale. We know then that none of this body was fed to the chimera ant Queen, enabling his later resurrection in the ‘Reina’/chimera ant body. Rather, his resurrection must have occurred through some other means. I argue that the #3 wand works by producing a second body that shares Kite’s consciousness with his original body, a second body that may survive the death of the first. This theory has several upshots and supports:

Motif of reduplication. There is another case of curious, unexplained duplication at the end of the Chimera Ant Arc. Namely, the dictator Diego is shown to be still alive and in retirement, despite having been killed when the ant king took over his palace. The two Diegos are clearly not a case of simple decoy; they are perfect physical duplicates. I don’t argue that Diego’s double is connected to Kite’s double, speaking in terms of plot; I merely argue that the Diego ‘clone’ provides evidence that Togashi was thinking about doubles at the end of the chimera ant arc, and wanted to draw our attention to this. (More contentiously: there are also curious parallels between Kite and another character who is canonically shown to have a double: a white-haired, serious character with a two-syllable name beginning with ‘K-A’ and ending with ‘O.’)

Precedent for body-doubling through nen. On the subject of Kastro: while it is plausible to assume that nen can do anything you can imagine - the only question is what price you will pay - there is an exact canonical precedent for someone creating a physical duplicate of themselves out of nen. It is not entirely clear whether Kastro’s double was conscious in its own right or capable of functioning independently, but it is noteworthy that Hisoka was only able to defeat Kastro in the absence of the ‘clone.’ If the duplication hatsu had been active at the moment of Kastro’s death, it is entirely plausible that the double might have gone on living and fighting as Kastro himself would have done, down to the psychological weaknesses that were his downfall. And even if this were not true, Kastro was an enhancer; Kite, as a nen user whose conjuror category is strong enough that his main ability is more or less a conjuror ability, would indisputably be able to create an even better double that would be able to carry his consciousness through a full, ‘new’ life.

Accounts for caracterization discrepancy. The fact that ‘Chimera Ant Kite’ exhibits strong, indeed irreconcilable, differences in character from the original Kite supports the theory that CAC is ‘really’ a chimera ant, generated in the usual way, rather than Kite’s consciousness transferred through some magically-pristine method into another host.

Accounts for why Kite was not fed to the Queen. Crucially, at the time Kite was dismembered, the royal guard were still loyal to the Queen. With his string bean physique Kite would undoubtedly not have been a delectable morsel on merely gastronomic grounds, but as a powerful nen user he would be singularly nutritious. Given this fact, Neferpitou should have fed him to the Queen. Instead, his body was turned into a puppet and used to train soldiers. Neferpitou’s use of his body for this purpose only makes sense if the Queen got an equal prize of her own; say, a whole identical Kite body to consume.

TLDR; the circumstances and causes surrounding Kite’s ‘survival’ as a chimera ant, while misty, are best explained by the theory that the crazy slots wand (weapon number 3) somehow enables Kite to duplicate himself. Following this duplication, both Kites were defeated by Neferpitou. One Kite was fed to the ant queen; the other was turned into the zombie/puppet version that Knuckle and Shoot apprehended.

[bestworstcase]

farran rereads lost lagoon: chapters 3-4

- a shot-put ball, according to my cursory research, weighs in the neighborhood of 6-16 pounds. leila howland expects me to believe that princess “hoisted an adult woman 70 ft into the air on the daily with nothing but a pulley and raw upper body strength” rapunzel has a hard time picking up a shot.

anyways

- rapunzel thinks about how she used to talk to herself in her tower when she was isolated (and lonely) but stopped once she came to corona, and this girl looked like she was talking to herself, and it gave rapunzel this weird sense of familiarity! now what in the world could that mean? its so subtle i can’t quite put my finger on it.

again, romance novel.

less sardonically - i will say that tts cass has never struck me as an especially lonely person. yes, rapunzel is quite possibly her first ever close friend, but cass also appears to be on pleasant terms with her coworkers and has at least one or two friendships or mentor-type relationships among the guards (stan and pete). animals in tts are anthropomorphized enough to qualify as humans, and cassandra is unequivocally friends with owl and fidella. she is friendly if not friends with at least one coronan citizen (monty). she’s utterly unfazed by crowley’s crabbiness. she’s able to get along with the pub thugs. in vardaros she befriends vex with ease and makes herself right at home among the citizenry at large. there is zero friction between her and lance - at most she rolls her eyes when he’s being ridiculous. and out of the main cast, cassandra is the one who seems closest to varian in s1 - like, she has actual bonding moments with him. 

THE POINT BEING, cassandra may not have a lot of close friends, but she is nevertheless personable and demonstrates the ability to adapt herself to suit a variety of social environments. maybe i’m projecting here - i have very few close offline friends because my preference for in-person socialization is for it to be very casual - but taken together this doesn’t scream ‘lonely person’ to me. it instead says ‘person who finds social fulfillment in a wide net of friendly acquaintanceships’ and possibly also ‘person who finds close, emotionally intimate relationships worthwhile but very demanding to maintain, and so seldom or never seeks them out.’

this, absolutely, a very subjective reading of her character - it is just as plausible for cass to be someone who is socially competent but feels inwardly unfulfilled until rapunzel comes along. but even in that reading, this implication that cassandra is as deeply lonely, as thoroughly isolated in corona as rapunzel was in her tower is baldly absurd.

- i think i will have more thoughts about how arianna is characterized and the relationship she and rapunzel have with each other later in the story. for now it feels rather mechanical, and like arianna exists in the story to facilitate cassunzel happening.

- cassandra comes across to me like she has an anxiety disorder written by someone who doesn’t quite know how to convey how that feels? she catastrophizes: what if rapunzel thinks cass attacked her? will she get in trouble? but then she stops to make snide comments about rapunzel’s security detail ‘[falling] down on the job’ and concludes with an impressive amount of certainty that rapunzel isn’t going to make a big deal of it, after all. that… isn’t how anxiety works?

then, immediately, she finds a note from her father scolding her for slacking off—making it clear that she is indeed in trouble, like she feared—and her response is to scoff and throw it away. zero concern about being in trouble. zero worry about the consequences she might face for refusing the pointed “offer” of being rapunzel’s lady-in-waiting. like… this isn’t anxiety. i’m positive it’s meant to convey anxiety, but it comes across as cassandra just being… melodramatic and rude and grumpy. like a teenager. it’s unpleasant. and it bears very little resemblance to tts cass, who expresses a clear and consistent anxiety regarding the security of her job and the looming threat of a convent.

- secondly: “Friedborg reported that you missed your afternoon duties AGAIN. Please be advised that this is unacceptable. The queen is looking for a lady-in-waiting to serve Princess Rapunzel. It would be a great opportunity for you, and you must show the queen how prepared you are to train her in the ways of the court.” i am 100% convinced that howland thought cass was rapunzel’s age or younger. if friedborg is effectively cassandra’s direct supervisor, and she is reporting absences to cassandra’s father instead of addressing this with cassandra directly, the only explanation that makes sense is that cassandra is not of legal age.

- “Ladies don’t wield weapons, lead military strategy meetings, or race on horseback. Ladies do needlework, flower arranging, and hairstyling.”

sighs.

i am not going to argue that corona, in any incarnation, isn’t culturally sexist. it is. there are no women in the guard, no women in trades, no female business owners in the vein of monty or xavier or feldspar. besides rapunzel and arianna - who as the monarch’s spouse has very little in the way of actual political power - there are no women in the upper echelons of the government. besides cassandra, the only gnc women around are criminals. cass is denied even a chance to join the guard for no evident reason, even though her father allows eugene - a man he openly despises - to take the tests and then begrudgingly hires him when he passes. no one sees an issue with this, even though cassandra is demonstrably overqualified.

however.

howland makes this cultural sexism explicit text, and she does so in such a way that it implies something pretty horrifying about the already pretty horrifying corona-saporia unification backstory.

i am talking, of course, about general shampanier. you know, the female saporian general whom herz der sonne married when the two kingdoms were unified. the female saporian general who personally dueled der sonne for hours, according to under raps. the female saporian general who, forget military strategy meetings, led an entire goddamn army. i will accept the possibility that shampanier did not ride horses, because rapunzel’s return suggests that saporians have some sort of cultural objection to that. but this book predates rapunzel’s return by a large margin, and it isn’t canon anyway, so odds are the general shampanier of this story rode a warhorse at some point or another in her illustrious career of being the general of an army!!!

this woman - general shampanier - became the queen, the wife of arguably corona’s most historically important king, at a defining moment in coronan political and cultural history. tts and lost lagoon would both have us believe that this was a romantic, peaceful union between two people and two nations, but a few hundred years later - this. ladies don’t fight. ladies don’t belong in the war tent. ladies don’t ride horses. cass takes these things for granted as facts of life. but general shampanier did all of those things, and she did them extremely well, and she became corona’s queen.

WHAT HAPPENED?! WHAT HAPPENED TO SHAMPANIER’S LEGACY?

how did corona go from a warrior-queen to this, in just a few hundred years? the most plausible answer is that the background radiation of sexism and, perhaps, anti-saporian bias was powerful enough to unravel any cultural impact she may have otherwise had, deep enough to render her an outlier, an aberration, an exception to the rule that women do not act like that.

even arguing here that ‘lady’ specifically means ‘noblewoman’ doesn’t add up - because, again, general shampanier became THE QUEEN. you don’t get more noblewoman than that!

it feels unfair to judge this book with details added in season 3—such as the fact that shampanier is evidently not buried with herz der sonne—but this total lack of a cultural impact from general shampanier, queen of corona, feels very telling even without taking those tidbits of extra-textual information into consideration.

and good god, saporia hasn’t even properly entered the narrative yet! this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg!

*deep breath*

moving. on.

- continuing the theme of cass being a child larping as a guard recruit: she has a closetful of weapons which she maintains to the exacting standards of the handbook, but skips out on her job to “train” in secret because evidently she’ll do ANYTHING to get on the guard except, you know, demonstrate a modicum of responsibility with the job she has now.

- moreover while i think cartography is a neat hobby for cassandra to have, it… doesn’t make a lot of sense if it’s part of some nebulous plan to ~prove herself worthy~ of being on the guard. like, cartography straight up isn’t a relevant skill, and while knowing the countryside could certainly be helpful for guard work in the event a criminal goes to ground in the wilderness, it’s like… it’s like if i applied for my current job, which is in software/tech support, by focusing an intensive amount of energy on teaching myself spanish. fluency in spanish is a useful skill and one that i could turn into an asset within the bounds of my current job, and it might be the deciding factor in me getting hired over someone else with equivalent experience and skill in computing and tech support (which is what the job involves) because, yes, some of our clients are ESL spanish-speakers. but it’s—there’s a disconnect. if i were in a tight competition to get this job i would be pouring my time into sharpening my programming skill and polishing up a portfolio of relevant work. i wouldn’t be devoting hours upon hours to learning spanish. right?

on the other hand—if cartography is a hobby cassandra is passionate about, and she’s 16 or 17 or 18 and she really likes the idea of being on the guard and really feels like she can do it and is bored with her dumb teenager job and desperate to get her dad to make her a guard without actually grasping what being a guard entails or the kind of work it involves or what she actually, realistically needs to do to have a shot, then… yeah, skipping work to play pretend with her weapons and convincing herself that her favorite hobby is totally going to prove to her dad that she’s ready to be a guard!!! makes perfect sense. it’s no different from tts varian tunnel visioning so hard on this fantasy of ‘i’ll surprise my whole village with hot running water and then my dad will be proud of me!!!’ that he neglects basic safety measures and accidentally blows the whole system up. it’s not realistic. it’s a fantasy. it’s play.

- the only time cassandra brings up eugene’s criminal past in tts is to mock him for being a loser. like. literally. the plot of fitzherbert pi kicks off when she calls him a “two-bit hood” and then when he fires back that flynn rider was a LEGEND!!! she fires back “key word being was. and… what is it you do now?” and that’s the only time she brings it up. granted this is 6-7 months into their relationship but… still, frankly i never got the impression that “former thief” was anywhere close to the top of cassandra’s list of reasons for hating eugene. he’s just a dick. she doesn’t like him because he’s a huge selfish jerk and she warms up to him after her starts behaving better.

- rapunzel goes to the ty lee school of flirting. just… laugh really hard at everything your crush says even if it’s not funny.

- despite my… intense and rapidly growing dislike for how cassandra is characterized in this book, her experiencing an actual physical reaction when rapunzel enters her space without permission is good. it’s about the boundaries. it has always been about the boundaries, and rapunzel crossing them, and the intractable messiness that arises from that.

- in fact: how many times does rapunzel cross boundaries in just this one little scene? oh, let me count the ways!

1 - when cassandra goes to shut the door, rapunzel ducks under her arm to enter the room. (eugene attempts to enter as well, but cass succeeds in blocking him.)

2 - missing or ignoring cassandra’s first “go away” hint about only playing individual sports.

3 - missing or ignoring cassandra’s second “go away” hint (“I let the silence get awkward.”)

4 - arranging cassandra’s invitation to the feast of elodie the great with the captain beforehand, so cass can’t use him as an excuse to decline.

5 - missing or ignoring cassandra’s obvious discomfort with this news, taking cassandra’s attendance at the feast as a done deal, and skipping straight to asking cassandra to sit next to her.

6 - in response to cassandra’s very diplomatic signal of not wanting to do that (“I sit wherever I’m assigned”), she declares that she’ll make sure cassandra is assigned to sit next to her.

7 - touching without permission, which makes cassandra flinch.

all of which results in cassandra making what she considers to be a “tactical surrender.” and then shutting and locking her door, because she feels so rattled. as i recall, lagoon is actually a lot mellower on the boundary violations front - and rapunzel actually learns better over the course of the story, which is probably the biggest reason that lost lagoon is not canon and cannot be canon to tts - but it feels worth writing this sort of thing out because, well. it is one of the dead horses i keep clobbering.

[raveneira]

Since Yashahime is such a dumpster fire Im just gonna rewrite the sequel to what I THINK would have been the better alternative to the whole SessRin situation and also some story elements that could really be improved and would make this series alot better.

For starters, if we HAD to go the SessRin route then I would make it take place 21 years after the end of final act, Kagome was 18 when she returned to the feudal era and 3 years had passed at the end of the final act which made her 21, Rin should have been about 11-12 at that point, if we count 21 years from then, Kagome would be 42 while Rin would be 32-33, meaning when the twins were born Rin was 18-19, I know that might make ppl a bit uncomfortable still but atleast she would be a legitimate adult where you can atleast say "alright...Im KIND of ok with this, I still dont like it but atleast she is technically an adult capable of consenting and not a literal child being taken advantage of"

Thats if they HAD to go the SessRin route, then I would atleast make it done tastefully where it doesnt promote pedophilia, plus the old gang being in their 40s wouldnt be that big a deal because they'd still be capable of fighting.

Now for my PERSONAL take on how the sequel should have taken place, SessRin wouldnt happen at all, because the beauty of their relationship stemmed from this ruthless cold hearted demon who hated humans, learned to love and care for a small child to the point of nearly crying when he thought he lost her for good, there are all different kinds of love and the love Sesshomaru had for Rin was pure and innocent. He was someone she adored as her savior and caretaker and she was someone he cared for and wanted to protect, to me that bond was far more impactful and meaningful than anything romantic or sexual building up between them, but simply two people whom the other simply cannot live without because they mean THAT much to eachother. Such a pure and sweet relationship did NOT need to be twisted into a romantic and sexual light. Rin could have continued to adore Sesshomaru and he could have continued to check up on her and bring her gifts as he did in the final act until Rin decided she wanted to travel with him again.

Now onto the rewrite, as I stated SessRin WOULDNT happen and their bond would remain as it was in the OG series, so who would be the twins mother? well if we HAD to go the half demon route to show Sesshomaru's development full circle, and we didnt wanna undo Kagura's death because it was a critical moment for Sesshomaru's development, there were several other routes that could have been taken.

1 Create a new character and develop her over the course of Yashahime through a series of flashbacks as we unravel the mystery of what happened to everyone through the girls travels. If you want to go the angsty route you could have her die giving birth and have Rin raise them as a sort of surrogate mother figure, kind of like Clementine with AJ.

2 Use an already established character, one possibility being Nazuna, a human girl that debuted back in the early OG series, she had black hair and black eyes but as we see from Yashahime, the girls clearly didnt inherit their mothers looks as in the OG series Rin's hair was black and her eyes are brown while Setsuna's hair is brown and she has blue/purple eyes while Towa has red eyes, features that neither of their parents have. They also have a random red streak in their hair for some reason. 

So based on this, Nazuna would be a good possible candidate as she was a teenager in the OG series and would be an adult by the end of the series when she would give birth. [Correct me if Im wrong about her age but she looks like a teenager, but if Im wrong then I would just adjust the timeline to where she would be an adult at the time she gives birth]

Another potential candidate would be Momiji, true she may have been anime only but since this is an anime only sequel she is a plausible candidate. She has red/auburn hair which would explain the strange red streak in the twins hair. Like Nazuna, she was a teenager in the OG series so she would also be an adult by the time she'd conceive and give birth.

Another candidate would be Kaname Kururugi, a game exclusive character, but the fact that they went through the trouble of creating a complete OC and fleshed out her backstory to such a degree and allowed her to build relationships with established characters, including Sesshomaru, its safe to say they could have incorperated her into the anime canon considering they already had an established foundation they could have just built off of and meshed it into the anime. Plus she has brown hair and blue/purple eyes just like Setsuna.

Now that we have all the potential candidates, who's the one that seems the most plausible? In my opinion, I would personally go the Kaname route because she has such a deep and fleshed out backstory and they actually took the time to even animate scenes specifically for this game, so she does TECHNICALLY make an appearance in the anime, just not in an actual episode. And just like Kagome, she could have grown fond of the feudal era as well and wished to go back and somehow found a way to do so at the end of the Final act or maybe a month or year later after Kagome returned.

So going with the Kaname route, I'll begin my rewrite.

Being as Sesshomaru hasnt seen her since she was 15 like Kagome and vanished for several years, when he finally sees her again she will now be 18-19 when they reunite and a relationship would start to build and ensue.

Continuing where the game left off, Kaname would continue on with her normal life as Kagome did and eventually graduate when she is 18. She would still often think about her time in the feudal era and miss all the people she spent time with and bonded with there, one person specifically being Sesshomaru.

^ A refresher for those who forgot the Sesshomaru ending.

As she comes home from graduation, another Doll Festival of Wishes is being held and it reminds her of Sesshomaru whom she wishes to see again, she goes and buys one of the dolls and writes his name on it as she did when she first returned home, thinking to herself that its no use and is probably a waste of time, but with what little hope she has left, she does the ritual anyway.

Afterwards she goes over to her father to help him with the festival, who like last time asks her to go get something from the storehouse. As she enters the storehouse, the hole in which she fell through before has been patched up, as she walks through the storehouse, she walks on the patched up floor which caves in when she walks on it and she is once again transported to the feudal era.

She once again lands in a forest not far from where Kaede lives, as she wakes up, she is greeted by Sesshomaru, who had saw her unconscious on his way to visit Rin and watched over her till she woke up. Overjoyed and also in disbelief, she hugs him which surprises Sesshomaru who isnt used to recieving this type of affection but he doesnt push her away, nor does he reciprocate by hugging her back.

As she lets go she tells him how much she missed him and everyone there, then, noticing Rin wasnt with him, asks him where she was, worried that something might have happened to her. He reassures her that Rin is fine and that he was just on his way to visit her at Kaede's village which relieves Kaname. She goes with Sesshomaru back to Kaede's village where she reunites with everyone much to their surprise but they are all very happy to see her again.

Anyway Im not gonna do a play by play step by step storytelling so Im just gonna mention the main story beats and you guys can fill in the blanks for yourself.

Anyway after the happy reunion and catching up, Sesshomaru prepares to leave back on his travels which saddens Kaname who had longed to see him again and only got to be reunited with him a short time. Reluctant to be apart from him again, she asks, or rather insists he allows her to come with him on his travels. He tells her that if she comes with him it'll be a dangerous journey for her, she replies confidently that she can take care of herself and promises to not be a burden to him. Reluctant but not willing to argue, he tells her to do as she wishes and flies off. Kaname hops on A-Un and soon follows, and the two begin their travels together.

Thats pretty much how'd we leave off the final act, atleast a month or two after, you can decide your own timeline.

As for what happened on their journey and how their relationship developed will be shown through a series of flashbacks over the course of Yashahime as we solve more of the mysteries.

In episode 15, we'd get the same flashback but with Kaname being the one to give birth to the twins with Rin, Kagome, Sango, and Kaede there for her as support. It is said that when Sesshomaru and Kaname found out she was pregnant, he brought her back to the village where she could have a safe pregnancy and birth. Of course Sesshomaru isnt the mushy type to stay there with her through her pregnancy, but he does visit from time to time when giving gifts to Rin but also goes to check on her and see how she’s doing, although he doesnt admit thats what he’s doing.

After the twins were born, everything plays out relatively the same, but instead of just taking the twins without a word to her, he atleast reassures her that he's taking them someplace safe from harm, although he cant explain to her right now what that harm is, Kaname says she trusts him.

As I said, things play out relatively the same after that.

As for Rin, what exactly happens with her? well if we MUST pair her off with someone, it should be Kohaku, someone she has an established relationship and bond with that is closer to her age. Whether or not they have kids I'll leave up to you to decide, but I like the idea of Kohaku having a little demon slayer son to carry on their legacy. It would be interesting seeing his bond with Setsuna since Rin would essentially be like a sister figure for the twins although they dont remember her, it would be interesting and sweet to see Setsuna develop a bond with their son who for the sake of simplifying things, we'll call him Korin.

Korin, if we want Rin to be an adult at the time she gives birth, would be 4 years after Kaname gives birth to the twins when Rin is 18-19, making Korin 10 in the present. Like the twins, Korin has no memories of his mother since she was sealed away in a tree for whatever reason, so the only mother figure he's ever had has been Setsuna, which would be an interesting dynamic to explore since it would be similar to how Sesshomaru filled a parental role for Rin who didnt have anyone at the time.

Moroha would NOT be this uncaring about her parents, infact she would be insanely curious, maybe even furious wanting to figure out why they abandoned her and vanished without a word since nobody seems to have told her anything that happened. She would want answers and wouldnt stop until she gets them. The OG crew if we MUST have this mystery drawn out, would tell her that it would be better if she found out the truth for herself and that any answers they give her wouldnt be the answers she wants. So Moroha's driving force in the story wouldnt be about some stupid bounty hunting debt, although she could still be a bounty hunter, but her main motivation would be trying to discover the truth about her parents and why they abandoned her.

Also this BS with Koga giving her up would NOT happen, it just wouldnt, that is BEYOND OOC for him to do and I will not be having it. Instead, Koga would be IN character and not let Moroha out of his sight, he would treat her like kin like the rest of the wolf demon tribe, maybe even give her special treatment because of her connection to Kagome. Koga would train Moroha himself, not going easy on her because he wants her to be strong enough to fend for herself, concerned because of her being a quater demon and having her demon powers sealed, he’s hard on her to toughen her up to not have to rely on it. 

If we must include Yawaragi, then she would be sort of a bodyguard assigned to watch over Moroha by Koga for when he cant. The storyline of the rat armor would still relatively be the same but instead of selling Moroha off to some shady bounty hunter which Koga would never allow or forgive her for doing, she simply introduces him to her as a long time friend, Moroha would take interest in the bounty hunting business as an opporunity for training, and potentially finding info on her parents since Jyubei seems to have alot of connections and intel that’ll be useful in her journey. Yawaragi instead of pursuing the key alone would bring Moroha with her when they are approached by the shady demon whos name I cant be bothered to remember, he blackmails her with the key telling her to fight Moroha if she wants it, Moroha scoffs at this telling him that she wouldnt do that and that they’ll both fight him together to get the key instead, but to her surprise Yawaragi attacks her.

Everything plays out relatively the same, Moroha is hurt at her betrayal and lashes out at her. Yawaragi, like in the episode uses this fight as one final lesson for Moroha, with full intention on dying by the end of it. Moroha is hesitant to fight her because she still cares about her as she was like a second mentor and somewhat mother figure to her. So to get Moroha to fight seriously she lies to her by saying that everything was a lie and that she never cared about her etc I wont go into a ton of detail, Moroha is reluctant to believe her but is eventually convinced when she attacks her full power, seemingly with the intent to kill her. This pushes Moroha to fight seriously as well, remembering what she taught her about using her clever thinking and successfully strikes her down. 

After this she goes over to her and Yawaragi admits to lying to her so that she would fight because she knew chances are the shady demon wouldnt have given her the key and since the rat armor was close to killing her anyway she decided she would rather die by Moroha’s hands rather than being crushed to death by the armor. Moroha would be devestated and guiltridden since she is the reason she was in the cursed armor to begin with, but Yawaragi reassures her that it isnt her fault and that it was her own negligence to see through the trap that resulted in this outcome. As a reward for defeating her, she gives Moroha her sword [yes Moroha wouldnt have her sword until now] and tells her to get stronger with it so that she wouldnt have to rely on her rouge, but win using her own strength. Moroha promises her that she will and Yawaragi passes away shortly after that. Everything plays out relatively the same after that.

As for the twins their motivations can mostly stay the same, but they also wouldnt be so uncaring about their parents, or specifically Towa wouldnt. Towa would be furious at her father and want to find him and maybe even kill him for abandoning them and causing them to be separated with seemingly no regard for their safety. Setsuna can maintain her non caring attitude, but given Towa's upbringing in the modern era, it makes sense for her to be furious at her birth father's neglect after experiencing what a loving home and father feels like.

As for what happened to Kaname, like I said you could go the angsty route where she died giving birth, or you could have her be kidnapped and used as a bargaining chip to blackmail Sesshomaru into doing the enemies bidding. You could have it where Sesshomaru was able to prevent Rin from falling into the enemies hands but not Kaname. Or maybe Kaname sacrificed herself for Rin, agreeing to go with the enemy in exchange for them sparing Rin, which is what leads Sesshomaru to sealing Rin in the tree to prevent them from potentially coming back for her. You guys can come up with your own conclusions there, these are just some scenerios off the top of my head. But for the sake of the rewrite we'll go with Kaname being kidnapped and used to blackmail Sesshomaru.

I’ll make an actual rewrite in a separate post with how I would PERSONALLY make the sequel, this post is just me tweaking and making slight alterations to the way Sunrise chose to write the sequel, the separate post would be how I feel the sequel could have played out instead for the better.

[galacticnova3]

sorry but what do you mean by good faith headcanoning? /gen (i agree w/ you and you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, i’m just curious)

Oh I’m fine answering stuff like this! Helps me get my points across easier if people actually know what I’m talking about after all. Apologies in advance this got very long because I’m tired and can’t write short explanations when tired.

In a nutshell, it means not making some incredibly complicated headcanon that “explains” how x thing that clearly applies doesn’t actually apply. I just call it good faith headcanoning because it’s headcanon that doesn’t stem from much, if any canon basis, but that also isn’t used to excuse or push harmful or super unrealistic interpretations. An example of a good faith headcanon would be that Meta Knight is blind and his mask is what lets him see. There’s nothing that suggests or supports this in canon, and considering he still flies off even without his mask, it can be assumed it’s not actually required for vision. But saying that you headcanon he’s blind ultimately doesn’t do any harm, and just as importantly, doesn’t deny important established information.

As an example of a bad faith headcanon… Ok, this is gonna be silly, but I’m kinda brain’t right now. Say someone decided they don’t like the fact that Kirby loves strawberry shortcake for whatever reason, and said that they headcanon that Kirby LOATHES strawberry shortcake. In response to people pointing out that Kirby’s love of strawberry shortcake played a major roll in Squeak Squad, and has been depicted in other situations as well, they decide to say they headcanon that Kirby actually DOESN’T like it, but had to eat it for a challenge. Or they headcanon he was being “influenced” by something to make him want to eat the shortcake, as well as in every other instances of it being eaten.

The problem is that while this sort of thing technically DOES work as an explanation, it’s not a “fair” or reasonable one. No matter how much people point out that it contradicts something that’s been established, the person can always just point to their complicated workaround and say that “you can’t police my headcanons that’s mean!” In essence it’s basically the same issue teachers/professors have with you doing an opinion or argument-centric paper on something that can’t be disagreed with or argued against; at that point you’re not addressing the information, you’re just dodging the issue.

Yes, it’s true that people are allowed to headcanon what they want and that policing it(when it isn’t harmful/disgusting) is a shitty thing to do. I agree with that entirely. I’m also not against a bit of tip-toeing around in the vague parts of canon, and in fact that’s probably how the majority of my headcanons came about. However, in my opinion, there’s a point where it becomes a bit too much, where it’s really clear it’s all just an excuse to ignore important and well-established information about a character. Ignoring canon is fine until ignoring it fundamentally changes aspects of everything connected to it, in a way that no longer resembles the actual media.

The simple solution is to just call it an AU and then go from there, instead of making excuses for why X is like Z, when in the series X is shown to be like Y. In that case, so long as the impacts of changing that aspect are shown, and again, it’s not just an excuse to make abhorrent content, there’s no problem.

In reference to how this came about, the “bad faith” headcanons I was talking about would be the ones that basically say “Marx wasn’t actually a bad guy”, “Marx wasn’t being selfish”, “What Marx did wasn’t manipulative”, etc. as a means to justify Marx not experiencing consequences. Doing that essentially removes the basic core aspects of Marx’s character. Milky Way Wishes’ entire plot revolves around the simple fact that Marx is manipulative and a liar. He basically admits it himself when he says he got the sun and the moon to fight, got Kirby to summon Nova, and then brags about that whole thing going according to plan.

While it’s not out of the question to give him a motivation besides wanting to rule, like I did with Magolor in my headcanon, that motivation shouldn’t/can’t be used to undermine or otherwise excuse his actions. It doesn’t matter if he wanted to take over in order to improve Popstar or whatever(which he didn’t, because he gets excited about being able to cause all the mischief he wants, by the way). At the end of the day, he still probably caused major problems when the sun and moon started fighting, lied to and later attempted to kill Kirby(indirectly through exposure, then directly by fighting him), and ultimately got Nova destroyed. If the headcanon solely exists to say “but it’s ok and doesn’t matter anymore”, whether to woobify him into just a naughty widdle clown boy or (eugh) ship him with Someone, I can’t see a plausible way that it is in good faith and not just a tailored excuse to deny his wrongdoings in canon.

Now, this might seem like there’s an unfair line, because obviously not every unrealistic headcanon is in bad faith, but imo it can be figured out pretty simply. Generally, it can safely be assumed to be bad faith if multiple of the following things apply, within reason:

-It’s ignoring core information that, when changed, changes something completely in ways beyond just what’s being changed (ex. If you say Marx was actually possessed and that’s why he did MWW rather than being power hungry, there’s going to be more affected than just everyone going “oh it’s not his fault, ok” and then doing nothing)

-It’s changing so much information to make sense that, in justifying the one headcanon, many other things no longer line up or make sense, but go unaddressed (ex. Saying Meta Knight wasn’t bad in Revenge of Meta Knight because he wanted to take over Dreamland because there was actually some kind of great evil that he needed control to destroy, and that saying it’s because he wanted to end the lazy lifestyle was just a coverup to not cause mass panic)

-The headcanon attempts to justify an act that can’t be honestly justified or made ok in the canon circumstances (ex. Saying Sectonia actually wanted to rule Floralia and take over Popstar for good reasons that Kirby couldn’t see, like trying to unite them into a safer whole, or trying to justify Hyness’ mistreatment of Zan Partizanne by saying she’s actually the bad one)

-It is used in a manner that basically attempts to “victimize” the creator or “villainize” people who disagree if discrepancies in their headcanon are pointed out (ex. The creator “headcanons” Dedede is actually totally evil in order to write characters hating him, and acts like they’re being bullied when people correctly point out the positive relationships Dedede has with the main cast, as well as his role in aiding the side of good in games like Return to Dreamland, Triple Deluxe, and Star Allies.

-It is otherwise an unsupported, implausible headcanon being used to excuse gross and/or malicious content (ex. Headcanon excuses for shipping gross pairings, like MetaSusie or p*do/*nc*st ships)

While these criteria technically mean my shortcake example doesn’t count, I think there’s also always going to be a bit of case by case judgement with this sort of thing. Another important note, a bad faith headcanon isn’t necessarily bad conceptually; in most cases the issues can be solved by just making it an au with the appropriate changes, as that removes the issue of “how much canon can a headcanon ignore before it’s basically just an au?” As an example, “Au where Marx wasn’t a bad guy” is very different from “Marx wasn’t a bad guy”, while still allowing the same concept to be explored.

[rontufox]

Silver & Blaze Origins Theory

NOTE: This is just for fun and isn’t proven by canon material. EDIT 4/26/2020: Added a read more & better Silver evidence.

A lotta things bother me about these two. Based on the canon info we have (outlined in this in-depth post), we know they both originate from the distant future. When Blaze seals Iblis inside herself, she leaves the distant future and fades into the Sol Dimension. In turn, she becomes princess of the Sol Dimension, which later involves her in the events of Sonic Rush. Neither Blaze nor Silver remember one another because the Sonic 06 timeline resets. However, they do meet anew in the new timeline.

Time reset paradoxes aside... I have questions. 

How did Blaze seal Iblis inside herself?

How did Blaze seal herself into another dimension?

How did Blaze arrive in the Sol Dimension’s present rather than its future?

How did Blaze become princess of the Sol Dimension by dropping into it? 

How does Blaze have an affinity with the Sol Emeralds when she’s not from their dimension? (enough to turn into Burning Blaze)

Before anyone points it out, yes, I’m aware several of these can be answered with “bad writing.” But I want to have fun with lore and logic.

I’ve created a theory that satisfies all these questions. I acknowledge that one of the questions has a canonical answer, but the rest are based on assumptions made by the player. For fun’s sake, let’s question those assumptions. Then at the end I’ll present my theory.

1) How did Blaze seal Iblis inside herself?

Because her soul is alit with flames. That is, if you believe the answer from Sonic 06. 

Let’s establish the rules the game lays out for sealing Iblis. First, Iblis can be sealed inside members of the Soleanna royal family.

Eternal Sun! The Living Flame that has been entrusted to the royal family! Fall into slumber with a royal soul!

- Duke of Soleanna

Second, Iblis cannot be sealed inside Silver. 

We can rule out that Silver used the wrong incantation, wrong number of Chaos Emeralds, or that he must have special training or bloodline, because the third thing we learn is Iblis CAN be sealed inside Blaze. And she used the same method he did. The only difference is her soul.

Don’t worry. My soul is already alit with flames. I will be accepted.

- Blaze the Cat

To me, this explanation seems a little too convenient. An exception to the royal soul rule exists? And it’s a soul alit with flames? Which in of itself is a rarity considering no other character consistently wields fire powers, much less has these powers associated with their SOUL. And Blaze just happens to exist in Silver’s timeline AND is close enough to him to be involved in the events of Sonic 06 and have the opportunity to perform the seal? 

Convenient as it is, it’s still an explanation. I could accept this answer... Or, I could point out a much more interesting factor to consider. Blaze just happens to have a royal affiliation... more on that later.

2) How did Blaze seal herself into another dimension?

This takes place in-game, yet there’s no explanation. Add in the fact that it’s apparently something Silver can do too, and it makes even less sense.

Come on, make it quick. Use your Chaos Control... to stop time. Then... seal us into a different dimension.

- Blaze the Cat

Considering Silver learned to use Chaos Control, it’s plausible he could’ve stopped time like Blaze asked. But how exactly was he supposed to seal her into a different dimension? There’s two possibilities: 1) Chaos Control, or 2) It’s an innate ability.

Innate ability is absurd. It’d make Silver way overpowered and begs the question why he never helped everyone escape from Iblis to a different dimension before this. But Chaos Control isn’t much better. Sonic, Shadow, and Silver all use Chaos Control to open time portals throughout Sonic 06. But not dimensional portals. On top of that, 2 people and 2 Chaos Emeralds are required to open these portals. 

What amazes me is when Silver prepares to do as Blaze told him, he’s not even holding any Chaos Emeralds. How does he expect to do it with a flick of his arm?

In the end, it doesn’t matter, because Blaze herself is the one who does it. But establishing how unlikely it is for Silver makes it even less likely for Blaze. She never learned Chaos Control. And, seeing as only hedgehogs are known to wield this ability, it’s doubtful she can.

So... how did she do it? Maybe it’s some combined effect of Iblis, the Chaos Emeralds, and her soul, but... that’s a lame explanation. 

There’s one more possibility if we watch the cutscene closely.

The Sol Emeralds.

It can be debated that she’s turning into Burning Blaze here. It lasts maybe 2 seconds. You can watch and decide for yourself here.

Burning Blaze brings the Sol Emeralds into the equation. And for me, they’re the best explanation for how Blaze transported to a different dimension. After all, they were a contributing factor in her transporting to Sonic’s dimension in Sonic Rush. Another thing of note is almost immediately after turning into Burning Blaze, she starts to fade away, suggesting that activating the form triggered her fade into another dimension.

There’s a problem though. Up to this point, Blaze has had no association with the Sol Dimension or its emeralds. So how can the Sol Emeralds be here? 

Maybe you can argue she gained access to the Sol Emeralds by beginning to fade into the Sol Dimension itself. But how did she start fading into the Sol Dimension without first accessing the Sol Emeralds? A lotta people allow time and dimensional stuff to be a little paradox-y, but I don’t wanna be so lax.  

This leads me to believe: Blaze has always had an association with the Sol Emeralds. How? More on that later. 

3) How did Blaze arrive in the Sol Dimension’s present rather than its future?

Or, to ask it another way, if Blaze entered the Sol Dimension from the future, why does she end up in the present when she crosses back over in Sonic Rush and other games? Shouldn’t she end up in the future with Silver?

Frankly, if a series lets characters jump dimensions and timelines, it’s not that far-fetched to let them jump both in one go (see: Eggman Nega). But to give a less magical answer, the reason could be Iblis. The Duke was conducting experiments on Solaris in an effort to manipulate time. If Iblis is associated with time too, it could’ve taken Blaze to a different time in the Sol Dimension.

This question doesn’t add or detract from my theory, so I won’t include it in the last section. I included it here cuz it’s a good question I’ve seen asked.

4) How did Blaze become princess of the Sol Dimension by dropping into it?

Now here’s a big one. 

Surely the Sol Dimension existed before Blaze entered it, as evidenced by its long history and heritage. And part of this heritage states the role of guarding the Sol Emeralds is passed down the princesses of the royal family. How can Blaze just drop in and become the princess when she hasn’t had any association with the Sol Dimension up to this point?

I see 3 possibilities: 1) Blaze transporting to the Sol Dimension caused the dimension itself to change and... conveniently make her the most important person in the dimension, 2) Some circumstance convinced the royal family to change their tradition and appoint Blaze, or 3) Blaze was always a princess in the Sol Dimension.

Now, earlier I said that I think Blaze has always been associated with the Sol Emeralds. I also think she’s always been a princess in the Sol Dimension. But, how, if she originated from the future? Hm... maybe it’s because she didn’t...

5) How does Blaze have an affinity with the Sol Emeralds when she’s not from their dimension?

I’m won’t bother presenting other possibilities with this one. The only option I can accept is Blaze was always from the Sol Dimension. Always a guardian of the Sol Emeralds. 

So let’s get to the theory!

Theory: Silver and Blaze are from the past.

Oh yes. It’s conspiracy theory time

I don’t think Silver and Blaze are from the future. They were definitely there in Sonic 06, and Silver continues to reside there. But I don’t think that’s the time they originated from. I think they came from the distant past. Silver, from Sonic’s dimension’s past, and Blaze from the Sol Dimension’s past. And I think they knew each other there.

Blaze being from the Sol Dimension’s past makes the questions disappear.

1) How did Blaze seal Iblis inside herself?

She has a royal soul.

2) How did Blaze seal herself into another dimension?

She turned into Burning Blaze and the Sol Emeralds returned her to the dimension she belongs to. 

4) How did Blaze become princess of the Sol Dimension by dropping into it?

She was already its princess in the distant past. When she returns, she’s recognized as such and re-appointed to her role.

5) How does Blaze have an affinity with the Sol Emeralds when she’s not from their dimension?

She IS from their dimension!

So here’s the basic narrative: 

Long ago, in the distant past, Blaze was princess of the Sol Dimension. An unknown event displaced her and Silver to the distant future of Sonic’s dimension. They both lost their memories. Later, Blaze returned to the Sol Dimension’s present after sealing Iblis inside herself. Her memories were again lost. But the people of the Sol Dimension recognized her. Amazement spread across the land at the return of the lost princess of old. The royal family helped her regain her memories, or re-taught her who she was. She was then re-appointed to her role and continued life in her rightful dimension.

So what about Silver? What information supports Silver being from the past? 

Truthfully, not much. At least not compared to Blaze. But I have a few broad points to support it. To explore them, we’ll need to go to the past.

The Past

What do we know about the past? 

We know that technology was more advanced. Understanding of magic (emeralds, etc) was more advanced. The civilizations that wielded them flourished, but now, no longer exist. Doom was brought upon them after they misused their technology.

This narrative has been consistent in the games from the 90s to present day (seriously, check out the translated Japanese Genesis era manuals). Despite that, we rarely see this past for ourselves. Even time periods fans consider “the past,” such as the flashbacks in Sonic Adventure, don’t depict this technologically advanced time. 

The only glimpses we have are rare ancient ruins that haven’t completely succumbed to nature yet--locations like Sky Sanctuary. 

Sky Sanctuary’s more technological side is best seen inside the ruins. Revealed there are lots of glowing, geometric, cyan lights. 

Now, where have we seen that before?

Usually, Silver’s futuristic design is attributed to him being, well, from the future. But what makes things “look” futuristic? Appearing more technologically advanced than the present. Now, is there anything about the future in Sonic 06 that screams “technologically advanced”? Everything is in ruins. It’s an apocalyptic world. 

Which time seems more advanced than Sonic’s present? The past, or the future? Which time does Silver’s design most belong to?

Being from the past also better explains Silver’s powers. Technology and magic were better understood back then. If people can wield powers in Sonic’s world, the past is the time period it would be most common. And isn’t it unique how Silver and Blaze are the only two characters who consistently wield powers without the aid of technology or magical gemstones/items?

If you want a more direct comparison of Sky Sanctuary’s technological motifs next to Silver, here’s something I whipped up:

That’s all the support I have for Silver being from the past. Him originating from the past isn’t required for this theory to work, I just prefer it cuz it dovetails nicely into the whole theme SEGA has going for them. And into the next thing I’m gonna talk about.

I like to imagine that Blaze and Silver knew each other when they lived in the distant past. But how, if they’re from two different dimensions?

Dimensions

Let’s talk about dimensions. Sonic’s world has several. Sonic’s dimension, the Sol Dimension, Maginaryworld, maybe the storybook games? And there’s probably others I’m forgetting. 

I’d argue the Babylonians are from their own dimension too. If you don’t already know, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity reveals that the Babylonians were aliens that got marooned on Sonic’s planet in the distant past. But if dimensions are a thing in the Sonic world, what’s more likely? That the Babylonians were considered aliens because they’re from outer space, or because they were from a different dimension? 

Knowing the Sonic world has these dimensions, and that people of the past were much more advanced... What if they realized there were other dimensions? What if they began communicating with each other? Formed relationships and alliances?

A world where it’s commonplace to communicate with those outside your own dimension. This is a world where Silver and Blaze could know each other.

The only evidence I have to support this is the guardian structure. The first three dimensions I listed (Sonic’s world, the Sol Dimension, and Maginaryworld) all have their own guardian structure that started in ancient times and remain preserved to this day. What if the rulers of the past agreed to form this guardian structure to protect the magical items of the worlds, and to also preserve the autonomy of their individual dimensions?

Final premise

I’ll conclude this with a premise that resulted from my imagination running wild with this. If you like this theory, feel free to explore your own ideas! _____________

It’s the distant past. Thousands of years before Sonic’s time. 

There are many dimensions. And within them, civilizations. Some more are advanced than others. Those with the technology to detect their neighboring dimensions have formed loose alliances with one another. This encourages cooperation between dimensions and is especially helpful when threats appear within or between dimensions.

In this era, there lives a princess named Blaze the Cat. She’s an inhabitant of the Sol Dimension, and Guardian of the Sol Emeralds. Her high position naturally involves her in interdimensional affairs.

Blaze is called to help investigate a problem shared between her dimension and the dimension famous for its Chaos Emeralds. While there, she meets a hedgehog named Silver (or already knew him beforehand). The further she progresses her investigation, the more serious the problem proves to be.

This is nothing we’ve seen before. Our worlds are in danger!

- A line I could imagine Blaze telling Silver

Perhaps it’s the first manifestations of the doom that will later be brought upon their worlds. Or maybe it’s one of the series’ godlike beings--Solaris, Time Eater, Dark Gaia, etc. Or maybe someone, or something, is meddling with powers they shouldn’t.

Eventually, Blaze and Silver face a final culmination of this problem. An event that either sucks them into time and space, or presents such danger to their lives that the Sol Emeralds pull them into time and space to protect them. Either way, they are ripped from their current time and thrown far, far into the future. 

And they are never heard from again.

[etherealhavoc]

Sanders Sides Rainbow & Foil Theories (Warning: Very Long)

Disclaimer: other people may have come up with some of these ideas before, but I didn’t look to any other posts for reference when making this one.

Rainbow Theory:

Rainbow theory is already widely accepted. The sides each represent a color from the visible light spectrum [ROYGBIV] with Roman being red, Janus being yellow, Remus being green, Patton being blue, Logan being indigo, and Virgil being violet. That, of course, leaves the implied existence of an orange character we have yet to meet, who will be referred to as Orange from this point forward. There’s further support for this character in several scenes, including when Virgil tells Thomas “Do not allow him [Deceit] or any of his friends to stick around that long ever again!” after SVS1. This implies that Janus has more than one friend – Remus and another side we have yet to meet. The existence of Orange has been further supported by the thumbnail of SVS Redux, as there is an empty character slot next to Remus:

The rest of this will hinge on the rainbow theory being supported as well as the existence of Orange, given that there is already a lot of evidence backing up these ideas.

Foil Theory:

Setting that aside, the rainbow theory along with the introduction of Remus as “the dark side of creativity” has led to some speculation that each of the sides has a foil. Some versions theorize that each ‘light’ side has a ‘dark’ counterpart. However, Roman is the one who coined the light vs. dark dichotomy, and some of the other sides (most notably Virgil at the end of Intrusive Thoughts) have rejected this terminology. Virgil corrected Thomas to say “the others,” and in  SVS Redux, Janus made it clear that he was not an evil snake boi, he was just a snake boi. The entire rest of that episode supported his claim – Janus may have manipulative tendencies, but what kind of evil character advocates for self-care? It seems to me that none of the sides are truly good or evil, they just all have different perspectives on the world and think a bit differently. In the end, they all have the goal of doing what’s best for Thomas. Their different approaches do tend to create conflict for Thomas, mainly because there isn’t always a clear right or wrong to choose from.

However, it’s possible that the sides could still have foils. Just because these differences aren’t clearly centered around good vs. evil doesn’t mean that different sides can’t come from opposite perspectives. Keeping this in mind, here is my take on the foil theories. First, let’s look at a traditional color wheel:

Looking at this, we can try to find the sides… yellow for Janus, Orange, red for Roman, purple for Virgil, Blue (but it’s a dark blue) so blue for Logan, and green for Remus. But wait! Patton is missing (or Logan, if you decided to use the blue for Patton). This doesn’t work because the color wheel traditionally used for art isn’t the same as the colors on the visible light spectrum. This puts a dent in attempts to use primary and complementary colors to decide on foils for the characters. Yes, Roman’s red and Remus’ green are clearly across from each other and that is the most clearly established pair, but it’s hard to match up the rest of the sides that way when either Patton or Logan are missing. So, in order to properly use color theory to support the theory that each side has a foil, it’s important to keep in mind the differences between the traditional color wheel above and the visible light spectrum (which we can just go ahead and look at now).

In this, we can clearly pick out each side from Virgil to Roman. However, because the visible light spectrum is based on wavelength, it’s linear and that means that no colors are clearly across from each other. When you put these colors in a wheel, keeping the proportion of the wavelengths comprised by each color the way they appear on the spectrum number-wise, the result looks like this:

This shows a comparatively smaller amount of orange and indigo to the rest of the colors, but also doesn’t show opposites or complementary colors as clearly as the traditional color wheel. Remus and Roman are still largely across from each other, but they don’t line up perfectly. It’s also not a stretch to say that based on this color wheel, Janus and Logan would be foils, and Patton and Orange would be foils. However, based on this wheel, Virgil could either have two foils (Janus and Remus) or none at all. These pairings make sense based on what we’ve seen so far, although Virgil’s case requires additional analysis.

[Side note fun fact about the pink in the second image above: it’s not actually part of the light spectrum, our brains invented the color pink to fill in the gap between violet and red when we could sense blue and red light but no green]

Now to break down each of these pairings and why they make sense…

I don’t need to go too much into detail as to why Remus and Roman would be foils – they both encompass creativity and exist in an almost binary way, probably because Patton and Roman (and therefore Thomas) view creative things in a strictly good vs. evil light, as discussed in the Intrusive Thoughts episode. There isn’t a lot of room for grey area here. Now, I personally think that neither of them are strictly good or evil but rather encompass the ideas that Thomas sees as acceptable vs. unacceptable, but that’s not quite relevant to this discussion.

Next, Janus and Logan could reasonably be each other’s foils. I know that some people make a case here for Janus and Patton, but not only does that not match the color wheel, it also makes less sense than Janus and Logan in the context of the episodes. The clearest pair we have so far is Remus and Roman, which is largely due to Roman’s very black and white view of good and evil. When Remus enters, he immediately knocks Roman out. Similarly, nearly every time that Janus has made an appearance except when masquerading as Patton, he has removed Logan from the picture. In SVS1, he impersonated Logan in a manner that seemed intentionally see through. If he had actually put in a significant effort, it seems like he could have gotten away with the impersonation. So, if that wasn’t his goal, what was? Well, his goal could have been to exclude Logan entirely. When Logan finally appears, he says “You guys are doing a courtroom scenario… without me? Unacceptable” before being immediately shunted to the back of the room by none other than Janus. In SVS Redux, Janus allows Patton to skip all of Logan’s input (the button was yellow and black, Janus’ colors, and a cane similar to Janus’ cane in the Lilypadton fight pulled away the text pop-up), and then takes Logan’s place again – effectively excluding him from this episode as well.

Aside from that factor, Janus and Logan argue in a similar way. Both of them use facts, the difference being that Logan simply presents his facts in a mostly objective way while Janus uses facts and theories to support his own personal argument. Even when Logan uses facts to prove a point, he tends to use entire theories that he personally agrees with. Janus picks and chooses bits of fact and theory that support his point, and often uses them in a way that borders on manipulative. His style of arguing fits with a Mark Twain quote I like: “Get your facts first and then you can distort them as you please.” Both Janus and Logan think and argue in a logical manner and use outside references for support, and the differences in the way they do this supports the idea that they could be each other’s foils.

The dichotomy between Patton and Orange involves a lot more speculation, mainly because Orange as a character doesn’t exist yet and we have no way of knowing for sure what that side of Thomas will represent. However, there have been a few clues so far.

Mini theory time: the orange side represents Thomas’ more aggressive emotions, primarily anger. This makes sense just in general, but also because that part of Thomas clearly exists, but has not particularly been addressed. Logan threw a crumpled-up notecard at Roman in a clear display of anger, the sides argue in a clearly emotional way frequently, and most recently, Thomas’ enraged entry into his house after the wedding took place under orange lighting. That could have been a coincidence, but Thomas and the rest of his team put so much thought and effort into each episode that I’m going to treat that lighting as purposeful.

Now, an interesting thing about these instances is that Patton, the side who is supposed to be in charge of emotions, never seems particularly angry even when the other sides are. When Thomas came in seething after the wedding, Patton seemed horrified by the outbursts and swearing, but not visibly upset about how the wedding went at all.

That leads to the reasoning behind Patton and Orange being foils. In both of the other pairs, the two sides in question seem to have the same primary function. Roman and Remus both represent creativity, but in two different ways. Logan and Janus both think logically and back up their reasoning with facts, but Logan presents the facts as objectively as possible while Janus manipulates them and presents them in the way that best serves his purposes. Patton’s primary function as stated is morality, but he views the world through the lens of emotion. He said himself that morality as he sees it “all comes back… to empathy.” If Orange also represents Thomas’ emotions, with a focus on the negative and aggressive ones that Patton seems unwilling to even entertain, it would make a lot of sense for them to be foils. It’s hard to say exactly how their perspectives here would differ, considering that Orange doesn’t even canonically exist yet, but based on the hints we’ve received so far, the emotional dichotomy here is plausible.

Finally, we have the options for Virgil’s foils or lack thereof. If Virgil has two foils, they would be Janus and Remus as based on the light spectrum color wheel above, and at surface level this seems plausible. After all, the two other sides that Virgil seems to most vehemently dislike are Janus and Remus. However, it seems more likely that Virgil has no foil whatsoever. Neither Remus nor Janus view the world through the same lens as Virgil. Remus comes closer, as intrusive thoughts tend to be things that Virgil is understandably anxious about, but Remus doesn’t view these things as worst-case scenarios, and he likely doesn’t even regard them as realistic. He just seems to take joy in chaos and venturing into creative territory that makes others uncomfortable. Janus, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to think similarly to Virgil at all. In the end, it’s more likely that Janus and Remus make Virgil uncomfortable because he feels like they are a threat to Thomas and not because they are acting as his foils.

On the other hand, if we take the pairings as previously mentioned and leave Virgil with no foil we could rearrange the color wheel to accommodate that and it would look like this:

This gives everyone a clear opposite except Virgil, but also would leave a strange gap between green and yellow that would not naturally exist. However, it would make a lot of sense in the context of the Sanders Sides universe for Virgil to not have a foil. While all the other sides clearly align with either the ‘light’ or ‘dark’ sides (which hopefully will receive alternative titles at some point, since none of them purely represent good or evil), Virgil has settled somewhere in the middle. The entire “Fitting In (Hogwarts Houses)” episode was about how Virgil didn’t fit neatly into a box even though the others more easily seemed to. Virgil’s role as anxiety is to protect Thomas. While all the sides want the best for him, none of them are as clearly protectors as Virgil. Historically, Virgil’s namesake was likely a Roman poet named Publius Vergilius Maro and called Virgil, who in Dante’s Inferno had the role of guiding Dante through hell. That role may have been literal in the story, but Virgil’s role for Thomas seems to be guiding and protecting him through situations that feel like hell, or that induce panic.

If Logan and Janus view the world through logic, Patton and Orange view the world through emotions, and Roman and Remus view the world through creative potential, Virgil views the world through the lens of worst-case scenarios. His job is to get Thomas out of these worst-case scenarios with as little damage as possible. None of the other sides have this same outlook, that we’ve seen. The orange side might, we haven’t seen him yet, but he isn’t even plausibly opposite of Virgil on the color wheel. I feel confident in my theory that he represents the other side of Thomas’ emotions.

If anything, Virgil is his own foil. He sees worst case scenarios, and he can and does use that knowledge in two opposing ways depending on his goal at the time. Sometimes he uses it to protect Thomas, like when he panicked and told Thomas to get rid of his phone. The fight or flight response is firmly in Virgil’s territory and this is an ancient and essential defense mechanism in humans against danger. However, Virgil sometimes uses his worldview to scare Thomas or simply to prove a point. In the Embarrassing Phases episode, he purposefully upsets Thomas and the other sides in order to get the point across to Thomas that, as he puts it “when you reduce a piece of my history to just a "phase", you ignore everything that I went through. Who I was when I scared you all the time is no less real than who I am now.” Note the second part of that quote – Virgil used to be one of the ‘others’ and scare Thomas all the time, and that was real. Now, he works with the ‘light’ sides and aims to protect Thomas in a less scary way than he did before. He’s the same character, but the Virgil he was before the Accepting Anxiety series and the Virgil he is now could certainly be foils to each other.

That turned out much longer than expected, but I’ll end with a short summary. Based on the rainbow theory and a color wheel using the visible light spectrum, the foil pairs are as follows: Roman and Remus, Logan and Janus, Patton and Orange, and Virgil (who could be foils with nobody or possibly with himself). Each pair perceives the world through a different lens, but uses that primary function or worldview in contrasting ways. None of the sides are good or evil, that’s not the dichotomy here, they just have different ways of trying to do what is best for Thomas.

[logicalbookthief]

Game Night

So I actually had most of this written before 15x18, and then the episode gave us great Maggie + B team moments, so I figured, well, now I have to deliver. 

Featuring drunk interns, Schmico, canon-compliant Jaggie (barely but for the sake of, yanno, canon) and teeny-tiny hints to potential future Caggie because @schmicoismysunsword has convinced me it ships.

Now cross-posted on ao3!

Maggie doesn’t make a habit of mixing her professional life with her personal one. Aside from the fact that her sisters work at the same hospital as she does, as does her boyfriend, and her ex-- Look, the point is, Maggie tries to keep her private life a private one, albeit not with the passion of Dr. Bailey. 

Just -- she has the unfortunate tendency to babble. Aloud. To anyone nearby, who might be listening.

Which meant unintentionally venting to interns, who were always around, and always eager to listen. It starts with Parker, who, if not sworn to secrecy, at least has the decency to pretend he isn’t hanging off every word that comes out of her mouth. Schmitt is one of the more eager of the bunch and he happens to be on her service today. 

“Game night,” she mutters long-sufferingly. “Why tonight, when Meredith and Amelia are busy, and apparently, I don’t have enough of a life where I have any excuse to be somewhere else.” 

“Oh, right, the football game is tonight. Nic-- Dr. Kim mentioned that was a thing-- a thing Dr. Avery does,” Schmitt stutters, casting some furtive, flustered looks her way. Honestly, Maggie isn’t paying attention.

“I hate when I have to pretend to care about sports on TV. You know what else is on tonight?  The Magicians. But you don’t see me making a night of it with friends.” Not that she has any, apparently. At least, any without kids or prior commitments. 

Maggie deflates, more self-conscious than she means to be. “April enjoyed watching sports. Or maybe she was better at pretending than I am...”

Something dejected in her tone must spark a bit of nerve in Schmitt, who clears his throat. “Hey, you could -- uh, you could come out with us tonight,” he says, shrinking a bit under her stare. “Uh, if you wanted.” 

“Us?” she echoes critically. 

“Oh, um, well there’s me, Doctors Helm, Qadri, Parker--” All interns, Maggie mentally concludes, at the exact moment Schmitt realizes he’s asking an attending to tag along with his friends. 

“Never mind, it--” Finding an extra burst of nerve, Schmitt spews out in a rush, “It’s trivia night at this pub we like and you’d make a great ringer.”

Then he goes on ahead to the next patient on their rounds, as Maggie blinks. Has she sunk so low to consider to hanging out with a couple of kids? 

Except, she thinks with a wince, that sounds exactly like something Kiki would’ve said to her. After all, it isn’t as if the interns are that much younger than she is. Maggie’s so far ahead it only feels that way. She was always the kid to talk to the adults rather than friends her own age. And when she attended her first year of medical school still in braces while her peers were all adults, she had no choice but to grow up fast. 

Sacrificing one night of professional integrity probably wouldn’t tarnish her career forever. And a trivia night is exactly the sort of brain flexing she would prefer over an evening of her male coworkers yelling about a ball not making it over the right line. 

“What happens outside of the hospital, stays outside of the hospital,” Maggie springs on a stunned Schmitt, ending any further discussion with a firm glance. “I’ll be there at 7.”

“Dr. Pierce, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Qadri begins, and then, with the utmost reverence, “You fucking rock at trivia.” 

Schmitt and Parker whoop in agreement. 

“I do,” Maggie asserts, flushed with victory. And it’s probably the jalapeno poppers, too.

“I can’t believe you argued with the guy asking the questions,” Schmitt admits. “And you won.”

“Well, if you don’t have an encyclopedia knowledge of Happy Potter,” she preens. “Don’t try me.”

Helm returns with the celebratory round of shots, including one for her. Is it unethical to take shots with your interns? While on the clock, yes, definitely. Then again, it’s a little unethical to sleep with interns, too, and yet--

Maggie downs the shot. 

Parker hisses as the burn of alcohol slides down his throat. “I need at least three more of those after the study session I pulled last night,” he says, winded. 

“Right, your intern exams are coming up.” A swell of fondness rises in her chest as she remembers toiling over her textbooks, the ease of assessment, the pride of passing with high marks. “You guys excited?”

A chorus of groans answers her question. Oh, right. Not everyone was a child prodigy who gloried in tests. Maggie flinches and figures to hell with it, she’s already in this deep. She orders the next round of shots. 

“I’ve read so much I wore out my contacts,” Schmitt mumbles, his cheek plastered against the table. 

“Did you fall asleep wearing them again?” Taryn huffs at his miserable nod. “Dude, you’re going to go blind.”

“And fail your exam,” Parker adds, prompting another groan. 

Maggie has the weird urge to pat his head consolingly. Luckily, Qadri does it instead. “At least if you fail you have a hot surgeon boyfriend to support you,” she mutters enviously. 

“You could be a house-husband,” Helm proposes, raising her glass at Maggie and Qadri. “Because it’s 2019 and that’s equality.”

Schmitt seems to consider this seriously.

“You wouldn’t have to shave fish,” Qadri tacks on, wrinkling her nose. “No offense.”

It takes a full minute for Maggie to realize the remark is directed at her. “Oh! None taken,” she says quickly. “I take no responsibility for that exercise. Or the smell.”

“Which still hasn’t come out of my hijab,” Qadri mourns. Seeing Qadri look any amount of sad, Maggie decides suddenly, should be a crime listed under do no harm. 

“I’m sorry,” she offers. “I’ll make Jackson buy you a new one!”

For some reason, that sets them into a fit of giggles.

“Drunk Dr. Pierce is the best,” Parker declares, and then blushes, bright and splotchy. “Except for, uh, sober Dr. Pierce. She’s the most wonderful, uh--”

“Careful, don’t hurt yourself,” says Helm, wryly.

“Sober Dr. Pierce would be at home, pretending to care about sports,” Maggie scoffs. 

“With Link, Dr. Avery and Dr. Kim?” Dahlia grins. “Sounds like a dream.”

“Pretty sure we’ve all had that dream,” Levi snorts. 

“Uh, hello?” Helm pulls a face, jerking a thumb at herself. “Lesbian.”

“Everyone except Taryn has probably had that dream,” he amends. 

“Her, and me,” Maggie says blandly. Alcohol loosens her tongue almost as much as bullies and outrage. “As if our free time isn’t limited enough by his projects, and my environmental research, now Jackson’s gone and bonded with his new buddy Link, who loves sports, and camping, and nature, and -- bikes, I guess?”

“Nico says Link’s got a man-crush on Dr. Avery,” Schmitt whispers in what’s not really a whisper. Parker snorts messily into his drink, which she finds weirdly endearing.

“Please tell me Kim also has one of those secret bro handshakes with Link?” Maggie begs.

Schmitt nods. “Yeah, no, they do. He tried to show me it once, but I, um, accidently hit his chin with my open palm.”

Fits of laughter overcome the group while Schmitt flushes. “Aw. Did you kiss it better?” Parker wheedles. 

“I don’t kiss and tell,” says Schmitt, tight-lipped. 

“You do so,” Helm snorts, shoving him in the chest.

“Hey,” says Qadri, noting how Maggie’s spaced out. “At least if he’s watching sports and -- I dunno, crushing beer cans? -- with Dr. Link and Levi’s ortho god, then you don’t have to act like you want to hear about baseball.” 

“Football,” Parker corrects. 

“There’s a difference?” Qadri wonders. 

Maggie would try to answer, except the implication has finally sunk in. “His ortho god?” she asks, gesturing skeptically at Schmitt. 

“Yuh huh. Dr. Kim is his boyfriend,” Helm shares with relish. 

“Oh!” What she means to say is congrats, yet what emerges is a clumsy, “Wow. Good job.” 

Schmitt only shrugs. “I don’t know how,” he confesses in a slightly dazed tone. “Sometimes I think I died in that freak windstorm and this is just the last of my synapses firing off one last wet dream.”

“Dude, that’s dark,” Parker murmurs. 

“I haven’t slept or had sex in...” Schmitt pauses, clearly wracking his brain. “What’s today?”

“Preaching to the choir,” Maggie mutters. Huh, maybe that has something to do with her mood. 

“Oh, God,” Dahlia exclaims, as if she just cracked the code. “What if that’s why. What if Link is sleeping with Dr. Avery??” 

Parker nods sagely. “That makes sense.”

“Oh, God,” Maggie echoes. After a couple shots of tequila, the theory seems totally plausible. “Oh, no, what do I--”

“Don’t worry,” Schmitt interjects, radiating a suspicious amount of calm. “Link is too busy fooling around with Dr. Shepperd to sleep with your boyfriend.” 

Maggie exhales in relief. Then it dawns on her, what he actually said. “Wait,” she yelps. “What? He’s sleeping with my sister?”

Schmitt blinks. “You didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t know!” Maggie gapes. “How did you know?!”

“He’s fucking the other ortho god,” Helm and Qadri chime in. 

“Right,” says Maggie, slowly and with effort. “Right, okay, I’ve got to remember that detail for tomorrow. So maybe, only … one more round of shots?”

Helm’s eyes light up. “Dr. Pierce is the coolest,” she declares, and the rest unanimously agree. 

Maggie Pierce has never been named the coolest anything -- the most impressive, sure, and the most talented by far -- so she can’t help the thrill that shoots through her, headier than any glass of alcohol.

“We’re taking a Lyft.” Parker has emerged as de-facto leader of the drunk brigade, voted in as least likely to order an axe-murderer for a driver. “Levi, you in?” 

Schmitt shakes his head, wincing as it jostles his precarious balance. “Nico said he would pick me up if I wanted.”

Helm snickers. “House-husband,” she sing-songs at him. 

“Breadwinner,” Schmitt fires back. Neither of these are insults, Maggie notes, uncertain if she should point this out.  

“Ma--” Parker catches himself with another blush. “Dr. Pierce, do you, uh, need a ride?” 

“Hey!” Schmitt says like he’s had a full-on brainblast. “You can wait with me and Nico can get you, too.”  

“Really?” Maggie perks. It saved her the trouble of calling anyone liable to embarrass her; namely, either of her sisters or worse, Karev. “That would be fantastic.”

“Sure, he’s already at Jackson’s place,” Schmitt replies confidently. If she were slightly more sober, Maggie doubts that logic would hold up to scrutiny. As it is, it makes perfect sense to wait for Schmitt’s ortho god to drop her off at the place he drove in from.  

Turns out, Dr. Kim is a sexy sight to behold, even with a proprietary arm wrapped around Schmitt, who’s too busy mumbling grateful nonsense into his shoulder to notice the adoration in his boyfriend’s gaze. 

If he is surprised to catch Maggie in a similar state of inebriation, Kim has the decency to make no mention of this. Instantly, he’s her new favorite attending-level doctor. He is also a gentleman, offering Maggie his hand as she clamors into the backseat of his car, all the while still steadying Schmitt with a hand clasped over his waist. 

Maggie marvels at the coordination and strength, wonders if he could carry them both simultaneously, should the need arise.

“He’s awesome at carrying people,” Schmitt brags, meaning that, whoops, she said that aloud. 

Kim chuckles. “Thanks, babe,” he says, wryly. “But at the risk of oversharing, maybe don’t go into detail.”

“What, that it’s a sex thing?” Schmitt says in what he clearly believes is a whisper for their ears only, before he collapses back onto the seat, supremely self-satisfied. At exactly the same volume, he adds, “See? I can be discreet.”

“Great job,” Kim snorts, unimpressed. And yet unable to resist pressing a kiss into his boyfriend’s brow before he starts up the engine. They’re cute, Maggie thinks blearily, and hopes she managed to keep the thought inside her head. 

Judging by the grin Kim shoots her out of the corner of his eye, she probably didn’t succeed. 

Jackson looks surprised to see Nico at his door again, not that long after he left. “Hey, man. Did you forget something?”

“Nope,” says Nico, cheerily. “Just doing a drop-off.”

“You--” Jackson stares in bewilderment, until Nico moves aside, allowing his passenger to sidestep his bulk. “Mags?” 

Maggie stumbles to the door, using one of his sturdy biceps for balance. “Thanks for the lift, Kim,” she waves over her shoulder.

He nods, still smirking as he walks back to his car, away from the bewildered Jackson.

“Mags, are you -- you good?” He hovers close behind as she carefully navigates the stairs, forgoing the temptation of the couch for the queen-sized bed. 

“I,” Maggie begins, slurring with great dignity. “Fucking rock at trivia.” 

The morning-after is almost worth the hangover. Watching Jackson try to puzzle out what she got up to last night -- and exactly how Dr. Kim fits into the picture -- is too funny, since Maggie deigns to tell him only the bare minimum, lest she look as silly as she feels when she walks into work with a lingering stuffiness.

“Wow. You look as though you need at least a double-shot,” says a familiar voice, rippling with sympathy, but also a fair bit of humor. “Good thing I got you a triple.”

Maggie stares blankly at Kim and at the to-go cup suddenly placed in her hands. Truly he is a kind and benevolent ortho god. “What’s this for?” 

Kim grins. “Last night my boyfriend went on about how cool Dr. Pierce was, and how hungover you’d be, and that it was his fault,” he explains, obviously quite amused. “And this morning he groggily demanded I make amends by being especially nice to you this morning. Hence, coffee.”

“That is--” A level of thoughtfulness that made all boyfriends, including her own, seem like total jackasses in comparison. Nico smirks as if he knows exactly what she’s thinking and enjoys the high ground very much. “So unnecessarily sweet. Thank you.”

“No problem,” he says, and leans in, a sheepish twitch to his unfaltering smile. “I’d also appreciate if he didn’t get fired over whatever you may or may not have heard last night.”

Maggie laughs. 

“Honestly, I’ve forgotten a decent amount already,” she admits, for the sake of all three of them. “Except the part about Dr. Link and my sister?”

Kim chokes on his sip of coffee. “Ah, you didn’t hear that from me.”

“No, I heard that from your drunk boyfriend,” she replies, picking up the pace to follow his long strides. “But I absolutely need to hear more from you!”

At his reluctance, Maggie pulls out her trump card. “I’ll buy you a bagel.”

Nico stops to considers her. “Multigrain, veggie cream cheese?” 

Evidently, Kim has a price. Maggie appreciates in someone who is still, until further notice, her favorite attending.

Petition for more of what 15x18 gave us with Maggie and the interns? And for Maggie and Nico to become friends?? Hire me Grey’s

[commentaryvorg]

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 2.7

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in chapter 2’s Daily Life/Deadly Life transition, Ryoma’s corpse put a bit of a damper on Himiko’s magic show, Shuichi officially became Kaito’s sidekick and recognised this for exactly what it is, namely Kaito encouraging and supporting him, Kaito had more words for Gonta about being sure of himself and learned that Ryoma was trying to get stronger, and we left off as the newly-formed duo finished investigating the gym and headed out to check the other places of interest.

Let’s investigate everywhere else, then, starting with Himiko’s lab since it’s the closest on the way out of the gym.

Kokichi and Tsumugi are in here, even though just a second ago Kokichi appeared to be in the gym. Tsumugi says she’s here specifically to keep an eye on Kokichi because of the whole investigate-in-pairs thing, meaning she probably followed him here from the gym. So when on earth did Kokichi get the chance to sneak into Ryoma’s room and steal the motive video? He really should have just been suspiciously not there during the gym investigation and then turned up here now, making you assume he’d been here all along.

Kaito mentions that revealing Himiko’s trick would make things kind of boring.

Kokichi:  “Ooh! Kaito believes in Himiko’s magic!”

Kaito:  “That’s not what I mean. I was just thinking that her tricks are like magic that brings smiles to people.”

Tsumugi:  “Ah, yeah, I guess you could think about it that way…”

Kaito:  “Besides, it’s just like my dream to go to space! I believe I can travel across the Milky Way! I believe I will meet aliens! Flying around space with thoughts like that is the true spirit of adventure!”

He’s such a dork. And it makes sense that someone like Kaito would feel this way – he likes to believe in fantastical, impossible things not because he genuinely thinks they’re true but because pretending they are makes life more fun. This is why he kept insisting that those “adventures” of his he told us about in his FTEs were real things that totally happened to him!

He’s also practical enough to know when to drop the playfulness and actually be realistic, which is why he was trying to get Himiko to admit what the trick was earlier because people’s lives are on the line, but even so he finds it a shame to have to ruin the fun part.

And all this is quite relevant to the theme of fiction. Fiction is fun not because you genuinely believe it’s true, like when you’ve been lied to, but because even though you know it’s not true, for a little while you can immerse yourself in that world, suspend your disbelief and imagine that it’s true.

Kokichi:  “Kaito, that’s… the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! Your idealistic dreams won’t help this situation!”

Says the one who’s constantly insisting that lies are more exciting than the truth.

When you know what’s up, Kirumi’s meeting with Kokichi to lecture him and be motherly at him is quite obviously her desperate attempt to get herself an alibi for the time before nighttime when anyone could have entered the gym. Shuichi assumes that it’s because she’s fulfilling Kokichi’s earlier “request” for her to be his mom, but that’s just something Kirumi uses as an excuse to be doing this. In fact, there is a line in one of her FTEs where she mentions that she does not appreciate being called a mother, meaning that this is not a request she would usually take. If anyone happened to have got that FTE with her before this case, I wonder if that’d have raised some more suspicions about her actions.

Kokichi:  “She was starting to bore me, so I turned around to leave, and then…”

…

Kirumi:  “Stop right there… Our conversation is not over yet.”

Kokichi:  “I don’t gotta listen to you! You’re not worthy of lecturing the Ultimate Supreme Leader! C’mon, Miss Maid! Catch me if you can!”

Kirumi:  “Is that… a request?”

…

Kokichi:  “And then… I guess Kirumi decided to take tag super seriously…”

And this part, too. You can just see her thinking “wait, don’t leave yet, I still need my alibi!” She pretends it’s because of Kokichi’s “request” again just to try and give a plausible reason for why she’s doing this.

I find it a little odd that Shuichi doesn’t think he needs to confirm Kokichi’s account with Kirumi. It’s partially being presented as Kokichi’s alibi, after all, and if anyone would make up their alibi out of thin air, it’d be him.

Kokichi:  “By the way… you didn’t get captured by Gonta yesterday, did you, Kaito? Where were you? And what were you doing?”

Kaito:  “I was running around the whole time. I hid in bathrooms, bedrooms, all over the school…”

Kokichi:  “Hmmm, I see. …”

Kokichi has one of his sly grins for that last line. He knows that Maki and Ryoma had each others’ motive videos, and he knows Maki’s talent, so he assumes Maki’s the culprit. Here, he’s just learned that the only person without an alibi for before nightime other than Maki is Kaito. So what I think this is is him getting the idea for his plan to turn them against each other – or rather, to turn Kaito against Maki – during the trial.

Next I’m heading not to Ryoma’s lab even though the stairs to the upper floors are closest, but rather to the pool first, for reasons that’ll make sense later.

Kaito:  “The culprit probably got in and out from here! Alright! Investigate every nook and cranny!”

Kaito won’t rest until his sidekick has investigated every suspicious-looking nook and cranny!

*cough* Sorry, that was my Ace Attorney coming through again.

Monokuma:  “And then, that person will be rrrrrripped apart by the Exisals!”

Kaito:  “Y-You’d go that far?”

Heh, remembering the time you almost got ripped apart by an Exisal, Kaito?

Shuichi:  “It looks like… a little piece of fabric.”

Kaito:  “It’s just trash, right? Nothing to be worried about. We’re looking for the culprit! We don’t have time to pick up trash!”

Again with Kaito’s investigative skills being… not great. He does not have a good intuition for what’s likely to be important during an investigation.

Shuichi:  (Perhaps it’s just my intuition, but it does bother me. …I should learn to trust it sometimes. My intuition as the Ultimate Detective…)

But of course, Shuichi’s investigative intuition is good, and here’s him starting to believe in it even without Kaito’s direct encouragement!

Kaito:  “Hey, Shuichi… Does this pool really have anything to do with the case? We got all psyched up about it, but it doesn’t seem like there were any clues here…”

Yes, there were, Kaito. You’re pretty bad at this detective thing.

Kaito:  “Then why not just jump in and fish it out by hand? Oh! That’s right! They couldn’t get in the water!”

However, this does seem to be Kaito having figured out that the murderer only left stuff in the pool because it was nighttime, so props there I guess? Shuichi has also clearly figured that out, so it’s a little strange that he doesn’t try and argue earlier in the trial that the murder could have taken place at nighttime. I guess that’s part of the reason why he’s so unwilling to assume that only Maki or Kaito could be the culprit during that part, since that’s still in the back of his mind.

Kaito:  “Let’s go check out the other places. There’s no time to waste! Isn’t that right, sidekick!?”

Kaito is encouraging and good and a friend.

And now we’re heading back up to the third floor to Ryoma’s lab, even though the dorms are on the way to that. There is also method to my madness there.

Shuichi mentions the lab feels different from before but doesn’t spot why. Kaito doesn’t notice anything at all. Guys, both of you were hanging out in this very room two days ago; you should be more observant than this. The tennis net being down is kind of obvious.

While looking at the pool through the shower room window, because they already checked out the pool earlier, they think back to what Monokuma told them about the pool rules:

Shuichi:  “…can we assume no one was in the gym or pool at nighttime?”

Monokuma:  “…Well, at the very least, no one alive.”

…

Kaito:  “Why’d he say ‘no one alive’?”

Shuichi:  “I believe he was hinting that a dead person wouldn’t be considered to be ‘breaking the rules.’ Which means it’s possible that a dead body was in the gym or the pool at nighttime…”

Kaito:  “So there’s a chance Ryoma was carried to the gym after he was killed?”

You only get this exchange if you’ve been to the pool first, and it’s a helpful addition to figure things out, so I did things this way around because this gives me reason to assume this is the “canon” order that Shuichi investigated things in.

Kaito’s statement during the Debate Scrum in the trial is, “Rules probably don’t apply to corpses, you know”. For a long time before I knew this extra exchange existed, I assumed Kaito had managed to figure that out by himself. But, well… apparently not. Sorry, Kaito, I overestimated your detective skills.

Kaito notices the marks on this window frame, and…

Kaito:  “Now you understand, right, Shuichi?”

Shuichi: “What?”

Kaito:  “How amazing I am to have noticed such a super, ultra important clue… It’s all in a day’s work for Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars!!!”

What a dork. Someone might be overcompensating a little for having not noticed anything else or contributed to the investigation in any way other than this. He apparently wants people to think he is good at investigating, even though he really really isn’t.

Shuichi deduces in his inner monologue that the shower room is quite likely to be the true crime scene…

Kaito:  “It seems like you figured something out… You seem more confident.”

…and Kaito notices this and encourages him because he is Good and definitely can contribute to the investigation by boosting Shuichi’s morale.

While investigating the tennis net, we learn that Kaito used to play a lot of tennis.

Shuichi:  “You were in the tennis club?”

Kaito:  “That’s why… it pissed me off so much that Ryoma was acting like that…”

Shuichi:  “Did you… know Ryoma from before?”

Kaito:  “I never met him, but I heard a lot about him. I mean, these days, there’s no one who’s played tennis that hasn’t heard of him. He’s been a tennis legend since middle school. He was like a hero to every tennis kid. And then… once I finally got to meet him, he became a coward…”

Here’s the reason Kaito has been so harsh on Ryoma and only Ryoma. Because Kaito looked up to him, like a hero. Because he was expecting Ryoma to be strong and cool and awesome and when he saw that he wasn’t, it really got to him.

Kaito:  “That pissed me off so much, I ended up being too hard on him. But regretting that now won’t help. There’s nothing I can do…”

And so, Kaito was too busy being hung up on that that he didn’t reach out to support Ryoma with his weaknesses like he absolutely would have done if it had been anyone else. If Kaito had done that, maybe Ryoma would have found a reason to live simply from their friendship and wouldn’t have sacrificed himself for Kirumi. Kaito’s trying not to wallow in regret because that’s not what he likes to do, but he’s saying this because he does regret not helping and knows he could have made a difference if only he hadn’t been so angry at him.

If you think about it, tennis really isn’t the obvious choice for Kaito’s favourite sport – you’d think he’d be more into a team sport that involves communication and working together. You know the reason I believe the writers had it be the case that Kaito was into tennis? So that Ryoma could die when he was supposed to. The whole point of Ryoma’s character was to tell the story of someone who willingly became a victim for a greater cause because he’d lost everything and had no reason to live. But that story is being told as part of a story which also contains the Luminary of the Stars, someone who instinctively tries to support anyone who’s weak and suffering and help them get stronger, and is really, really good at it. Just from that alone, Kaito would have helped Ryoma find a new reason to live and Ryoma wouldn’t have died the way the writers wanted him to. So there needed to be a reason why Kaito, despite his nature, wouldn’t help out Ryoma in particular, and to do that they had to give Kaito this history of having looked up to Ryoma, making him disillusioned and harsh on him when they meet.

In short: Kaito was too powerful and the writers had to nerf him to make this chapter work.

When I say “writers” here, I don’t think it’s particularly likely to include the in-universe writers. It’s possible, since clearly the no-reason-to-live thing was exactly what they were going for with Ryoma, motive video and all, and they also clearly intended Kaito to be someone who encourages and supports others. But I don’t know if the in-universe writers could necessarily have predicted the way that Kaito having looked up to him in the past would make him react to Ryoma’s weakness. After all, for most people, you’d expect having admired someone to be even more reason to want to help them, not less. The out-universe writers have the benefit of always being in Kaito’s head and therefore being able to know exactly how he would react to any situation. They can retroactively add things to his character on the fly to change his reaction and make the situation turn out how they want it to. But the in-universe writers just wrote everything about Kaito’s character into a Flashback Light at the beginning, and after that point they had no more control because he became a real person and not just their character any more. So it’d be much harder for them to predict exactly how he’d respond to things, and if it wasn’t the response they wanted, there’s a lot less they could do to change it.

(The alternative explanation from an in-universe writing perspective is simply that the writers had Kaito know about Ryoma because they thought it’d seem more realistic if a few of the Ultimates knew of each other, such as how Shuichi had heard of Kirumi too.)

Next, since we’re on the third floor, we’re heading to Maki’s lab to question her and Kirumi. Shuichi didn’t include this in his list of places he wanted to investigate other than the gym, so I’ve seen a lot of first-time players miss it and awkwardly wander around not knowing where to go. He really should have mentioned it.

Kaito:  “Hey, once we’re done with the trial, can I get a massage?”

Kirumi:  “But of course…”

I like how Kirumi casually agrees to this request despite knowing it’s impossible because by the end of the trial either one or the other of them will be dead.

Kaito:  “I didn’t see him at all yesterday, actually.”

Kaito did see Ryoma, actually, in the morning at the casino. But that was an optional scene that some players might not have got, so, yeah.

It’s interesting for Kirumi to be having this conversation about who was the last to see Ryoma alive… right in front of Maki, who was the actual last person to see him alive other than Kirumi herself, but she’s still not going to admit to it because she’s afraid of being suspected. Quite understandably, since she met with him alone in the middle of the night when she could easily have killed him and not been seen doing it.

Kokichi is also lying about the last time he saw Ryoma, mind you, since Ryoma came to him to ask who had his motive video, which had to have been after Kokichi had seen the videos and therefore after 11pm. So Kokichi is also keeping important information from everyone just because he thinks it’ll be ~hilarious~ to try and turn Kaito and Maki against each other and wouldn’t be able to do that if we knew the murder happened at nighttime. What a wonderfully helpful person.

Kaito:  “Hahaha! That’s pretty harsh! But my sidekick is working his ass off!”

Maki:  “…Sidekick?”

Kaito:  “Yup! Shuichi’s my sidekick now!”

Maki:  “Shouldn’t it be… the other way around? The dumb one should be the sidekick.”

Hee, I still love Maki’s jabs at Kaito. And Kaito being such a goof that he’s excitedly telling everyone about Shuichi being his sidekick now. Mind you, I think it might be significant that he’s choosing to tell this to Maki in particular, since he probably already has plans to try and make her into his next sidekick.

Kaito:  “Th-The dumb one? I’m more of a scientist type of guy… so this stuff really isn’t my thing.”

Maki:  “…Wouldn’t being a scientist be helpful for an investigation?”

Kaito:  “More importantly…”

I like how both Shuichi and Maki pointed out that being a scientist should be useful in investigations (thus proving that Kaito probably wouldn’t actually make a very good research scientist). And how Kaito conspicuously changes the topic.

Shuichi:  “You’ve been in here ever since this room opened up. Almost as if… you’re keeping watch. Making sure no one else enters.”

Maki:  “… Is this… an interrogation?”

Gah, Maki, assuming that he’s interrogating her because she has so much to hide and she’s terrified of anyone managing to get it out of her, even though all Shuichi wants right now is to know anything she knows about the case. (That said, his detective’s instincts are still honing in on the question of why she’s guarding this place even though it’s irrelevant to the current case, so she isn’t wrong to be wary.)

Shuichi:  “But you should at least cooperate with our investigation… Because all our lives are on the line.”

Maki:  “Even if I did cooperate, I wouldn’t be any help.”

Except for the part where she can tell them that Ryoma was alive at nighttime. That would be helpful. But she’s too afraid of being suspected, because she’s so used to the idea that everyone should suspect her that it doesn’t even occur to her that they wouldn’t.

Maki:  “Gonta did stop by, but I managed to chase him off somehow. All I did was tell him… ‘If you lay a hand on me, you’ll choke to death on your own tongue.’ That’s all.”

Kaito:  “So Gonta got scared off by that? Well, I guess he would hold back against a girl.”

This reads like another instance of Kaito being grazed by a Misogyny Bullet, like he’s supposedly brushing off how intimidating Maki is by going “lol but she’s only a girl, right?”. But I actually don’t think that’s it in this case. Kaito genuinely does not find Maki intimidating – even when he learns that she’s an assassin, he’s not the slightest bit afraid of her, because he trusts his instincts that she’s a good person. Therefore, it doesn’t occur to Kaito that her threat might scare someone, so he figures Gonta wouldn’t have been that scared either, and therefore assumes that Gonta took her gender into account, because after all Gonta has his gentleman thing and gentlemen must be considerate towards ladies.

Maki:  “Are we done here? You’re wasting your time talking to me. I don’t know anything.”

Kaito:  “Okay, I’m done here.”

Shuichi:  “Huh? You are?”

Kaito:  “Well, her alibi is a little shaky, but I don’t think she killed Ryoma. That’s what my instincts are telling me.”

Maki:  “…”

Look at Kaito believing in Maki, because his instincts are telling him she’s a good person and they’re right! And I love Maki’s silent glance away, like she’s wondering how the hell he can think that about her without any proof.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if Kaito could sense that Maki has more she’s not telling them – the way she ended the conversation really does sound like she’s trying to because she doesn’t want to have to say any more. Even if he did, though, Kaito wouldn’t ask her to tell them whatever she’s hiding, because he trusts that whatever it is isn’t anything malicious and that forcing it out of her won’t help things.

Kaito:  “But if you remember anything, be sure to tell Shuichi, okay? He’s my sidekick, y’know? He’s pretty good.”

Maki:  “…”

Maki’s silence this time looks like she’s sighing, probably in exasperation at Kaito’s… Kaito-ness. And I like how Kaito is asking her to tell Shuichi, not himself, if she remembers anything. More signs that this really isn’t about Kaito and Kaito’s just acting this way to give Shuichi as much help as he can to solve this case.

Finally, off to Ryoma’s dorm room. But while we’re in the dorms, before heading into his room, I examined Kaede’s door.

Shuichi:  (… Kaede… Your wish… the promise that we would make it out of here together…) [starting to cry] (I promised you… but…)

Kaito: [looking away and wincing]  “Shuichi, let’s think later. First we gotta deal with Ryoma’s case.”

Shuichi: [smiling slightly] “Ah, right…”

(Descriptions of their expressions included because they’re important and most people probably haven’t seen this exchange.)

I love this little moment. It really shows how much good Kaito is doing for Shuichi here, even though he’s been basically no help in terms of actual investigative work. Kaito obviously notices Shuichi staring sadly at Kaede’s door and starting to cry, and even though Kaito’s also in a lot of pain over the fact that they couldn’t keep their promise of not letting another murder happen, he’s able to help Shuichi stay focused on what needs to be done. And Shuichi’s small smile shows that he really does appreciate that Kaito’s here and understands what he’s going through and is giving him the nudge he needs. It would be hell for Shuichi to have to force himself through this investigation while feeling like this if he were alone. Friends are especially important in a situation like this, and Kaito is such a good friend.

Shuichi:  “You see, if we suppose the motive for the crime was the video… There’s a high possibility that Ryoma had the culprit’s motive video.”

This is a bit of a stretch, I think. He’s assuming something along the lines of what I’d been saying earlier – that the culprit committed murder simply to get their hands on their video. If the culprit committed the murder because they saw their video and were driven to murder because of it, there’d be no reason to specifically murder the person who had their video rather than anyone else. Unless there was something extra-incriminating in their video such as “this person is secretly an assassin”. But, you know, too bad Maki’s not the murderer and Kokichi is just causing Shuichi to jump to false conclusions because he stole the video for the sake of making things ~fun~.

…If Kokichi hadn’t stolen the video, then Kaito and Shuichi would have ended up watching Maki’s motive video right here. Huh. That would have been interesting.

I wonder if that’s actually the real reason that Kokichi stole the video: because he wanted to keep a monopoly on the knowledge of Maki’s talent, so he could reveal it whenever he chose. He brings out the video in the trial to talk about it being Maki’s, but he never actually plays it to prove that it’s hers, so he could still have talked about whose video it was without needing to physically have it with him.

Kaito:  “Alright! That’s just what I’d expect from my top sidekick!”

He’s your only sidekick right now, Kaito, of course he’s the top one. Also I really can’t see Kaito picking favourites among his sidekicks when he does have multiple of them.

Shuichi briefly flashes back to Kaito’s motive video and looks worried. I’m not sure why this worries him – he’s just decided that the culprit is likely to be the owner of the video Ryoma had, which would make Kaito less suspicious.

Kaito mentions that he’s been thinking maybe they should have watched the motive videos after all.

Kaito:  “They showed the most important people to us, right? So… maybe we should’ve watched them… Without looking away from the truth… At the time, I agreed with Keebo, but after thinking about it… I changed my mind. And… if we were worried about watching them alone, we coulda just watched them together.”

Shuichi:  “Watch them together?”

Kaito:  “Yeah… we shoulda gathered together and watched all the videos. Share everybody’s motives. Even if it’s something you can’t bear by yourself, it’d be possible with everyone. That’s what cooperation is, right?”

It’s a really interesting outlook he has on this. He knows that the videos show something awful and terrifying – your loved ones in horrible danger – but he thinks it’d be better to face up to that truth rather than running away from it while knowing that your motive video still exists and so your loved ones probably still are in some kind of danger that you just don’t know about.

And most importantly, he believes that if everyone watched them together, with the spirit of co-operation in their minds, then things would be okay. Someone seeing their motive alone would potentially become desperate to kill out of fear for their loved ones, but if everyone watched them all together and saw that everyone else also had loved ones that were just as important to them, they’d be less likely to do something selfish. The point of the videos is to drive people to murder by making them scared and desperate, but if everyone understands what everyone else is going through and they all support each other through that fear, then a murder should be less likely than if everyone tries to deal with their fears alone. That’s such a wonderfully Kaito outlook to have.

It’s also interesting that Kaito never tried to suggest this to everyone else earlier. He says that he agreed with Keebo at the time, but the thing is, Kaito didn’t say all that much during that initial conversation they had about what to do with the videos. I think it’s more that at the time, Kaito just wasn’t sure about the right thing to do, and so he didn’t object to Keebo’s decision despite not necessarily strongly agreeing with it either – being Kaito, of course he wouldn’t advocate something unless he was sure of himself. By the time he had made up his mind about this, it was probably too late to really bring it up in a way that was likely to persuade anyone, since they’d been decided on the opposite approach for a while and trying to rock the boat would only end up making him sound like Kokichi, which wouldn’t help at all in getting them on board with an idea rooted in co-operation and trust.

If Kaito had happened to make up his mind about this sooner, soon enough to bring it up during the initial conversation everyone had about the videos, then he almost certainly would have done – and if he’d brought it up in that context, maybe he’d have been able to get enough people to agree with him. This chapter would have gone very interestingly differently if they’d gone with his approach.

Shuichi:  “That’s… what Kokichi was trying to do.”

Kaito:  “Huh?”

Shuichi:  “Kokichi was trying to get us to participate in a motive video viewing party of sorts. That’s why he forced us into the same room. Do you think that was his way of ‘cooperating’? Do you think the same way?”

See, Kokichi was trying to get everyone to watch all the videos, but there was absolutely no spirit of co-operation involved in his way of going about it. He literally described the scenario in which everyone shows each other their videos as “not co-operating” a few days ago. All Kokichi wanted to do was make sure everyone saw their videos and let them all stew in their own fear and desperation alone, and then he could be sure that everyone and anyone could be out to get him and wouldn’t have to fear being “betrayed”, and Monokuma would get the murder he wanted and not cause them even more problems than they already had.

Kaito:  “N-No… if that’s what he wanted, he coulda just asked us.”

Exactly. If Kokichi actually thought of what he was doing as “co-operation”, then there would have been no need for him to go about it in such a coercive way. He could have just made the same argument Kaito made just now, if he really felt that way, and it might have convinced people.

Kaito:  “That’s what a normal person woulda done, but the thing is, he’s *not* normal. Maybe he did want us to cooperate, but there’s no way to know for sure. He’d never tell us.”

If Kokichi actually does want everyone to co-operate, then he is the most terrible person at actually getting that to happen. Trying to get people to co-operate by being as much of an unco-operative asshole as possible doesn’t seem very likely to work. He should be smart enough to know that.

Hm, you know, this discussion about Kaito and Kokichi’s opinions on sharing the motive videos serves as another example of both of them wanting to do the same literal thing but for completely contrasting reasons, which is also what happens in case 5.

Kaito:  “Looks like it’s time, bro.”

Shuichi:  “Y-Yeah… …”

Kaito:  “Hey, why do you look so worried now!? Don’t worry! You can do it. I believe in you.”

Shuichi:  (Believe in me…?) “Why? Why do you trust me, Kaito? There’s a chance that I’m the cul—”

This is a good time to point out something notable about the idea of “believing in” someone, namely that there’s kind of two versions of it. First there’s simply trusting that someone is a decent person and didn’t or won’t murder anyone. Then, once you already believe that about a person, there’s a further level of belief in their potential to be able to do amazing things. Kaito is affirming the latter kind of belief in Shuichi, because to him the idea that Shuichi wouldn’t kill anyone is already so obvious that it doesn’t even need saying.

But Shuichi seemed to mostly get hung up on the idea of the former kind of belief, to the point of asking Kaito about it. It’s probably because he’s just spent the whole investigation in Ultimate Detective mode where he has to suspect everyone and everything – especially after what happened last time with Kaede. I also wonder if he’s asking this because he’s still a little afraid to trust Kaito even though he wants to, and wants to know how trusting people can come so easily to Kaito.

Kaito:  “I believe in you because I want to. Do I need a reason other than that?”

Shuichi:  “…What?”

Kaito:  “Isn’t that why you believed in Kaede? I mean, sure, I might get betrayed in the end, but… If I worry about that, I won’t be able to believe in the people I wanna believe in!”

Kaito’s philosophy about believing in people is so good! He is not being stupid to believe in people the way he does. He’s fully aware of the possibility that his judgement might be wrong and he might get betrayed – but his desire to believe in them and the joy that’ll come from being able to do so wholeheartedly without letting himself worry about betrayal is worth that risk in his mind. By believing in people just because he wants to without any concrete proof, Kaito is simply being brave, and maybe a little reckless. And isn’t that just exactly how Kaito always is?

(This conversation about believing in people takes place in whichever location you happen to finish investigating in. But when it’s flashed back to during the trial, the background is always Ryoma’s room. So apparently that’s the canon place they have this conversation, which is why I saved this room for last. It would be nice to imagine they had this conversation within earshot of Maki, but apparently that’s not how it actually went.)

Kaito:  “Shuichi, we’re still young… I can’t die before I’ve had my first drink or gone to space!”

KAITO CAN’T DIE BEFORE HE’S GONE TO SPACE, YOU GUYS. I’m sure you know how Very Important this is. He will be mentioning something to this effect multiple times because it is so very important.

Kaito:  “If you’re not going to get yourself in gear now, then when!? Now’s all you’ve got!”

Some fuel for the “Kaito’s parents died” train, I think, with the sense that he knows life is short and you’ve got to make the most of every moment while you still have it, because there might not be a later.

Shuichi:  “… Yeah, Kaito. I know.”

Kaito:  “Yeah, that’s the expression I wanted to see. Heh, that’s my sidekick.”

Kaito is so proud of his sidekick for managing to push past his negativity and stay positive and it’s adorable.

Shuichi:  (I have to believe in myself. I have to *believe* that I can do this.)

And believe in the Kaito who believes in you!

…okay, look, I’m probably going to feel compelled to make that reference a few times, shush. It could not be more appropriate.

Tsumugi: “But I don’t even know where to start unraveling the truth… Aah… I should’ve played more point-and-click adventure games…”

Nah, Tsumugi, I’m pretty sure you’ve already played more than enough of those.

Tenko:  “I hear males pick on girls they like to get their attention! Which means Kokichi must like Himiko!”

Kokichi:  “Huh!? How’d you know!?”

While this part about Kokichi liking Himiko is almost certainly a lie, it’s interesting to see it come up here… when it also comes up in trial 5 from “Exisal Kokichi”. Either Kokichi was attached enough to this stupid little lie that he put it in his script, or Kaito was paying attention to this here and somehow decided that jokingly hitting on Himiko would be a way to make himself seem more convincingly like Kokichi.

Maki:  “…Sorry, but I don’t know anything. If you think a child caregiver can help solve a murder case… then we’re all in trouble.”

Maki’s making the same weak argument she was earlier. She’s just really hoping no-one is going to prod her too hard for information and force her to reveal that she met Ryoma at nighttime, because she’s convinced they’ll all think she did it if they knew that.

Kiyo:  “To kill because you have a reason to live… To die because you have no reason to live… Which, I wonder, is correct?”

Is there any reason they can’t both be? Or they can’t both be wrong? Also, the killer didn’t kill just because they wanted to live, but because they wanted to escape. Killing simply in order to survive is a foolish strategy in this killing game, unless you happen to have a life-threatening illness; I’ve been over this.

Kaito:  “You’re thinking too hard about it… Living things just gotta live. Anyway, no matter what happens to us, we gotta live!”

I appreciate Kaito butting into Kiyo’s weird amoral philosophising with his straightforwardness.

Kokichi:  “Yeah… you don’t really need a reason to live. That’s just the icing on the cake.”

This implies that Kokichi maybe doesn’t have a particularly strong reason to live and is just kind of along for the ride in life. He still does want to live, but if his determination to survive isn’t as strong as others’ might be then this goes some way towards explaining why he ends up willing to throw his life away just to “win”.

Kaito:  “Shuichi… before we head over there, let me give you some advice, hero-to-sidekick.”

Kaito considers himself the “hero” to Shuichi’s “sidekick”. I think this is the first time he’s mentioned this, and it’s a very important thing to keep in mind. Especially considering what we just learned about how he thought of Ryoma.

Kaito:  “If you want to give up, wait until after you’ve done everything you possibly can! Wait, no. That’s still no good… Okay! I won’t forgive you if you give up! You got it?”

Shuichi:  “Yeah… got it, Kaito.” (He’s right… I can’t give up. I made a promise to Kaede.)

Of course that would be Kaito’s advice, heh. And Shuichi is on board with it, since he’s so determined not to let Kaede down!

There’s a conspicuous gap next to Shuichi in the elevator where Kaede stood before. I know the elevator scenes always just keep everyone in the same positions, but I’d have really liked it if Kaito had moved into that spot instead, as the one now giving Shuichi emotional support. It doesn’t seem right that he’d just keep standing in front of Shuichi not even looking at him now that they’re “hero and sidekick”.

Kokichi:  “You put a lot of elaborate detail into this courtroom. Almost like it’s for show.”

So in other words, Kokichi has deduced that this is being watched. And is he going to help us figure out what’s going on and escape by telling anyone else this fact? No, of course not.

Kirumi:  “Is this just for show? Are you showing this to the people outside and—”

Kirumi seems a little worried that her most important people might be about to find out that she became a killer for them. Not that that would stop her from doing everything in her power to save them. I guess she’s also reacting to this because if it’s true then it proves that everyone is currently still alive and she’s not too late to save them.

Monokuma:  “Puhuhu. Those people aren’t with us, so you don’t need to worry about them. Get it? They’re not with us. As in, they’re no longer with us, y’know what I mean? In other words, you 13 are the only ones left in the world.”

At first this kind of reads like Monokuma’s just saying the people outside aren’t relevant because they’re on the other side of the fourth wall so they don’t matter to this fiction… but then he implies they’re all dead, meaning he is actually playing along with the backstory after all. (And Kirumi is probably desperately hoping he’s lying about this, otherwise whoops.)

---

[Next post]

[caledfwlchthat]

R:R(RR) theorypost: GAME OVER and the route to victory

I’m now at the point in Rose: Remember where I really have to decide how I’m going to wrap it up just in order to write new material.  I’ve put the poor dears through a lot, and am putting them through more, and they’ve been changing in response to it.  Do I just leave it hanging, as a meditation on the indifference of the multiverse?  Do I crush their hopes by revealing to them the truth that victory was never solely within their grasp?  Do I give them some small part to play in filling in gaps of the canon retcon timeline?  Or do I work to find a way for Rose’s plan to pay off, into an AU vision of victory diverging further from canon?

I don’t know that there’s any particular right or wrong answer for this.  My thoughts on how long the story should be, and how to end it, have evolved as I’ve written and more of the story’s potential has been revealed along the way.  I feel like I’ve taken some risks already, so whatever I do, I don’t want the conclusion to be a timid anticlimax. But while I could argue that the doomed timelines that have been revealed are all mostly canon-compliant, the essential nature of the canon retcon timeline is pretty much set in stone.  And we’re only shown, in canon, doomed timelines that somehow come back to affect the alpha.

Also, the reason I set “canon compliance” as a goal to shoot for is that I’m interested not only in the characters and their relationships, but the whole mythos and big-idea questions Homestuck poses.  Thus if I go the AU route, I want whatever I come up with to be heavily informed by the meta-structure and central themes of Homestuck canon, while interpolating somewhat to resolve the tensions I’ve already built up with the doomed timelines we’ve seen so far, and propelled by the momentum the characters are building in their shared dream-bubble afterlife.  I’m happy with the canon Homestuck ending, but I see the constraints posed by Lord English’s influence as a challenge to be curious about.

Regardless of what route I take, I need to think carefully about what GAME OVER meant and what the deal was with the retcon timeline in my view.  Again, better theory minds have thought about this in a canon context.  Items to consider below include:

the nature of Rose’s proposed plan in R^4;

the nature of John’s retcon powers and LE’s influence;

the details of Terezi’s choice to have John revive Vriska.

Mild spoilery stuff for R^4 under the cut, not in terms of any definite choices yet made but in terms of my reasoning about the scope and flavor of things to come, based on constraints from Homestuck canon theory.  (Major spoilers for the end of Homestuck though, if you’re just reading it now!)  If you’re a fan and want the inside scoop, or if you just have opinions, click the clicky.

Rose’s Cunning Plan

At issue here is whether to provide the doomed meteor kids of R^4 with a plausible path to victory, as Rose suggested in chapter 15: by allowing the meteor kids in a currently live timeline to meet their doomed alt-selves and receive game-saving cross-timeline support.  This choice recalls Vriska’s insistence on acting to remain relevant despite being stuck in the afterlife.  Similar things do happen in canon (Davesprite, the Aradiabot army, John joining Vriska’s treasure hunt), but less often, and perhaps not in the way Rose is talking about.  There is quite a lot of commerce between players and/or ghosts from different universes (Calliope, all of Openbound, pretty much all of Homestuck really), but much less from different timelines within the same universe.

This might be just as well, because if it happened regularly it would mean pretty much any player could become a Seer of Time/Mind/Heart after experiencing at least one death, in addition to all their other powers and abilities.  It would break something.  It seems as though it should be rare, or have a high cost attached to it (e.g. a Denizen Choice), or both.

What the cost should be, though, depends heavily on the context provided by the canon narrative, so let’s look at that.

John’s Retcon Powers and the End Run Around Lord English

My understanding of what happens in Act 7 is strongly informed by this comprehensive post (“Apotheosis and Creation Myth”), which sets out the entirety of the Homestuck canon narrative as the “alpha timeline” controlled by Lord English, and interprets the house juju and universe door as linked entities providing entrapment within, and escape from, the alpha timeline and hence the canon storyline.

This means John’s retcon powers are fundamental to Homestuck as a story.  If LE really is that powerful and has absolute causal control over the alpha (canon) timeline as a stable loop, then the only way to break his influence is to introduce acausal elements — which is what John does, by dipping his hand into the rich world of possibility.  This could consist either of pulling in extra-canon influences, or remixing influences within canon in ways LE couldn’t have anticipated starting from the initial conditions that spawned him.  Within the narrative, John’s actions fix a bunch of fairly prosaic problems with the GAME OVER timeline that could probably be addressed with regular Time player shenanigans.  But on a mythic or meta-narrative level, the retcon powers are absolutely necessary to neutralize LE.

This is why, in R^4, even timelines in which alt-Daves decide to use time travel to fix things end up doomed.  From within the narrative, if Dave can only travel to events along his own past or future world line, Dave actually can’t access the primary decision point John uses to fix things (reviving Vriska).  From a meta-narrative viewpoint, Dave is a Time player working only with elements LE has already doomed, so his efforts are hopeless.

I thought about giving Dave a Denizen Choice that could enable him to preserve the timeline and defeat LE.  Based on the above theoretical understanding of LE, though, the scope for that is pretty limited.  I could wangle things to give Dave retcon powers instead, but thematically they’re much better aligned to Breath than Time, and to John’s personality, so that solution would stretch plausibility.  Or I could get Dave to team up with John somehow — meaning the price would already have been paid and a Denizen Choice for Dave would be superfluous.  I might allude to Dave being presented with such a Choice, but it won’t play a major part in the action.

So any alternative ending R^4 produces has got to involve John’s retcon powers somehow.  This requires John to:

Participate in the treasure hunt and interact with the house juju to acquire his retcon powers;

Participate in at least one GAME OVER timeline to spur him to gain control of those powers;

Make his own Denizen Choice and claim the retcon powers as his own;

Receive information from some trusted source (such as a GAME OVER Terezi or some other cross-timeline Light or Time player) enabling him to F1X TH1S.

Technically it could happen that John never gains control of the retcon powers and just blunders into a solution, but the in-narrative probability of this is basically zero, and the lack of any meta-narrative cost would stretch plausibility.  This also illuminates why GAME OVER had to take place.  You could say GAME OVER is the true cost of John’s retcon powers, at a much higher overall price than his Denizen Choice (although the latter impacts John more directly, in terms of his knowledge of Retcon Jade’s loneliness).

A Multiverse of Retcons

What this also suggests to me is that John’s retcon powers could be even more of a problem for LE than previously implied.  The canon retcon timeline demonstrates at least one way to resolve the various problems that prevent the players from winning.  Any timeline that leads to victory needs to pass through the choke points defined by LE’s influence, but there are so many degrees of freedom in a timeline that it’s far from obvious to me that those constraints define a unique and immutable solution to Homestuck.  Thus, if I was able to think of another one, who’s to say John couldn’t have made those choices?

The Apotheosis post is optimistic and generous about the openness of the post-game world.  In principle, I don’t see why that spirit couldn’t extend to any alternative retcon timeline that could be made convincing.

The one problem with this approach that would necessitate a true AU, rather than an elaboration on canon, is the fact that LE originates from within the new universe created in the retcon timeline shown in canon in ACT 7.  This raises the question of what LE’s relationship is to any other potential universe created from a separate retcon branch of the alpha timeline not shown in canon.  If multiplying offshoot universes also multiplies instances of LE, the kids have actually made the situation worse for existence!  And if LE is associated only with the canon universe, that fact needs to be explained somehow too.  There’s nothing in canon that would explain why LE would be associated with any particular offshoot universe; we could call it “spontaneous symmetry breaking” which might be an acceptable explanation from a within-narrative standpoint, but not from a meta-narrative standpoint.  It isn’t elegant, in a way that galls me.

I’ll have to let that one simmer for a while but I welcome comments on it.

The Problem of Vriska

So, what are the choke points?  In particular, what context guides Terezi’s specific choice of intervention — to bring Vriska back?

This choice remains controversial, but upon thinking about it, it seems like the most economical choice that could have been made under the conditions.  Here’s what that single change accomplishes:

Brings Vriska back (i.e. prevents a major character death).  Doc Scratch telegraphs Vriska’s death as a classic LE move — saying that Bec Noir’s massacre of the meteor kids, but implying any other outcome in which Vriska lives was “certainly not an outcome the alpha timeline would allow”.

Absolves Terezi of the guilt of having killed Vriska, which certainly serves LE’s purposes — though this may be disappointing for those who want to watch Terezi grapple with and overcome this guilt on her own.

Enables Vriska to intervene for Rose and Terezi, keeping them out of destructive substance abuse and/or blackrom cycles.

Nonlethally removes Grimbark Jade from the action until Condy is dealt with.

Prevents a post-retcon Aranea from screwing things up all over again, since pre-retcon Aranea was inspired by dead Vriska to intervene and cause GAME OVER.

Provides the group with a player who is not only willing, but enthusiastic, to forgo entering the new universe in order to face off against LE with the house juju.

That’s a lot of stuff.  It’s pretty much a comprehensive catalog of Act 6 failure points.  If Vriska isn’t brought back, then all the rest of these other highly non-trivial things have to be dealt with by other people.  The other important thing John does is to exonerate Vriska re: Murderstuck, prompting Terezi to arrest Gamzee and thus contain LE’s influence through him — and even this isn’t totally unrelated to Vriska’s death sentence.

I remember Hussie getting a lot of flak for bringing Vriska back at the time.  The main accusation I remember was that it was lazy storytelling.  Some fans were glad to watch (Vriska) learn some humility and find flushed happiness with Meenah, and felt she was robbed of this development.  Others felt as though Vriska’s meteor interference was ex machina and robbed the meteor kids of the chance to develop more naturally; prior to the retcon, though, they were clearly all in arrested development post-Openbound, and needed some kind of stabilizing influence against Gamzee, or for Gamzee to be contained.  Apart from that things are all a bit hazy in my head.

So, can the R^4 kids win without Vriska in a way that isn’t implausible or distressingly expensive?  If it can be made to work, the result would be an alt-ending AU, requiring the story to depart from its relatively strict canon compatibility.  If we instead believe that the canon retcon timeline is the only way Lord English could have been defeated, this clamps down on the influence the dead meteor kids can have from their bubble, and gives the story an even darker and more fatalistic feel than it already has.  Of course, I have elements in motion to take some of the pressure off (*coughrosemarycough*), but it will definitely affect how the plot flows.

[housmania]

In Defense of TJLC

A response to this Slate podcast and to general misconceptions.

Hello! Call me soe. I like cats, BBC Sherlock, and friendly online communities. I hope you do too.

I also blog about TJLC. So, when a Slate podcast came out this week portraying TJLCers in a jarringly negative light, I was dismayed. What I heard was not the community I know.

This post’s aim is to tell the other side of the story. I’m writing both for people who support TJLC and were shocked to hear of the podcast, and for people outside TJLC whose initial impressions have been skewed by the podcast or other outside sources.

I’ll address four of the most common arguments against TJLC through the lens of the argument presented by Willa Paskin, the podcast’s creator:

TJLC, as a theory, is “far-fetched” and merits no serious consideration.

TJLCers are dogmatic, ideological, and close-minded.

TJLCers have hated on people outside of TJLC to an unusual and appalling extent.

TJLC has brought more harm into the world than good.

I intend to refute these points. In the process, I hope to represent your run-of-the-mill TJLCer: not a hateful extremist, but rather someone who supports a theory, enjoys discussing it, and is happy to let those who don’t live their happy lives.

It also means adhering to the standards of a good TJLC meta writer: going through the podcast thoroughly, addressing Ms. Paskin’s correct insights as well as her failings; reading and acknowledging critics and downright opponents; citing all sources; and remaining civil and open-minded. I wish Ms. Paskin had afforded us these privileges.

I genuinely believe that Ms. Paskin meant well. Nonetheless, the biases of her sources, combined with several misconceptions and imperfect research, result in a piece that portrays TJLC inaccurately.

To understand what the podcast got wrong, we first need to cover:

What is TJLC?

TJLC is the theory that the characters John Watson and Sherlock Holmes will end up in a canonical romantic relationship on the BBC show Sherlock. People who support this theory are called TJLCers. TJLCers write analyses of the show, the Sherlock Holmes stories, and numerous other sources known as “metas”.

TJLC is short for “The Johnlock Conspiracy.” I must immediately clarify that this name is a joke. It began humorously and is always, always used tongue-in-cheek. Keep this in mind: Many misconceptions about TJLC arise from the fact that we take very few things seriously, as I’ll discuss later.

What isn’t TJLC?

TJLC is not the same as Johnlock.

Johnlock refers just to shipping John/Sherlock—thinking they’d make a cute romantic couple, without necessarily having any expectation of that happening on the show.

More fundamentally: Johnlock is about creating transformative, creative content. It’s about making something new. In essence, it’s fiction.

TJLC is about analyzing evidence that’s already there. It’s nonfiction.

Ms. Paskin frequently blurs the lines between the two and mourns TJLC for not having the same level of creativity. She explains, for example, that fandom reads into tiny elements of a show to create a transformative space. But TJLC is not transformative. That’s Johnlock.

Neither is TJLC based on wanting the show to “bend to [our] desires”—i.e., Johnlock shippers projecting wishful thinking onto the show. I’m happy to serve as a counterexample for that! I actually didn’t ship Johnlock at all before discovering TJLC. Rather, I found the theories plausible and loved the idea that a show centered around deduction and analysis could also be the subject of deduction and analysis.

Of course, people who already ship Johnlock are more likely to be attracted to TJLC. But the basis of TJLC is not to “see in the story that you have, the story that you want” (46:40)—that’s shipping—but to analyze the story you already have.

I cannot stress this enough: TJLC is analysis, NOT shipping.

TJLC and the “Great Game”

As the podcast explains, TJLCers aren’t the first analyze Sherlock Holmes. Fans of the originals have been analyzing the stories since the 1880s. These early theorists actually gave the name to two kinds of fan analysis: Watsonian and Doylist.

Watsonian fans played the “Great Game,” treating the stories like a real world. Doyle didn’t exist, so every detail had to be explained in-universe rather than attributed to author techniques or error. They’re closer to your modern shippers, creating headcanons to fill in gaps.

Doylist fans acknowledged that (no duh) Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a real person, and therefore analyzed the stories as works of literature. They are essentially literary analysts and critics, the kind that wind up on JSTOR.

TJLCers are Doylists. Obviously, someone made the show. That means we analyze character arcs, cinematographic techniques, and rhetorical devices in the dialogue like a researcher in film studies or literature would.

Ms. Paskin warns that in the Watsonian Great Game, people kept “tongues planted firmly in cheek; TJLCers, not so much.” And yet, that’s the point! You wouldn’t expect a literary analyst to go “lol maybe The Great Gatsby criticizes society but like who knows” any more than you’d want Watsonians to really believe that because John Watson’s wife called him James, his middle name is Hamish (Scottish for James) rather than acknowledging that Doyle just forgot. A ridiculous premise entails a humorous approach. A reasonable premise entails a rational one.

TJLC isn’t quite the same as highbrow analysis, however, for three reasons:

First, we use our analyses to speculate about the future of the show. We don’t have the privilege of analyzing a complete work. In that sense, the closest analogy I can think of is that of political analysts: examining what’s already been said and done to predict what will happen next.

Second, we evolved from a fandom space. That means that the barrier between TJLC and Johnlock, between nonfiction analysis and creative fiction, is never as solid as it would be in academia. Furthermore, a significant number of TJLC meta writers also engage in fictional fanworks, making it more difficult to distinguish where hard analysis ends and transformative work begins. I’ll go into some of the nuances of meta in a bit.

Third, the people in TJLC are generally queer women and often young. And we can’t discuss biases against fandom and TJLC without acknowledging sexism and homophobia. When a film critic writes a theory, it’s deep; when we do, it’s ludicrous. Paradise Lost is fanfiction just as much as AO3, but only the former is treated as legitimate literature. Theories about straight couples are plausible; ones about queer ones are suddenly delusional or fetishization. Adult fanboys are mature content creators; fangirls are hysterical.

Conversations about the implicit biases in media depictions of fandom aren’t my focus here. Nonetheless, it’s crucial to bear in mind that highbrow criticisms of fandom that focus only on its ill effects and ignore the complexity, depth, community bonding, and social change that fandom (analytical and transformative) creates often denigrate fans as immature and delusional without considering whether that accurately represents even a significant minority of a fandom. It’s a bias that we should all keep in check.

As progressive as Ms. Paskin may be, the podcast also falls into this trap. In particular, she emphasizes sensationalist depictions of TJLC theories—highlighting far-fetched theories and glossing over deeper points—and the contemptible actions of very few TJLCers while glossing over the far more plausible mainstream theories and kindness of nearly all TJLCers. As a result, we naturally look hysterical and delusional.

So let’s tackle each of those issues: TJLC as a theory and the behavior of the TJLC community.

TJLC as a Theory

If you don’t support TJLC, I’m not asking you to be convinced by a few paragraphs. The aim here is simply to explain why TJLC is plausible.

Ms. Paskin asserts that (1) TJLC is completely unsupported by the original Sherlock Holmes stories, (2) that romantic coding in the show is simply “a knowing wink,” and that (3) TJLC “is based on an unfalsifiable premise: that the creators are lying to you.” In fact:

1. TJLC is supported by the original stories.

The Sherlock Holmes canon contains significant, documented evidence of queer coding similar to other works of the same time period. It’s also reasonable to theorize, based on biographical data, that Doyle himself was bisexual.

The extent to which the stories were deliberately coded is a matter of debate. Yet Ms. Paskin simply asserts that “Conan Doyle wasn’t trying to create a homosexual subtext when he wrote the characters, but he did write a deep and committed friendship.” As @one-thousand-splendid-stars put it:

How on earth can anyone possibly know if the homoeroticism was intentional or not, when ACD could’ve been persecuted for admitting it, or making it more obvious?

Ms. Paskin’s assertion, which does not acknowledge any evidence to the contrary, again conflates Johnlock shippers with TJLCers. Johnlock is about transformative fiction; TJLC is about nonfiction analysis.

Ms. Paskin also suggests that TJLCers are “queering” the text, except that queering generally implies a queer theory approach to something that wasn’t queer to begin with. Our whole objective is to reveal that the text was originally queer.

2. The basis for TJLC is the show itself.

Ms. Paskin supposes that TJLC is “is based on an unfalsifiable premise: that the creators are lying to you.”

But TJLC isn’t based on anything the creators have said. It’s based on analysis of the show itself.

There’s a whole lot of analysis; good summaries are here and here. Essentially, we argue that given the level of coding on the show, the most probable outcome is that there is deliberate subtext meant to foreshadow that John and Sherlock will become a couple. Elements like Sherlock being indifferent to women, yet “romantic entanglement would complete [him] as a human being” suggest that the subtext isn’t just a “knowing wink,” as Ms. Paskin asserts: it would be poor writing (not to mention queerbaiting) to complete such a setup and not follow through.

3. The creators

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that TJLCers believe Moffat and Gatiss are deliberately lying when they say that Johnlock will not become canon.

And normally, I would agree! Except that Moffat and Gatiss have a long history of lying through their teeth about plot developments. For example, they vehemently repeated that The Abominable Bride would be a stand-alone episode completely independent of the show, but it turned out to be a drugged Sherlock’s theorizing about Moriarty’s plan. And before Series 4, they said that Mary would become a long-running character, then killed her off in the next episode.

So it’s not a stretch to think that they could be lying about one more thing, particularly when TJLC relies on independent evidence from the show itself.

In fact, Paskin argues that TJLCers, like Watsonians playing the Great Game, base their theories on a “contradiction”: “On the one hand the author might as well not exist, but then on the other hand, this person who doesn’t exist has made this perfectly explicable logical thing.”

Except that unlike Watsonians, we do acknowledge that the creators exist. We analyze the show as a work of fiction, with narrative techniques that can be analyzed just as much as plot elements.

Furthermore, the fact that the creators lie constantly doesn’t mean we don’t pay attention to what they do say. They have large incentives to keep upcoming plot twists secret, but that doesn’t mean they can’t reveal their motivations and influences. A lawyer questioning a lying witness can still gain information from what they do say.

Take a closer example: Say I went back to 1897 and asked Bram Stoker if there’s queer coding in Dracula (which is now well-documented). He would probably respond along the lines of “I’m not a sodomite; also, what???” But he might wax poetic about homoeroticism in Walt Whitman’s poetry and mention that his charismatic but domineering idol Henry Irving was the basis for Dracula.

So no, there’s no contradiction between analyzing the show and the creators’ influences while still believing that they don’t want to reveal upcoming plot points.

The Behavior of the TJLC Community

How Theories Work

Ms. Paskin rattles off several far-fetched TJLC theories that make TJLC as a whole sound ridiculous. Furthermore, she implies that TJLC is a monolithic community with a “dogmatic” belief in all of these theories, such that criticism and discussion don’t exist.

Guess what? I’m in TJLC, and I don’t believe half the theories she mentioned. That’s because TJLC is much less uniform than its detractors would believe. Furthermore, the general level of confidence that people have in a given piece of evidence depends on its strength. In other words, the more evidence for something, the more likely that TJLCers agree on it. The less evidence for something, the more likely we are to treat it as just something cool that could turn out to be coincidence.

We can divide TJLC meta into five basic categories:

1. Foundational meta

These are well-respected analysis of character arcs, dialogue, and other clearly deliberate plot elements such as this one. Pretty much all TJLCers agree with them. These are your best-researched, most widespread meta; they form the true basis of TJLC. Here are some examples. And yet they hardly show up in Ms. Paskin’s discussion, because they don’t make TJLC sound too far-fetched.

2. Circumstantial evidence

TJLC can stand on foundational meta alone, but there’s also secondary evidence to support it. This includes the “drinks code” (the theory that beverages serve as symbols on the show, supported by subsequent creator remarks) and similar theories that can’t hold up TJLC by themselves, but do provide extra evidence and add nuance to theories about character arcs and plot development.

3. Accessory meta

These are analyses of elements that could well turn out to be coincidence due to scarce evidence. If true, they allow us to establish character arcs in greater depth, but it’s perfectly possible that any given one is coincidence. These include the theories on wallpaper and lighting that Ms. Paskin reports as though they were the pillars of TJLC. They’re theories that I read and go, “Hm, interesting; maybe.”

4. Spinoff theories

These are theories that deal with specific paths the show might take. They generally have groups of supporters within TJLC, but each spinoff theory usually only has a smaller group of supporters within the larger TJLC community.

It’s important to note that many major theories don’t have to do with Johnlock at all. Take M-theory, the idea that Mycroft and other characters are under Moriarty’s thumb, or EMP, the idea that some episodes take place in Sherlock’s mind palace. If, as Ms. Paskin asserts, TJLC is about wishful thinking and wanting Johnlock to be canon, what would be the point of these? Furthermore, if TJLC is monolithic and dogmatic, why do we constantly discuss and critique these theories in constructive discussions? I had to make a whole table of theories after Series 4 because everyone’s opinion was so different!

5. Crack theories

These are usually clearly labeled “crack” and are never meant to be taken seriously. Again, TJLC contains a lot of humor. So sometimes, we goof off and write theories like this one that are clearly ridiculous, usually with an exaggerated conspiratorial tone, to have fun in the spirit of the Watsonians. Unfortunately, some people outside TJLC think we actually take these theories seriously and accordingly treat us as crazy people. Guys… Ctrl+F “crack” first.

To summarize:

TJLC contains theories with varying levels of evidence that are treated with corresponding levels of seriousness.

TJLCers are far from dogmatic. Different people have different views, and that’s OK.

TJLC is founded on criticism and discussion (here’s an example). By disagreeing on meta, we gain better insight into the characters.

Addressing Ms. Paskin: The theories she dwells on are EMP and M-Theory (40:04 and 10:37), both spinoff theories. They do not form part of the main body of TJLC, and fans are far more flexible about that stuff because it’s not nearly as firmly supported as foundational meta. She cites a clip analyzing Mycroft’s theme in the score, which is accessory meta that could well turn out to be coincidence. (By the way, I have serious doubts about all three of these theories. And TJLC is perfectly accepting of that!)

She also talks about loudest-subtext’s meta on the 2009 BBC queer representation report, whose objective was to demonstrate that it was possible for TJLC to happen from a production/permission standpoint, not to prove that TJLC was happening on the show. In that sense, it’s closer to circumstantial evidence.

She also fears that TJLCers “try to find order and logic and reason in every detail.” Again, sane TJLCers treat less solid evidence as less likely to be true. Caveat: Some TJLCers do go overboard. But they do not represent the overwhelming, sane majority.

TJLC Culture

Confidence and Criticism

Ms. Paskin finds it alarming that many TJLCers regarded TJLC as far more well-supported, even certain, than “an opinion or a possibility” or “just one ship among many” (14:50).

And yet, in an academic setting, isn’t it normal to think that the theory you researched and support is correct? Again, we hit the boundary in how the public perceives highbrow research and fan analysis. TJLC was not “just one ship among many” because (again) it’s not a ship, it’s a theory based on research and analysis. So naturally, we had a higher level of confidence in TJLC becoming canon than a shipper with an unsupported ship would.

Ms. Paskin implies that this confidence led directly to TJLC being unable to take criticism and therefore hating on people outside the community, since “denying [TJLC] was denying the truth” (14:55). But—first off—confidence does not directly lead to thin skins. Again, we debate everything. If good meta writers couldn’t change their minds given new evidence, TJLC wouldn’t exist.

Yet even when some TJLCers were more certain about TJLC than could be reasonably expected, the overwhelming majority was perfectly nice. We can, in fact, agree to disagree with others.

But this brings us to the most painful part of the podcast:

Fandom Toxicity: The Broad Picture

The podcast, having painted TJLCers as delusional, dogmatic crusaders, goes on to argue that TJLCers hated on people outside TJLC to an unusual and deplorable amount, such that TJLC’s main effect was to increase toxicity in the Sherlock fandom.

For starters:  Yes, a few TJLCers did fit this despicable mold. I universally condemn people who went out of their way to attack people outside or inside the community. They are an insult to TJLC’s values of inclusivity and rational debate. And my heart goes out to the people who suffered as a result of them.

But guess what? All the TJLCers I’ve talked to agree with that. Because the fact is that awful people form an incredibly small minority of TJLC.

Most of the TJLCers who listened to the podcast found this to be the most insulting and painful part. They’ve reiterated time and again that the community as a whole is not a toxic place.  @artfulkindoforder put it best:

So many TJLCers were never mean to anybody.

You can think we’re unrealistic, immature, delusional—fine. But at the end of the day, the overwhelming majority of us stuck to our circles of courteous people and just had fun.

In broad terms, there were several inconsistencies between the podcast and what I found. First, the podcast attributes toxic behavior to large swathes of TJLC, when in fact it tended to be a small group of repeat offenders, many of whom would attack people inside TJLC as well as outside it. loudest-subtext, a longtime TJLC blogger, discussed this here.

Secondly, the podcast makes absolutely no mention of the hate that TJLCers—often perfectly civil ones—received, which makes it easier to paint TJLC as engaging in vicious, one-sided attack. TJLCers, especially at the beginning, received shocking quantities of anonymous hate. Like attacks on people outside TJLC, I’m sure that the attacks on TJLCers were also due to a tiny minority of toxic people. But to gloss over them entirely is to paint an incomplete and biased picture. As @one-thousand-splendid-stars put it:

I’m not going to pretend that there was never nasty behavior from TJLC, but I’m also not going to say her description of us was accurate. She presented the TJLC fandom like it was a toxic cult.... She talked about fandom bullying as though we were never on the receiving end of it, and weren’t ever ridiculed, or called stupid, or sent anon hate, or harassed. To imply that tjlcers were only dishing it out is just flat out inaccurate.

The anonymous attacks on TJLCers had several results. First, TJLC developed a culture that stresses avoiding confrontation with outsiders: leaving other shippers be, unless they seek out TJLC posts. For example, some of the first things I learned were to misspell other ship names on TJLC posts so they wouldn’t show up when people wanted content promoting that ship, and not to reblog posts from outside shippers’ blogs with TJLC-related comments. Far from attacking outsiders, the whole point is to let people who disagree with TJLC do their own thing.

Second, the vast majority of TJLCers despise anon hate because they receive it unusually often. I’ve never seen a community with so many posts reminding people never to resort to it because they’ve seen how it hurt TJLC bloggers.

Third, a handful of TJLCers who got repeated and unwarranted hate did get more combative. But when looking at their later behavior, it’s important to understand that many of them became less willing to compromise on TJLC because they’d seen toxic fans remain unwilling to compromise or debate with them. And most of the conflicts I’ve seen as a result came from anti-TJLC people coming specifically to comment on TJLCers’ posts, not from TJLCers going out of their way to fight non-TJLCers.

Specific Incidents

I didn’t want to rely on secondhand knowledge about hate to write this response. In the spirit of TJLC, I wanted to be fair and impartial. That meant looking through the blogs of people who had received hate inside and outside TJLC. So here’s what I found out:

First off, it was awful. I was looking 4-5 years back to find the worst instances of hate in the community, and I wasn’t used to it because the bloggers I interact with are universally inclusive and civil.

Ms. Paskin discussed three specific incidents on the podcast: top/bottomlock, the 2015 221BCon incident, and post-Series 4 anger.

When top/bottomlock came up, I was baffled. First off, that discussion is ancient. It’s so old that by the time I joined TJLC in late 2015, it had practically died out. More importantly, a “debate” that Ms. Paskin describes as “very specific and dogmatic fanon” was—as I’ve understood—never taken seriously. Again, TJLC is not a very serious place, and people outside it are bound to misinterpret inside jokes. 99% of TJLCers saw top/bottomlock as nothing more than fodder for crack theories, and yet Ms. Paskin’s sources on this issue—none of whom are actually in TJLC—describe it as a debate of monumental importance.

The 2015 221BCon, on the other hand, was a serious conflict. As far as I can tell, people like Emma genuinely suffered, and the fact that neutral fans received anonymous attacks is shameful. But the results of this stretched to TJLCers as well as people outside TJLC, something that the podcast conveniently neglects to mention.

The end of Series 4 disappointed people throughout the Sherlock fandom. I’m not talking about Johnlock: plot inconsistencies, weird characterizations, and plot pulled from a horror movie resulted in its lowest Rotten Tomatoes rating ever. TJLC is too small to have that kind of clout, so to say that TJLCers were the only ones disappointed is clearly inaccurate.

Ms. Paskin claims that Series 4 “seemed straighter, not gayer, than before” and yet John telling Sherlock that “romantic entanglement would complete you as a human being” is uh…pretty gay. For many TJLCers, the problem wasn’t that there wasn’t Johnlock; the problem was that the quality of the show seemed to have drastically decreased.

TJLC immediately split into two groups. One group left TJLC, believing that Moffat and Gatiss had been queerbaiting. Many of them began constructive anti-queerbaiting discussions. Unfortunately, a few took their anger out on the creators.

The resulting hateful messages do not represent the views of the vast majority of former TJLCers, let alone people who still support TJLC. The fact that Amanda Abbington received a death threat is disgusting; and yet in TJLC, she’s always been regarded as a sort of beloved “fandom aunt”. In addition, Ms. Paskin cites an article that claimed that fans “dampened [Martin Freeman’s] enthusiasm.” But that interview has already been revealed as a clickbait-seeking misinterpretation—by Freeman himself.

The second group—those remaining in TJLC—were a bit desperate, and I’ll be the first to admit that several theories with scanty factual basis became more popular then than they would have in calmer times. The Apple Tree Yard theory, for instance, is clearly ridiculous in retrospect. But even I was willing to consider it. (Not my finest moment.) As a side note, however: the far-fetched “China cancelled Johnlock” theory she mentioned is by someone who’s not only outside TJLC, but also notorious for hating it

But regardless of the quality of these theories, 99% of the remaining TJLCers were certainly not hating on people—because who was there to hate, if there was no queerbaiting?

Ultimately, the podcast’s descriptions of hate related to TJLC are one-sided, distorted, and do not reflect the conduct of the overwhelming majority of TJLCers.

Podcast-Specific Errors

There’s a reason why the podcast comes off so different from reality: its research is seriously flawed.

For a podcast about TJLC, Ms. Paskin interviewed a whopping one (1) actual current TJLCer, whom she apparently interviewed after building much of her argument. Every other interviewee was outside TJLC and specifically disliked it. That will hardly make for an unbiased final product.

As a result, she culminates with several remarks that are genuinely insulting. She likens TJLC to “any other standard conspiracy where you have a Judgment Day,” suggesting that we’re irrational and fanatical. She summarizes the entire community as “people being cruel to one another because they disagree about how a fictional TV relationship should turn out,” combining every misconception of (1) TJLC being a ship instead of hard analysis, (2) blaming every TJLCers for the actions of very few, (3) TJLC being a silly fan thing rather than a starting point for meaningful research into queer representation and literary analysis, and (4) ignoring TJLC’s vast contributions to TJLCers’ lives while overemphasizing those who were harmed by it. Both remarks are in keeping with standard media portrayals of fans as irrational and immature. I expected better of her.

Ms. Paskin says that she “had a dream about…digging deeper, talking to more people, ones who could perfectly explain the allure of TJLC to me.” She had the opportunity to interview more actual TJLCers, but didn’t take it.

But the offer still stands! Come talk to us! Learn about what we’re actually like! Criticize our theories, if you think we’re dogmatic. Ask us what we think of TJLC, if you think it ruined our lives. Our ask boxes are wide open!

What the Podcast Left Out

Swimming in descriptions of TJLC as a source of hatred, the podcast glosses over one tiny little detail: that TJLC genuinely improved the lives of the vast majority of TJLCers.

I came out because of TJLC. I learned how to analyze literature because of TJLC. I discovered new parts of history and the queer people who have always been part of it. I found a community of curious, passionate, funny, and kind people who I could talk to.

And I’m just one person. I know people who found lifelong friends because of TJLC, wrote books because of it, became students of gender and sexuality studies, found a community of support when they had mental health, financial, or other personal problems, and had a blast theorizing about the possibility of landmark LGBT representation. Heck, Rebekah of TJLC Explained filmed hours of people talking about how much the community meant to them. And I even know former TJLCers who, though disappointed with the show, still appreciate how much it taught them about queer theory, queer history, and themselves.

Evaluating TJLC as a whole, it’s not far-fetched, dogmatic, or primarily a source of “darkness.” It’s a legitimate theory, supported by debate and rational analysis, that improved the lives of far more people than it ever hurt.

You’ve read this. Now what?

If you’re in the media:

This Slate podcast is now the #1 result when I search The Johnlock Conspiracy. Thousands of kind and logical voices on Tumblr and other sites are immediately silenced by well-known publications. So yeah, I care what the media thinks. Few voices have widespread effects. I want people trying to find out about TJLC to get a well-researched, less biased view of it.

Please, take your research seriously when discussing fandom. Interview actual members of the community. Be aware of the public bias of fans as unworthy of serious attention and unable to construct rational, legitimate arguments. And fight against it.

If you’re inside TJLC:

Researching for this meant a trip into the darkest parts of TJLC. We need to acknowledge that not everyone in this community is nice to everyone all of the time, and this resulted in incidents that seriously hurt some people. Remaining civil, especially when faced with disagreement or outright malice, means we keep this community friendly for everyone.

If you’re outside TJLC:

Thank you for taking the time to learn about a topic from someone you don’t necessarily agree with. We need more of your open-mindedness in the world.

If you completely disagree with me, please don’t send me anon hate. Constructive criticism is cool. Anon hate is lame. Be cool. But I welcome questions, comments, and constructive debate. My ask box is always open.

 Thank you for reading.

-soe

        ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

@thesaltofcarthage @devoursjohnlock @waitedforgarridebs @one-thousand-splendid-stars @garkgatiss @shinka @witch-lock @jenna221b @sarahthecoat @inevitably-johnlocked @the-7-percent-solution @artfulkindoforder @warmth-and-constancy@marcespot@whtboutdeductions@tjlcisthenewsexy @bluebluenova @heimishtheidealhusband @tendergingergirl @sagestreet @ebaeschnbliah @221bloodnun @marcelock @watsonshoneybee @victorianfantasywatson

[tf2headshotcanons]

Headcanons for Spy and Pauling's friendship? I thrive for them supporting eachother in the comics

Ah yes! One thing I'd like to clear up is that this will have some Scout x Pauling implications, for obvious reasons.Firstly, we already know that Spy is one of the more intelligent and sane men of the group. In fact, I'd argue that he's the second smartest and most sane (or second most). For this, Pauling would naturally and immediately trust him. Plus, he has skills with women. However, due to her role, she was one of the few women he didn't immediately "target" for seduction. Obviously that leads for an immediately positive relationship.At first, their relationship was professional, albeit Pauling putting a lot of trust in him. Likewise, she was the only sane person in his eyes so naturally he trusted her to... To a degree. Again, she's mentioned a handful of times that she would do ANYTHING for Admin, including lying and cheating.Now I have 4.5 canonical examples of such a bond. The first is Expiration Date. On their seemingly last days, Spy teaches Scout how to be the "perfect" date for Pauling. To me, this shows caring on both sides. It's already canon that Spy is good with kids, likes them (no pedo) AND is the Scout's father. So naturally, he'd try to help his son and make him happy, even though he can be a bit of a cunt about it. Now... This is where my interpretation morphs. In a way, if Spy is aiding his son to date Pauling, he not only approves of her for his boy, but also may view her like a daughter, as opposed to a friend. This is personally how I perceive the relationship. The 0.5 piece of this being that she also knew he was the Papi Chulo, I mean, she DID "take care" of the DNA samples. You know, proof that he's Papi Chulo.Next is Smissmas. Who does he call? Pauling. Whilst this may be because she's a higher up that isn't going to immediately punish them, it also further implies a trust and bond, very reminiscent of friendship. Though they do disagree, and sometimes she even questions his methodology. Hence why she told Jack to run. Still, they both trust each other enough to lean on each other.Going back to the game's lore, in Tough Break, it's revealed that she hangs with ALL the mercs. They all like and trust each other. They're a big family. However, she chooses Spy to actually teach her something. Piano. Though his method bizarre and cruel, it is genuinely effective and she goes through with it. Put it this way, though it's plausible, if Soldier told her (forget those damn robots!), she wouldn't nearly trust him enough to not overdo it accidentally. Spy has already shown that he uses tough love, in that he can be rather belittling of his own son, but it's out of love. Just because he's a wanker, well... That doesn't mean he completely hates your guts. Just mostly.Then my final big example goes to the cyanide capsule. When Pauling had a breakdown and they believed they really all were going to die, he offered death. It sounds harsh, but out of all the mercs present (Demo, Pyro - Zhanna and Sol were in another room) he chose to let her die with him. He was willing to take her too in order to save her. In a way, he was prioritising her over the rest of the team present. One could argue about Py's mask or Demo being asleep, but he could wake Demo up, or offer Pyro if they remove their mask. He didn't even give them the offer. It was Pauling who was priority, and Spy of all Mercs know that women are just as capable as men. Likewise, he could have been selfish and consumed the contents alone. Saved himself. So those are my examples using canonical pieces, but here's a few HCs I perceive in a list:- Pauling turns to Spy for advice on pretty much everything, even the feminine stuff. And he advices her like a father.- Though they act as they share a professional relationship, Spy views her as a daughter and Pauling views him as an older brother.- He teaches her various tricks to make her life easier. Likewise, if she's interested in something, he will go out of his way to educate her.- Whenever she's hurt or sad, he will comfort and assure her gently. Behind her back, he will seek brutal revenge. Even torturing those who harm her.- When she goes shopping, he'll accompany her for safety.- Likewise, when Spy needs to get something off his chest, he confines with her. Even with knowing how deadly loyal she is to the Admin, he sees more.- He secretly knows that Scout and Pauling may not work out for sexuality reasons, but he secretly wishes it would. 1) For Scout's happiness, 2) To accept Pauling into his family.- Pauling reminds him of a less flirty, more tame and slightly more awkward version of Scout's Ma, even in appearance.- She trusts her back to him, that's a lot to a Spy!Told ya I was working on a mini essay.

[lawfulgoodedgelord]

Okay, so continuing on my earlier roll of “Rudy Lom as a Hephaestus Metaphor”, I have a million tabs open and the sum of my excessive knowledge about the lore behind A.I. to bring to the table. Let’s go, I’ll attempt to make this as coherent as possible by bringing up one point at a time.

First off, Hephaestus is the Greek god of craftsmen, blacksmiths, metallurgy and fire. In Antiquity that just about represented the driving force of technology and industry, metallurgy being pretty much an art as much as a science.  Rudy is a cyberneticist, but also a computer scientist, programmer, and has notable background in other sciences, mostly related to industrial printing (see: his knowledge about the ChemPrinter in “Perception” and his knowledge about the BioPrinter in “Straw Man”).

Secondly, Hephaestus’ symbols are a hammer and anvil, OR a pair of tongs:

[Source]

In Rudy’s front pocket here (ignoring the circle). Those may look like scissors but, forgive me for not finding an adequate picture, the handle is identical to that of an old fashioned pair of forceps. A tool used in medicine which function not unlike the bulkier tongs used in blacksmithing, but for small delicate things (such as the inside of that poor unfortunate MX′s head for example).

Thirdly, Hephaestus does not reside with the other gods, but instead has his own palace under the Mount Etna and is generally outcast from the rest of the Olympians. Rudy, as we well know, is lonely out in his re-purposed church which is outside the precinct. Hephaestus is an outcast who never gets any visits, neither from his family or rarely even from his wife Aphrodite who cheats on him with Ares. Rudy never goes out, period.

Fourth, and most importantly, Hephaestus is known for his gift with technology and special power to produce motion. Hephaestus made a number of notable objects for Olympus and special figures, which ties rather nicely in to Rudy being Chief Technician. But Hephaestus also built metal automatons to work for him in his workshop, silver and gold lions and dogs to guard palaces, and most importantly, Hephaestus built Talos, the man made of bronze who circled Crete thrice a day to guard Europa. Talos, as I have mentioned before, is the first known mention of artificial life in mythology, the first A.I. if you will. Rudy supervises the Synthetic Dispatch Division. He is in charge of how the androids are doing. The men made of metal, carbon fiber and silicon who circle the City on patrol to keep the inhabitants safe. And when we first meet him, Rudy is working on a robotic butterfly, imbuing the inanimate with motion. Later, during “The Bends” he “abandons” the head of an unknown android (who I still feel bad for) who was neither a DRN or an MX. A personal project? Probably.

Fifth, @mehay1 brought up a very interesting point with the Synthetic Souls, and I think that there is definitely a mythological link. Prometheus stole the fire that he gave to humanity from Hephaestus’ forge. Now, if we take the fire to mean the “thing that defined humanity above the rest of the animals as sapient meta-conscious beings”, then Nigel Vaughn stealing the Synthetic Souls from Rudy’s lab was stealing “the thing that elevated androids above other machines as sentient meta-conscious beings”, we have a striking parallel. (note: I use “sapient” and “sentient” here separately as two words with distinct meanings, the former relating to reasoning and the latter to feeling).

In addition, @starbase-yorktown noticed the song, which I hadn’t correlated it to anything, but adds another dimension to that first scene. It definitely places Rudy further into the divine sort of area that he already seems to inhabit. But the lyrics (as copied from their post) are actually Spot On for Rudy’s part in giving Dorian to Kennex:

Feeling unknown and you’re all alone,

This is Kennex, he’s just woken up, alone, from a coma and has lost everything. He doesn’t even know himself anymore.

Flesh and bone, by the telephone.

Lift up the receiver, I’ll make you a believer.

This I think in with Kennex’s synthetic leg, he has to believe in the technology, because it’s a part of him now.

Take second best, put me to the test.

These verses are Dorian. Dorian is second best, he’s a decommissioned android of a model notorious for catastrophic malfunctions. He’s second best.

Rudy is being put to the test, but more in the sense of a dare. Rudy knows what he is doing by giving him Dorian. And while It’s true Maldonado requested that Kennex be partnered with him, Rudy is the one we see actually doing the introductions.

Things on your chest, you need to confess

Kennex again, he has guilt over his past and he has his demons, and through even one season, Dorian helps him through some of it.

I will deliver. You know I’m a forgiver

Rudy: he will deliver Dorian to Kennex, that’s why he was called.

But also Dorian: Dorian forgives a lot of Kennex’s mistakes.

Reach out and touch faith (x2)

“Touch it to his left ear”. That’s all that’s coming to mind because the fact that it’s a stick felt weird and I sort of know why now.

All in all, I think this small passage of the song is a tremendous block of foreshadowing. I know my analysis is messy at best, and I’m sure that if we had gotten to see more of Kennex and Dorian’s relationship develop, the verses’ relevance would have been much clearer then they are currently. 

In conclusion, there are a good number of traits that Hephaestus and Rudy share, the most salient one being their ability with technology. I think the most convincing argument is the literal symbol of Hephaestus present in every scene where we see Rudy working. However, there is another thing which throws all of this out the window. Hephaestus is lame footed, either from birth or due to fall when he was cast out from Olympus. This has been correlated to the fact the blacksmiths, especially those that worked with bronze, over time suffered from arsenic poisoning (a key component in early bronzes was arsenic). Rudy, as far as the show tells us, is unfit but able bodied. Now, I can propose some theories, which are more canonically plausible headcanons than anything else. But given the (non-exhaustive) evidence above for the correlation between Rudy and Hephaestus leads me to believe there was an unreleased “Rudy’s Backstory” episode where we would have gotten some more information supporting (or denying) the parallels explained above.

Either way, feel free to add to/disagree/argue with me about any and all of this.

[mild-lunacy]

Sherlock, Irene and the Alien Girlfriend Trope

I don't wanna write this post... and the fact is, it's still not a natural reading of canon for me, but I think I like challenging myself to go deeper and deeper into the dark and the damp. As I said in my post-S4 meta on Sherlock's sexuality, I can't actually see Sherlock/Irene in the show even when I try to and suppose I should be able to, but I have to believe the intent was straightforward in the interviews about Irene, at least insofar as the acting. I'm thinking of the recent pre-S4 mention by Ben C, where he says Sherlock has a 'private life' with her to some degree. Given that I take Mofftiss' old interviews seriously (like I said recently), I suppose you could argue it follows we're meant to consider Sherlock ambiguously (but not really *romantically*) involved with Irene ever since ASiB-- in a very limited sense, anyway.

In other words, I imagine taking that texting reference in TLD seriously only makes sense if he'd texted her every now and then (not particularly often) but ever since the beginning. That would mean he'd done it in TSoT, for example, and that's why she showed up in his Mind Palace with all those other women he was intending to interview. So what do I think about that?

Like, remember that in ASiB, HLV and even TLD Sherlock thinks romantic entanglement isn't for him, and is 'human error', at least on the personal level. Any secret fluffy romance is out. So if any involvement exists, it's... maybe mildly sexually flavored teasing and a bit of chat, essentially much like what John was doing with Eurus. Oh, irony. Anyway, I still think it's weird, and almost completely unsupported. I don't even know how to respond (once I dissociate from my more intense emotions, I mean), because usually I need something to work with besides the suggestion there's something I don't know about, essentially. I mean, I think Sherlock respects her and finds her interesting... sexy would be a huge stretch. He's more likely to be flattered by the attention. However, I have to at least consider that Eurus asks that about him not being a virgin 'cause he's not... and it's related to the texting. Somehow.

Am I supposed to think about this so skeptically? I don't know, but considering that I like plenty of het couples, I can say with some confidence that I simply need something to work with before I find a romance or even attraction truly plausible for a character like Sherlock, and that's not asking for too much. This is *Sherlock*. You can't just hand-wave it or leave the audience to fill in the blanks when his very inscrutability and unsuitability for relationships has been a major refrain up to and including TLD. Anyway, note that I'm not suddenly accepting Ben C's statements as 'canon' -- I'm just taking them seriously and following the logical consequences to see where it leads. And seriously, it's hard to credit. If I force myself, I can imagine Sherlock's endless curiosity and bravado leading him to experiment once with Irene after he rescued her, and then texting. But with literally nothing to go on... and my conviction he's much more sentimental about other people than that, given he'd been a virgin *before* Irene, I can't do it. The main reason is my conviction we should be able to *tell*, because he would have changed his attitude or behavior somehow. After all, Sherlock's disconnection and its connection to romantic entanglement is a long-running theme, though we usually associate it with Johnlock, as most recently listed in @balancingprobability's post. You can't really resolve all that without consequences with Irene, either. So, I have to assume that he'd never consummated the relationship if it exists.

Besides that issue, I can't put a woman-- or The Woman-- into the box essentially reserved for Jim Kirk's 'alien planet only' girlfriend in Star Trek TOS. I mean that it seems unnatural to me to do out of any context, though I have to consider that the narrative may support it or indeed that could be the intent. That is, I have to imagine Irene Adler as a person who only really matters at all in a very narrow context, there and nowhere else. A brief vacation to carnal pleasure and/or ambiguously romantic interest, until it's time to go home to the Enterprise (and Spock-- or John, in this case). With Jim, at least it fits his personality; there's a reason Spock only did that when he lost his memory. It's not something you can casually insert for Spock, and so it never happened. Sherlock is much more like Spock than Jim Kirk, obviously. I don't really know how it works in Ben C's mind. The magic of heterosexuality at work?

This does appeal to me in one way, and that's just that I was never comfortable saying Irene's *only* function is metaphoric or representative of Sherlock's feelings. That sort of meta-only approach to characterization is just not very Mofftiss. Irene is a real person, so Sherlock has to have some actual relationship to her actual self and an actual explanation for her appearance(s) in his Mind Palace, no less so than any other character would need a reason. If you ask me, ultimately that reason isn't meta but neither is it meant to communicate the shape of any actual 'relationship'. No, what we have is the suggestion of one, much like Johnlock exists, between the lines. It's just... well, in this case, it's between the lines to preserve Sherlock's status, the legend and the mystery of 'Sherlock Holmes', I think. Even with het, they didn't want to go too far afield from focusing on Sherlock and John, or 'modern Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson', perhaps. It's all about them, and their stories. In the stories, Sherlock is either with John or alone, and so he remains-- with Irene Adler more or less a recurrent theme or memory rather than a person. A narrative ghost, like Mary.

It may seem like that's going back to the meta level, but it's a different kind of meta. It's more of a Holmesian commentary, a sort of self-indulgent homage rather than a fully fledged aspect of characterization. This is meant to be a teaser that relies on heteronormativity, not an actual relationship that makes any difference in the story. This definitely bothers me, especially in context with the continuous focus on Sherlock's capacity for romantic feelings and the importance thereof. This subject is constantly teased, presented as important, but not taken *seriously* except in ASiB and TSoT, which are also the two queerest eps. Like, by *no* stretch of the imagination is ASiB about Sherlock's relationship with Irene, and it could've been-- just like TSoT could've been about John and Mary, and wasn't. The women seemingly exist just muddle the waters, but that's particularly true of the way Mofftiss wrote Irene. They both work as conduits for the male characters' emotional development. They're still just... not pivotal to Sherlock or John's emotional growth, even though in TSoT and TLD John *says* as much about Mary. It just doesn't ring *true*. With Sherlock, there's absolutely no attempt made to make the arc about anyone other than John (and in fact, Ben C even mentioned this in the same interview he mentioned his 'private life' with Irene). So John is the center of Sherlock's universe, undoubtedly... but then there's texting vacations, sort of like sex vacations without the sex.

Anyway, it certainly casts their conversation at the greenhouse in TAB in a different light, given Sherlock *was* hiding some juicy tidbits and/or hetero impulses from John and from himself... maybe because Redbeard and/or Eurus's trauma, 'cause he heard Redbeard/a dog bark? Except who in the world hides heterosexuality, trauma aside. I just... I don't think it's *beyond* Mofftiss, but it really stretches credulity to think Gatiss wrote Sherlock as a closeted straight man. That's just... a bit much. I mean, I assume Ben C doesn't think of it like that, but Gatiss would be aware of the subtext, and he almost certainly doesn't think of it in those terms. So... I'd say we can dismiss any reductive or straightforward reading of Sherlock's sexuality, regardless.

It's obviously intentionally ambiguous, there's no way around that. The text isn't clear by any means, regardless if Ben C's headcanons, which you can see 'cause Moffat's said Sherlock's not interested in women, point blank. Honestly, that is what makes the most sense-- he may be haunted by Irene, and I suppose he visits her room in his Mind Palace sometimes (really?), but he's *obsessed* with John to the point where various villains feel the need to remark on it and/or show their home videos on the subject. Sherlock's emotional intimacy is overwhelmingly with John... and to be fair, that's not unusual in depictions of heterosexual manly men in genre media. Jim and (to some extent) Spock are certainly like that. It's just... Jim Kirk respected women, and they knew where they stood with him. There was no need for secrecy, and he was always sincere. This is... not that.

This is more like a heterosexual male fantasy projected awkwardly and incompletely onto Sherlock Holmes, who hadn't even developed enough conscious awareness of himself in his romantic/sexual aspect to do anything with it, for most of the show. The man was completely oblivious of most things to do with feeling until at least TSoT, so any long-distance texting would have been very, very bare bones until the time of TST/TLD, when John left him for good, and I guess he reached out to anyone who'd let him (he'd even tried therapy, after all). However, my suspension of disbelief can only stretch so far; so... still gay or null, essentially, as I said. It definitely doesn't extend to straight!Sherlock. Sorry, Ben.