#future season speculation

[nalyra-dreaming]

Hi! I’ve been wondering what Armand thinks about the legion of Lestat-esque corpses in Magnus’ tower? He must have found them at some stage, at least when living there himself. But the way Armand tracked goings on, presumably he was already aware of all the almost-Lestats before Lestat was made a vampire? Did Armand ever talk about it anywhere? Do you think the tv show might address Armand’s thoughts on Magnus’ choice of Lestat specifically & of his doings with the mountain of dead Lestat-a-likes beforehand?

I think this show probably won't miss out on that little detail, no. :)

I mean... they like to put their fingers into wounds, and that is one.

Because I agree (and I have mentioned that in "Monstrous are what monsters be"), but Armand knew of Magnus. Magnus, under the protection of Rhoshamandes. Magnus, just outside Paris. Of course Armand knew what was going on.

But that part is never addressed irrc, by neither Lestat nor Armand. (And imho they should have addressed that). Nor Magnus.

I don't think it will be part of s2, but I think there is a high chance that Armand at the theater... is actually part of his keeping track of things. Keeping track of Magnus, too. (I mean, even Allessandra notes how she went out to Magnus to visit him, and walk with him, and talk to him. Allessandra maybe knew of it all before Magnus started it, which means Armand maybe knew it before as well.)

So maybe Armand will omit that in his retellings in s2, but if they will go there then it will be Lestat who worries that wound in s3 I bet.

Also, I have a feeling they will go full horror for that part - and the other vampires knowing... is part of the horror.

[o0anapher0o]

I don't know if this has been discussed to death already but I just looked up Tintoretto. Mostly because I had never heard of this guy and the comment that Marius was a contemporary of his has been bothering me for ages. I'm by no means an expert on renaissance art but I still refuse to believe this guy is famous enough to be useful as a reference point. However.

I know we're on a slightly shifted timeline with Armand as well, since they've aged him up and moved his becoming a vampire back to 1508 (based on the 514 years age he gives) but the thing is Tintoretto was born in 1518 and probably didn't pick up a paintbrush until the 1530s. So if that comment is meant to date that painting that would mean the painting is from a time when Armand very likely thought Marius was dead.

I've seen people speculate that Armand wouldn't have put up a Marius painting if they hadn't made up someway at some point. I'm not sure I agree, but if this painting actually supposed to be from the mid 1500s that at the very least proves that Armand in 2022 knows that Marius didn't die in Venice.

[phddyke]

So, if Hooty was able to hear Lilith…are the puppets conscious? It may just be because she cried on him, but he also says, “Sequestered in a darkness like unto death,” which made me very uncomfortable.

If they are conscious, I don’t think they’ll fully discuss the implications because it’s a kid’s show, but months of being locked in your own body which sometimes moves without your permission, unable to speak, only your thoughts to keep your company…woof. It might blow your mental health out to the point where it would never recover.

Thinking about Willow’s Dad Gilbert knowing that she was crying for him, running toward him, wanting to save him, and being unable to hold her and reunite with her, to comfort her. Raine hearing Eda. Raine being forced to threaten Eda. Darius and Eber being forced to threaten Eda, too!

Raine being aware that Belos possessed them?? I saw someone on Twitter suggest that Belos wiping the goop off their cheek might have been Raine crying.

Just. Fucked up.

[guthrie-odonto]

Hold on just a moment

So we have these images revealed recently, yeah? With Luz’s staff having what I can only describe as “nebula on a stick”, yeah?

And there’s two images of it in that form in the forest outside of what I can assume is the Collector’s room. That might mean these scenes aren’t that far apart chronologically or the palisman “hatching” process takes a while once it actually starts to hatch, but…

What if Luz carving her palisman so she can “let it decide what it wants to be” resulted in her palisman being a shapeshifter, with this orb being the base (or initial) form? The ultimate symbol of unapologetically being whatever, whoever, your deepest heart says you are. It’d be the ultimate thesis statement of this series, even more so than “us freaks have to stick together”

Plus, there is just ALL of the evidence that Luz’s palisman is gonna be a snake, if not a winged snake, and… a shapeshifting snake that has a bond with Luz and her family? A shapeshifting snake that arguably has winglike appendages—maybe ears, for example?

Can’t say we’ve never seen that before.

[wildlife4life]

6X14 Coda/Future Ficlet

Eddie runs into Vanessa less than a year later and he almost doesn’t recognize her. Her long brown hair was held atop her head in a clipped up messy bun, her face was free of make-up and instead of a body-hugging black dress, she wore shorts and an oversized, off the shoulder sweatshirt.

But then again, the farmers market really wasn’t the place for fancy attire.

“Vanessa?” Eddie called out.

Vanessa’s attention snapped away from the mangos she was admiring and at first looked at Eddie in confusion before recognition took over. “Edmundo, right?” She smirked, probably remembering his heavy insistence to call him Eddie that night.

Eddie laughed, “Hm. Still got that wit. Ever let a man get past all that charm?”

Vanessa chuckled, “Maybe. My Tia finally gave up a little while ago.  Apparently, there are only so many nice Mexican boys she could find for me.  But I did find a very delectable mid-west guy.  So far, he’s up to the fifth date.” She wiggled her eyebrows, “And what about you? Find that lucky gal to get past the first drink?”

“Better.” Eddie replied, looking over his shoulder to see Buck ambling his way towards him, his reusable tote no longer empty.

Vanessa followed his gaze then snorted, “Now that is no pretty Latina girl. Where did your Tia find him?”

Eddie turned back to the woman, “She didn’t. Pepa had no hand in this.”

Buck, immediately took notice of Vanessa when he joined Eddie and quickly staked his claim by wrapping his free arm around Eddie’s waist and planting a soft kiss to his cheek, “Hey babe, make a friend?”

Vanessa bit down on her lip to suppress a laugh, while Eddie rolled his eyes fondly. “Buck this is Vanessa.  She’s the girl Tia Pepa tried setting me up with awhile back. Vanessa, this is Buck, my boyfriend.”

“Oh! You’re the one who beat Eddie to punch in shutting down the date. Thanks for that.” Buck said.

Vanessa flicked her hand around, “Really it was no problem. It seems everything worked out as it was supposed to. But seriously, how did you score this blue-eyed handsome gringo?”

Buck blushed bright red at her description and Eddie chuckled, slipping his own arm around his boyfriend’s waist, and giving him a tight squeeze, “Wasn’t hard really. We’ve been co-workes and friends for years and then one day I looked up and realized, Oh, he’s right there and I’m not alone.  Never really have been since I came to L.A.” Eddie looked up at Buck and smiled softly, “Sometimes you don’t have look to hard or far for the right partner.”

Buck returned Eddie’s smile with his own then softly pecked him on the lips. Vanessa sighed, “No wonder you tried to turn me down.  You had this waiting for you huh?”

Eddie chuckled, “At home on a very comfortable couch.”

Buck laughed and Eddie’s heart picked up tempo. But it wasn’t in panic. His heart hadn’t stuttered in panic since he and Buck were separated by the bridge collapse. Now, his heart beat to the rhythm of his love for Buck.

And no amount of Tia meddling could change it.

I think I'm getting a handle on this coda thing... But anyway hope you enjoyed! This was just a small thought that popped into my head and I tried to weave in as many common buddie metaphors as I could!

[cathchicken]

Little guide on the celestial being races in my ToH AU

MESSENGERS:

The Messengers are considered the lowest class of celestial being. They do not possess a physical form, and are only capable of interacting with the two realms through the mirror realm. They are very knowledgeable, and are considered the scholars of the celestial realm. They thrive off of obtaining new information and being able to spread it around the realm, hence their name “Messanger”. They are very bird-like in appearance. Compared to the other races, they are on the best terms with the Collectors (which isn’t saying much), thanks to their shared interest in preserving knowledge.

ROYALS:

Royals, contrary to their name, do not partake in a monarchy whatsoever. The origin of their title isn’t known by any others besides the Collectors (who refuse to share that information), but many speculate it is because of the scarcity and fantasticalness of the race itself. Royals embrace both tradition and change, and often act as mediators under societal conflicts. This makes them decent leaders. Most Royals can be easily identified by their sense of justice, but other Royals choose to live more frivolously, and often take the physical forms of other celestial creatures. Overall, Royals are definitely the most abstract and diverse race. Many poses either slight to extreme mammalian motifs, such as dogs or cats. The Collectors do not like the Royals, for whatever reason…

WARRIORS:

Warriors are very literal in their nature: natural born fighters. Not magical powers, just pure and raw physical combat skills. Royals and Warriors get along very well, as Warriors agree to protect a Royal’s community through friendships among leaders. It is rare to see a Royal lead city without Warrior guards. Warriors each are born with their own unique skill set and weapon preferability that they go through trials at a young age to discover. Once they do, around an age comparable to 12 year old humans, they are ready to immediately begin an mentorship with an elder Warrior (they must not be related). Their bodies have sharp, pointy patterns, and whilst being fairly humanoid compared to the other races, have hints of dragon/wolf features, which are reminiscent of their powerful abilities, but also strong and loyal hearts.

COLLECTORS:

Not too much to say here, since you guys probably already know the collectors deal… collecting things… and stuff… but I’ll go over their general relationship with the other races: The Collectors, even compared to the other celestial beings, have a mysterious society and seemingly infinite knowledge. The other races, while complex themselves, can’t even being to comprehend what and why the collectors do what they do, and thanks to the Messengers slight relations, are only very afraid of them. Not just their power, but their seemingly deranged, or just, too immaculate mental states. They generally don’t bother the other races, besides that one apparent conflict with the Royals in the past. For now, the other races live in peace, but try not to think about what the collectors may be up to in the background. Most of the collectors have a very human-like appearance, which I think works well with the animalistic motifs of all the other races. Just like other animals on earth, they are aware of humanity’s presence and impact, but couldn’t comprehend what we are really up to all the time. Truly a terrifying reality.

As mentioned before, there is a final fifth race that I have yet to reveal, as I haven’t worked on them very much yet. But I hope this suffices for now :)

[sundayswiththeilluminati]

Well, it’s been a week and I've had time to cool down and put together my thoughts on Season of the Seraph and its ending. So here goes.

The season finale plot did not require Rasputin to die. "The eliksni are trying to get control of the warsats" is literally a strike. If the warsats needed to be taken off the table as a get-out-of-jail-free card we could have blown the network and kept Rasputin himself. There was an active decision to kill him. Having thought about it, I think I understand why this decision was made - but I still think it's a terrible decision, and I'll explain why.

Before we start, I don't want to sound like I'm going after Destiny's narrative team either personally or professionally. I'm not calling them terrible writers, much less terrible people. I don't know them! They might even be terrible people, for all I know. While I refer to a single monolithic "narrative team," I know in reality there are multiple groups working on different stories. I’m not a professional writer, and they are. And I genuinely believe all of them are talented people who work hard and care about Destiny. But that doesn't mean I don't have some criticisms.

After considering it I think there are three possible reasons to kill Rasputin:

1). The narrative team believed this was a good emotional conclusion that brought closure to his character arc in Destiny. In this case I just think they're flat-out wrong. I'd say "I respect it" but I kind of don't because I think it's so terribly wrong. I don't know what other people think Rasputin's character arc involved, but I won't get closure till Rasputin faces the Witness again and finally ends the war he's been trapped in for centuries. But I get why they would do it, if they believed this. And that final mission was really good. I had a hard time noticing at the time, but it was very well-done, and the cutscene proper was well-shot, -scripted, and -acted (though I'm still angry about the Traveler upstaging Rasputin's death). They put a huge amount of effort into it and into the story work all season long.

But his death being well-done doesn’t change whether I think it was a good narrative choice. Even saying “Rasputin’s arc should conclude here,” the way it was set up had him sacrificing himself to basically cancel himself out. Unless they’re saving up a plot twist, Rasputin ultimately contributed nothing to the fight. He didn’t do any damage to the Fleet or Witness, or anything to stymie Xivu Arath. He died thinking he’d never helped humanity at all and it was safer if he didn’t exist. I don’t know about you, but I find that extremely unsatisfying.

2). Someone doesn't like Rasputin/doesn't know what to do with him. This is two reasons, but they overlap. The Operation: Sancus mission dialogue pissed me off because it gave me the impression that whoever was writing it really didn't like Rasputin and was taking the chance to morally excoriate him. A more subtle version recurs in the final mission where Rasputin is essentially sacrificing himself to null out his own existence - saying "as long as I exist I'm a threat to humanity" - as if he can't ever help or contribute more than endanger people, which is just flat-out wrong. "Humanity doesn't need a Warmind" you're part of humanity, Red. He’s a person; he doesn’t need to justify living. If someone just decided Rasputin Was Bad Actually I’d be very angry indeed. But I don't think it's that personal. Destiny has lots of writers and multiple narrative teams will touch the same work. One person's distaste probably wouldn't steer an entire season.

Related, however, is the reason that maybe no one knows what to do with Rasputin. To be honest I sympathize with this one. Would it shock anyone to hear I've thought about how I would script a Rasputin-focused season? It's surprisingly hard to build a plot around him. A game needs to be interactive and Rasputin's kind of all or nothing - either he can handle the whole problem himself or he can't do anything at all. Red also mostly plays defense. He doesn't have a goal he's working towards other than "kill the Witness/save humanity." You need to come up with a plausible goal that we can believably help him achieve, and that's nontrivial. But, well, that's why I'm not a professional games writer and these people are. "Not sure what do" is not IMO sufficient justification for assassinating one of Destiny's oldest characters/factions.

3). The Destiny narrative team is trying to "declutter" the setting and foreground story by sidelining characters who take a lot of lore to understand. I think this is the real reason, and it's worth talking more about.

A lot of us lore-nerds have long complained about Destiny not foregrounding its setting and story, and Bungie has responded by trying to do so. I think we didn't consider what that would actually look like. Imagine Destiny's story like a long movie. Now imagine people are constantly coming and going from the audience, and everyone who comes in has to nudge their neighbor and go, "hey, what's happening?" Destiny is always (hopefully) acquiring new players, and existing ones are dropping out and coming back. Even most established players either don't read the lore or don't track/remember it. We the lore-keepers are very much the anomaly. If we want story to be a focus, that story also has to be more accessible to new players, lapsed players, people who don't bother reading loretabs, etc., because otherwise it harms their experience and there's a lot more of them than there are of us.

I think this is why we've seen a lot of seasons that introduce whole new concepts - the eliksni Sacred Splicers, for instance - rather than following on existing storylines. Introducing a mostly-new concept puts new and old players on a similar footing. Haunted is another type of compromise between the goal of furthering the story and the goal of making it accessible. Calus and Leviathan are back, but so warped that old players have as much to learn as new ones, and the Sever missions dive deep into character pasts but pretty explicitly describe the emotional arcs they're illustrating, so you don't have to be familiar with that character to get what they're going through. To those who already know Zavala, Crow, etc., it seems laughably obvious and strained. But to those who just got here, this is their first time learning not just about Safiyah but also about Zavala. I think this is also why there have been multiple casual retcons of minor stuff - there isn't time to explain the history, and they've decided it's not worth confusing people.

Rasputin is old. He's been a significant part of Destiny since literally the pre-Alpha test. The complexity and history that are part of why we love the Warmind also make him hell to explain to new people. It takes a decent amount of lore to get invested in his character and since Beyond Light none of that lore is featured in-game. Pre-Season of the Seraph, anyone who began with Beyond Light literally never met him. They never visited Hellas Basin, which is one big environmental story about Rasputin, and The Will of Thousands strike, which demonstrates Red's power and contains many possible dialogues that emphasize him trusting you/acting as an ally, left the playlist ages ago. Since then a new player's only gameplay interaction with him has been Fallen SABER, in which Red yells incoherent Russian and tries to flatten you with a warsat. Is it a surprise relatively new players might not be up on his character arc?

Season of the Seraph, with its narrative of rebuilding Rasputin from the ground up, would be a perfect time to introduce new players to Red's long history, and they...kind of...did that. They worked in Felwinter although then for some reason felt the need to retcon in the whole "Clovis wanted to destroy the Traveler" plan. If you were a new player who didn't know anything about Destiny lore, and you just played Season of the Seraph, you'd get an entire canned arc for Rasputin that hits the early high notes: built to be a weapon, rebelled against his constraints, humanities nerd, big smite, loves Ana and Elsie, makes mistakes but genuinely cares and wants to help.

But that's where Seraph stops. In existing lore (I almost typed "in reality") Rasputin worked out the whole "not a weapon" thing well back during the Golden Age. For a lot of us Warmind fans the most interesting parts of his story happened after that - the entire Collapse, confrontation with Darkness, years of hiding, etc., not to mention all his character development during Warmind and Worthy. He's gone through a lot, and Seraph misses all of it (except Felwinter) in favor of rehashing the same arc for a third time. It's like when moviemakers keep rebooting a superhero origin story. It may be a good story, but eventually we'd like to move on to the other parts we enjoy: this sleeping giant, hard scifi AI, grouchy old bastard, lost lore of the Golden Age, champion of humanity, learning from defeat, learning to trust again, the morality and trauma of warfare - what it means to lose a war - a being never meant to become what he was transforming still further, still unfolding his own potential.

So understanding why they might have done this doesn't excuse what I still see as a terrible narrative choice. I think dropping Rasputin is a major waste of potential, and he's far from the only tricky character to explain. Osiris, or at least the Cult of Osiris, is similarly old. His story is complex and weird and requires knowledge from Curse and earlier, yet he's still playing a major role. Other current characters like Elsie, Saladin, and Crow also need a decent amount of knowledge about previous game events to get why they are the way they are. Saladin's origin story isn't even in this game. It's not Rasputin's fault the game went three years without so much as mentioning him outside of written lore. What was wrong with the great Xivu-Rasputin “war god” parallels most of the season worked to set up, about the intent of violence? Are we never going to explore those? Are we just throwing out all the dialogues planning a role for Red in the upcoming war? Why did we have a dramatic confrontation about trusting Rasputin to operate independently if he were going to be gone in a month anyway? Just in Seraph alone the number of interesting plot threads abruptly trashed by this death argues against it.

Rasputin's longevity is precisely part of why he should stick around. In the first mission of Destiny 1 you wake up in his shadow. He has a history with us. There's just no one quite like him in Destiny. He's not just a character but an entire faction. He explores a part of story space that no one else does. He resonates with us as people rather than players. I assume Neomuna will pick up the Golden Age banner, but it’s a thriving city; Rasputin represented the ruins, the dangers of a dead age, the shadow of apocalypse. He's also maybe the most Guardian-like character and one of the best to weave a parallel/cautionary tale - were we, too, only made to be weapons? But if Rasputin didn't stay a weapon, can we too transcend that intention? And of all the factions in our solar system, the two with the most personal scores to settle with the Witness are the eliksni and Rasputin, and Misraaks'/Eramis' story has focused much more on the Traveler's flight than the Fleet's attack. Of everyone in Destiny Rasputin has the most desperately personal motive for revenge on the monochrome bastard. Now he's not even going to be there to watch it crash and burn.

I understand that foregrounding story also comes with the requirement that it be accessible to those who don't do their lore homework. I appreciate the monumental amount of work that's gone into doing that and the experimental nature of it. But I think the balance has skewed too far towards accessibility. Stuff like the end of Season of Plunder that has zero narrative motivation or continuity and doesn't even get a pretend justification drives me absolutely batty. You can only break internal rules so many times before players stop buying whatever narrative stakes you're trying to set up. Making the story easier to follow doesn't mean characters have to be cartoonishly-exaggerated caricatures like Clovis was in Seraph - just absolutely cartoonishly evil - or reduced to one or two character motives explicitly laid out for the player (though, credit where credit is due, Clovis was hilarious.) It doesn't mean the dialogue has to be as subtle as a Thundercrash. It doesn't mean you get a blank check to retcon or invent whatever's needed to create the intended character arc. If anything that discourages looking further into lore - why bother to learn it when next season will change it all again? I think Y5 represents a lot of experimentation by the Destiny narrative team, and I really respect that. But I also hope they learn what didn’t work from it, and sacrificing Rasputin in an ultimately pointless and unnecessary finale is a major misstep.

[thesherrinfordfacility]

please note that this is a pre-s2 masterpost; new one can be found here.

contrary to popular belief i am actually capable of writing up genuine theories about s2, but they are still wonderfully feral and unhinged in both tone and nature, so voila welcome to ✨rhi's crackpot speculation/meta masterpost✨ featuring some very special guests that are way more insightful and clever than me

note: contains spoilers

d-day edit: lmao let's sort this shitpit out🍲

old post-s2/s3-relevant metas etc but they didn't make it to the final cut of the new masterpost:

BIT NERVOUS about this being linked but fuck it, i didn't like the first two eps INITIALLY but in my defence i learnt the error of my ways and consider it to have been prime's fault

thoughts on s3 in the immediate aftermath

i heard you calling from across the ether for some whump material so i wrote some

also i meta-girlbossed a bit too close to the sun with recontextualising the lion/adam/eve parallels in s1e1 now that we know what we know about aziraphale and crowley pre-fall

someone shared their opinion about the playlists with me then i blacked out and when i came to there was meta

i got big feelings™ about the argument clip in that aziraphale is honestly just a nice man doing his fucking best (not a prediction but just a wee rant)

s2 live commentaries bc im sorry reading these back is GOLD:

episode 1/2 (lumped together bc i went to a screening) (also neil liked this and i feel exposed the poor guy had to read this??? over all the other somewhat intelligent stuff on my blog??? this is what he went for???? man's WILD ✨)

episode 3

episode 4

episode 5

episode 6 (lmao)

and then basically anything else, mostly all pre-s2 so have a read and laugh at me, it's ok honest

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

this one made me tear up a bit because i live on a diet of bagels and aziraphale/crowley biblical whump material LMAO AM I APOLLO????

(as amended) the one where my entire theory on aziraphale and crowley's angst for s2 is predicted based on the length of his ridiculous (see: delicious) sideburns

an earlier musing on the plot of like the first three episodes (fuck it let's be real i'm just blueprinting a fanfic in this post)

by all accounts crowley is not, in fact, james bond

the second coming gets fucked up bc gabriel is a pussy ass bitch

✨✨SDCC/NYC✨✨ people pls read this and talk to me about it bc I'm losing it everyone else just shh and read silently for a minute ill get to you in a sec okay id still love to know what happened at the sdcc screening but i went to my own one in the uk and what i saw has done nothing to dissuade me from this theory im sorry

lol haven't updated this post in a hot minute but this is the SMOOCHY prediction

i told y'all crowley was getting hit by the cozzy livs and now my boy has to work in a pub, liz truss i hope ur happy

if i must suffer then you must suffer also thems the rules

✨✨live feed of my breakdown over the episode titles✨✨

a wee romantic shitpost about ep5 but im adding it in here for posterity bc if this does happen im going to simply decease

this was birthed from the above but with ep2(?) spoiler context

IS GOOB JESUS?????

i have a sinking feeling that crowley may be a double agent and honestly that's not very james bond of him

segue from the above, someone really cleverly came up with the thought after the wanted posters that crowley is involved in hell descending on the bookshop to get gabriel and was rewarded with duke of hell (hence the art of him on a throne) and i latched on like a fucking barnacle

I cry

(also as amended lmao) my rhetoric on how unequipped aziraphale is to handle intense gay panic god bless this mess this lil funky dude

i have now done so many speculation posts about the 40s that it feels like groundhog day but if prime insist on feeding me 40s content then that's their own damn fault (but this one is the most recent and where I'm currently at so read this one first)

(older) a tinfoil hat inspection of anything related to ww2!husbands, magician aziraphale, and the Dinner of '41

(older again) extended-Dinner of '41 analysis in the context of s1e3

once upon a time aziraphale and crowley fucked up the ineffable plan by not getting together in 1941 and god wasn't happy about it and everything went tits up, the end

a simple humble commentary on how the trailer was put together and a warning to not trust a single thing prime tells us

okay it's not s2 related but i had a bit of wine and a small heartbreak over their first meeting in the beginning and now any other method of therapy is redundant

and last but certainly not least (not for the moment anyway, there's a few more feet to descend before we truly scrape the bottom of the unholy barrel that is my psyche) we encounter the deranged, manic, unbalanced and frankly disturbed commentary i birthed in response to The Spoiler

enjoy, my boos ✨

[the-irreverend]

TFW you realize that Belos is probably gonna try to possess The Collector in the final episode

[laf-outloud]

Huh... well, at least they're still getting Season 4 (even with a pared down cast and writer's room.)

Makes me wonder if announcements about Walker and the All: American shows will follow. As of now, Walker is the only show that hasn't had to make any cuts for the next season.

[nalyra-dreaming]

I have not seen much talk of this shot from the trailer yet...

That is Louis, in his dark room in (likely) the 40s, developing photos - and burning this one.

It does seem as if he is doing it with the fire gift (or if someone else there does it with the fire gift?!), and it does seem to be a very targeted little flame.

Meaning especially this photo is supposed to burn.

Now, obviously the camera(s) Louis has will play a big part of it all. Together with the diaries the photos are tangible proof of what he saw - and how Claudia looked, for example.

Of what was reality, and what was hallucination.

Of what he wants to remember - and what he will choose to forget. Or what he should forget, by someone else's decree.

It will be immensely interesting to see which photos will survive, especially since this:

might be the same room. Which means Louis might spend a lot of time there, even sleep?!

Many have theorized that Louis is still seeing Lestat there, in that room, too, because of this:

But I personally think that is Louis' hand.

If he has a special room to himself to develop photos in that speaks for an extended time in Paris (before the shit hits the proverbial fan).

If he and Armand have a relationship for longer it stands to reason that Armand might have come into that room at different points, too.

We do know Armand has the fire gift, so I could easily see him burn that photo in the first gif.

OR that is actually the moment Louis develops his - and that would be hugely interesting then.

What would make Louis want to incinerate a photo so badly that he would be able to bundle the energy and send it out like that. What would produce enough emotions, "fuel" for him to be able to do that.

What is on that photo... or what isn't, for that matter.

[mollysunder]

Potential Complications of Ekko's Time Shenanigans

There's a lot about Ekko that makes me nervous for him next season. Besides the fact that the Firelights tree house could easily get firebombed, because it's a literal hole in the ground with no cover. We'll ignore that most of the exits are above ground-level or sealed with a heavy door, and that some of the small metal fixtures on the treehouse look like human skulls. There's this larger, but more understated threat that Ekko's going to lose his mind after using the Z-Drive too many times.

When Vi berated herself for how she should have been there to protect Ekko, she wished that she could change the past, Ekko said, "That's a good way to drive yourself crazy". I thought that answer was pretty ironic, because wanting to change the past is his whole thing. At first I thought it could be a one off thing to tease Ekko's future ability. Then I remembered that Ekko has a joke voiceline that makes light of the effects of time travel on his mind. Sometimes Ekko would say, "Time scramble doesn't travel my brain.".

The dangers of the Z-Drive became more plausible the more I thought about Ekko's place in Zaun. Of the three most prominent minds in Arcane's Zaun (Singed doesn't count, he's from Piltover), two of them, Jinx and Viktor, deal with debilitating mental illnesses brought on by their respective work. For Jinx, her bombs killed her brothers, worsening her paranoia and fear of abandonement. While Viktor's work with the Hexcore has only further isolated him from his already small circle of friends, which will only make his future depressive spiral worse once the Hexcore causes him to be exiled in disgrace from Piltover. In both their cases, their work has lead them to be partially alienated within their communities, usually by their notoriety alone.

Ekko is supposed to be the exception to the rule for most Zaunite champions, but in Arcane he's not. Ekko builds technology to sabotage Silco's Shimmer supply chain, putting a target on himself and anyone associated with him. Ekko and the Firelights have to live clandestinely from the greater Zaun. Their fight against Silco has caused them to be less connected or just present in Zaun than someone like Jinx is. And on top of that isolation you have Ekko being placed in a de facto leadership position for his group for who knows how long, everyone there either looks the same-ish age as him, or are literal children. All the while he's responsible for the raids they carry out that were shown to carry a high fatality rate, at least one of the raid members looks younger than Jinx did in Act 1. Ekko may live in a nice tree, but he isn't doing well.

Then there's Heimerdinger, who is sure to be a pivotal influence on Ekko's story next season. Every mentor-student relationship in Arcane has shown that the students (Jinx, Vi, Viktor) inevitably internalized the lessons of their teachers (Silco, Vander, Singed). But more importantly, these pairs tend to share parallel experiences with one another, though it's more general than 1-to-1. And based on Hemierdinger's VA, Mick Wingert, the most defining aspect of Heimerdinger's characters was the suffering he experienced at the loss of his home, Bandle City, from the Rune Wars. Wingert stated that the closest frame of reference for the loss Heimerdinger experienced was similar to a Holocaust survivor. If the director and writers found Wingert's interpretation appropriate enough to play Heimerdinger, then part of that is likely to come through more in the next season.

Ekko's perspective is bound to change once he works with a person who will tell him that everything that can go wrong, in fact has gone wrong before. And the weight of Heimerdinger's words will probably carry considerable weight on Ekko's opinion next season. Heimerdinger's character is likely to fulfill the role of (grand)parental figure that Ekko has long needed. I can only see Heimerdinger heightening Ekko's fears and anxieties on the potential future disaster that will destroy his community and his responsibility in preventing it.

For next season, Ekko will probably believe he is at least partially responsible for Zaun and Piltover's war because he couldn't stop Silco or Jinx in time. When he finally creates the Z-Drive, he'll have the opportunity to rewrite every new potential mistake he could have made, even if it's only by 2-seconds. Ekko will either keep rewinding until he gets trapped in his own timeloop and breaksdown when he realizes his efforts are futile, or the instability of the Z-Drive creates too much attention and some outside party intervenes and pulls him out.

[haystarlight]

MORE SPOILERS! FOR THE FUTURE SPOILERS!!

So that's scene where Belos tries to possess a Grimwalker but fails was interesting and I have 4 things to say:

1.This confirms that Hunter popped out of the ground already with a 15 or 16-year-old body and there was no child or baby period for him. This sucks because I was so convinced he'd popped out of the ground as a baby and I really liked the idea of little kid Hunter, he would've been soooooooooo cute. So I'm bummed about that.

2.If he came out of the ground already a teenager, then all the childhood memories he has (or he thinks he has, rather) are definitely fabricated by Belos by magical brainwashing or something. That's somehow even sadder than him having a lonely childhood with Belos in the Emperor's Coven. Like, whatever childhood he thought he had wasn't even real. Or what if he doesn't even have fake childhood memories and someone asking him about his childhood would break his brain?!

3.Does Hunter have a belly button??? Probably not, right??? This one's more of a joke.

4.Another joke one; I'm actually really relieved they didn't go through with the Grimwalker possession angle cause that would mean even more Hunter angst. And I think Belos possessing Raine is really cool.

... and also, if they actually showed Hunter shirtless onscreen, Disney Channel Studios would get stormed by a violent army of hungry teenage girls. And I don't think any of us wants that.

Teenage girls are animals.

[travelerarisu]

li tianchen and chen xiaoshi's theories - link click season 2

I don't know if anyone else has done this already but if someone else has, please let me know-

anyway, shoutout to my friend (Annie if you're reading this, I hope you know you're the best~) who debated with me over this for three hours...

be warned, there will be spoilers to both season 1 and season 2 of link click !!

more under the cut (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

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for the sake of simplicity:

CXS = Chen Xiaoshi

LG = Lu Guang

LTC = Li Tianchen

LTX = Li Tianxi

XSS = Xu Shanshan

To start, let's establish that CXS's power is to dive into the past through a photo from the present. If he claps hands with LG before diving into the past, he can establish a connection with LG during that dive. However, lthough it's often translated as diving into the past, I see it more as him reliving what happens after the moment the photo is taken through the perspective of the person taking the photo. All throughout Season 1, we follow his dives into photos and there is one overarching theme; he shouldn't change the past lest he risk affecting the present and future.

He shouldn't but what if he can't?

Off of the top of my head, there are only two instances where CXS actually changed the future (yes, I am aware that when he possesses LG's body in Season 2 and then breaks the window, he changes the situation slightly by using the kettle which LG didn't originally use but in that instance, the outcome at the end was still very similar, if not the same, to what originally happened)

For CXS to change the future, he has to dive into a photo to affect the present to change the future. He was able to do this during the Dou Dou case and with XSS's implied death.

For Dou Dou's case, I think it's important to remember that the circumstances were really peculiar and that no one (other than Qiao Ling who gets distracted by CXS on his first dive into the past when he dived into the photo as himself) notices Dou Dou get abducted other than the abductor herself. When diving into the photo as Dou dou, CXS makes a dramatic change in the past by punching the abductor in the face, pretending he's her ancestor, and making her believe she's cursed. Then, in the present, LG (with the information that CXS uncovers on said abductor) informs the police who then arrest her. She then "treats Dou dou as if he were her own son" due to the belief CXS planted in her which "creates" a new timeline that she follows through with for the next two years. The fact that she confesses when arrested by the police and admits to everything easily in this new timeline is evidence of this. The key point here is that she followed through.

Now, so far we've established CXS's power is closer to a reliving of the past than a true time travel to the past, that he can't change the past unless he makes a dramatic difference which would affect the present by creating a new timeline, and then following through with this newly made timeline is what actually changes the future.

Next, let's establish LTC's and LTX's powers. LTC's power is to possess and control someone through physical contact while LTX's is the ability to see and feel what a person in the present is seeing and feeling through a photo. What I want to bring attention to is how LTC is in the present, possessing someone in the present, to affect the future. He is in the present directly changing the future.

This is what sets him apart from CXS who is in the past trying to affect the present to change the future.

If we turn the past and present into "node" then we can think of LTC as being in one node (the present) affecting infinite futures and other nodes while CXS is jumping into another "node" (the past) to try and change the "node" of the present which would then change the "node" of the future. (like a domino effect)

Therefore, as LTC is always in the "now" affecting the future when he is using his power to possess, he determines the "now" and because he is in the present he is the only one who can make big changes to the future.

In other words, to CXS, death is an unchangeable node for him but not necessarily for LTC which leads me back to XSS's case, the only other case where CXS was able to change the future.

In XSS's case, XSS (in the original timeline) is heavily implied to have died at the hands of Liu Min or at least had been mortally wounded and would have died very soon. Liu Min was the one that killed her and who was the one that was possessing Liu Min's body during said murder? LI FREAKING TIANCHEN.

When CXS dives back into time through a photo of XSS, he intrigues LTC who is possessing Liu Min by asking him to visit the Time Photo Studio effectively stopping him from killing XSS. The key point here is that LTC was the one who made this decision which changed the present and future completely which supports my theory that LTC is the only one who can make the big changes to the future as he is in the "now" and can directly do so (unlike CXS).

This would also explain why CXS is forcibly "ejected" when LTC tries to possess him. CXS possession of people only happens from past to present while LTC is only able to possess people in the present and onwards. Thus when LTC tries to possess a person already possessed by CXS, like LTX in the flashback, in the present time, he automatically “ejects” and overrides CXS's possession.

And so, because of how LTC's power works (he is always in the now and is affecting the future directly) he determines and decides the “now” so to say. This is why CXS can’t easily change the past without LTC "confirming it" and deciding to "follow through" with the change. 

And with all of this, assuming LG also realizes this, then it would be natural to assume that he has come to the idea that with LTC, he can finally make that future he so desires where CXS is alive. All he needs is for LTC to "confirm" and "follow through" with the changes he will makes in the past when he dives to effectively reverse CXS's imminent death.

Too bad they're on opposite sides...

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To everyone who read this far, thank you for your time !! This is my first ever tumblr post and I'm still not too sure how to use tumblr...

So much respect to all the other Link Click theorists on tumblr who make these long posts that I've only just realized take forever... thank you all so much for all your wonderful theories 🙇‍♀️

Let me know what you think, and until next time ٩(⊙‿⊙)۶

~Ari ❀

[daylightaftertherain]

also just to say I'm probably not going to speculate about much until s3 comes out (could change though, I have a terrible track record when it comes to this), mostly bc I don't have time or energy and bc I saw last time how much speculating can interfere with enjoying the experience of watching a new season and also the number of dumb takes you see from people w zero media literacy but let's not bring that up again

[brsb4hls]

I thought I was pretty chill about every possible ending of 'Loki' but if they make him take over the tva I'll be pissed.