#just me hashing out theories and headcanons i guess

[selenityshiroi]

So two weeks ago I caved to the cute images on my dash and sought out Toilet Bount Hanako Kun to read.

I’ve since read it through twice.

I have no idea where the kids do all their theorising and discussions nowadays (probably discord...which is better for live discussions and not cataloguing previous discussions) but I have THOUGHTS I need to put to page.

Spoilers for up to chapter 79 because I had the misfortune of reading it just after the chapter came out and am stuck waiting for a month with the existing fandom

So...Yashiro becoming Hanako’s assistant and being sacrificed to disrupt supernaturals was part of a long term plan, right? Which went disastrously wrong when he caught feelings and couldn’t bear to sacrifice her any more? (a sort of ‘well, if she’s gonna die anyway I might as well make her last months easy/fun and then at least her death has a purpose sort of thing’)

That’s my assumption following the severance.

(not sure WHY he needed to disrupt the supernaturals but I think Hanako (pre Yashiro feelings) was still a ‘does questionable things for the right reason’ boy and not doing it for anything shady)

But...the latest arc gives me more thoughts with regards to Hanako/Amane and Tsukasa.

First of all, I think the manga will end (or maybe not...it could come earlier than the end) with both Amane and Tsukasa returned to mortal form because whatever entity took Tsukasa and has apparently replaced him has kind of stolen their real futures from the both of them (which seems to be a supernatural distortion that can be corrected if they want). I think defeating it/destroying it will return their futures to them. BUT I also think Amane will be returned at age he died and Tsukasa will be returned at age 4 (the age he was stolen away). Mostly because Tsukasa has apparently spent the last 50 odd years stuck in a cursed house as a young child and isn’t really in a state to be returned as a teenager.

(also I think it’ll be less traumatic for Hanako to have a baby brother back that never hurt him and that he remembers fondly instead of the image of whatever took his place)

I also think that Amane will be as ill as he was when Tsukasa wished him better (because defeating the wish dealer will reverse Tsukasa’s original wish) BUT I do think the words of the doctor (along the lines of ‘we can’t heal him with the medical knowledge we have right now’) will be relevant and modern medicine can heal whatever his illness is quite easily.

(Amane and Tsukasa’s parents may also return at the same time because whatever killed Amane apparently involved his parents, too, because of the news reports of a family suicide...plus someone would need to look after baby Tsukasa and give Amane a home)

I DO however think that Amane/Hanako would still be supernatural (maybe aborbs the full powers of whatever the entity is...I currently believe he has half of it’s powers which is a) why he is so powerful for a ‘simple toilet ghost’ and b) why their powers seem to be mirrored/paralleled (also he probably got them when he killed ‘Tsukasa’)). Mostly because I can’t see him ever being just a normal kid again and also because it would be far more interesting and give further plot potential.

Now...Yashiro...I know she can see ghosts because of her near death and now she’s connected to the supernatural because of the mermaid scale blah blah blah.

Um...what about her apparent ability to move through time? Which I believe Hanako doesn’t even know about so it’s not related to her being his assistant?

There is no way that she is 100% a normal human being. She must have some sort of supernatural connection regardless of her relationship with Hanako and I hope this gets explored and developed.

Also, would a mortal/supernatural Hanako be affected by the mermaid scale differently? Just wondering because then they might have to take charge of the curse and twist it to their own purposes.

Finally...I’m, dying here. I love them so much! This art style is so cute and they are so sweet and adorable and I haven’t followed an ongoing monthly manga since FMA and I’m already impatient for more.

[utilitycaster]

yeah one plan I really wanna work on is an archive of tumblr metas for crit role campaign 3, to keep all the debunked theories remembered!

My only fear is whether it can be publicly accessible :(

Not sure about public screenshots of other peoples content (with links to the original post) without their consent, but an archive of just links is so much drier to click through.

How would you do it?

Hi anon,

You seem like a nice person, from this ask, who does not deserve the tirade I am about to unleash below so my answers in short are:

1. I think a fandom theory on a social media is a thing that most people will recognize might get cross posted so I would just summarize and link, were I to take on this project, which I will not be doing.

2. No idea how I'd make it publicly accessible; I'd probably either make a website, or a Google doc under an anonymous email address, neither of which are ideal, but no better options come to mind.

Anyway welcome to the consequences of entering my inbox. While writing this I enjoyed myself a lot but I was also like 'tbh this is probably why I don't get as many anons any more; it is because I am Gotdamn Annoying.'

So this was like, maybe 75% a shitpost, not in that I don’t genuinely believe it would be useful, but in that a comprehensive list is nearly impossible to do. Even if you limited yourself to Tumblr (ie, no Twitter or Reddit or god knows what else), you would necessarily be limiting yourself also to things that were tagged and/or got a decent amount of traction within the fandom as a whole.

I think there are a number of problems though. The first one is that while some theories can be debunked immediately upon their arrival into the primordial soup that is fandom, some may always remain technically possible, just vanishingly improbable, including some of my least favorites (cough secret dragons cough) because you cannot logically prove a negative unless you just outright ask the creators. And still others may be debunked - or proven - only after a very long time (eg: The Traveler is Artagan) and personally I want to only use this for debunked theories, so you'd necessarily need to keep a separate list of theories that are neither proven nor debunked, otherwise you just become a rehash of the, well, hash, that is the Wild Mass Guessing page on TVTropes rather than what I was specifically envisioning, namely, "this is a list of theories that were proven to be wrong, and here is why."

The second problem, which you may have guessed from my previous line, is that I come to bury these theories, not praise them*. I think some theories are good but ultimately incorrect and it's worth having them on display! I also think a lot of theories are bad, and that a good deal of theories aren't even really theories. You used the word meta, which I actually think of more as analysis than theories although the line between those two things is blurrier than most. But also, a lot of things people call theories or meta are, well, Wild Mass Guessing, headcanons/personal opinions, wishful thinking that has a tenuous relation to canon at best, and/or pure unadulterated nonsense. And I would include some of that, but not all, even though I often use the word 'theory' in a similarly loose way to kind of refer to anything that people are saying might be true in the story even if I think it's the ravings of a madman, even though my 'proper' definition of a theory would be an explanation that both answers an existing question and is supported by the existing text.

My point here is that I think some theories are best forgotten and my motivation is more accentuating the positive, pointing and laughing really hard at the negative, and ignoring a lot of the neutral headcanon-type stuff on the grounds that a neutral headcanon is your own private business and I respect that.

The third problem is curation. I have run into a similar issue with kind of shitpost projects that I did sort of take on and now languish and glare at me from the back of my mind when I am doing nothing on a weekend (specifically my attempt to make a personally useable Exandria timeline). Wiki-style editing has its benefits, but also significant drawbacks, because the same people who make pure unadulterated nonsense theories have the same editing power as people who are excellent at literary analysis, if not more. In an ideal world I would recommend putting something like this on the wiki, and there might even be a page now intended to serve a purpose akin to the WMG page on TVTropes (I did not bother to check), but in practice the CR wiki is currently under the thumb of someone who I will sum up briefly in Figure 1:

Fig 1: A Venn diagram.

Anyway, the fact is, the TVTropes WMG page has had things like "when the Mighty Nein fight Trent, Veth will get the HDYWTDT" even though that's not a theory and in fact by the nature of D&D is impossible to predict by any means. That's just a thing that would be kind of cool to happen. I worry that any true wiki format would fall to a similar fate. It would not actually be a list of debunked theories, telling the story both of interesting and genuinely good ideas from fandom that ultimately just did not turn out to be true, as well as some real clownshoes bullshit, but rather a bathroom wall on which to scrawl vague ideas.

So I think the only way to feasibly do this is to just spend time in the fandom and collect theories, like an anthropologist, and accept that you're going to miss some, and maybe have a Google Form for submission thereof that requires things like a post with a certain threshold of notes such that you can easily collect theories from others but are under no obligation to include every one. Even then this will be subject to personal bias, and while I personally love having executive control of things I also recognize the flaws of such a system. I would definitely include some kind of disclaimer along the lines of "This has opinions in it about theories; while the debunking is objective, whether or not it was a good theory prior to being debunked has some subjectivity involved."

*I know in the context of this line actually the speaker was in fact coming to praise the thing he said he was just going to bury; RIP to Marc Antony but I’m different.

[madestrcng]

tagged by: @dcputyrook​ tagging: whomest ever

BASICS:

Name: Bee ;w; Age: 22 Pronouns: they / them Sexuality: Gay Zodiac sign: Capricorn  Taken or single: single pringle Four Things About This Blog: ✘ I originally made it to be a John Seed blog while I was still playing through the game, but after considering and playing more of it, I decided on Staci instead.  ✘ Partly why I decided on Staci was because he was similar to a muse I use to play that I missed, and mostly because I found @badwclv​‘s blog in the tags while I was on my personal and I just ???? wanted to have a reason to write with them and I hadn’t seen any blogs for Staci when I looked. So I was the first to write him on here. ✘ uuuuuuh, a lot of Staci’s backstory is based on previous characters I played from other fandoms that I thought were similar, my own personal experience (see below), and some fanfics I had read about him. His secondary verse (cult verse) is heavily influenced by a fanfic actually. Embarrassing to admit haha I just found the story concept and Staci’s development interesting and I wanted to see where I could go with that. ✘ I write Staci as being Native American and had grown up on the Rez. Mostly because I myself am Native American and grew up and lived on an Indian reservation all my life before moving for College. I decided to do this partly because of how Staci looked (nonwhite, dark hair, etc), and also based on the general area of where this might all take place. Montana is home to a lot of different Indigenous tribes, like The Cheyenne, Crow Nation, Bitterroot Salish, Blackfoot, just to name a few. I decided on Blackfoot because their reservation is North of where Hope County is supposed to be set. Idk if that is really that interesting but I just ??? wanted to do it, because not a lot is known about Staci before EG, and I found it as a way to build his character and connect to him more personality. Like, if he and I shared experiences even if they were mundane and small, it would make writing him more real to me?? Idk f that makes sense, but point is that bc of this I created like 5 other FC5 OCs or Other Characters (Wheaty) on my multi who are also Indigenous and I get to thrive??? writing native characters??? Thanks I suck lmao

Three Mun Facts: ✘ I will go the fuck off about character theories or headcanons for the most minor characters ever. I only really do it on discord because I fear being annoying and spamming but, I got some deep ass metas in my head. ✘ I wanted to be a filmmaker since I was 4 years old, and I made some short films in middle school and high school. So when I graduated I moved across the country a month later and went to film school. I graduated with a degree in film & cinematography, and every time I watch Inside Eden’s Gate or any of the shorts made for Far Cry, I cry because I wanna make some shit like that. Super wild. ✘ I can play bass guitar and use to be able to play piano like a mf but I stopped and now I’m really rusty. Anyway, hire me to be your bassist in your punk band ;3c

EXPERIENCE:

How’d you start: I rped Naruto over texting with my best friend in Middle School. Platforms you’ve used:  I pretty much jumped right into tumblr after that, never did the forums or anything. I think for awhile we used skype :0 but I only really rped over skype, email, facebook, and texting on and off for awhile with her. But I found uuuuuh, a Durarara!! rp group randomly like two years later and was like oh???  Anyway, so I’ve used skype, email, tumblr, aim??, facebook, and I now RP on Discord a lot more. Best experience: honestly hard to say, I think when I just met people I really hit it off with and we just meshed well is always the best. But if I have to be specific uuuuh, I once joined an RP group about Gods or something, and I eventually got my best friends to join which is what got them into Rping. Also through it I met another girl who became like, my best friend online for YEARS after that, from age like, 13 to age 20?? And also bc I was a big gay, I fell in love with her which uuh, didn’t end well but point is that, the best part is just making friends who you love and adore who stick with you even after the group or fandom you were in together dies.  Worst experience:  fuck ok honestly, I had someone who would hound me to ship all the time, and would follow me every time I moved blogs. They would constantly hound me to write smut with them (even tho I was underage) and if I said no they would just be like oh well too bad and would start writing their character doing some shit with mine and get really fucking mean to me if I didn’t reply. Also would constantly bug me to reply to them and guilt trip me, even if I wasn’t home to reply or if I was at school, they would get really mean and vicious about it. And would post horrible shit about me on the dash and stuff when I wasn’t home to reply to our threads.

And they would constantly like, play if off like I was the bad guy and the abusive one and was overall just really toxic and super mean to me and my friends? Pushed away my other shipping partners, forced me to tell my best friend I cant ship with her anymore or else??? And we were all like, 14 or 15 at the time when we met them, and they were like, 36 and had a kid and was married. I didn’t get away from them until I was like, 18 :))) and they had made so many people dislike me and shit because of the dumbass stuff they said about me, so I had to leave tumblr for awhile. Anyway when I came back like, months later a bunch of people had come out of the woodwork who I don’t even remember to apologize to me and be like wow some shit went down and this person showed their true colors and everyone kinda realized they were toxic and a liar bc I guess they tried to do it to some other people. It was wild.

MUSE PREFERENCES:

Original or canon: Canon usually Favourite face: oh geez uuuh, i guess Rami Malek since I’ve used him A LOT, or Erin Richards. Least favorite face: idk man, I guess people who use FCs who are dead irl makes me uncomfy. It just feels weird to me :/ Or people who use White FCs for nonwhite characters, sometimes its up to interpretation though like a video game character or something. But when it’s super obvious a poc and they use a white fc it’s super weird for me. Multi or single: both, but I have trouble maintaining a multi.

WRITING PREFERENCES:

Plots or memes: plot usually, sometimes I don’t know what to do with memes or I don’t know what the other writer is comfortable with. I like to hash things out and make a game plan so I don’t screw something up. Best time to write:  I usually write at night, but sometimes I crank out replies during the day if I have time or if the muses suddenly strikes. Do you like your muse(s):   I love all my muses so much it hurts wowie How long (months/years?): uuuuuh, started in 6th grade so uuuuh, 11 or so years now?? Something like that, I feel like my writing peeked in high school but then again, if I look back at it, it was probably all cringy and dark bc I was a little edgelord.