#pls stop just deciding things are an interesting thought and calling it meta it's frustrating

[seeingteacupsindragons]

I've been reading so much meta, it's a little hard to keep track of who said what, so sorry if you have discussed this. Anyway, I saw a theory that William and Louis are twins, but because William stoke the identity of someone who is two years older, he's been lying about his age. Do you have any thoughts on this?

This is a very silly theory that doesn't make any sense. Let's break this apart.

The fact that William stole the identity of someone two years older than him is based on his extracanonical age of 24 (for the bulk of the series). This is the only reason we actually know this. OG William would have been 26 in the bulk of the series if he survived. This is discernable through simple math: he was turning 13 when he died, and the main series takes place 13 years later.

However, Louis's extracanonical age is only 23. Therefore, if William was lying about his extracanonical age (somehow???), he could just as easily be OG William's age, or Mycroft's age, or--you get the picture.

William's extracanonical age, to me, feels indisputable. Yes, his profile in the series is lying, or at least cribbing a few facts from OG William's biography (like his age and birthday, which are not William's own). But because his age even on this profile doesn't match up to OG William's biography, and because his height and weight are a perfect match to Sherlock's down to the centimeter and pound, the fact that they are exactly the same age despite this causing some weird timeline funniness, feels very concrete.

Yet, again, Louis's extracanonical age is only 23, and he has no reason to lie about that, especially extracanonically.

But here is my biggest reason this is incredibly silly to think of this idea as "meta" or a "theory": It doesn't help understand the story at all. It might be sort of fun to think about or have as a headcanon or write fanfiction about, but nothing in the series is weird in a way that would be less weird if they were twins.

Nothing in the series, even pre-adoption, indicates that they might in any way be twins. They are close siblings close in age who look similar....but OG William was only a bit over a year younger than Albert, and they also looked quite similar. Sometimes, this is a thing that happens. Mycroft and Sherlock could be mistaken for each other when Sherlock pulls his hair back. They're obviously not twins. They're just siblings who look like each other.

While YuuMori has some elements of unreliable narration, and while that is one of my favorite tropes I think should be used so much more often it should be universal, an unreliable narrator only works when the narration itself stops making sense until you realize someone's view, explanation, and narration of the situation is off.

For instance, in William's narrative, Sherlock was a detective who wouldn't kill, but would arrest/kill/end him, the Lord of Crime. Because William thought that, and because that's the typical story, readers were generally willing to buy it. But Sherlock had said already that he liked William, never said he was going to kill anyone, and very early on said the reason he wasn't going to kill Hope was because he didn't want someone to hand him answers--William wasn't actually tempting him with something he wanted anyway. Ergo, we can determine that William's narrative was unreliable. It doesn't actually match the facts presented to us.

Nothing at all in this series indicates anything about William or Louis's apparent birth being about a year apart is off, or unexplainable, or inexplicable, or just seems odd. In fact, it's never remarked on in canon at all. They have no real strangeness about them or their story that would make more sense if they were twins.

This is a theory that's trying to solve something that doesn't need to be solved. It's very much being pulled out of thin air.

And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with doing that. Please, I write original fiction: that's most of what I do. But it's ridiculous and inaccurate to call that meta or theory or analysis.

[rubykgrant]

having au brainrot today and I want ur hot opinions on the theory/concept thingy that the ai base their ‘human’ names off their hosts… like O’Malley being a combo of Omega and Allison, Gary being a mix of Gamma and Reginald etc….

cause…. I know we don’t know the freelancers names but…. Please imagine a universe where epsilon calls himself Eddie or something…. Cause pls I’m 🥺

anyway hope ur having a good day lmao

Oooh, OK so, I have several ideas about this!

For the obvious canon in the show, we know that Alpha initially thought his name was Church because of some left-over thoughts regarding the Director, and Epsilon also liked using that name (I think because Caboose gave it to him and he just kinda liked how it sounds, but not in the sense that he was "the same Church", y'know?). As for the other AI, we never know FOR SURE why they picked certain nick-names/personal names (except the combination of the Meta, but that was a whole other situation). The idea that they kinda want to use different names together to make something of their own is really cool though! I'm not sure what they would all pick for themselves, but it would be really sweet to see them have different names they liked~

The awesome @leonardalphachurch once made a post that stated Gamma named himself after the snail from Spongebob, and honestly? Yeah, I totally accept that as factual. The thing about RVB is; sometimes the meanings behind what the characters do is very deep... and sometimes, it's just because of Spongebob haha. My thoughts behind that though; at some point, Gamma was finally allowed the chance to watch TV, and he genuinely enjoys cartoons, it just supremely vibed with his sense of humor (for a long time, the AI weren't allowed to experience much within Project Freelancer, so just being able to watch TV was actually a really important thing... what better way to get a glimpse of humanity than to see what humans create, and just enjoy it like people do?)

Personal thoughts about the Omega/O'Malley name (and why it continued with Doc); in sort of an extra/deleted backstory, there was a bit in which Omega left Tex and temporarily was in the head of some other dude... she got him to return, but the AI commented on the man's name being "O'Malley", and that he liked how it sounded. This isn't technically canon, but it is interesting. Caboose also seemed to imply that his name WAS O'Malley, but everybody was calling him Caboose, so he went along with it to avoid being difficult. That is VERY up in the air, what with all the confusion going on at the time. In my head, I imagine that maybe Caboose's parents didn't take a shared last name , and his father's last name IS O'Malley. If I want to include that little bit of the backstory, perhaps the person Omega was talking about was Caboose's father! Thus, the name stuck (and it didn't even seem too weird for Caboose at first, because he knew that name). As for Doc... I have a whole thought process that he has actually had his O'Malley since childhood; it was extremely traumatic after his brother died, and unfortunately the people around him decided that the best way for Frank DuFresne to "get over it" was to just STOP talking about the things that made him sad. Basically, keep acting happy until you are happy! Which is NOT good... also, his family listened to a lot of alternative medicine advice, which is why Doc thinks that drinking orange juice is a cure-all. As he grew up, Frank DuFresne ignored the part of himself that needed to vent his frustrations and express his needs, while also avoiding anything that reminded him of his brother...so he totally forgot that they used to watch a cartoon show together, which had an over-the-top villain named Malloy (this is why when Omega became part of Doc for a while, he was EXTREMELY more excitable and talkative; that was always Doc's O'Malley, he had just been denied an outlet for too long)

Last thoughts about AI names; I once thought of a "slightly more normal" High School AU, in which Church is indeed still a system (with his own fragments being named after the Greek Alphabet, as the AI are named in the actual series), but he also has extended family members who share certain traits; Dillon (Delta), Thaddeus "Thad" (Theta), Emmet and Isaac (Eta and Iota), Gary (Gamma, obviously), Owen (Omega, though his dad is the one with a genuine rage problem. Owen has anger issues as a result, and Church doesn't care much for that uncle), Silas (Sigma). In this AU, the Director is Church's older brother, and they were both named after their grandfather Leonard; the elder brother is Leonard L Church, and the younger is Leonard A Church (the A is for Allen, but this is also symbolic of him being Alpha. Epsilon is who comes forward when Alpha is no longer there... he's obviously not "dead", like the actual series, but he's dormant if that makes sense, so Epsilon is there to kinda be The Guy now. He doesn't legally change his name or whatever, but for his own purposes, he chose the middle name Elliott for himself to differentiate). LL Church was married to a woman named Allison, who had a younger cousin named Bethany. LA Church and her met on their own, not even realizing that their families already had a connection (Alpha HATES his older bro), and then they found out they were technically cousins by marriage, and went EWW WE CAN'T DATE GROSS (they were teens at the time). At some point, Allison and LL had a child together, whom LA never met; he was literally in the hospital with a head injury. By the time he woke up, he had memory loss, and Allison was dead... Beth was there to try and help LA recover, and this was where they actually started their own relationship, as well as calling each other Church and Tex. Church has several more problems with getting hurt and losing memories (just bad luck!), and down the road Epsilon finally reconnects with his niece, Carolina. Tex actually met her as well, but never knew this was her cousin Allison's daughter.

Sorry that was A LOT, haha. Thanks for asking~