#salmons are red and it fit the color scheme of the whole circle but like???

[fogwitchoftheevermore]

ok so while watching joey's s1 and just rewatching s1 in general, i was looking at the items in the circle surrounding the dragon egg where shrub is meant to be sacrificed and they are. they’re interesting.

now, quick refresher on what i'm talking about: right after sausage goes good again, xornoth steals the dragon egg and puts it in this summoning circle type thing with the plan for joey to kidnap shrub and impale her on a dripstone spike above the egg. when the blood gets on the egg, some magic makes the blood corrupt the egg and now the dragon is cool.

the summoning circle is surrounded by eight items that are, in order: a netherwart block, a wither rose, a nether star, crying obsidian, a piece of crimson wood, a salmon, a magma block, and a red nether mushroom

and the items gem replaces them with are equally interesting: a red mushroom, a cod head, a gold block, wheat, a redstone block, an amethyst shard, a sea lantern, and a red tulip

the things she replaces them with are things she takes from her allies and herself, because the spell she's using says she needs things that are important to the people of the land. the gold block is scott's, the amethyst is gem's, the wheat is pearl's, the tulip is katherine's, the mushroom is shrub's, the cod head is from jimmy's place, the sea lantern is lizzie's, and the redstone block is fwhip's. an important note to ME is that almost everyone she takes these items from is involved in the fight, except for fwhip, lizzie, and jimmy. fwhip's involvement with the xornoth plot is pretty interesting to me but i'm not gonna get into that here, and unfortunately, i don't know enough about jimmy and lizzie's lore and their whole deal with xornoth to comment on them but that's NOT REALLY THE POINT LET'S MOVE ON!

the things placed there by xornoth are just basic ominous nether stuff, for the most part. even the wither rose, which i usually associate with a certain alliance, can just be seen as an ominous thing. katherine does use them for her pit of death, and i vaguely remember the corruption turning some of her flowers into wither roses, through i'm not certain that actually happened or if i'm making it up. the point is that there is one REALLY WEIRD outlier there. the salmon. and the fact that gem brings not only a cod head into this but something FROM fwhip as well, and replaces the salmon with the thing representing her makes me think this like?? has to be an intentional fwhip reference??

so here’s my thought here and like. look i recognize i'm biased towards Everything about fwhip but hear me out. i think it’s possible that, before sausage betrayed them, xornoth was planning on having both sausage and joey kidnap someone, either to ensure someone died and the ritual succeeded, or as a sort of distraction, ensuring that the attention of anyone coming to stop them would be split. (to be clear, when joey is first shown the area, the ritual is already set up. this was done in ADVANCE, and sausage's betrayal was pretty recent.)

he tells joey that the sacrifice HAS to be one of the emperors, and while he doesn’t specify why he thinks shrub is the “perfect” choice i personally think it’s pretty clear.

xornoth just like, flat out doesn’t like her. i mean he doesn’t like most people, but he’s got personal beef with shrub.

she doesn’t have anyone who would go looking for her. joey and her talk about it when he kidnaps her just an episode earlier- shrub says herself the only people who might come looking for her are her dogs. and she wasn't even wrong! if it’s shrub that’s missing, there’s far less chance anyone will notice, and far less chance anyone will interrupt.

i truly think exor just enjoyed making people target their friends/family. sausage at one point says that xornoth was making him “kill people i wasn’t supposed to kill” (in reference to fwhip and gem). he isolated his followers as best he could. shrub was joey’s only friend, especially after sausage left.

so with those three reasons in mind. who do we think sausage might’ve been tasked to kidnap…?

THAT'S RIGHT BABY THE SALMON’S THERE CAUSE FWHIP WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THERE! (and i would say the crimson mushroom was shrub’s symbol in all this but that's not my point)

now, let’s look at the reasons i gave for why shrub was chosen: xornoth didn’t like her, no one would’ve noticed she was gone, and she was joey’s only friend (emotional turmoil)

i’m gonna come back to reason one for fwhip, but let’s touch on two and three real quick. i truly don’t think people would’ve noticed fwhip was gone until it was too late. gem was his closest friend after sausage left the wra, and even they didn’t cross paths super often. he was a pretty isolated person. as for causing sausage emotional turmoil- yeah, duh. we already know how much he cares about fwhip and that he didn’t really want to kill him from the remark i mentioned earlier. and the only were people in that same circle for sausage were pearl and gem. pearl is her own beast- xornoth could barely take her in a fight so let’s be real he KNOWS sausage couldn’t. and gem is. ok we’ll get into that.

now, circling back to reason one: hatred. xornoth doesn’t like any of the emperors, let’s be real, but the ones he hates the most seem to be shrub, scott, and gem. obviously he can’t kill scott, and shrub is already involved in all this, so why wouldn't he have sausage kidnap gem? she would fulfill the friend requirement too, like i mentioned! well, it’s simple.

look at how well it went last time, lol.

also, gem is a lot more social than a lot of the other emperors, especially fwhip, and is deeply involved in scott and katherine’s research in defeating xornoth. someone was gonna notice she was missing FAST. look at how quick jimmy showed up last time (i know he wasn’t looking for them but like. still. come on.)

also, i think the reason for kidnapping fwhip instead of gem is very important here: gem was always going to notice the dragon egg was gone and was always going to go looking for it. and not only did she notice, she saw xornoth take it. she was always going to figure out where he’d taken it and try to stop him, and i think exor was perfectly aware of what could possibly distract her from the egg long enough to perform the ritual.

her brother. fwhip was the perfect pawn to keep sausage under his control and gem distracted in the event of a fight, and i just. i think this could've been the original plan had sausage not betrayed them, and now i'm rotating the possibility at light speed in my brain. please play in this space with me.