#a lot of these things seem even more plausible now; i could have suggested these back in the early 2000s just on my own whim

[writesailingdreams]

ETA: added something (#5)

my-based-on-nothing-but-my-opinion summary of what's left in One Piece, seeing as Egghead is adhering pretty thematically to what I would expect:

Elbaf; legendary myth explains stuff

more Blackbeard problems

Vivi rejoins

df-science problems

origin of df

big battle at sea at the end of the Grandline

#wsd weird brain #one piece #a lot of these things seem even more plausible now; i could have suggested these back in the early 2000s just on my own whim #ignore me #not tagging as one piece theory because the initial idea of these wasn't based on current events in one piece at the time #saying it now it certainly fits #why am i even posting this? #does this count as spoilers? #it doesn't feel like it as none of this has happened; probable but not actual

[rallamajoop]

Mia Winters and the Connections

There are a lot of bad takes on Mia Winters out there, a lot of really irritating shallow misconceptions. But for now, I’m just going to tackle one of the big ones that annoys me the most.

Mia Winters is not a scientist, and it's debatable whether she had any long-term association with the project that created Eveline. She may not have even met Eveline before being assigned to transport her to South America.

Mia’s not any kind of researcher. Her job when she worked at the Connections is laid out clearly in the first document you find within moments of starting the flashback ("Orders"): she’s a member of the Special Operations Division in the English version, or a 'special agent' in the Japanese (特殊工作員, tokushu kousaku-in). The English version also gives Mia the role of 'caretaker', implicitly of Eveline, but there's not much to suggest this is a role extending beyond the bounds of this particular mission (for comparison, the Japanese doesn't mention caretaking at all).

Mia's job is exactly what we see her doing in the game: transporting important assets under cover identities, and running around doing damage control with a machine gun if things go south. She echoes the same in her letter to the Bakers, stating she 'was assigned to transport some important cargo.' Even the 'imprinting protocol' she refers to seems to be mostly part of a transport protocol (going by the very little we ever learn about it), and may not even have been implemented until shortly before they left.

Even in the one photo of her standing with the research team, you might note that Mia and her partner Alan are the only people present not wearing lab coats (and believe me, with how much other photoshopping there is in this photo, Mia would have been wearing a lab coat if they'd wanted her in one). The photo itself is far more of an easter egg than a real plot point anyway, and probably isn't worth reading too much into ‒ I mean, Alan is apparently the director of the Special Operations division, so it makes no sense to assume he's part of this one science team. But if you really want a 'canonical' explanation for this photo, considering Mia and Alan are wearing the same clothes as in the ship flashback, you could reasonably assume it was taken right before Eveline was shipped off to America ‒ a kind of "Let's get one last snapshot of the team together with the transport crew before Eveline goes to South America" deal. It's completely plausible Mia may not even have met Eveline until the same day this was taken.

So where does this 'scientist' nonsense come from? The only source which does call Mia a 'researcher' is a timeline entry in this one RE7 strategy guide which has never been published in English – and it's a good example of why sources like this are usually better treated as pseudo-canon at best. You can find various translations of it online – but you can also buy the whole ebook (which I did), so here's the page where it originally comes up.

And yes, inasmuch as I’m qualified to translate, the line does state that Mia joined the company as a ‘researcher’ (研究員, kenkyuu-in) in 2010. But the same guidebook also refers to her as an operative (工作員) just a couple of pages later, so even the guidebook is hardly consistent.

Charitably, perhaps we could read that Mia was initially hired as some kind of generic, low-level research assistant before being transferred to the special operations division after showing aptitude in that area. But it's more likely that Mia was simply going to be a researcher at some point in the game’s development history, before Capcom changed their minds, and the timeline that made it into the guidebook is just very out of date ‒ it happens. Either way, one line in an inconsistent guide book hardly trumps what actually made it into the games.

I do realise that asking people to pay attention to what's actually in the games over what's repeated in some wiki somewhere (or a gazillion different fanfic) is a big ask for any fandom, but Mia was clearly never a scientist in the game we all played. She still knowingly worked for some really evil people – she doesn’t get to claim innocence here – but the idea she's personally responsible for every bad thing ever done to Eveline is absurd.

FWIW, other details from the guidebook also back up the idea that transporting assets was a major part of Mia’s job. Her bio (above) mentions that she was away from home a lot, something that strained the Winters’ marriage, and that she told people she worked for a ‘trading company’ – a solid cover for a job focused on travel and logistics.

A very little is said about Mia’s relationship with Eveline. The guidebook does mention that the reason Eveline’s so attached to Mia is because Eveline had known her since she was ‘confined to the “mysterious organisation” that created her’, which could be taken to imply she knew Mia well before their trip began, but it's not much to go on. Mia's own feelings on Eveline are described briefly in a caption: “Although Mia found Eveline creepy, she also felt compassion for her lonely situation,” which tracks with how Mia interacts with her in-game. It doesn't track so well with the idea Mia had any real authority over how Eveline was raised or treated, however, and would be perfectly consistent with the idea Mia might not have known her long at all.

The guidebook timeline also tells us that the E-series project begain in 2000, and that Eveline herself was created in "the early 2000s." This doesn't make a whole lot of sense for reasons I've talked about already, but does put Eveline's creation well before 2010, the year the same timeline gives us for when Mia started working at the Connections. Since the guidebook also tells us Mia was 32 in 2017, back in 2000, she would have been all of 15 years old. Whatever Mia's involvement, the project long predates her joining the company.

But the real issue with trying to given Mia any major responsibility for the E-series project is that the lab that created Eveline was located in Europe. Mia, meanwhile, has a driver's license telling us she's from Texas.

The European location for the lab is another detail that gets barely mentioned in the games, though it's mentioned repeatedly in the guidebook, and the Baker Incident Report even puts it specifically in Munich, Germany. Given all we learn in RE8, that location does make a lot of sense, when the mould was found in Eastern Europe, and that Miranda herself was part of the research team (she gets multiple photos and a lab coat, you may note). And even if the lab wasn’t right on Miranda’s doorstep, Munich is a heckuva commute from Texas, or anywhere else in the US. Even if Mia was often away from Ethan for long periods, as her bio implies, how involved could she realistically have been?

I don't want to overstress the idea that it "doesn't make sense" for a special agent from Texas to have been intimately involved in a European research project ‒ making sense has never held back RE lore before. But the idea that Mia was brought in only as a handler for Eveline when she was being moved to America still makes a lot more sense than to suggest the Connections were fine with their star asset’s primary handler going home to the US every other weekend.

There are possibilities between the two extremes, of course: Mia may have had sporadic contact with Eveline before the trip, either regularly or just once or twice. It's easy to assume the 'imprinting protocol' must mean that Mia's been Eveline's primary handler for some time, but heck, maybe it's better read as the opposite ‒ something that can be quickly applied to a new handler or caretaker in a hurry, to explain how Eveline got so attached to someone she'd only just met.

Given everything we actually see of her, you could even speculate that Mia was chosen as Eveline's 'caretaker' specifically because she was someone nice and motherly enough for Eveline to bond with. Eveline was pretty clearly fucked up long before Mia ever got involved, and not actually wanting to adopt a walking bioweapon whose idea of a happy family involves mould-powered mind control really does not reflect badly on Mia's character.

Whether Mia was already working for the Connections before she met Ethan also isn't clear. The guidebook tells us she began working for them in 2010, and married Ethan in May of 2011 (later confirmed by the date on Mia's ring in RE8) – though it doesn't specify when she and Ethan met. Even by Texas standards, marrying someone you’d known less than a year would be pretty unusual, so it’s likely Ethan knew her before she took the job. But even that 2010 statement comes along with the bit about Mia being hired as ‘a researcher’, so you can always take it with a grain of salt if you'd prefer.

And that's pretty much it for what the complete RE canon ever tells us about Mia and her former employers.

So here’s where I’m left with Mia’s role at the Connections. Even if she wasn’t aware of exactly what she was signing up for when she joined the company, and even if she considered all that lying to her husband about it to be a simple matter of confidentiality around sensitive research, she’s fully aware by the disaster in 2014, and plainly has a guilty conscience when she admits to lying to Ethan in her video message. However responsible she may or may not have been, she's still complicit. Her hands are hardly clean.

But they’re still a whole lot cleaner than, say, Luis’, considering that he was a key member of the science teams at both Umbrella Europe and in Saddler’s cult, and I don’t see him getting a fraction of the same hate as Mia. They both regret what they’ve done, and they’re both willing to give their own lives to make up for it. No, Luis never lied to a spouse about it (that we know of), but he's every bit as shifty and secretive. And frankly, most of the other shit that gets dumped on Mia’s doorstep is just as much bullshit (like, people do realise the “Mia” we see having “marital problems” with Ethan at the start of RE8 isn’t Mia, right?) But that’s material for other posts.

We don’t know how Mia got involved with the Connections, or how she felt about working for them, because the games never give us this information, and that’s a real shame. But in the capitalist hellscape we’re all living in, she’d hardly be the first to find herself stuck working for truly terrible people, one way or another.

Meanwhile, everything we see her doing during the outbreak on the tanker speaks to a basically good person, desperately trying to run damage control in a fucked-up situation. She tells Alan she’s not going to let him die, even though what’s going down is his fault. She tries so hard to talk Eveline down. After she’s rescued by the Bakers in the Daughter's DLC, she insists on staying in the trailer, meaning to leave at her first opportunity – pretty significant, considering she knows she’s infected already. She also leaves them a message warning them to stay away from Eveline, even sharing information on how to make a serum if they are infected. If you pick her over Zoe on the dock, the first thing she does is try to convince Zoe to come with them anyway. Even under Eveline's mind control, you'll catch her ranting about needing to contain the outbreak, blaming herself, and telling Ethan she loves him with her last breath.

And after being infected herself, the first thing on her mind is to try and protect Ethan, recording that message admitting she’s lied to him, and warning him to stay away (Ethan never gets that message, but you can’t say Mia didn’t try). Mia loves Ethan enough to die to save him – and she will, if you choose the Zoe path, and she’ll do it without a second thought.

Mia is fascinating to me as a character because she’s so full of contradictions: a woman who leaves syrupy video messages sending ‘tons of kisses’ to her husband, but who is completely comfortable running around with a machine gun killing mould-monsters, and who shrugs off an Eveline jump-scare with 'fucking hallucinations!' Someone who’s done bad things and knows it, and is trying so hard to make up for it, but whose background and motivations are left frustratingly undeveloped. But if you haven’t caught that Ethan and Rose mean more to her than anything, you really haven’t been paying attention.

Whatever you assume about Mia’s full story, she’s complicated in a way that makes her so much more interesting to me than most of the franchise’s more popular playable characters. I am very serious in saying I want RE9 to be just the full Mia-Winters-story, because to me that’s the only remotely satisfying justification for keeping her such a mystery for so long. I know that's not at all likely, but fuck it, I can dream.

Mia’s made her share of mistakes, but holding her responsible for everything the Connections has ever done is no kind of fair.

#Mia Winters #Resident Evil Village #Resident Evil 7 #Mia Winters week #The Connections #RE lore #Mia is THE BEST character I WILL FIGHT YOU ALL

[alex51324]

That Tweet, take 2

OK, so my first reaction to That Tweet, by Djenks, was as follows:

My money is on DJenks realizing that he shat the bed & now furiously trying to write himself out of the corner he's in. (My second guess is that he basically already knows there won't be a Season 3, but there's some network or business-related reason for not announcing it yet.)

But now that I've had a bit more time to think about it, I am kind of seeing a scenario where he could've intended it to be a fuckery all along.

Step one is that we imagine him being a bit disappointed by how Lucius's death fooled absolutely no-one. It's likely that he was planning for the reveal that he was alive to be a much bigger moment than it actually was; maybe he even has some Big Reveal ideas that he had to put on ice once it became clear that there was very little actual suspense surrounding Lucius's fate. This is, obviously, since I don't know him personally, a big hairy guess, but it seems like a very plausible reaction for someone to have, when they put a lot of effort into planning a surprise and it falls flat because everyone guessed it.

Step two is him deciding to sell Izzy's "death" a little harder, with the emotional death scene and the funeral (where we do not actually see the body, and a mourner, Wee John, is missing) and all. It's laying it on a little thick, in my opinion, but again, we did all confidently (and correctly) assume that Lucius was alive based on the evidence that "this show wouldn't do that" and "The Stede-Ed reunion won't work if he's really dead," so you can see how a showrunner could, hypothetically, get to--

Step three, is Djenks opening up his socials at the crack of dawn on Thursday morning, expecting to see reams of speculation and analysis about how Izzy could have survived, and being genuinely shocked to instead find seas of angry and devastated fans suggesting that he should perhaps give up television in favor of a career in going and fucking himself.

Step four, realizing that he drastically overshot the mark re: creating genuine suspense over character death, he tweets out a big obvious hint.

I don't love this interpretation--for one thing, there is nothing in the episode we saw that would provide a plausible in-universe reason for faking Izzy's death. It would be pretty easy to create one--have Prince Ricky No-Nose vow personal vengeance against Izzy Hands in specific for calling him a syphilitic cunt/his role in foiling the "end of piracy" scheme--but we did not see anything like that. To make the funeral scene work as a fuckery, it would be necessary to insert a flashback between the "death" and the funeral in which A) this happens, and B) the other characters find out about it. That's a cheap trick that I personally hate--the old, "Haha, I made you feel a thing by deliberately withholding context"--but again, if it's an overcorrection for the complete and abject failure of the effort to create suspense around Lucius's fate, I guess I can live with it.

If Izzy's death is a fuckery, that addresses a lot of the other problems with the finale. First, Ed and Stede's obviously-doomed, harebrained scheme to give up piracy and be innkeepers (in a dilapidated shack, on an island where we see no other people or settlements) is plausibly funny, as long as we aren't thinking that Izzy died for it.

Second, the tonal whiplash of going from the funeral to the wedding is also fine if everyone involved knows perfect well that the guest of honor at the funeral is actually recuperating just offscreen.

(Thirdly, there's Captain Frenchie--I haven't seen much discussion of that, but the only problem I had with it is that I can't think of any moments from the season where he stood out as being a leader for the crew. I might've missed something; he's not one of my particular blorbos, but it wouldn't have taken much, just something you can look back on and see how it was setting up him becoming captain.

And, crucially, we do have those few little moments of setup for Frenchie as First Mate to Captain Izzy. Frenchie was there during the dark days, during which he presumably underwent some skill development, pirate-wise, and definitely bonded with Izzy to some extent. We see him holding Izzy's hand during his breakdown, and he presumably helped hide him and definitely lied to Blackbeard about it, and then how they were sitting in the cell on Zheng's ship--it isn't a whole lot, but you can look back and see why it makes sense for Izzy to pick him.)

Making Izzy's death a fuckery doesn't do anything to fix the way the whole Zheng thing fell flat. (Why give her a massive fleet in the first place, only to take it away? Why did we get those scenes of ships being towed across land? What was she doing selling soup on the Republic of Pirates? For that matter, why did she come to the Caribbean in the first place, after becoming Pirate Queen of the Chinese seas?) It doesn't help with how Ed and Stede keep repeating the same beats of getting closer, then running away, then reuniting without ever talking about their relationship or their issues. It doesn't address why the Kraken Era had to go that dark, if the whole thing was just going to be smoothed over in the space between episodes 4 and 5, and how Ed never really takes responsibility for any of what he did.

However, middle installments of trilogies are notoriously difficult to write, and it isn't particularly fair to judge them before you get to the last part. Most of the weak points could look better in hindsight once we know how it all turns out.

(And, not for nothing, as long as Izzy is alive, we can still get something where Ed reckons with the Kraken Era, and particularly-but-not-exclusively what he did to Izzy. I don't see how that works with a dead Izzy, though--it's too easy for Ed to keep minimizing what he did and offloading blame onto him.)

There isn't a whole lot of evidence for an Izzy Lives scenario. All we have is:

This Show Wouldn't Do That (which, recall, was point 1 in why we didn't believe Lucius was dead. However, it is weakened by the absence of point 2--unlike with Lucius, the person who "killed" Izzy isn't a character we're expected to like or root for.)

No body at the funeral. I initially interpreted the funeral as being intended as proof that Izzy was really dead, a sort of "don't get your hopes up, guys," after what happened with Lucius. But again, if we're thinking about the framing of Izzy's "death" as an overcorrection to how completely non-fooled we all were by Lucius's, maaaaaybe not? I mean, if he really wanted to hammer the nail into the coffin, we would have seen Izzy lying in the grave, or his body being sewn into a shroud of sailcloth (as was the custom), or something. (Also, point 2b, the unicorn did have two legs.)

No Wee John at the funeral. There are certainly Doylist reasons he might've been left out--maybe the way the shooting schedule worked out, it saved money or some other resource to just leave him out of that scene, something like that. But for an in-universe reason, "somebody had to stay back and nurse Izzy" makes a lot of sense. (I mean, if this show operated on real-world logic, someone would have had to stay with the ship, but that's never been a concern before.) Wee John helping Izzy with his makeup for Calypso's birthday was presumably a bonding experience that involved some vulnerability on Izzy's part, so it would be weird for him to just nope out of the funeral, but plausible that Izzy would find him acceptable as a caregiver.

Stede and Ed's conversation over Izzy's grave could, just barely, make sense as a conversation about how Ed and Izzy are now on separate paths, with no particular guarantee that they'll see each other again. It takes a certain amount of massaging to make it fit, but it almost could? (Except Zheng's part really doesn't--unless the grave actually contains someone Ed cares about, or she isn't in on the secret that the funeral is a fuckery.)

I'm not in love with any of this, or even particularly convinced by it--my enthusiasm for any Season 3 is going to be pretty dampened, unless the announcement that it's been picked up includes the information that Con O'Neill has a contract to appear as a major character in all 8/10/whatever episodes--but IDK, I guess it's maybe not outside the realm of possibility? Ish?

#our flag means death #ofmd #izzy hands #I'm just spitballing here

[666writingcafe]

The Outdoor Market

Content Warning: a brief conversation about religion at the end

MC

"Hello!" the butcher greets when we step up to his counter. "What can I do for you?"

"I'd like to buy five whole chickens," Beel answers. He told me that he struggled the other day to not eat everything he saw before paying for it, but that doesn't seem to be the case today. Granted, I'm holding his hand to prevent him from wandering off too far, but still. He could just as easily use his free hand to grab stuff.

"Five chickens, coming right up!" The butcher pauses. "Didn't you come through here recently?" Beel nods his head.

"I was with my brother." The butcher smiles kindly.

"Ah, yes. I remember now. You were one of the tallest people in the crowd." He glances over at me. "I see you brought someone else with you today. Is that another sibling of yours?"

"This is MC." The butcher grins.

"How wonderful! I remember you telling me about them. I think it's sweet that you guys moved closer to them after graduation." I was not aware that Beel came up with a cover story. It would have been nice to know beforehand so that I could play along and not mess up any details.

"They really mean a lot to us." Beel squeezes my hand, looking over at me with a loving gaze. The butcher glances around to look for customers before leaning closer to us.

"Allow me to offer you some advice," he states.

"Advice?" I repeat. "What kind of advice?"

"I'm going to let you two in on the secret to a long, healthy relationship."

"I'd definitely be interested in hearing about that," Beel responds, causing the butcher to softly smile.

"Well, the main thing is that you both have to respect each other. You each have to let the other live their own life without interfering too much, and you need to stay interested in each other. As long as you consistently do these things, you'll be good."

~~~

"So, what exactly did you tell the butcher the other day?" I ask Beel. We've dropped off the chicken at the house, and now we're currently sitting on one of the benches outside.

"Oh, that," Beel remarks. "I told him that you were an exchange student at the college we went to, but it was several hours away from where you lived, so we couldn't come over to see you very often once the exchange program ended."

"But then once you guys graduated, you decided to move closer to me so that we could see each other more often."

"Exactly." I like that he came up with something plausible. I wonder if anyone helped him hammer out the details of that story, or if he did everything by himself.

"What did you think of the advice?"

"I thought it was interesting. Do all human world butchers offer secrets to long and healthy relationships?" I shake my head.

"I think it's just a quirk of this particular one."

"I see." Beel pauses. "I wonder if we've been doing the three things he suggested."

"You and your brothers?"

"Well, yes, but I was thinking more about you and me." Interesting.

"Do you want my honest opinion?" He nods. "If we're solely judging by those three criteria, I think that my relationship with you is the healthiest one that I have with you guys."

"What makes you say that?"

"You're the only one out of your brothers that actively tries to not interfere with my life too much." He doesn't respond for a moment, appearing to mull over my words.

"I suppose you're right," he eventually agrees. "They either drag you into their drama or do things behind your back to alter certain aspects of your life. I know they do it because they love you and want to spend time with you, but some of the ways they choose to express it...it rubs me the wrong way.

"They want things to be perfect for you, even going as far as to try to eliminate anything that might cause you pain or hardship. But it's impossible. Life is supposed to have challenges, and not just trivial ones, either. Everything you've gone through, both good and bad, has made you the person you are today. You're strong, MC, but you're also kind. And smart. Incredibly smart." He pauses. "I think my brothers forget that sometimes. You're not just some clueless sheep that needs to be guided in the right direction; you know where you're going."

"Is that left over from your Celestial Realm days?" Beel nods.

"It was drilled into us constantly. This is going to sound harsh, but we were taught that humans were dumb creatures easily tempted by sin. Part of our job was to keep them on the path of salvation because they were too stupid to do it themselves."

"Even though we were created to have free will." He sighs.

"I've never understood that."

"Free will?"

"No. That's simple enough. What always confused me is why we had to exert control over humans. Due to free will, some of them will inevitably choose a different path than the one we planned for them, and that should have been okay. If it wasn't, then why did God--our Father--give humans free will in the first place?"

"Some say it was a test to see if humans would choose the path of God on their own."

"Maybe, but then why punish those that choose differently?" He shakes his head slightly and sighs. "I'm sorry, MC. I didn't mean to get all religious on you." I reach out and touch the top of his hand.

"Don't apologize. I appreciate the insight."

#obey me shall we date #obey me mc #obey me beel #obey me beelzebub #i introduce to you: philosophical beel #i don't like how beel often gets reduced to an airhead jock who only thinks about food #i don't like how many of the characters get reduced to a couple character traits #but that's beside the point #i like to think that beel isn't stupid #after all #he's thousands of years old #he's bound to know a thing or two outside of food

[thefandomenchantress]

In episode two of chapter two, MonoTV drops this line while Teruko and Veronika are investigating the playground:

It was such a weirdly specific thing to mention (the fact that the Movie Screening Room could somehow lead to the playground, I mean) that many took note of it as possibly being important, including me.

Once we saw that the light was broken, some thought that maybe Veronika (since she was the only one to hear this comment besides Teruko, but it’s possible someone else thought to do it without MonoTV’s comment) could’ve somehow used the light as a way to climb down from the movie screening room to the playground, with the rope helping secure them. Since the floor is squishy and helps people not get hurt, a fall from the movie screening room might not get whoever used the secret entrance hurt in a significant enough way for them to get a significant injury, if they somehow used the light and rope to at least partially descend.

Of course, that’s a lot of speculation. While I think that tossing the rope over the light (possibly by throwing the ball of clothes over the light with the rope attached for extra weight and such) from the movie screening room secret passage and then jumping to the rope to climb down from makes sense by itself, I haven’t done enough looking into the rest of the crime to see if it would fit into the rest of the evidence at the crime scene. So for now I’ll leave that at that, and discuss this topic with a more general question:

Is it plausible for a secret entrance (possibly made by punching the wall) to the playground via the Movie Screening Room to even exist?

The most common reason for people to outright deny its existence is a fair claim: Proving that some sort of passage exists between the two rooms is hard to do in a trial, given that Teruko can’t prove it while stuck in the trial room. How is she supposed to prove there’s a hole in the wall without showing people the hole in the wall?

But I’d like to suggest a possibility. What if the students didn’t have to stay in the trial room? What if they were allowed to revisit the crime scene, or at least the room above it?

Despair Time does seem to base its events on Trigger Happy Havoc (THH). Very loosely, however. While Xander betrayed Teruko like Sayaka betrayed Makoto, the first motive, which would’ve likely matched THH’s first motive, isn’t given out in DRDT. And while Nico’s gender plays a role in chapter 2, just as Chihiro’s did, they didn’t end up being the murder victim. I could go on.

And something interesting happens in Trial 2 of THH, something that, to my memory, is something that only happens in this trial, and this trial alone:

Kyoko suggests that the class leave the class trial room so that she can prove something about the case. Monokuma agrees, because she promises it will make the case more exciting.

And, surprise! She does this to prove how someone could’ve entered a room in a way they seemingly couldn’t have judging by the information the class currently had:

So it isn’t impossible that DRDT will also pull out this trick and allow Teruko or another character to convince MonoTV to let them leave the trial room (Teruko could be like ‘this will make it more exciting, which means higher ratings’ or something like that). While I think them leaving the trial room for a brief period would relate to the secret passage, it could also be used to reinvestigate the crime scene in some other way.

Of course, I know comparing the canon games to DRDT isn’t exactly irrefutable evidence, but MonoTV’s comment struck me as strange enough for me to want to think of how it may affect the case. Then again, it could just be a silly joke. But it’s more interesting to explore the possibility it did mean something anyhow.

#danganronpa despair time #drdt #drdt spoilers #thh spoilers #dr1 spoilers #theory

[merrivia]

I really love the way you analyze the text and I was wondering if you could help clear some fog over a puzzling line that is, for me, well, puzzling 😅 in KR, ch2 (Laurent POV), what do you think he means when he says to Govart :”you always wanted to be on the other side of the door-and now you are”? Coz I’ve always read it as ‘govart was outside the door during the abuses and he wanted to be in the Regent’s place’ but I’m not too sure, maybe I’ve missed some nuances… or is obviously that? Thank you for your time anyway 😘

Oh that’s a really nice thing to say thank you @nonome-art! 🌸💕 I’ll try my best though a lot of Pacat’s wording puzzles me too!

That is an interesting line and it definitely is ambiguous in my opinion, so I can see why you asked!

If you look at the line in context, at first glance, it’s all about Laurent trying to prevent Govart from cutting his tongue out. Laurent needs to stay intact, needs to try to survive without getting maimed or raped or killed and his best weapon is always his mouth.

The Regent doesn’t really see a man like Govart; he’s just a blunt instrument to be used tactically, and he assumes he can manipulate Govart into killing Laurent easily and quickly enough.

But Laurent can see that Govart isn’t as easily manipulated as that. We already know from the rape of Erasmus and the duel with Laurent, that he is vindictive and sadistic, filled with a petty machismo, and also from the way he treated Laurent when he was his captain, loves especially to lord his power over others. Laurent knows he would be burning with revenge after Laurent humiliated him and injured him so grievously during the duel, and that what Govart wants is to enjoy torturing Laurent which includes hearing him “lie and wheedle and suck up” to him, as well as scream and beg for mercy.

I do think the line is ambiguous and can be read in more than one way: perhaps Govart was, as you say, aware of the Regent’s abuse of Laurent and wished he had been in his place, and now he gets to be. If so, Laurent knows that Govart knows also. That does bring up lots of questions including whether Govart would have been trusted by the Regent with knowing that (and who else at court knew? Who would the Regent trust with that?) or whether he truly would have kept quiet about it and wouldn’t have used it against Laurent verbally in some way before now and so on- but I do agree the line could plausibly read like that!

Alternatively, perhaps all Laurent meant by to be ‘on the other side of the door’ was a metaphor for ‘being in the room where it happens’ in a broader sense- to want to be as powerful as these royals he serves, to be as powerful as the Regent who exercises power through cruelty. Both the Regent and Govart, in fact, share a brutal sadism which they express in different ways, but only the Regent gets to hurt royalty, gets to hurt Laurent. And now Govart does too, and even more directly than the Regent. What a power trip.

Certainly what we do know, is that Govart is going to enjoy every cry of pain and every word that spills out of Laurent’s mouth, because that way, he gets to revel in his power over him. A thug or hired murderer is there to obey orders and dispatch someone quickly; Govart wants the special privilege of enjoying himself, to prolong and torture Laurent, to get his revenge and to hurt him slowly- to feel just as powerful as the Regent.

I was struck by this line though:

The word ‘untouchable’, suggests that Govart has always thought of Laurent as fenced off, someone who no-one was allowed to touch. That doesn’t quite vibe with him seeing Laurent as the Regent’s former victim, perhaps? Even when Govart accused Laurent of only being “hot” for his own brother in PG…it somehow doesn’t seem to quite work with him knowing about the abuse. I could be wrong though and I think this is definitely open to multiple interpretations.

I do have one final thought on Laurent himself using the phrasing ‘the other side of the door’ as a metaphor. Perhaps to Laurent, the times when he was hurt the most was behind closed doors. Therefore, that is the imagery his mind immediately conjures up to explain Govart’s motivations of wanting to be in a powerful enough position to hurt him.

Or maybe not!

Sorry I can’t give you a definitive conclusion but thanks for asking an intriguing question 🌸

#captive prince #ask answered #laurent of vere #don’t know if it helped but thanks for asking

[herrscherofmagic]

a random thought just occured to me, about honkai star rail

so the aeons are kinda sus because they're supposedly super-duper powerful but we don't even know hold old they are, and some of them seem very young. we don't know when the earliest Aeons were born or how many there are (at least afaik), and yet they have such a big impact on the universe.

and yet Honkai is ancient. like, unbelievably ancient. billions of years ancient.

so what if the entire concept of Aeons and the "system" of Paths was the creation of a civilization that tried to tap into the power of the Imaginary Tree to overcome the Cocoon of Finality?

The Cocoon is already established as its own thing likely separate from Aeons and Paths, and GGZ implies it came from beyond the Imaginary Tree. Meanwhile the Aeons and Paths seem to be tied directly to the Imaginary Tree.

However, there's nothing that suggests any sort of concrete structure or system or consciousness in the Tree- normal worlds grow organically and in order while bubble worlds grow chaotically and erratically.

But... if a civilization (perhaps even a post-Finality civilization like Earth, except much more advanced) tapped into the power of the Imaginary Tree to try and unite worlds to overthrow the "rule" of the Cocoon (for lack of a better term) then that could explain the existence of Aeons. perhaps the earliest Aeons were products of this system and with time the system grew out of control of its founders, becoming an independent entity that now governs "Paths" and leads to the creation of Aeons.

This is complete and utter guesswork without any solid basis in lore, of course. but I do think it'd neatly explain why Aeons are so young compared to the rest of the universe, but also why they're so inexplicably powerful. The civilizations we encounter measure time in hundreds and thousands of years, not millions and billions of years, after all. Furthermore, if Aeons can be "killed" and if we might even have to kill one or more Aeons in the future, it'd be a lot easier to believe that we mortals could achieve such a thing if Aeons were the products of other mortals instead of being fundamentally connected to reality itself.

I think this is plausible especially because some of the acts we've seen Humanity do with the power of Honkai in HI3rd seem to rival what Emanators and arguably even Aeons can do. Like Otto making an entire new branch of the Imaginary Tree, which effectively duplicated planet Earth and created a new worldline branching off of the from the one he's from. Or Project Stigma trying to unite the consciousnesses of billions of people, or the Stigmata which store memories in Imaginary Space and grant power to the Stigma Awakened, storing thousands of years of memories in immortal beings that exist outside of reality itself.

This is insane stuff, and that's from a civilization that's only 6,000 years old along with some inherited gifts from another 6,000-year-old civilization (that ended 50,000 years ago). Humanity alone couldn't achieve these things, but with the power of Honkai they could. So who's to say a larger, more developed civilization with 100s or 1000s of years of experience in a post-Finality world couldn't develop a system that tries to establish governing principles upon the Imaginary Tree itself?

just sayin'

#honkai star rail #honkai impact 3rd #honkai theory #honkai impact 3rd theory #honkai star rail theory #“theory” okay well it's more of a blind guess lol #there is no concrete evidence i'm just tossing stuff at the wall to see what sticks #but i think it'd be pretty cool tbh

[hazbinmurderparty1846]

Full list of casting for the Sweeney Todd AU (and reasons for all of them)

Mr Todd: Obviously it has to be Alastor. Why? Well, because first of all: serial killer. Second of all, I feel like Todd is what Alastor would become if he went off the deep end. I know he's already pretty fucked-up, but he's not as bad as he could be, and mark my words if you put him through something like what Todd's been through, that is exactly how Al would become. Possibly even worse.

Mrs Lovett: Rosie. Do I need to say more? She's a sweet, cheerful cannibal lady with motherly qualities, and she cares for Alastor a whole hell of a lot. I did have some issues with casting her as Lovett, though, mostly because Lovett seems slightly less stable than Rosie and her relationship with Todd is clearly not very healthy on either end even before he kills her. But Rosie still fit her too well not to.

Toby: Now here, look. I couldn't figure out who the hell to put as Toby, so unless y'all have any ideas I'm gonna be casting an OC in his place. Said OC was already intended to be Rosie's adopted child, so it fits. But if anyone has a better idea I'll be glad to hear it, I hate using OCs in things that aren't centric to them.

Judge Turpin: Valentino. Again, need I say more? His main thing is being a rapist, and so overwhelmed by lust that he would ruin a man's life for a small chance at a woman he found attractive. Val already demonstrates this kind of behavior in canon, albeit towards Angel Dust, not Emily. Who else could it be? Plus he dies, so.

Beadle Bamford: Velvette. She's the closest character to Val that I could think of, and them being assholes together would make sense. Plus I just really wanted to draw her in a suit and top hat.

Signor Pirelli: Vox, of course. His only purpose is to be Todd's rival and get murdered by him almost immediately, who else could it be? Vox would probably openly allow Alastor to murder him tbh, the bottom that he is- plus, I also just really like the idea of him singing opera in an obnoxious Italian accent.

Lucy: Emily. Now hear me out - I'm not normally an AngelicSmile shipper, but it's the only Alastor ship other than RadioRose that I can even remotely picture. Plus, she's sweet and naive enough to be Lucy - her getting taken advantage of by Val and attempting suicide after, while a very dark and sad concept, is very plausible.

Johanna: Again, unless y'all have any ideas, I'm replacing her with an OC. I considered Vaggie, but decided against it because she'd be Alastor and Emily's daughter and that just felt weird. I considered Niffy too, but Niffty x Charlie is really not something I wanna write, so I scrapped that too. Help is welcome.

Anthony: Charlie. Who else could it be? A naive, idealistic, determined young sailor who never gives up, especially when it comes to love. Sounds like Charlie to me. Plus, her rescuing Alastor and bringing him home is such a Charlie move, let's be real, nobody else on the cast would do that.

And that's it for now! :D So, do y'all agree? Any suggestions for improvement? I'd love some help if you'd offer it, but if not thats fine! ^^

#hazbin au #hazbin hotel #alastor hazbin hotel #angelicsmile #radiorose #hazbin vox #hazbin valentino #hazbin velvette #hazbin vees #hazbin hotel rosie #hazbin alastor #hazbin oc

[doks-aux]

Of all the characters that we a) have already met and b) know for sure will be in season 2*, I think Fang is the most likely candidate for a love interest for Izzy. And he’s probably the option I like the most.

They’ve clearly known each other a long time, and there is some level of camaraderie and concern that you can see here and there. Obviously whatever relationship there is to speak of has soured over time. Izzy thoughtlessly yanks on Fang’s beard which Fang particularly doesn’t like (mean), and Fang practically leaps at the chance to gossip about a painful and humiliating moment from Izzy’s past (mean). And of course there’s the whole mutiny thing.** But that isn’t all it is. They seem to get along well on the island in episode two. Fang’s (and Ivan’s) absence in episodes 7 and 8 and return in 9 could*** suggest that he actually left the Revenge after Izzy did and only came back when Izzy did as well. And they seem quick enough to let bygones be on both sides after the interrupted mutiny, and Fang even expresses genuine concern over Izzy’s foot.

There’s more than enough foundation there to build or rebuild something on top of and probably plenty of time and opportunity now that they’re part of Blackbeard’s new, very small, very isolated, fairly traumatized crew. Fang’s lost Lucius (so far as we know he knows) and Ivan (however they write Guz’s absence into the show), and Izzy’s lost pretty much everything plus a toe while trying to convince himself he’s regained everything he wanted. They’re the closest thing the other will have to a friend, at least at the start. I could see Fang trying to reach out to Izzy as the one familiar person he has to lean on, and it would likely take repeated attempts, but Izzy has to break at some point, and Fang is right there to fall to pieces on. Of course, I expect and hope to see them interact and form closer dynamics with Frenchie and Jim as well, but it just seems so narratively logical (and emotionally satisfying) for their relationship, whatever it is and will be, to be explored.

It wouldn’t be a smooth ride (and wouldn’t be as interesting if it was), but I think they could be very sweet together if they let themselves.

*Ivan and Calico Jack, in that order, are the other most likely candidates of the characters we already know (IMOO), but we know Ivan isn’t returning and Jack is likely dead.

**Not on topic at all, but they really went zero-to-sixty on that mutiny thing, right? Like, I guess they cut a lot of stuff out for time, but Izzy was being cringe and bitchy at worst. The Revenge crew put up with Stede’s whole deal for at least weeks, and Fang tolerated having to kill his dog, but Izzy’s little prat fall of a captaincy is what gets them to mutiny in, like, a day? This is why I lean toward the theory of them not actually intending to kill him but just scare and maybe send him on his way.

***Note that I said “could.” There’s nothing concrete to suggest Fang and Ivan’s absence had anything to do with Izzy’s banishment, much less them feeling some kind of way about it when all was said and done. But there’s also no explanation offered or hinted at all. When he goes, they go, and when he’s back, so are they. So it’s as plausible an explanation as any.

#Izzy Hands #Israel Hands #first mate of my heart #Fang #PuppyLove #this is the ship name i'm going with #i've made up my mind #pirates #Our Flag Means Death #ofmd meta #shipping #doc posts pirates

[cartmanseyes]

Ginger Kids provides some of the strongest evidence in the series that Liane is where Cartman learned all his prejudices. This little tidbit puts a lot of Cartman’s actions in a new context too.

First, the ending of the same episode (included in the clip).

Kyle: “You are such a manipulative asshole.”

Eric: “Yes, but I’m not going to die.”

The obvious interpretation is that Cartman was referring to the movement of ginger supremacists he started killing him with everyone else when they found out he was not ginger, but Liane’s bit adds some additional stakes. It’s entirely plausible that he could also have been referring to his own mother “putting him down” as the doctor suggested. She’s considered it before, as seen in the Cartman’s Mom is a Dirty Slut episode, and while Cartman is not made aware of her trying to legalize “aborting” him there, in this episode she very plainly seems to consider ending his life right before his very eyes.

We could also say that the ginger supremacy movement was an attempt defending himself, not only from the bigotry he started at school then fell victim to, but from his own mother. Securing power with an army of people willing to obey his every command would be effective in preventing a doctor from euthanizing him. Obviously, he’s starting the movement for selfish reasons even without that, but if we assume he internalized that interaction with the doctor, it raises the stakes immensely for him.

The second thing this sheds a new light on is the episode Tsst, where Cartman considers killing his own mother.

Cartman (internal dialogue): “Wait. Maybe I don't have the right to kill my mom.”

Cartman (externally): “No! She's my mom, I can do whatever I want with her! It's more important that I live the way I want!”

Now, in the episode itself, this is played as evidence of Cartman being a twisted little monster. But if we take the times Liane has considered killing her son into account... Well, turnabout is fair play isn’t it? Cartman thinks he’s entitled to kill his mother because he has evidence to believe she thinks the same about him and just hasn’t chosen to do it yet.

#theory tag #random nonsense tag #Liane Cartman #Eric Cartman #Ginger Kids #s9e11 #liane is not innocent #liane is not a victim #she's reaping what she's sown lol #analysis tag

[djpumpkinsoda]

OOOOOOK when i was in school i wrote a big ol dump of random theremind biology headcanons written in this sorta scientific observation soooooo imma copy it HERE and hope you guys like! nothing is written in a particular order, i just made this up as i went. Since Psychic Island is in space, naturally it gets very cold. This makes it rather strange that Thereminds have absolutely no hair or fur. The only known, and the most obvious, adaptation they have for this is the thick layer of fat under their skin. It is thickest on their abdomen and thighs, and thinnest on the top of their head and their arms. They are also able to regulate their own body temperature (warm-blooded). While lacking the Cold element seems like a plausible explanation for their smooth skin at first, this does not hold, since there are quite a few furry monsters that do not have the Cold element; Scups, Whaddle, and Flum Ox being the most notable. It is possible that, due to the presence of the Water element on Psychic Island and the Theremind's affinity with water, that they were once aquatic; evolving more fat instead of fur.

Now, you might be wondering how they fare in warmer climates. Once again, they can regulate their own body temperature, but it is a bit harder to cool down than it is to warm up. This is more evident by the fact that they do not sweat. What has been observed is that they drink lots of water, likely to keep their brain hydrated. Their tongues are very strange, almost resembling a chameleon's but with a small hole in the front that goes through the entire muscle. They use it to drink, and they can also eat by picking food up with their tongue and quickly swallowing it. Their lack of teeth and small mouth limit them to soft foods or small bites, but they manage. The most interesting thing, though, is the straw-like properties of their tongue. It is theorized that the way their tongue is shaped allows the water they drink to cool down the blood inside it, which then makes its way around their body. They have also been seen bathing in small pools wherever permissible when visiting islands outside of the climate they're used to. If you're wondering why they need so much water even though they don't sweat, the water seems to evaporate directly through their skin rather than coming out first and then evaporating. Obviously there are other ways they get rid of water, but that's for my good friend known as the Fucker of Minds to talk about.

As for other bodily functions, their eyesight is terrible, on account of their pupils being spiral-shaped and constantly spinning. Instead, they rely on both hearing and small psychic waves that they send in front of them, almost like echolocation. The psychic waves create a mental image of what is in front of them, allowing them to effectively "see" their surroundings. Their mouths are peculiar as well. They are very small, toothless, and almost sealed shut with just enough room for their tongue and whatever they are swallowing. Interestingly, their mouth is not part of their respiratory system whatsoever, and it is theorized that their flat noses and large nostrils are to allow easier access to the lungs, since that is the only way they breathe. While there is not much evidence behind this, they may also be able to absorb oxygen through their skin when wet, making them technically amphibious despite spending their lives on land. This may explain their affinity with water. However, contact with oily substances does not seem to hinder this. Very intriguingly, research has led to the discovery of vocal cords in their throats, hinting that at some point during the evolutionary process, they could speak and breathe with their mouth. Currently, they are considered vestigial parts, but an occasional, otherworldly squeak may be heard from them when they are caught off guard, suggesting that quick, sharp breaths are enough to make a sound.

The mouths that they summon with magic are solid for some reason, which may be a testament to the strength of their psychic power. They can perform almost every function of a normal mouth, with the only exception being eating and breathing since they are not connected to the body. However, they are primarily used for projecting the Theremind's inner voice, useful when singing or speaking to groups of people. When they are in a private conversation, they are more inclined to use telepathy since it uses less psychic energy. Keep in mind psychic energy is not the same as physical energy; a Theremind can still use their powers with ease after physical activity. After extensive use of their magic, however, they will need a break and may stick to just using telepathy. Levitating themselves does not require as much psychic energy as levitating an object or another monster, but a Theremind drained of their psychic energy may stick to walking against their wishes. It is unknown why they prefer levitation over walking, and the shape of their feet does not seem to be a hint.

To allow as much brain growth as possible, a Theremind's skull does not have a neurocranium (the part that protects the brain) and instead tapers off at the top of the head, just barely cupping the brain. The brain is not exposed, but rather there is a thin layer of fat (that somewhat obscures its shape) and a thin, sensitive skin, similar to the skin on the inside of their ears. While it does not grow much throughout their lifetime, they have physically adapted this as a result of their knowledge and psychic power growing stronger over time to the point that their brains could no longer be contained in a skull. The shape of their skull is rather interesting; it has a similar shape to a human skull (besides orifices and cranium) but their head appears rectangular due to the amount of fat and muscle obscuring what would be their neck. They can still look up and down, but their movement is limited. Their "chin" is made of muscle rather than being part of the skull, allowing more complex facial expressions in lieu of eyebrows. It is currently unknown how they keep small particles from entering their eyes, since they completely lack eyebrows and eyelashes. [soda note: yes i know i give them massive cartoonish eyebrows in my art but that's just to make their expressions easier to see, they don't actually exist]

But now for the question you've been waiting for: Without any bone protecting the brain, how do they protect themselves from head injuries? The answer is the psychic waves, the same ones that help them "see". Part of helping them observe their surroundings is detecting anything that might harm them in their immediate vicinity. The most intense waves are in front of them, but there are many all around the body, completely invisible but there thanks to the Theremind's psychic power. If there indeed is something in the way, these give them time to either move out of the way or use psychokinesis to stop a moving object. Psychokinesis is just one of their powers; they have quite a few different abilities (that have been observed). Some they use everyday are telepathy, summoning their outer mouths, reading others' thoughts and dreams, and self-levitation. They are constantly hearing others' thoughts due to their sensitive hearing, but most have the strength to tune it out and limit their focus to one or two monsters at a time. There are reports of Thereminds hypnotizing people and manipulating memories, but the often-malicious nature of these actions makes them rare to see. Contrary to popular belief, they do not use their eyes for hypnosis; that is entirely their mind. However, it has been proven that making eye contact with a Theremind for too long will cause a person to pass out. It has not been tested with monsters, and the people who have experienced this did not have any issues otherwise after waking up.

#theremind #theremind my beloved #msm #my singing monsters #episode 2 of soda yapping about her fave #headcanons

[lendmyboyfriendahand]

Replica

Maglor had expected to be surrounded by strangers in Valinor, he just hadn’t expected them to claim to be his family.

They were skilled actors. The impostors had all of Tirion fooled, even their old friends. Every elf in Aman knew that the Valar had been merciful, and had permitted the sons of Feanor to walked among their people at long last.

Except that these six eves were not Maglor’s brothers. The appearances were perfect; the shade of false-Celegorm’s hair exactly the same as had always been on the floor along with Huan’s fur, the dimple in Curufin’s chin that had only showed when he lost all composure present in the double as well. The impostors had studied as well, and could recite any fact that the role they played ought to know, whether from childhood or the war in Beleriand. Even when Maglor had tried to trap them, they saw through it, and would correct his deliberately false details as if they had been there. He had to stop trying to catch them after only a few stories though, as false-Amras had worried when Maglor had declared their childhood vacation was to the northern Pelori rather than the southern. He had asked if Maglor was feeling alright, if Maglor had any difficulties recalling things. He had even asked if Maglor was fading, and had alerted the rest of Maglor’s false brothers about Maglor potentially having memory issues. If Maglor wished to avoid a trip to Lorien to reside under Este’s care, he could not keep up his tests.

That was the true flaw in their act. Maglor would have seen through their act without it of course; the sheer impossibility of his family being allowed to dwell in the Valar’s paradise would have alerted him, and he was certain that he would always recognize his brothers if they were truly present.

But they all acted so kind. Not to say that the Feanorians had always been cruel; you catch more flies with honey than vinegar after all. But they had never refrained from retaliation, or wasted word on praise that could be used for instruction. Now false-Celegorm would loose a rabbit from his snare because he saw its kits nearby. False-Curufin complimented Celebrimbor’s works, and spoke no word of jewelry despite that having always been the young elf’s strongest skill. False-Amrod and False-Amras spent one day a week with Nerdanel, helping with chores and letting her treat them as barely-grown youths rather than the adults they had been even before the Darkening. Even False-Caranthir had less of a temper than history and Maglor’s memory would suggest, leaving a discussion in a huff rather than revealing his opponent’s weaknesses with a single cutting word.

And Maedhros. False-Maedhros would hear no one speak ill of Dior or Thingol, despite them shedding the blood of his people. His visits with Fingon were plausible enough, but staying for hours afterwards to chat with Findis because “she rarely gets out, and seemed lonely” was not. False-Maedhros was even kind to Maglor, despite everything. Maglor, who had twice abandoned him for dead, though only had been right once. Maglor, who had only stolen the Silmaril out of concern for what the Feanorians might do to others, not to save his family from damnation. Maglor, who had then thrown away the Silmaril that their entire family had died for. Maglor, who Maedhros had once accused of loving his prisoners more than his brother, and Maglor could not deny it.

No, the real Maedhros would not have been kind to Maglor.

____

"I know your secret," Maglor whispered to the one who was pretending to be his older brother.

Unsurprisingly, the false Maedhros tensed. "You do?"

"Of course. You might have everyone else fooled, but I know my brother better than they do, and I know when something's off about him."

"And you're not disgusted? I don't want to make you uncomfortable."

"I admit it's unconventional, but I gave it a lot of thought and I'm alright with it. In fact, I approve." Maglor had initially worried that the impostors were just a group of elves looking for a convenient royal title to shelter cruel and vicious deeds of their own, but by all accounts they were a credit to the family name. If Maglor could never have his brothers back, at least these were making it so that he could speak about his family as anything other than complete villains without people spitting on him. And Nerdanel deserved to have her children back, and Celebrimbor deserved to hear that his father approved of him.

"You really do?" The impostor asked like it was the fulfillment of his longest held wish.

"Yes."

Suddenly the other moved close and grabbed Maglor's shoulders, pulling him into a fervent kiss.

Maglor kissed back, as the other was very pretty and it's not like they were actually related. If the kiss became something more it would have to be hidden so the rest of Valinor didn't think they were committing incest, but it's not like Maglor had a lot of people to spill the secret to. For now, he was kissing a very handsome elf who was obviously infatuated with him; long term plans, and the other's real name, could wait.

#my fic #my writing #maemags #replica #these are in fact the real Feanorians by the way #but being apart for over 6000 years means that they have had some personal growth that Maglor hasn't witnessed #Maglor is suffering from Capgras syndrome #''a condition where the sufferer believes that their family and friends have been replaced by impostors''

[nirvanai]

aini spoilers ahead, but I got thinking about my “OK, so who actually programmed Tama then?” headcanons again and wanted to share them! To summarize, I have four main theories:

Pewter did program Tama and the game lies

Pewter didn’t, but someone else at ABIS did.

Tama’s AI was self-actualizing/”self-programmed”

Someone outside of ABIS programmed her.

And to expand on them a little, I’ll put the rest under a cut.

So, to start with 1: Pewter did program Tama. Honestly, I think this is actually the least likely theory here, for one main reason: Uchikoshi may mislead or be vague in his twitter replies, but he doesn’t lie about things. So between Tama herself stating that Pewter didn’t program her, and (iirc, correct me if im wrong!) Uchikoshi re-stating that, I really don’t think it’s likely. But I included it here just for completion’s sake, because why not.

For theory 2: Honestly, I also consider this one relatively unlikely, for the simple reason that Pewter is still at ABIS. Think about it this way: if they already had an engineer working for them who was fully capable of programming an additional AI-Ball and presumably then overseeing the Psync machine system, why would the government risk letting Pewter out of jail? Boss may have a lot of blackmail, but even then I find it hard to imagine the government risking such a major scandal unless Pewter was genuinely irreplaceable. And Boss’s dialogue in-game supports this, so I strongly doubt ABIS has another engineer of his level just sitting around in the background.

Theory 3 is one that I actually do think is a possibility. Laid out most simply, it’s the suggestion that Pewter may have thrown together some core basics to her programming etc, but her actual personality was something she developed on her own to suit her and Ryuki’s needs. Given the fact that the Wadjet system does seem to have some level of “sentience” with how it protected Aiba, its not outside of the realm of possibility to consider Tama having “grown” a sentience on her own.

Theory 4 feels unlikely for the same reasons as theory 2- not only would it render Pewter irrelevant, but that also would mean that more people outside of ABIS both know about the AI-balls, and would be capable of making them. The one strand of evidence in this theory’s favor would be the fact that Tearer seemingly knew about the AI-balls when meeting up with Ryuki, however it’s also possible that could’ve been the result of leaked confidential info.

And then, the secret 5th theory that is almost entirely a crack one but also has enough canonical possibility that I genuinely can’t ignore it: Tama was a real person who’s consciousness was transferred to the wadjet system somehow, to become Tama the AI.

Now, I thought of this one as a joke at first, but the thing is: multiple times in the game, Tama will make jokes and references to stuff that has Ryuki questioning her being an AI. Stuff like talking about her family, just a handful of weird tidbits that stuck out in my brain. It’s like 99% likely that they’re intended to be just that: weird jokes from the funny AI girl, but it’s still plausible enough that I had to add it to this post. 

And honestly, as wild as that would be, I do genuinely think it’d be a very interesting possibility to explore? I love the idea of Ryuki and Tama working together to learn more about where she came from, and the ensuing horror and mysteries that could come about as a result. 

Regardless, I do hope that this is something future materials will explore a little more, tbh. I don’t expect it to be high on the list of mysteries to solve, but I’d enjoy learning a little more about it. 

#tama #tama aitsf #tama aini #nirvanai #aini #nirvana initiative #ai nirvana initiative #nirvana initiative spoilers #nirvanai spoilers #aini spoilers #aitsf spoilers #this has been bouncing around in my head of late #and i wanted to share a few random thoughts #don't mind me overthinking random throwaway lines again #but also if i'm onto something with one of these i'll be so excited- #(i do not expect to be onto anything lmao but who knows anything can happen)

[possiblyimbiassed]

Metaphorical musings about BBC Sherlock

ETA: I now realise that this rambling got rather difficult to follow, so here’s a TL;DR with the points I’m trying to make:

Redbeard could still have been a dog - Victor’s dog - with all its metaphorical implications.

I think the ending of S4 is based on ages of nostalgical thinking from Conan Doyle’s audience, where ”it’s always 1895”.

But too fit in a truly modern adaptation, paradoxically, I think BBC Sherlock needs to align more with ACD Canon.

Canon didn’t end with Mary and two arguing men in 221B - it ended with Watson driving Holmes to a hotel in London.

This show seems to go in circles, but if we’re inside Sherlock’s head, he needs to wake up, get out of that loop and start living in the modern world (discarding the hetero norm of S4).

The recurring theme of “pilots” does, I believe, remind us of Sherlock’s and John’s relationship as it was presented in the Unaired Pilot.

The ‘pilot’ is also John Watson - the driver. He needs to live up to that.  

This was at first going to be an addition to @thewatsonbeekeepers’  excellent meta series about S4 from an EMP perspective, which ended with this little gem of very interesting metaphorical interpretations of TFP (X). But my addition got so lengthy that I thought it would be next to a crime to highjack their thread with it. :)  

@thewatsonbeekeepers‘ analysis makes a lot of sense to me on various levels, giving context and suggesting plausible interpretations to a lot of things that have been baffling me for a long time. But it also inspired me to look a bit closer on some running concepts of this show, as well as its (supposed) ending in relation to its very first beginning - the Unaired Pilot - and try to connect them metaphorically. Here are some of my own musings regarding their meta:

The Redbeard conundrum

We left off with about 20 minutes to go, as Sherlock is sinking into the black depths of his mind – the deepest we’re ever going to get as well as the darkest in colour, chiming with the rest of the series. And then – flashes of Eurus, Redbeard and young Sherlock bleeding in through his memory. @sagestreet’s meta argues that Victor Trevor could genuinely have been Sherlock’s first love even at that age, and I don’t dispute the possibility, but I do have an alternate reading for slightly later in age, based on one image alone. Jump back in your mind to TAB, when Mycroft tells Sherlock he was there for him the last time – we get a shot of a teenager in a drug den which is never repeated again, but which has a sense of absolute past trauma attached to it.

I totally agree with @sagestreet that every dog in this show represents homosexuality – every one of them, including Redbeard. But I also agree with @thewatsonbeekeepers that Victor Trevor could also have meant trauma to Sherlock a bit later in life than what we see in TFP. A metaphorical reading does not necessarily exclude a textual reading, I believe. I do have some problems, though, with the concept that was presented to us at the end of TFP: that Redbeard was supposedly not a dog, but rather Sherlock’s little friend Victor Trevor who died as a child. Because this doesn’t quite fit with the data, does it? Why couldn’t the name Redbeard have meant both the dog and the friend – and be a metaphor for Sherlock’s internalised homophobia?

I’m reluctant to buy the idea that all the flashbacks that Sherlock had of the word ‘Redbeard’ and/or this specific Irish setter with red fur - in HLV, TST, TLD and TFP - would exclusively be his mind’s substitution of a childhood friend who was murdered. The data we’re given seems rather more complex than that. Here’s a resume:

The concept of Redbeard was introduced already in TSoT, when Mycroft (Brain!Mycroft?) was warning Sherlock to ‘not get [emotionally] involved’ with John’s wedding. Sherlock answered with “I’m not a child anymore”, which suggests that ‘Redbeard’ occurred in his childhood.

In HLV the word “Redbeard” is assumed by Magnussen to be a trigger word for Sherlock. That would perhaps work if the dog were the thing in Sherlock’s life he had cared the most about. But if the thing that would trigger Sherlock’s psyche was actually his friend, why wouldn’t “Victor” be an even stronger trigger word?

Then we see the actual dog in Sherlock’s mind palace after he’s shot in HLV, where it’s implied that Redbeard was ‘put down’ (just like the inn-keepers in THoB claimed to have done with the Hound). 

In TAB we don’t see the dog, we only hear the muffled whimpers of Redbeard distracting Holmes in Sherlock’s drug-induced mind palace scenario, when Watson asks him about his feelings for women. 

The word ‘Redbeard’ is also scribbled on Mycroft’s note in the plane scene in TAB, after Mycroft (brain!Mycroft?) has declared that he will always be there for Sherlock.

In TST, when Sherlock is (supposedly) drugged by Mary, we see a dreamy scene with the Irish setter: 

and then we can see Victor Trevor playing pirates with little Sherlock and hear the dog bark at the same time. We can see from Victor’s checkered shirt in TFP that he’s the same little guy, but in TFP he wear’s the dog’s handkerchief:

In TLD, when Sherlock is on the brink of throwing himself into the Thames, we catch a very short glimpse of the same scene, repeating Eurus’ song from TST and TFP, as if to hammer the whole idea in: little Sherlock played pirates with a dog and a friend.

In TFP, Sherlock claims that Redbeard was his dog, who little Eurus locked up somewhere. But then adult Eurus reminds him in another scene that their father was allergic to dogs, so they were never allowed to have one.

Considering all these flashbacks, it seems rather as if Eurus – Sherlock’s gay trauma according to @thewatsonbeekeepers​  – is simply trying to get rid of the ‘dog’ – homosexuality – and claim that Victor was dead anyway, drowned in that same well where she was trying to drown John, so why keep bothering about the dog?

I strongly suspect that one of the main purposes with BBC Sherlock is to encourage the audience to actually read Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes – all 60 of them if possible. :-) Mofftiss haven’t exactly been true to ACD canon textually – in fact I think they have deviated miles and miles away from the original stories, especially in S4 (Watson never had a child, for example, and Mary Morstan was never an assassin. Watson naturally never ever beat up Holmes so he was hospitalised, that was extremely absurd). But on the other hand the subtext is very similar, I believe. I even think some of the metaphors are exactly the same, which our show might want to point out.

The name Redbeard is not mentioned in canon as far as I know, but Victor Trevor is, in The Gloria Scott (GLOR), and he’s not a child. Trevor was, according to Holmes, “the only friend I made during the two years I was at college”, so @thewatsonbeekeepers​’ reference to the scene in TAB with teenager Sherlock in a drug den as a traumatic event, possibly connected to an older Victor than in TFP, is very interesting. Holmes describes Trevor as “the only man I knew, and that only through the accident of his bull terrier freezing on to my ankle one morning as I went down to chapel.”

This is evidence that Victor Trevor did in fact have a dog, even if its name is not mentioned, and Holmes got bitten by it, which effectively tied him to Trevor. This seems to fit extremely well with @sagestreet​’s analogy. So if in our show Sherlock’s father was ”allergic” to dogs (meaning that Sherlock wasn’t allowed to express homosexuality), then Redbeard might actually still have existed belonging to Victor, right? And Victor may have named his dog after the pirate character he used to play with Sherlock. Maybe Sherlock loved Redbeard as if he were his own, and his friend too, but Redbeard might have been put down for some reason, symbolising the repression of Sherlock’s love for his friend? In GLOR, though, Victor Trevor doesn’t die; he moves to Terai, India, to a tea plantation… ;-)

Apart from playing pirates as a boy, in TFP we also see Sherlock hijack a fishing boat and actually become a pirate. I don’t think piracy is ever mentioned as such in canon, but the closest ACD comes to this is probably the story about Victor Trevor’s father – also referred to as ”the Governor”(!). In his youth, Mr Trevor (whose real name was actually James Armitage) got involved in criminality and ended up hijacking a ship – The Gloria Scott – where he participated in a mutiny which eventually blew up the ship in the middle of the ocean. Armitage was among the survivors, but so was Hudson, a man who later caused his death from fear when he threatened to expose his great secret. Considering that homosexuality was regarded a crime in Doyles’ time, I think this points to Victor’s father being a gay man pressured with exposure.

The need for a new start

As for the ending of TFP, I’m still totally baffled by it, after all these years. I think it has been likely to produce cognitive dissonance (X) in the audience, which is probably one of the reasons that so many fans felt uncomfortable after S4. To me, it’s hugely contradictory in a logical sense, and I’ve always had problems trying to wrap my head around the very different messages that I think it sends out.

On one hand, as @thewatsonbeekeepers so brilliantly explains in their meta, Sherlock has finally managed to connect his heart with his brain, going through all the mental trials from his metaphorical sister in TFP. He has also re-built his home and he and John are symbolically running out of ‘Rathbone Place’ (and by association all the old adaptations) in the final scene. Which points to there being room for new, modern things to happen in their story, no longer just ’business as usual’.

On the other hand we have comphet!Mary’s final voiceover about the legend and the non-importance of who Sherlock and John really are, which didn’t at all ring true to me in a logical sense. Why would Sherlock go to all this trouble of finding his true self, connecting heart with brain etc, if it didn't even matter?  And why would a ghost, who didn’t even experience TFP while alive, be allowed to take over the role as storyteller and have the final word? I think this speaks for some huge un-solved problems and ‘lose ends’ that are not at all tied together properly - neither on the text-, subtext- or meta-levels.

And - what’s even more important in my opinion - Sherlock and John seem to be frozen in time in the final scene. 

We’re told by comphet!Mary that “...there are two men sitting arguing in a scruffy flat... like they’ve always been there... and they always will.” In TFP, the address 221B Baker Street is described as a kind of eternal institution which people - even Mycroft - turn to as a last resort, when everything else fails. The flat is rebuilt and some piece of furniture is changed, but nothing is modernized. Even the smiley face on the wall, on which Sherlock shot holes in his fit of frustration in TGG, is painted again and done the exact same thing to. But as everyone loves the place, no one protests. Status quo is reestablished.

This may be the conclusion of many adaptations, but it’s not what happened in canon, is it? This is not even remotely similar to the original ending. In ACD canon, it’s not “always 1895″, as so many readers through the ages have nostalgically claimed. Canon’s LAST ends in 1914 - almost 20 years later - with Holmes and Watson driving away together in a car, with Watson at the wheel. Byt that time, Holmes is no longer living at Baker Street - he has retired. In fact, there’s a whole story (LION) where Holmes is now living in Sussex close to the sea, in spite of his earlier statements about how much he dislikes the countryside. So in canon, he spends his time there (when he’s not on super-important spying missions for the government). And in LAST there are even some indications that Watson and Holmes are heading for a hotel room in London - not 221B. I have tried to expand on these conclusions in a recent comment on @sagestreet‘s last meta (X), providing some circumstantial evidence that might be interesting. ;-)

I’m not sure about @thewatsonbeekeepers’ claim that their meta has “just been an academic exercise”. While we don’t have any solid evidence of a pending S5 at this point, logical reasoning - and ACD Canon - still tells me that TFP must not necessarily be the end of the show. If Sherlock is in a coma, any future new content needs for him to wake up, he needs to open his eyes in the show’s reality, for TFP to ever make sense on a plot level. For what’s the point of having a story go in circles? (I tried to analyse the significance of time in BBC Sherlock here (X) some time ago).

Sherlock Holmes and codes

I really like @thewatsonbeekeepers’ musings about Greg Lestrade’s name and the implication of Sherlock suddenly having it right in TFP:

This is tied into Sherlock’s inability to move beyond the mistakes of canon – we see this weird inability to stick in modern Sherlock’s universe in other ways too, like the slightly old-fashioned nature of his costume (passed off as ‘timeless’, but clearly belonging to old as much as modern times), the deerstalker situation, thinking England has a king, not knowing the earth goes around the sun, not knowing Madonna, seeming to forget who Thatcher is – the list goes on, but Greg is the most constant one. Calling him Greg is a symbol that Sherlock has broken out of the confines of all of the past Sherlocks and has completely slipped into the modern version – which is exactly where he needs to be.

I totally agree that this is where he needs to be, and I also agree about Sherlock’s clothing here. I seem to recall ACD’s Watson talks about “a certain quiet primness of dress” in Holmes, which most probably meant a suit, something that our modern Sherlock seems to still use as signature clothing as well, which might appear a bit unnecessarily formal today. But let’s not forget that in the Gay Unaired Pilot, Sherlock was wearing black jeans and a rather more casual shirt with rolled-up sleeves:

Overall, I got a more “modern” feeling from Sherlock’s looks and behavior in the Pilot than in the rest of the show. I think code is significant in BBC Sherlock, and this goes for ACD Canon as well. And I believe that “pilot” might be one of the more important code words, as I tried to explain in this meta about codes a couple of years ago (X).

In TFP, the “Golf” in “Golf-Whisky-X-ray” (the message that Sherrinford picks up from Sherlock’s and John’s highjacked boat) literally means “I require a pilot” in marine signals - a marine pilot, that is. Which metaphorically might suggest that Sherlock needs someone to help him navigate their ‘ship’ through the dangerous waters (= emotions).

There’s also the sleeping pilot in TFP, who little Eurus - probably representing a part of Sherlock - can’t seem to wake up. She requires a pilot to land safely, but for some reason she calls him “the driver” instead of “the pilot”. 

A pilot’s uniform with four stripes on it means the rank of Captain, right? (X) And who do we know who is a military Captain? Why, Captain John Watson, of course, from Fifth Northumberland Fusillers! :-)

In the unaired Pilot Jeff Hope - one of several John mirrors in this show - drives Sherlock home in his cab, instead of to Roland Kerr’s Further Education College as in ASiP. This journey ends at 221B where Hope tries to kill Sherlock with poison, which is stopped by John who shoots Hope (and we don’t see Sherlock stomping on his wound in the Pilot, probably making his aneurysm burst; in Pilot it’s just John). So that would basically be ‘John killing John’, which @thewatsonbeekeepers​ presents as a risk in TFP - the risk that makes Sherlock realize that he needs to open his eyes and save John Watson from killing himself. 

I agree, but I also want to focus a bit on John killing himself being a clear risk already from day one in BBC Sherlock. In their second meta of the series (X), @thewatsonbeekeepers​ also mentions this:

‘Did you miss me?’ works for both of those layers – the danger John is in from criminals is something that was really apparent in s1 and 2, but John’s endangerment from suicide is also something that was there at the beginning of the series. Sherlock changed these things – and didn’t realise he was the changing factor, but something in his subconscious is telling him that with him gone, John Watson is once again in danger.

Most of us probably thought that John had found a far better use for the gun in his drawer in the first episode of the show when he killed a villain instead of himself with it. But looking at it metaphorically, this course of events maybe wasn’t that good either. In canon’s first story STUD, Jefferson Hope dies from an aneurysm - close to the heart; not to the brain as in ASiP, and not from a gunshot at all. Both metaphorically and literally, Hope died from a broken heart. Rather than a villain, he was an avenger who killed two criminals who had caused the death of his loved one and her father and got away with it.

As far as I can recall, in ACD’s stories neither Watson nor Holmes ever shoots anyone, with one exception: they shoot Tonga, the little guy threatening them with poisoned arrows in SIGN. Who I feel pretty sure is meant to represent Cupido, the little guy with the love arrows, of whom ACD wrote this poem (X).  They shoot Tonga, the Agra treasure is lost and as a result of that, Watson marries Mary Morstan instead of staying with Holmes. And then she becomes Mary Watson (representing the heteronormative concept of ’marry Watson’). Love (between Holmes and Watson, I presume) is presented as a bad, toxic guy in canon. 

And in BBC Sherlock Jeff Hope is presented as a bad, toxic guy. The little guy with the arrows being a villain is also mentioned in TSoT, which is drawing from SIGN. In a flashback related by Sherlock at John’s wedding, we see a very small guy chasing John and Sherlock over a rooftop, trying to hit them with darts from his blowpipe. This case is never explained in the show, but from John’s online blog (case called “The Poison Giant”) we learn about a very short jewel thief called James Swandale, who had killed people with poisoned darts. He and his giant friend also tried to kill John and Sherlock (note the symbolism here), but they never got to know why. Metaphorical meanings throughout canon, picked up by BBC Sherlock. 

Already in ASiP Sherlock claims he can identify “an airline pilot by his left thumb”. In the unaired Pilot, however, the pilot’s thumb for some odd reason was instead “a retired plumber’s left hand” (the rest of the quote is identical between the Pilot and ASiP). And, as @kateis-cakeis pointed out long ago, the whole filming of the Pilot is mirrored in ASiP; every single scene these two similar episodes have in common is reversed and reflected like a mirror. As far as I can see ASiP references the Pilot.

And then we have the female pilot in TAB, who comes to ask Sherlock if he had a “pleasant flight” after his OD trip on the plane. 

Four stripes = Captain, right? John. Turns out she very much resembles Lady Carmichael from his MP adventure. (And still I think we have good reason to believe that both characters were only occurring in Sherlock’s EMP).

All in all, I think this points to the concept of “pilot” being an important element to set things right in this show, and that of course has to do with John; he’s the ‘driver’. Some of us have even been discussing that this show seems to go in circles with lots of recurring themes. Canon doesn’t end with 221B; it starts with it. So the full circle is closed with TFP, unlike canon. But returning to the Pilot and things as they were between Sherlock and John at the end of that episode, could also mean the beginning of a new course of their relationship. A version that was never allowed to be shown before because of homophobia, but that new course would ultimately be more consistent with canon, rather than with people’s nostalgic perception of canon for 100+ years. 

@thewatsonbeekeepers mentioned in their other meta about TFP (X) that the Governor of Sherrinford is a John mirror, who lost his authority when Eurus - the ‘gay trauma’ part of Sherlock - managed to manipulate him. The Governor ends up shooting himself - ‘John killing John’ (again). And indeed John’s character seems a bit weak as a doctor in S4. For example is his competence questioned by both Culverton and Sherlock in TLD (but Sherlock still wanted to be examined by John earlier in TLD :) ). This is consistent with canon’s DYIN, where Holmes horribly manipulated Watson to believe he had a disease that was “contagious by touch” and even insulted his competence (“you are only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre qualifications”), in order to set a trap for Culverton Smith.

So my conclusion is that Sherlock’s manipulations of John - especially faking his own death after TRF - might have played a part in John’s lost authority and even in him being suicidal. But my point with all this rambling is that maybe John is meant to regain the lead now, to “buck up a bit” as Mrs Hudson puts it in TLD, before he’s finally allowed to be behind the wheel of her fast sports car. Maybe things will sort themselves out once Sherlock starts to break out from the circle and finally be honest with John, even let John take the lead, without fear of losing him to the villains, and once John starts to regain confidence in himself and who he really is. If they (and we) don’t need any ‘further education’ at Roland Kerr’s, John can simply drive Sherlock home now, wherever that is. :-)

@raggedyblue​ @sarahthecoat​ @gosherlocked​ @sagestreet​ @ebaeschnbliah​

#metaphorical reading #bbc sherlock #arthur conan doyle

[silverstarfics]

For @thunder-pride​ non-binary day, I have a quick fic for you all. It didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted but it’s getting late so I figured I’d post it anyway. 

AO3 link

Brains knew many things. Most things, even – at least in comparison with the average person. Fix almost any mechanical object under the sun? Sure. Recite every element of the Periodic Table and their respective mass numbers? Not a problem. Design and construct a fleet of the most advanced rescue crafts known to mankind? It had taken a little while but the Thunderbirds were also a success.

So, taking all of this into consideration, it seemed baffling that Brains had no idea how to start a conversation. Or to be precise, this specific conversation because it wasn’t exactly an everyday discussion. It was a sort of monumental, heavy talk which could tip the scales of the future in either direction.

In other words – or, you know, a lack of words given that was the problem at hand – it was monumentally terrifying which was not a phrase thrown around lightly. A lot of things were scary, but this? This was on an entirely new level.

The villa was mostly empty. Grandma was visiting friends on the mainland and Alan was fighting aliens on a video game again. Gordon and Scott were halfway across the world on a rescue in Denmark, leaving Virgil as the only other person present. It was plausible that Brains had planned to arrive in the kitchen around now for precisely that reason.

It was a light, balmy evening without so much as a hint of rain in the air. A gentle breeze rustled the palm fronds while the nightly symphony of insect song grew a little louder by the minute. Sun rays swept across the ocean to invite themselves through the sliding doors, transforming the kitchen into a pool of glowing gold. All of it should have established a sense of calm and yet.

“Hey,” Virgil called across, spying Brains lurking awkwardly partway between the conversation pit and the hallway. He lifted the saucepan of whatever he was cooking. “Are you hungry? I’ve accidentally made enough for… I don’t even know. Four? Five? Too much for me to eat by myself, anyway.”

Brains went to speak, faltered, and instead slid wordlessly onto a bar stool. For a few moments, they remained in a tranquil silence. It was so quiet that the distant waves against the beach were audible. From somewhere within the conversation pit, MAX let out a tiny trill which was probably meant to be reassuring but could also have been a suggestion that maybe notecards for this conversation would have been a good idea after all.

“Long day?”

Brains nearly startled out of the seat. “S-sorry?”

Virgil looked fondly bemused. “I was just asking if you’ve had a long day? You seem more…” He twirled a hand vaguely; a sixteen-hour rescue tended to steal a guy’s vocab. “…in your own head than usual. Anything exciting or are you tired?”

“Is both an option?”

“Both seems most likely, so yes.” Virgil returned his attention to the saucepan. Tiredness stamped his features and had taken root in his shoulders yet his voice remained soft as he ventured, “Are you alright?”

Brains paused. There came another encouraging warble from MAX’s direction.

“Actually, there’s s-something I’ve been meaning to, uh, t-talk to you about.”

This was fine. Absolutely. There was nothing to be afraid of. It was just like ripping off a band-aid – momentary pain but future relief.

“Do you think… m-maybe…” It made no sense to be so scared. This was Virgil. And yet Brains couldn’t stop the soul-consuming sense of utter terror. “Could you refer to me as they/them?”

Virgil didn’t hesitate, just carried on as if it were an ordinary conversation on any other day.

“Yeah, of course.”

Brains paused. “Really?”

“Why wouldn’t I…?” Virgil spun around to face them with pure heartbreak in his eyes. “Wait, Brains, did you think…? I am so sorry if I ever gave you the impression that I wouldn’t accept you. God, I- I’m sorry. You’re family. I love- I mean, we love you.”

“Oh.” Brains coughed. “I… I feel the same way.” Then, in a rush, “Thank you.”

Virgil reached across the counter to place a hand on their shoulder. “You don’t need to thank me. If anything, I should be the one saying thanks. Thank you for trusting me. Does anyone else know?”

“Just you.”

Virgil shoved the saucepan off the hotplate and abandoned his cooking attempts altogether. He had on that same soft smile usually reserved for moments when he didn’t think anyone was looking at him. He rounded the island and hesitated, hands hovering at his sides uncertainly.

“Can I give you a hug? Is that okay?”

“I…” Brains willed their voice to remain steady. There was a wave of emotion slowly creeping up their throat and a suspicious burning behind their eyes. “Y-yes.”

Virgil swept them into a proper bear hug. He was the only person allowed such close contact. Touch just wasn’t Brains’ usual way of expressing care. Technically Scott had hugged them in the past too, but that had been exceptional circumstances, and Alan just couldn’t be stopped nor deterred. But Virgil? He gave good hugs. So, Brains let themself relax into the hold until the overwhelming depth of feeling in their chest unravelled into something more bearable.

“They/them, huh?” Virgil murmured, a distinct note of pride in his voice. “Congrats. That’s a really big thing to figure out. I’m happy for you.”

MAX’s trill seemed sort of smug, as if to say I told you so.

Brains finally extracted themself from the hug. “Thank you. For n-not making it a big deal.”

Virgil seemed to wrestle with the instinct to say something more, then forced himself to return to the cooking. “You know, you still haven’t given me an answer. Do you want any of this?”

“Oh, r-right. Yes.”

And just like that, the words were out there. The world was still spinning without any physical changes, but somehow everything felt lighter.

#thunderpride #thunderpride 2023 #thunderbirds are go #a little hint at virgil/brains #because i love them

[romulussy]

Do you have any theories on the dynamics of Logan & Gerri's relationship? And how much of it do you think plays into her relationship with Roman?

ahhhh logan and gerri, my elusive little avocation. i wish i had more to give you but the truth is that their dynamic is like a chipped tooth to me. i can't help but poke at it and yet poking at it never gets me anywhere good. i can't get a definitive read.

i do kind of think the ambiguity is the point. i mean, there's clearly history there, and history, on this show, as we know, is all made up. but the bits they include just.... it paints a very paradoxical picture, and it's funny, because it goes both ways. like, gerri’s “loyal”, she "loves" logan, but she's willing to fuck him over if she thinks it's a definite win. logan "needs" gerri, but he loses all respect for her once he gives her (what he considers) real power. she's expendable but also, is she? really? he says he doesn’t want her hanging around like frozen piss and yet he's screaming for her the next day. it’s all very contradictory. 

i think the reason it's so hard to get a clear read of their dynamic is because there's a lot of question marks around gerri in general, even at just, like. a base level. i mean, you have to wonder how she made it to the c-suite at waystar "no women above the fourth floor" royco, because i don't imagine it was easy. and it's not like logan's misogyny would've been better in the 80s, so how the hell did she gets his respect? his trust? i remember when i first watched 2x8 and connor suggested gerri was once "the new thing" my immediate reaction was like oh, ew, yuck. i know that made roman's tummy hurt bc it made mine do a little flip. but now it kind of haunts me. like the more i think about it, the more im like, well, maybe….. 

i just think there are multiple plausible realities. like, did she ignore his interest and turn him down? did she play the flirtation game to climb the ladder but ultimately decline to fuck him? did she fuck her way to the top? i know the last one seems a bit :/ but there's the laurie thing, so i feel like you can't really rule it out as ooc. in my heart of hearts, though, i lean toward somewhere between scenarios one and two. i'm of the opinion that while gerri is a freak, she's also a fairly repressed and reserved. i don't see her behaviour with roman as common, it's more impulsive to me; like the kind of thing you get swept up in & then by the time you realise it maybe wasn't a good idea, well. you're in deep now. so i don't actually imagine gerri thinking sleeping with logan is a smart business move, and i don't see her falling for any kind of romance line, either, especially not considering he would've been married to caroline when gerri was "new". and then there's the fact that i just don't think logan would've kept her around if that had been the case.

ultimately i think their relationship is built on foundations of familiarity and longevity. like to me, gerri is more constant than she is loyal, but i think logan views it as the same thing, or at least finds it equally reassuring. there’s a level of trust, i think, that comes with knowing each other so long, and it means they’re fairly comfortable with each other, at least up to an extent. i mean:

i think they're kind of similar, too, at least in their business approach. like imo there’s a shared no nonsense, business is business mindset that makes them compatible work partners. one gerri parallel i love to think about is the vote of no confidence in s1 and the ‘how does it serve my interests?’ in s3. like, she sides with kendall in 1x6 bc she “works for waystar, not logan roy”, and it’s the same reason she turns roman down in all the bells say. if the sibs could prove the value of their plan i think she would’ve sided with them, though maybe not with logan in the room, but now im just getting off topic. what i mean is like, where roman takes the ‘betrayal’ to heart, i think if gerri hadn’t backtracked in 1x6 logan would’ve treated her the same way he did frank, which is just fuck off until i need you again. it’s not necessarily personal. 

i think they’re similarly self-serving which contributes to that contradictory nature of their dynamic. i do think logan is a bit blind to it in gerri, but as far as she’s concerned, i think there’s an understanding that logan won’t hesitate to throw her overboard if it suits his interests, which is why i think there’s always a certain degree of separation with her. but i think there’s definitely a level of respect or trust or, at the very least, understanding that’s born from that similarity.

if we’re talking outside of waystar, then do i think their relationship is pretty hollow. like the amiability is definitely relative to their business relationship. 

imo a key difference between them is that logan’s NRPI mentality for people outside of his family/immediate circle means that he really just doesn’t care about the harm his company’s done, whereas i think gerri compartmentalises to save her conscience (i talked about that more here). i feel like if gerri really let herself think about it, she’d find parts of herself that are repulsed by logan, but at the same time, there’d be parts that probably genuinely like him, even parts that admire him. but also, despite all that, i don’t think she’d care if he dropped dead. see what i mean by paradoxical? and in a sense it’s the same for logan: he values her so long as she acts in a way he likes. if she’s not under his thumb or if she’s got a bit of real power, then the respect gets thrown out the window. that’s just business, right?

as for how any of this fits into her relationship with roman…. i don’t know. i think roman’s relationship with logan was a contributing factor to romangerri (see this post) but i don’t know if i’d say the logangerri relationship plays into it much, at least not in a way that’s entirely unique. i mean, on roman’s part it definitely amplifies the ~wrongness of it all, which is a bonus for him, but i think for gerri the only significance it has is that it kind of proves roman’s assessment right. she’s clever and competent and people are happy to have her around, but she’s not valued, not really. i mean:

i think logan’s treatment of her is a contributing factor to that kind of itchy desire she has to be seen, which is what i think really draws her to roman. aside from that, i think the l/g dynamic is a deterrent more than anything else. i think she would’ve been worried about being found out, and like. who can fault her for that? we all watched 3x8. 

on that note, though, i do think the l/g dynamic factors into logan’s disgust at roman’s attraction to gerri. like it’s not just that she’s “a million years old”, i think it’s also that there’s history there, possible past attraction, even. like i guess you could say it adds to the wrongness the same way it does for roman, except this time no one is horny (lmao.) also i need to say that i think it’d be both hilarious and a fatal blow to his ego if gerri “the new thing” kellman turned him down years ago but is (in his head anyway) willing to fuck roman. like. good god. dead on the spot.

anyway. i’m cutting this off now because i’ve already gone on long enough but i hope this is in the realm of what you were hoping for <3

#gerri kellman #logan roy #logan x gerri #romangerri #complicated airflow #ask #* #gerri