#tinfoil hat time | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

someidiotwithalaptop · 1 year

Text

Alright: What the FUCK happened to Summer???

Because something sure did, and every new thing we hear about her gets more disturbing, and it haunts me.

So, I'll start with stuff that's fairly certain and like, small leaps of logic before I go full tinfoil hat conspiracy theorist. We have very little actual info about Summer, nearly all of it from different characters talking about her.

From Yang we get the basic facts from her family's perspective: Summer was a Huntress who went out on a mission and never came back. We also get the characterization of, "Super-Mom: Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters."

From Qrow, we learn that 1. She was a brat, which like, honestly STRQ was probably just "oops! all brats" 2. He thinks she would have pressed on if she knew the truth, which, uh, she almost definitely did. "We don't have to kill you to stop you," is not the sort of thing you say to Salem if you don't know she's immortal, that's all I'm saying. 3. Whatever her final mission was, she didn't tell him or Tai or Ozpin. I'm inclined to believe Ozpin when he says he genuinely doesn't know what happened to Summer, since his biggest secret is already out—plus he's been genuinely repentent about the mess his lying caused in Volume 6 and is taking steps to do better in the future. It would feel really weird thematically if he knew and was keeping yet another giant bomb of a secret. So Summer went on her final mission alone, or at the very least, she didn't tell any of Ozpin's inner circle where she was going.

We'll get to speculating about why not later, but I think this point is probably going to be important in Ruby's character arc—whatever Summer's ultimate fate, she got there because she tried to save the world alone, and we've seen Ruby do something similar. Like she's not running off after Salem by herself, but she's definitely trying to shoulder the burden of leading and inspiring everyone to keep going all on her own, without asking for help as that responsibility has been slowly yet systematically destroying her mental health. I mean ffs she's been literally carrying her team on her shoulders for two episodes now.

HOWEVER: Oz, Tai, and Qrow don't know anything about what happened to Summer, but it's possible that Raven might. When Ruby tries to reach out to her and convince her to work together, because they'll have a better chance than if they try to do it alone, Raven says, "You sound just like your mother," in truly the most bitter, disdainful-ass tone I have ever heard. And then she opens a portal for Cinder to throw a fireball at her. Whether this is about a more generalized friction that maybe contributed to Raven leaving, or a specific moment when Summer tried to get her on board with whatever she was doing on that final mission, is kind of uncertain. Or it could be both!

(And it might also be she married my ex bitterness but, admitting my biases here, I hate that fucking trope with a fiery passion and I think it's more interesting if her anger at Summer is actually about Summer.)

Regardless, if Summer did ask her for help, then based on how Raven reacted to Ruby I don't think she got it lmao

And then. Oh, and then. We get Salem!

"Your mother said those words to me. She was wrong too."

"Her again?"

So like. Salem definitely met her. Had a whole-ass conversation with her, even.

And that fucking smile??? Salem did some shit to Summer. It's just a question of what, exactly?

Right. Okay. So after they kill the Hound and realize WHOOPS that was a person and he looks an awful lot like Ruby! and everyone reunites, Ruby says this:

"When I saw its eyes, I knew. Salem used to kill people with Silver Eyes, like Maria. But she’s always wanted me alive. Why would that change unless, when she met Mom, she learned she could do something new?"

Timeline-wise, this seems accurate! But I'd like to also insert TR into the equation. It's a little hard to tell given the uhh, body horror of it all, but he definitely looks younger than Qrow (which is maybe not saying a lot given that Raven looks at least ten years younger than Qrow and she's his twin lmao) and, more to the point, like he's probably younger than Summer.

Like, yeah, hard to tell, but I don't think this man is past forty. And even if he is, it doesn't seem like Salem's had him for very long, seeing as she never sent him after Ruby or the relics in previous volumes. So he's probably an example of what Salem's been doing to SEWs after Summer.

Also, Salem calls him an experiment, and says that so far she's pleased with the results. Meaning Summer isn't exactly a Hound, though I wouldn't say that puts grimmification off the table. Just that it's not in the exact same way he is. And it's worth pointing out that the way TR has been grimmified, it's left him completely without agency and unable to disobey Salem. Even after Ruby blasts the Grimm off his head, he's still left repeating "Take The Girl" over and over without any sign of whoever he used to be coming back to the surface. It's possible that is what Salem is referring to when she calls him a successful experiment.

So the way Salem has dealt with people with silver eyes has gone:

Maria (kill her) > Summer (?!?!) > TR (an... experiment) > Ruby (bring her to me alive)

Adding TR into the mix, it seems unlikely that the "something new" Salem learned she could do from Summer Rose would actually have been, y'know, a Hound. Plus from a narrative perspective, I don't think we're going to have Ruby literally saying exactly what happened to Summer into the camera only for her to turn up, Hound-ified just as expected, a couple volumes later. So, some possibilities:

Ruby is actually exactly correct about what happened to Summer, but she's not going to show up later so there's no reason not to just tell us. Personally I doubt it's this, given the way the mystery has been unfolding over eight volumes and counting. It'd be kind of weird to just tell us instead of showing us, or indeed having the Hound literally be Summer. Also, if Summer is a Hound too then why is TR an experiment?

Summer was Grimmified but didn't survive the process, so she gave Salem the idea but she's not actually a Hound. This also seems a bit odd to me given that would mean she's basically just dead like we assumed, but with extra steps. Like it's upsetting but it doesn't represent the kind of dramatic upheaval to the sisters' worldviews that it feels like this is building towards. It doesn't explain how fucking smug Salem is about the whole thing.

Summer was Grimmified, but didn't actually lose any agency. This would explain why Salem is still experimenting, and why she's so pleased with TR—he's even more singleminded in carrying out her goals than Tyrian is. It also fits with the way the Grimmification worked on Salem. Even after she jumped into the goop, she was still very much herself—it's possible it influenced her, but she was definitely capable of showing love and affection to both Ozma and her daughters. She just, uhh,,, was also willing to try and murder them. But it's unclear to me how much of that was Evil Goo and how much was just that there's no way a human being spends any significant length of time as the Last Woman Alive without some unpleasant side effects. We're social creatures and we do not generally do well when completely deprived of company.

Summer wasn't Grimmified at all, the whole Hound thing is a red herring.

In either 3 or 4, regardless of how much body horror happened, Ruby is wrong about what happened to Summer. And in order to not undercut that moment of utter despair at what probably happened to Summer... I feel like what actually did happen has to be. like. worse.

AND IT'S A TAD DIFFICULT TO GET WORSE THAN THE HOUND.

So. Time to put our tinfoil hats on: what if we add an element of horrible betrayal?

Yes this is a Summer-joined-Salem conspiracy post.

But hear me out okay! Circling back a bit, why wouldn't Summer tell any of the inner circle where she was going? If she talked to anyone, it was Raven, who had already noped the fuck out by the time Summer went on her final mission. Now, if it was just Tai and Qrow I'd say she might've kept it from them for the same reason everyone always keeps that secret—she didn't want them to lose hope. But... Ozpin already knows. There'd be no reason not to tell him what she was doing, unless she knew he'd try to stop her.

Now: my goal here is to make all this make sense, without altering the first foundational piece of characterization we get for Summer. Namely, "Super-Mom: Baker of cookies and slayer of giant monsters." I'm not saying Summer learned the truth and went, welp, if you can't beat 'em join 'em. Because both Summer and Raven tend to act as foils to Ruby and Yang, and "gave up immediately" doesn't feel like an interesting foil to Ruby's perserverence. But, if you find out that there's an existential threat to the entire world, and she can't be killed...

Isn't it worth trying to negotiate?

Especially if, say, you were absolutely desperate to end this war in your lifetime. Because Summer knows that if it's really impossible, if Salem can't be stopped, then Ruby will get dragged in whether she likes it or not. All because of a trait that Summer passed down to her.

Salem's been killing people with silver eyes, probably for millenia. It's easily possible that Summer had her own visit from someone like Tock, or noticed the same thing Maria's father did, that there's a suspicious lack of people with silver eyes considering how useful they are against the Grimm. As long as Salem is a threat, Ruby is going to be in that same danger. Forever.

So she has to do something, right? If there's even the tiniest chance she can end this now, before Ruby will ever have to suffer for it, before she gets pulled into an impossible war and Yang comes charging in after her, because of course she's going to try to help her sister... isn't that a chance worth taking?

This is why I think Raven knows some shit, by the by—when she's telling Yang about Salem, she actually kind of indirectly drops the same bomb that went off in Volume 6, it's just that she didn't do it in the same explicit terms that Jinn did. "She can't be stopped, she can't be reasoned with, and she will not rest until Humanity crumbles at her feet."

"Can't be stopped" is Raven's translation of can't be killed, since "We don't have to kill you to stop you" seems to be a flavor of terrifying exclusive to Ruby and apparently Summer. But "can't be reasoned with" implies that somebody tried. And like, let's be honest. Do we really think Raven was the one who decided to give diplomacy a go?

Not to mention this line, which I'm like 90% sure is referring to Summer:

"Or... you can go back to Qrow and join Ozpin's impossible war against Salem, and meet the same fate as so many others."

It really seems like Raven knows something she's not telling us. Like, if that is a reference to Summer's fate, does that mean Raven knows what it is, or is she just speculating like everyone else? Does she have a portal to Summer, and is that giving her information the others don't have? All that, combined with the fact that she's also way more bitter about Summer than everyone else, seems signficant.

Anyways. Let's say Summer decides to have a chat with Salem.

She can't tell Ozpin. He'd try to stop her, because he'd see it as a suicide mission. Qrow or Tai both might tell him, or agree with him and get in her way, so she keeps it from them too. Maybe she goes off completely by herself—or maybe she goes to Raven, because she's the only one who might be able to help who Summer knows won't breathe a word of it to Ozpin. Either way, Raven doesn't help her. She's not getting anywhere near Salem.

And then... well. Salem got here by manipulating people, by swaying them to her cause. Summer asks her what she actually wants out of all this. Isn't there some way they could resolve this without this endless war, all this endless death?

Important to note, I don't think we've heard Salem's motivation in her own words. At least, not since the Lost Fable, when she wanted to rule with Ozpin as the new gods of Remnant. I think it's safe to say at least a few things have changed since then. Closest I can think of is what she says to Cinder in Volume 8, "In pursuit of a new world, no cost is too great." Which is ominous, but also quite vague, and says nothing about what she plans to do with the relics.

Instead, we get a whole lot of people guessing. Ozpin thinks she wants to die. Tyrian thinks she wants to destroy the world. Hazel and Mercury think she wants to remake it, with no Huntsman Academies, with them as the new top dogs.

There's a pattern here—Salem never actually says what she wants, and other people have a habit of projecting their own motives onto her actions. Ozpin wants to die, Hazel wants to destroy the Huntsmen Academies, Mercury wants to be the one with the power so he's not getting hurt, and Tyrian's just in it for the chaos.

And it's not like Salem hasn't done stuff like that on purpose. By the time she started growing her army against the gods and telling people they would all steal immortality like she did, she'd already tried to kill herself. She didn't want immortality. She just let people think she did, because it was more convenient for her.

So if this agent of Ozpin's comes to her, absolutely desperate for a way to end the fight before it can come for her daughters, well... why not just tell her about the gods? About how Ozpin plans to one day reunite the relics, and submit Remnant to their judgment? About what might happen if he does?

(TBH I don't think Oz will ever do that, not because I think he's decided not to or anything like that, but because I doubt he'll ever see a humanity united enough for it to be worth trying. We're an argumentative bunch.)

But like. To Summer, all of a sudden there's this other, even bigger existential threat. And Salem isn't like Ozpin. She does have a plan! She wants to destroy the relics, so that the gods can never be resummoned, because of course she hates them and so she would never want them to come back!

(Again, not saying this is actually true, my best guess is that she's trying to bring them back so she can fight them again slkdfjlskdj)

And then, if they succeed, not only will the gods not be a threat anymore, Salem won't be a threat either. She'll have gotten what she wants!

"This can all... be... over..."

Summer has to finish this. There has to be a way for her to do this by herself, to save everyone, to put a stop to it all in time to protect her children! (Raven can't be right, it can't just be hopeless!)

From there, all Salem really needs to do is be a bit careful how much she tells her other followers about what she plans to do—which it seems like she has—and eventually find a way to either hide what relics she has or convince Summer that she's trying really hard to destroy them, definitely, pinky promise!

(And, as an aside: if true, it's very possible that the reason Salem's so insistent on keeping Ruby alive isn't that she wants to turn her into another Hound, but rather that was one of Summer's conditions.)

All this, of course, may or may not come with a sprinkle of Grimmification. Because why not add some body horror to the good old-fashioned betrayal horror! Though, if I'm right and not going completely off the wall here, I suspect it's probably more in the vein of Cinder than TR. Namely, like, consensual.

Regardless, it definitely feels like Summer has been idealized to a point that's just sort of... begging for trouble. She's the perfect Huntress. The best of us. The one who would have pressed on. And like, historically putting people on pedestals like that has not gone well in this show (see: Pyrrha). Not to mention the way trying to be the perfect Huntress that Summer was has been affecting Ruby over the years.

Also, definitely totally unrelated to all of the above: I think paragons that turn to evil despite or indeed because of all their wonderful paragon qualities FUCK SEVERELY and I would like to see it.

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 9 #tbh only very briefly but I wanna be safe #summer rose #ruby rose #salem rwby #tinfoil hat time #cw suicide mention #(Salem's canonical failed attempts)#long post

99 notes · View notes

electricdreamachine · 10 months

Text

I’VE CONNECTED THE DOTS

when he said “it’s time to leave the past behind” he meant that from now on they’re only gonna be playing tbhc and the car.

glasto was a goodbye party for the pre-tbhc eras

#tinfoil hat time #arctic monkeys

18 notes · View notes

hesquiettoday · 1 year

Text

Ik that most bylers know the meaning of the flowers at the end of s4 and that they represent milkmans dead/dying relationship but I've literally never seen anyone bring up this implication

So El clearly sees that the flower is dead/dying but she picks it up anyway

And then we never see her let go of the flower implying that she knows that their relationship is dead or dying and that she's holding onto it anyway

So here's to the s5 trailer showing a close up of El dropping the flower foreshadowing her breaking up with mike

#tinfoil hat time #8th times the charm right?#byler #byler analysis #technically???#anti mileven

85 notes · View notes

daddymikeyway · 1 year

Text

Music is hard work

#system of a down #serj tankian #he rest #he’s fucking out #music is playing in the background he’s not moving #serj actually died while recording and we’ve been watching his clone #tinfoil hat time #idk if anything happened between serj and Sylvia or if serj is just that charismatic #but he gets a lot of screen time #Shavo isn’t even in here lmao

40 notes · View notes

ultravioart · 11 months

Text

Sombra uncovered a world wide conspiracy represented by an eye symbol, and that plot line hasn't been touched since. The conspiracy eye symbol could be connected with the Iris (eye motif) or god ai Anubis (Egyptian eye of Ra) but it got me thinking.

Apparently omnics were originally aliens in concepts for OW/Project Titan. (Seemingly an alien invasion/cohabitation conflict?)

Okay, so combine everything going on: Talon pushing global conflict in hopes of pushing humanity's advancement, Anubis' omnic crisis seemingly having no known trigger but causing mass advancement in tech, The Iris advancing omnic sentience ai and giving golden iris bestowed powers, Overwatch developing various cutting edge technology (teleporting Slipstream jet that gave the game's mascot Tracer her time powers, secretly hiring controversial Moira + Blackwatch, etc), and all the other things referenced in Sombra's conspiracy web like how Volskaya was using tech from "the enemy"(omnics) to build massive machines to fight... omnics.

OW2's original plan is canceled now, but think about it:

Ow1: intro to lore, first omnic crisis lore, FPS

Ow2: second omnic crisis and in the stories you play as OW pushing back or even beating Null Sector/Talon, PVE setting up the basis for an MMO

Ow3: MMO... with a bigger threat than NullSector/Talon.

Omnics were originally aliens. There are HUGE advancements in tech happening at high speed. Sombra discovered a conspiracy that changes everything ('sides' don't matter).

TDLR; The Sombra conspiracy might have been that a secret group is trying to advance humanity past a key civ/tech stage ASAP so Earth can fight off a technologically advanced 'alien' enemy that plans to invade Earth in the near future.

The focus on space travel even after the failure of Winston's crew is interesting, too.

So what kind of enemy? Aliens aiming to take over, or Alternate dimension/timelime trying to take over, or Time travelers from the future coming to attack the past earth to prevent an event in history... it would be something big where the heroes roster has to work together to fight off the invading threat in the MMO.

This would easily set up a large scale threat for an OW MMO story and landscape.

And with Tracer (time travel powers related to not time tech but teleportation tech) being the mascot, and with seeing that crew that worked on Overwatch (and Project Titan) went to work on a "parralel timelines fighting eachother" lore game Valorant, and from there going to work on a Valorant related MMO called "Project T"-- it makes me think the Sombra conspiracy would explain why multiple characters could exist on the same map, and it may very well have involved different timelines or atleast some kind of alien threat invading earth. Sigma even comments things in his voice lines that imply different dimensions or timelines.

But yeah, if Project T as an MMO comes to be, it may have been what Project Titan was intended as.

#tinfoil hat time #been trying to figure out how OW could fit a MMO and yeah.#mascot time traveler. mascot space ape.#overwatch #overwatch 2 #ow #ow2 #text #long text #Valorant and past OW crew connections is what makes me think project titan was abandoned due to the company #and crew jumped ship to go to Valorant to make Project T(itan) instead.

13 notes · View notes

eradicatetehnormal · 1 year

Text

*Thinks about this in conjunction with the theory that Yozora is a fusion of Riku and Sora or a Riku and a Sora*

#kingdom hearts #tinfoil hat time #kh #kh theory #The irony of him housing so many hearts for so long then going to live on in someone else's

11 notes · View notes

welcome-to-the-petty-parade · 11 months

Text

The MCR Instagram finally posting a new photo to their feed after over a month of nothing is keeping the MCR5 embers alive in my heart.

#mcr #my chemical romance #gerard way #frank iero #ray toro #mikey way #MCR5 #tinfoil hat time

14 notes · View notes

araniaart · 2 years

Text

Undead / Kas / Vampire Eddie Theories

It’s tinfoil hat time! Okay, so I’ve been rewatching Stranger Things after getting a massive dose of the Kas / Vampire Eddie brainrot, and been paying particular attention to the traits of creatures from the Upside Down. SO, here’s my current theory of how this could be possible with just things we’ve seen from the upside down, as well as how a lot of those traits line up with vampire myths/pop culture: Resurrection: - Even if dying from bat bites doesn’t have some property that hasn’t been seen before, and Eddie just is left dead or near dead in the Upside Down, just the fact he’s killed from bat bites alone is pretty poetic before a vampire-inspired resurrection. - The Mindflayer / the particles have the ability to animate the dead. We’ve seen this twice now: when the mind flayer takes a physical form in the real world through a conglomeration of bodies of people and animals AND in the Russian prison: the dead demo-dogs are reanimated by the particles when the glass is broken. - Vecna canonly absorbs the minds and memories of his victims, and the Upside Down is a hivemind. Even if things aren’t physically linked through the vines, if a demo dog finds prey, the others know. If a bat dies, the other bats know. It’s quite possible that not just the four three victims were absorbed by him (plus all the other people he massacred before coming to the upside down) - but anyone killed in the upside down. - the Mindflayer and Vecna can possess people. Will has been possessed/ turned into a “traitor” just from the connection of having been in the Upside Down and been a temporary host to demogorgon larva. - Therefore, I see no reason, if he wanted to, Vecna couldn’t put a mind/memory back in an animated body if it served his purposes. Likely with a bit of possession on the side. For funsies. (And spying/traitor/Kas storyline reasons). Vampire-Like Abilities: These are just things we’ve seen from other creatures already in the upside-down: - Transformation of human bodies: Vecna arrived in the Upside Down human, but scarred. During his time there he not only got, well, gross- bonding with the living vines and joining/taking over the hivemind, but he also developed literal claws on one hand. He also seems to have taken on many of the traits of other creatures of the upside-down (see below): - Resilience to normal damage: creatures from there are particularly hardy: able to be shot and stabbed and walk it off * Except for decapitation - another classic Vampire potential death method). and vulnerabilities to fire and sunlight. (Dart was a great representative of that, letting Dustin study a creature up close, see how sunlight/light seemed to irritate and hurt it). - Regeneration - everything seems to heal very well - even the portals themselves have a ropy/sinewy/visceral regeneration to them. - Stronger/faster/more agile than normal counterparts (See the Demogorgon in Russia vs armed humans) - Cold Bodies: When Will is possessed, his body temperature drops, and he dislikes the heat. - Blood Sense: In season 1, the demogorgon had an acute sense of (smell?) when it came to detecting, in particular, blood. Also, obviously, a hunger for said blood/meat. Put all of those traits on a person, and what would that look like to you? Add into that fun potential like claws, teeth, the potential to make that eerie chittery vocalization that upside down creatures can, plus anything else you want to add in for funsies, go nuts!

#Eddie Munson #kas the bloody handed #kas theory #stranger things #stranger things meta #stranger things spoilers #st4 spoilers #tinfoil hat time

38 notes · View notes