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skysybil · 4 years

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Penumbra Superlatives: Most Likely To Be A Dark Matters NPC

The people demanded it, and I am indeed a magnanimous conspiracy theory machine, so here is my incredibly ridiculous reasoning behind my “who is in the dark matters simulation and who is fake” ranking, found here. Thank you to my partner for listening to me yell about this for 24 hours straight now. Man, I am gonna look like an idiot if this isn’t a Dark Matters induced simulation or dream in the end with how all-in I’ve been going with this.

Also, if you guys ever want me to lay out every fucking tiny detail I’ve seen that I think points to it being a simulation, I’ll do that too. Please validate me.

This is insanely long, it’s like two to three paragraphs for every member of the space family. This is kind of shameful, I almost feel bad. I’ll be your best friend forever if you read it all. Also, I’m putting it below the cut for everyone’s sanity. Anyway, let’s go lesbians, let’s go!

First, in the “definitely an active participant” category: Rrrrrita!

I’ll admit, it’s genuinely really hard to tell what discrepancies in the story are suspicious simulation details and what is just Rita being a particularly unreliable narrator. However, my first general point towards Rita being an active participant/player/whatever you want to call it is the fact that we’re experiencing this through her perspective! I think it would be really cool to tell the story from the perspective of a caricature puppeted by Dark Matters, but I feel like it would be way more obvious in gaps in her thinking patterns if she was fake. Honestly, I personally think it would be impossible to run it from the perspective of one of these NPCs (as i’m calling them) anyway, because... you know, they probably don’t have much in the way of thoughts in the first place.

Plus, out of everyone in the group, she is most likely to be plucked out of a group of criminals by Dark Matters to recruit. Sasha knows her (or at least knows of her) and how good she is at her job. I’m sure she’s got a target on her back as someone that’s too powerful (seriously, I pray for the universe the day Rita realizes just how quickly she could take over the world--see: my THEIA Rita AU that i came up with this morning which I might post about later), but I’m also pretty sure killing Rita would be seen as a wasted opportunity. This could just be another test, just like Day That Wouldn’t Die but in an even more controlled environment. The perfect trap, the perfect test--hopefully for perfect results. And with how she tends to get caught up in glamour and drama or get distracted so easily, she’s one of the easiest members of the group to trick into not questioning the little discrepancies that comes from living in a lie.

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Next, Vespa. Love of my life and the only other member of the Carte Blanche crew that I’m almost totally sure is sharing space in this simulation.

She’s in a similar position that she’s a valuable asset for Dark Matters to try and take on--especially if they can use her past debts as blackmail or something along those lines. She’s a damn good assassin and they tend to specialize in making people disappear. Why wouldn’t they seize the opportunity to test her and see if she could truly work for them? Dark Matters also seems to lack an ethical core, to say the least, and if they consider her past trauma and her illness to be an issue, I’m sure they wouldn’t be against trying to “fix” her in their horribly scummy ways just so she could be a better killer for their organization. It could also be related to her skills as a doctor with the crew, to be fair--while Rita is off building robots and trying to break into a super secret base, Vespa is repairing the entire medical wing, an incredibly suspicious task when apparently enough of the ship survived that Rita’s computers are okay, the entire crew is unscathed, and the Ruby isn’t a warped hunk of metal.

Though she is also very likely to be nabbed by Dark Matters as an opportunity, the main condemning thing against Vespa being an NPC is the conversation we overhear with Buddy. No one else knows that Vespa considered or decided on leaving the crew. We can’t say that’s a part of Rita’s mind affecting the simulation around her because Rita doesn’t know, and it’s not information that could be hacked, either. It was just in her mind. Unless Dark Matters has their hands on new mind reading technology (oh god, not this shit again), there’s no way that the scene with Vespa and Buddy could exist unless Vespa is also inhabiting the simulation. Every scene they choose to include is deliberate. To rule Vespa out of the plan, all it would’ve taken was likely just Vespa being her normal defensive self. Why would they include a scene with a look into that vulnerability if it didn’t matter?

Speaking of the Vespa and Buddy scene--but why would Vespa snap at Rita that badly if she’s real, you might ask. You’re right, Vespa is aggressive but not that aggressive normally, and it stood out in the few interactions we saw. In Vespa’s defense, if she is participating in this simulation, she is understandably freaked the fuck out. Vespa spends every day of her life hyperaware of what might be real and what might be fake around her. She’s most likely to figure out that something is very wrong first simply because of that trait. How much of her mind is Dark Matters manipulating? Would DM have to simulate her hallucinations, or would that come naturally along with her mind being stuck in this simulation? I imagine that for every discrepancy we’ve picked up on, she’s picked up on six--but she no longer has the explanation of it being a hallucination. I imagine it’s frustrating and terrifying for her. I’d be on edge, too!

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Moving into our next category: “probably in the simulation”, with our only candidate Buddy.

Buddy is my question mark character. We barely interacted with her this episode. From what I can tell, most of what we saw from her seems in character, and she had some wicked fucking lines. I’m sorry, I refuse to give Dark Matters credit for the line “If you imagine all that could go wrong, all you’ve done is drag yourself through a thousand disasters. And even in the worst-case scenario, you will only need to live through one.” Because it genuinely made me feel better in real life, goddammit.

Buddy is mostly in this category for lack of evidence, both with the lack of interaction and with how Rita kind of glazed over the family meeting with her distractions. So, it’s hard to say. I’d love to hear others’ theories on Buddy’s place in this.

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Now, we cross the threshold into those that are probably not in the simulation, or are acting incredibly suspicious: the “on thin fucking ice” category. First, Peter.

Can this bastard decide on his personality for two whole minutes so I can get a handle on the little intricacies of the new Ransom persona? No? Goddammit. It’s hard to tell how much of the way he acted was genuinely suspicious and how much of it is the mask he’s put on for Peter Ransom. While he’s adopted the old name, he hasn’t adopted his old personality, so it’s near impossible to get good points of comparison on this new view. We’ve seen inside his head with this persona, sure, but we can’t compare the way he spoke and acted in his head with how he holds himself in front of Rita--he’s always going to choose his level of vulnerability based off of the least trusted person in the room. He’s not to that place with Rita yet. He’s going to have walls and facades up that he won’t have in front of Juno, or in front of himself. He can’t make it easy on him.

But that does not mean I can’t be suspicious of him, because I am. Fuck you, Nureyev, I’m still coming for you. Mainly, I’m squinting at his reaction to Rita’s plans and his lack of reaction to her openly talking about the two of them in an established relationship. We know damn well that Peter and Juno are not at that place yet. Why, do you ask? Because I trust that Sophie and Kevin wouldn’t take that moment from us. We’ve had three and a half years of slowburn buildup on Jupeter! We would not skip from “tentatively talking and trying to learn communication through ‘’’’’’poetry’’’’’’ and shit” to “established lovey dovey relationship” without being let in on it. I doubt Peter would let comments like the ones Rita made really slide in front of Juno--after all, the last time he admitted he was in love, Juno fucking left, and I bet there’s a lot of reluctance or trauma surrounding that. Yet he let it slide anyway.

Still, because Peter is a wild card, there’s still a possibility that his non-reaction was a defense mechanism or part of the Ransom facade (after all, he had to pretend he was in better standing with Juno than he actually was at first to keep his place in the family). The most suspicious thing he did in that conversation, in my opinion, was agree not to let anyone else know about the plan. He knows damn well that he is on thin ice with everyone in the crew except for Juno and Rita. Trust is in short supply for him and keeping his position in the family is incredibly important to him, both so he can find a way to pay off his debts and so he can pursue this shaky relationship he’s started to piece back together with Juno. Yet he hops right in with barely any pushback when it comes to keeping this Incredibly Vital And Important Plan a complete secret. Plus, you know, he supposedly couldn’t even stand, yet walked all the way to the computer cave. Sure, maybe Juno carried him, but I’d fully expect something like Juno picking him up to be a joke written into the script. I feel like it was deliberately left out.

Still, the only real glimpse of Peter that Dark Matters has ever had was of Rex Glass, and Peter definitely isn’t acting like his Rex persona, so how would they really know to get his personality around the Aurinko family to where it is? I suppose that could be attributed to Rita, Vespa, and/or Buddy shaping the simulation around them.

Tl;dr on the Peter section: He’s almost definitely an NPC but nothing is certain with a man whose entire sense of self is based off of an elaborate web of lies and inconsistencies.

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Also probably an NPC, but I’m not sure, thus on thin fucking ice: Jet.

You cannot tell me for one fucking second that Jet doesn’t know the Ruby 7 inside and out. That car is his baby. He’s torn the car apart and repaired it more than anyone else, and you’re telling me he doesn’t understand the core functions of the car--the engine, the fuel tank? No fucking way. I don’t have 3.5 paragraphs of speculation for Jet, I’m just so hung up on the fucking car thing. His personality fits well, which is the one string I’m holding onto that makes him maybe possibly an actual human being, but I feel like Dark Matters fucked up by trying to fill in the blanks on the Ruby 7. That’s where I think the issue comes from--the reason there’s a part in the Ruby that Jet doesn’t understand is because DM doesn’t know how the Ruby works, and they tried to put in what they imagined could power it or fuzz over the details. But I will cry if the Ruby was actually destroyed in the crash, there’s no recovering from that.

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And finally, if you’ve made it this far and not left after whispering to yourself holy shit, she’s insane, she’s absolutely insane, how much does this woman talk, we have the final category: unfortunately an NPC. And holy shit, is Juno 100% not in this simulation or being almost entirely puppeted by Dark Matters.

I genuinely can’t get into all my reasoning behind Juno being a puppet here without going on forever and doubling the length of this post, and I’ve put you through so much already. But every inch of Juno is suspicious, down to his tone of voice. Look, I’m happy to see him happy. But it just seems like a jump--just like as I discussed in the Peter section with the Jupeter relationship. It feels like we skipped something, or missed something. This is my theory: Juno has been crafted based off of how Sasha Wire knew him when she saw him last. He doesn’t have reactions that are quite right to the computers, to Peter, to anyone, really. Everything felt just a little off--until he got frustrated. Then he became more realistically Juno. I think this might be because Sasha is basing a comfortable and happy Juno (the one she assumes he must be around the people on the ship, especially Peter if she knows they’re romantically involved) off of the Juno she interacted with when they were younger, which is just off in comparison to the Juno we know now. She can build a more three dimensional Juno in the situations she’s familiar with, like a bored Juno, a frustrated Juno, or an angry Juno. She’s got the one-liners down, I’ll give her that.

I’m also just in general not surprised if Sasha is just keeping him separate from the rest of them. Possibly to try and talk him out of the family, get him untangled from the Dark Matters mess? Plus, he’s incredibly perceptive, and might be considered a risk to the simulation if he was in it.

Also, the out-of-universe evidence: I am 100% convinced that the reason the episode script came out late is because it had to be edited to remove some of the directions, possibly suspicious things like “too cheery”. Specifically, I think one of Juno’s significant directions is missing. It’s hard to put exactly what kind of direction is missing into words because I don’t know anything about script writing, but I just... I have a feeling. Trust me on this. I’ve seen other people on Twitter talk about it too, I’m not the only one. I stand by it.

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Anyway, since I want to keep my Juno-specific speculation as short as possible, that’s all, folks. If you stayed this long, genuinely I love you so much and I would give my life for you, message me or mention it in the tags that you made it all the way and maybe we could be mutuals or friends!! I love to ramble about this kind of thing. Follow me for more aimless speculation, hopefully not 2.5k words next time. If you have any questions or other stuff to discuss also mention it and I might post about it later!

Update: If you’re interested in the simulation theory, here’s the link to a post I just made laying out all my conspiracy theory evidence for it.

#holy shit i am SO SORRY this is so long #this is a lesson in being careful what you wish for #tpp #the penumbra podcast #tpp spoilers #tpp s3 #tpp s3 spoilers #s3 spoilers #tpp junoverse #simulation theory

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alteabellerose · 6 years

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”*Putting this under a submit since this might be long and I don’t wanna split it up in several asks that Tumblr might eat. Sorry for any inconvenience*”

”I have some thoughts about the latest chapter. I was not expecting the feels to hit me like they did. But I actually understand why MC did what she did. How she did it was harsh and unnecessary, but I do understand the point behind it.”

-This is a fairly long submission but it’s also worth a read bc anon makes a lot of good points about this whole mess but I don’t want to clog your dashes with this super long post so I’m putting the submission and my response under a read more-

”Something I felt hasn’t been addressed a lot in the story is the fact that MC gave up her whole life to be with Altea. She literally left her own world behind to move to an alternate universe. For Altea. Someone who is willing to give up everything to be with you is a big deal and shows a huge amount of trust, especially in the messy situation they’re in with the Witch Queen and an approaching war. Then she learns that Altea, who probably felt like an anchor, has been lying about a lot of things. Even something as trivial as the fact that she’s two years younger than she said/implied she was. From personal experience, I can say that that plants a seed of doubt that is REALLY hard to get over. Suddenly you’re questioning everything and you feel all alone. Even if you aren’t.”

”Even more so if, like MC, if she feels like she literally has no one to turn to. She didn’t just move to a different city, a different state or even a different country, she literally moved into another universe where no one from her past is. Where she has no way to contact them. And we know that Chicago is where she feels safe since Altea told her to think of a safe place and they ended up there. In Chicago, she probably would called Sophie or her parents or anyone else in her life to confide in/vent. In the L&L world, that person would most likely be Altea, but this time she’s also the one right in the middle of a huge mess.”

”MC only spoke to Iseul because he sought her out. The guys had to bring it up because of MCs aggressive behavior during training, MC didn’t go to the courtyard with the intention of talking to them. In fact, the one MC ended up confiding in was Helena (which kinda makes me suspicious btw).”

”Then add the fact that Mireille didn’t make a good first impression by threatening MC. Or the fact that she shoves MC out of conversations by talking to Altea in a language she knows MC doesn’t understand. Or hijacking the day she and Altea should’ve had together. Or the way she seems to have a thing for Altea or at the very least she seems to disapprove of MC and Altea’s relationship. Then, finally, saving Altea right in front of her.”

”I feel like MC probably had Helena’s words echoing in her head about people always being tempted by those who have been with them since the beginning. How Mireille will know Altea’s heart and have memories MC can’t touch. It probably doesn’t help that every other conversations Mireille and Altea has is basically “hey, remember when….” which would make anyone feel left out. Then Altea says she wants Mireille to stay with them in the castle…”

”Basically MC is feeling insecure as all hell and the only who seems to get it is Helena.”

”Sidenote: Considering you literally pick between Altea and Helena and how this chapter ended, I just have to say: If this is the point where Helena’s route starts, I’m gonna be livid! I want a clean beginning, not MC running to Helena because she and Altea are having problems! Not here for breaking Altea’s heart for Helena!”

”Anyway, there’s a distinct lack of communication between everyone, which is turning this into a bigger issue than it should’ve been. MC’s insecurities are very flawed, but also very real. And from her POV, Altea doesn’t seem to want to understand. She feels like Altea doesn’t get it, but really how can Altea get it when MC doesn’t communicate her feelings. Its irrational, but doubts and insecurities will do that unfortunately. ”

”No one is innocent in all this. MC should’ve communicated her feelings/thoughts to Altea. The necklace was an immature lashing out that’ll only cause more hurt. But Altea should been more upfront, should’ve considered how betrayed MC might feel given the trust she had shown Altea and communicated her thoughts instead if just announcing something like the fact that she wants Mireille to stay and expecting MC to be ok with it.”

”I feel like Iseul should take his own advice and tie both Altea and MC to Reiner’s chair until they actually talk to each other… They both have some apologizing to do. And, more importantly, they need to freaking TALK TO EACH OTHER. A real heart-to-heart where they both talk and they both listen.”

Okay so I’m gonna open by saying that I never saw a notification for this so idk how late I am at getting to it and I’m sorry if you sent this yesterday or this morning and I didn’t get to it earlier

But! Yeah honestly I think you’ve made nothing but good points here. I think literally every day about how hard it must be for MC to deal with the knowledge that she left literally everyone and everything she’s ever known behind, like sure she loves Altea and the guys are her friends but she left behind her best friend and who knows how much family all for Altea and this war with the witch queen when she could’ve easily gone back to her old life, not put herself in danger every single day, not left 25 years of her life behind. I wish we’d get more about that in the story, even if it was just in the form of comments from MC sometimes, like when she was talking to the witch queen about her memories of the garden her mother had, except wherein she’s talking to someone who will listen and care

I know that I’ve been making a fair few angry/hurt posts about this and generally siding with Altea, but I don’t want to make it seem like I think MC is completely at fault for things. I can’t say that I’ve been lied to on that scale, but I can say that I can relate to what Altea says about her parents and so I also understand why she would lie about that at the very least. I don’t mean that I approve of it, but I’m not exactly mad. I am, however, pretty much entirely on MC’s side in regards to the jealousy issue with Mireille, I’m secondhand jealous tbh, and it surprises me that Altea was oblivious enough to the issue to suggest that Mireille stay permanently. Definitely was not happy with her about that.

The main thing I’m upset with MC about isn’t necessarily leaving Altea, it’s leaving Altea when she barely addressed the jealousy issue with her. It’s not that I don’t understand MC’s reasoning. I had a similar problem in a relationship when I was 16 and I stewed for like, weeks, but instead of, interestingly enough, returning the necklace he’d given me and I had hardly taken off in the year and a half we were together in a symbolic breakup gesture, we talked it out and lo and behold, we stayed together for a while longer. MC walked off and GOD do I understand the “she saved you when I couldn’t comment” because I kind of have a protectiveness thing going on and christ that’d kill me, and Altea just says “I don’t hold a grudge against you for that, it was just chance” but like, I’d hold a grudge against myself for the rest of my life probably and now I’m rambling so anyway, Altea goes after her and asks what’s wrong you know, and MC is like “I’m jealous” and then hands her the charm???????? When they talked about her feelings for all of two minutes?????????????????????

I’m frustrated with the lack of communication happening, and from the perspective of someone outside the relationship of course it looks easy to solve so I’m trying to avoid judging too harshly but god if they would just talk to each other! I’m also frustrated because I’ve mentioned on this blog that I’ve played/am playing virtually every game I can get my hands on where you can play as a girl and romance a girl, and god only knows how many bi/pan/lesbian LIs I could rattle off right now, but Altea is my all-time favorite. So maybe I’ve been harsh on MC for doing what she did but god I just keep thinking about what my favorite girl ever must’ve been thinking when MC put the charm in her hands and it’s killing me and kind of clouding my fair judgment here

Like. I love MC and I support her always (usually) but TALK TO YOUR GIRL!!!!!!! I’m glad you said that the lack of communication is turning this into a bigger issue than it should’ve been because that’s by far my biggest problem with what’s going on. It just doesn’t need to be this bad.

Re: your sidenote god same. I was happy when Alain’s route started and I assumed they’d do the same thing with Helena, like have it be an AU type deal where MC just happened to get picked up by the generals instead of August and Iseul, but now I’m scared. I wouldn’t be able to play Helena’s route at first. I’d have to emotionally gear myself up for it, lmao. Helena getting a route is literally a dream come true for me, as in literally I wanted it so badly I dreamed about it once before they announced it, but I don’t know if it’s worth the expense of Altea’s heart. That’s a cheesy thing to say about fictional characters but it’d hurt her so much. I couldn’t do it.

Catch me crying like a baby when they have their inevitable heart-to-heart though, I’m a sucker for this stuff

Thanks for sending this in, I could talk forever about L&L lmao & I appreciate your apparently slightly more balanced perspective than my own

#long post //#SO sorry if youre on mobile and the read more doesnt work lmao #also sorry if i repeated myself or didnt make sense in places im not good at walls of text #Love and Legends #Love & Legends #Voltage #submission #anon #Altea Bellerose

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