#i didn’t even intend to write a theory when i started this post | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mutatedfish · 5 months

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and here’s my theory about how the half life funny streams are a lot like dante’s inferno. no wait come back where are you going

so to start off with both of them are working within familiar architecture but end up flipping expectations on their head. the intended/imagined audience for both inferno & hlvr are already familiar w the framework the story takes place in. for inferno, it’s assumed that the audience are some sect of christian & thus believe in the ideas of hell/purgatory/heaven as well as the idea of different levels of sin significance. for hlvr, the audience knows the general plot & game mechanics of half life/hlalyx even if they’ve never played themselves, as well as knowing abt the concept of machinima and rtvs’ improv through internet (plus for hlage they had the context of hlvrai).

in inferno, hell’s physical design is very very important to the narrative (as well as purgatory and heaven but i haven’t actually read those two so moving on). i could say a lot about it but tldr the settings are described in detail and have a lot of meaning both thematically and literally. in hlvr there’s storytelling/worldbuilding through the environment as well. from the half life 2 wiki page:

partially this is just due to half life being a good game in and of itself. however the thing that inferno and hlvr have in common is that they take these pre-existing conceptual settings and add the creators’ own meaning to them.

in inferno, dante descends into hell, but when he reaches the very bottom where satan is he finds out that he’s actually been going up the whole time. to be clear he is going down but then he & virgil reach the bottom and have to do a 180 and go back up, but “back up” is actually transcending hell and beginning the ascension to purgatory. essentially you’re actually at the very very bottom/furthest from god when you’re on earth’s surface and you have to go through hell to get to heaven blah blah blah. map linked here if you’d like to see a visual. the point is that this isn’t the typical view of ascension to heaven and therefore not what the reader is expecting; the structure of hell & the world that dante presents is altered to make an impact on the reader and tell the story. hlvr is similar in that it’s the pre-existing game (moreso for hlage, but i’d argue that hlvrai is still half life, just in a platform allowing for multiplayer goofs) but altered to tell a different story. the journey of hlvr is still that of the original game but the ending (benrey in xen, the gnome in the vault) emphasizes the importance of the altered world around the characters as much as the other changes that have been made from the original games.

this brings us to another important thing, namely the fact that hlvr are still games being played. there’s a concept we used when we read inferno in class like a year ago where we talked abt two different guys named dante: dante the poet, who physically wrote inferno and came up with the ideas in it and whatever, and dante the pilgrim, who is the character we experience the story as. dante-pilgrim brings all his biases and thoughts to what’s happening and, most importantly, is the actual guy going on the journey physically & spiritually, whereas dante-poet has already (spiritually) completed this journey. dante-poet didn’t go on the journey physically bc that’s not how the world works, but he is writing and portraying dante-pilgrim to be the character of himself (dante-poet) as he developed spiritually throughout time. essentially dante-poet is writing from the end of the story because he already knows what’s going to happen and how he ended up here, whereas dante-pilgrim is witnessing the story start to finish bc he is the vehicle through which it is told.

the same principle can be applied to wayne. wayne the streamer, who is physically playing the game and thanking donos and editing the videos post-stream, and wayne the player, who is the Character Of Wayne. like. in hlage, wayne-streamer did not literally get turned into a gnome, but wayne-player did bc wayne-player exists as one of the storytelling tools that wayne-streamer & rtvs are using to write the narrative. for hlvr, the division of waynes is partially for practical reasons (imo, writing/editing/publishing a poem is not the same as Doing It Live, e.g. dante probably didn’t have to deal with the limitations/issues of his medium at the exact same time as he was writing the poem (i am not a dante historian though so don’t quote me on this)) but it’s also for narrative reasons bc wayne-player is a consistent character throughout the hlvr series.

like. obviously the gnome refers to him as gordon in hlage to connect w/ hlvrai and whatnot, but wayne-player is also consistent in his reactions/intent/behavior. (also, i can’t concretely say this is a wayne-player effect, but the similarities between the “big bad” of each game so far is also interesting to me. both the gnome and benrey vaguely antagonize wayne-player and express a desire to go back/stay put/deter him from the journey despite his own wishes. other gnome/benrey similarities: acting sus as hell and wayne-player disregards it either through party opinion or his own. “you made me like this … i was innocent before i met you” (36:07 in the hlage finale) and “i was supposed to be nice but you forced me to be baaaad”. presumably this pattern will continue in hl2vrai) i believe that even if it has little-to-no effect on hl2vrai, the whole end sequence of hlage (particularly the vault & theater/woods scene but we’ll get to that later) is a canon thing that happened to wayne-player that will end up affecting at the very least the conclusion of the half life 2 streams.

in terms of characters within the story, another place i see similarities is the limitations they experience. you could argue the gnome and benrey similarities are due to similar limitations that they experience as members of the trio referenced in the peppa pig movie, but i wanna look at a more specific example. returning to inferno: there’s a scene in canto 21 where virgil essentially asks for directions bc the road is closed and his google maps isn’t working. unfortunately bc he’s in hell there are only demons and sinners around to ask, so he asks a demon who lies to him and they have a momentary diversion bc of it. note that virgil’s limitations aren’t a secret or anything— he’s only dante’s guide for inferno bc he represents human reason, and then ascending past there he gets a special divine guide and the point is that human reason has limitations that god doesn’t have blah blah blah— but this scene does stand out as a Thing. virgil doesn’t intentionally lead dante astray, nor does he realize the demon is lying, but it’s still a thing that happens bc he’s fallible.

in hlvrai, coomer realizes some aspects of what is happening (the setting is a game, he’s a computer construct, wayne-player is not a computer construct, benrey is an unintended feature in the game, etc) but whether bc he physically can’t or bc he’s preoccupied, he does not seem to piece things together fully and come to the conclusion that he’s in hlvrai. likewise, according to wayne, the blue gnome is right but his limitation is that he’s a freak. right before his demise the blue gnome tells wayne not to make a mistake he “can’t even begin to know and understand” in taking the red gnome. unfortunately he’s so consistently horny in such a unique and upsetting way that it has ruined his credibility for anything ever even if he managed to be not horny about it. i have more thoughts on blue gnome’s role but this post is already going to be so so long.

anyway you could claim this is just a thing in all stories bc characters have to be unaware of or unable to do certain things bc that’s how plot progresses, but i think there’s something special about characters being unable to do or see something even though it seems like they should.

the final bit of hlage is what made me sit down and actually start writing this whole thing out so let’s get into it. comparing canto 34 lines 22-24:

to gabe newman’s final commentary box in hlage, i can see a lot of similarities. i think the vagueness of both can be at least partially attributed to how writing works; sometimes the most effect technique is just to hint at something rather than describe it fully bc the audience will mentally fill in whatever fits best for them personally. however, a lot of gabe’s lines (references to the obsidian seal, the dread and the nightmares, “and that was the day he appeared”, “do NOT proceed any farther”, etc) read to me very much like appeals to pathos in the same way that lines 22-24 are. like it hurts gabe & dante to even just reference, let alone recall, what they’re talking about. tbh i just greatly enjoy this comparison idk how much meat there is to it but it’s a good writing decision imo

the trio in the peppa pig movie (man in blue, little man in red hat, and someone else (she/her)) corresponds to benrey, the gnome, and whatever we’ll see in hl2vrai (possibly alyx's shadow but who's to say). they don’t really exist solely within their respective games and have some sort of influence on the outside world (this being another setting of the player, essentially wayne-player’s world rather than wayne-streamer’s world) as seen w/ the gnome theater scene. in the vault the gnome states that it wasn’t wayne-player’s challenge and that he (the gnome) has won; the clear assumption here is that it was the gnome’s challenge. however, i think it’s worth considering that the challenge may not necessarily be the gnome’s either. the peppa pig movie claims it was made by gordon (which would correspond to wayne-player, but obviously it wasn't) and the gnome supports this, even saying that the theater is gordon’s “mind palace”.

so, the question arises: is there another gordon of some kind? i don’t think it would be that far-fetched to say that there is a character within the hlvr series that wayne-player has been taking the place of (whether purposefully, knowingly, maliciously, or not) and since original gordon doesn’t have a place within the games, perhaps he is assuming the metaphorical place of satan here; a sort of container for the peppa pig movie trio when they are not participating in their respective hlvr games.

anyway some other things that i thought were interesting but not enough to write whole paragraphs on:

the autobiographical aspects of inferno compared to hlage being a reflection of wayne’s experiences

dante-pilgrim’s swooning as a way of transitioning in location compared to going to sleep as a way of transitioning between acts

it would be cool to find a stage adaptation of inferno and compare it to hlvr bc the formats would be more similar

something something how contrapasso is applied in hlvr (particularly hlvrai)

the professor who taught the class i learned this shit in would be really really upset if he knew i was applying my analysis to half life funny

obligatory disclaimers and qualifiers: i’ve interpreted the half life funny streams extremely seriously despite the fact that the purpose of 90% of it is half life funny. i only watched the hlage commentary stream when it originally aired and i didn’t bother going back to rewatch it so if anything i say here is blatantly untrue sorry. for the sake of simplicity i’ve referred to the stream on the 16th as hl2vrai because it’s probably gonna be some variation on that even if that’s not the exact title. all inferno quotes were taken from the ciardi translation on archive.org

#hlvrai #hlage #radio tv solutions #wayneradiotv #rtvs #half life but the ai is self aware #half life alyx gnome edition #hl2vrai #half life vr ai #gordon feetman #post #i finish finals and immediately bust out the autism huh #anyway who's excited for the 16th? smile

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fights4users · 8 months

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The quorra problem | Programs, isos and the real world

Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with Quorra as a character! It’s more of a story element critique if anything, please read and don’t jump on me for the title. Quorra is adorable and I enjoy legacy- even if it doesn’t look like it from how I keep tearing it apart.

It’s a damned if you do damned if you don’t situation. On one hand you can’t leave her inside the grid when Flynn decides to literally go nuclear but you can’t leave her in the real world either. They have to because they wanted Flynn’s self sacrificing ending or wrote themselves into a corner (this isn’t about reintegration but I will still complain) and this was there way out. But they didn’t consider the implications of it at all.

Cosmic horror-

I’ve made several posts about it and still want to write something with this idea but to a program— the real world wouldn’t be so miraculous like how we see theirs. The minute you’re outside you’re Imediately bombarded with sensory overload and just too much information to process. The grid, which is much more human in its design than the ENCOM system, is still infinitely more minimalist than our world. One of the best scenes is Clu and his team raiding the hideout and not knowing what a single thing is and freaking out, she seems too well adjusted for someone who’s spent a few hours max here— look I know it’s the end of a movie and they can’t do that whole arc, but I digress.

Also don’t get me started on the rumored Ares plot and how they totally forgot quorra is already a program(technically iso) in our world- also it’s not really a “tron” movie plot— where’s the allegory?! The metaphor?! The symbolism?!

Another thing is that…Sam can’t tell anyone about her. Maybe Alan but her mere existence in our world is brain shattering. Trying to explain a advanced humanoid being that’s not here to harm us and is totally cool guys almost never goes well. It also leaves people a LOT to grapple with…like everything we know being forever altered.

This whole situation should be terrifying from both perspectives, however I love the theory that the only reason she was able to get out into the real world at all was because of Flynn’s data stored in the beam. That’s a great thought that almost makes me like her being in the real world just from how much impact that is.

Infectious-

What happens now? She can’t be revealed to the world (yet) and to put her back in the remains of the grid would be cruel. Putting her in another system would be wildly irresponsible because- do we even know what ISOs do? Across all media its “they’re special” but absolutely squat on their actual function or what they’re capable of. We see they have some kind of digital dna that’s literally a miraculous occurrence but that’s about it. Did Flynn even know? Are they just there- existing but not effecting/having a real world computer impact? Or worse - what if clu was right and they did contribute to the crumbling state of the grid? (I think it was a combination of his own fear and scapegoating—I’m just tossing the idea out there).

Sam transferring her over to another system without knowing what she does or how she could effect it would be disastrous. Am I saying she’s dangerous or would have any intent to harm? No not at all that’s now who she is, but it’s sort of a “releasing a domestic cat into the woods a state over” you don’t do that.

Does she get a regular job now, does Sam hire her at ENCOM? She’d likely be some sort of computer smart…in that she come from one. Or does he like —- set her up at a McDonald’s? How’s she get energy does she get plugged in- being in the real world isn’t going to magically give her a stomach. Sam just takes her to a power grid and she causes SoCal to blackout lmao.

Open portal-

I’m aware most of this post is just me overthinking the implications of everything they didn’t intend us to think to hard about. It’s supposed to be “yippee they’re safe” and I’m worried about digital ecosystems and what the human brain can handle. I think my problem mainly strives from this trope where the character brings home their friend from the other world/ is the reverse situation and no one bats an eye at all. It’s because they want the characters to still be friends no matter how many rules it breaks or sense it makes. It happens most commonly in cartoons. (There’s at least 3 in recent memory)

I’m not saying I want quorra to have been caught in the blast but that there’s a way they could’ve kept communication without world breaking. Open portal situation where he goes back to visit, he chats with her on the screen, both stay in their own worlds its sad but logical etc (I’m not writing a new ending but you get the point).

I guess it annoys me so much because it’s left so open ended, ride off into the sunrise while ignoring the implications™️. “I guess, We’re going to change the world” ok how 🧍‍♂️. The movie did not nearly give me enough information about ISO’s to see what changes they exactly do besides taking over ENCOM. “They[Iso’s] changed everything” ok how🧍‍♂️. Yeah it’s immaculate conception but what do they do I am shaking your shoulders Disney what do they do!

It’s not quorra I’m mad about or even the concept of ISO’s but it’s how the writing just falls short in these HUGE areas that require a lot of lore and information to be given that they just do not. And consistently don’t In the other media forms like betrayal (I haven’t seen uprising maybe they explain something). If you’re going to have beings that shatter your ideas of reality you sort of have to explain that!

#my old man yells at cloud moment #quorra McDonald’s au when?#tron #tronblr #tron legacy #tron lore #quorra tron #Sam Flynn #quorra #isos #programs tron #incomplete world building #critique #otherworld trope

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ven10 · 4 months

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hello :D! i'm curious that with the quagmires being your favorite characters, do you have headcanons for them, pre and/or post canon?

Hiya! :) I have SO MANY hcs about them so thanks for asking!!!! :D

Pre-canon relationship dynamic:

Quigley was closer to Isadora than to Duncan before the fire although he still was really close to Duncan too. I mainly think this bc in ‘The Slippery Slope’ Quigley mentioned Isadora on her own a few times, even quoting a couplet she wrote, whereas he only mentioned Duncan when talking about both of his siblings.

In order of most to least mischievous growing up I feel like it’d go Quigley, then Isadora and lastly Duncan.

Games/How the triplets would play when they were young:

Duncan: Would grab any random object of *aproximately* the right size (could be one of his mother’s shoes or it could be a spatula) and pretend it was a microphone. He’d follow people around “reporting” (more so narrating,really) what they were doing. This would REALLY annoy Isadora bc the worst thing when having writer’s block would be to have someone right beside you describing how you “stare blankly at a page in anguish. No inspiration detected for at least another treacherous week”.

Quigley: Strikes me as the kind of guy to climb trees, regardless of age tbh. He just has the vibe.

He would build forts at EVERY opportunity. Duncan once challenged him to build one in every room of the mansion and he almost did, with the exception of his parents’ office which was always locked.

He’d also draw loads. His drawing of a cave in TSS was described as an “elegant rendering” so I imagine he started doing art young. He’d get too passionate with a box of crayons and end up snapping most of them though. For his sixth birthday he’s gifted one of those pencils with multiple colours in the led and somehow angles it so that all the purple is used up first.

Isadora: She’d write plays for her+her siblings to perform for their parents+their parents’ friends that had surprisingly dark plot lines, especially for a 7 year old. Oh, and all the lines would rhyme, of course. She’d get annoyed when people read the script and asked if it was all one long song rather that the masterpiece of poetry she intended it to be perceived as.

Quigley would really enjoy acting in her plays+pour his heart and soul into the performance. Duncan would get really excited about it and do great when practicing with just the three of them but when it came to the actual performance he’d get shy+back out meaning Quigley or Isadora have to fill in for his role.

🎃 Halloween:

For Halloween one year, Isadora thought it’d be an amazing idea to dress up as Evelyn the conjoined twin bc she loved the song ‘Evelyn Evelyn’ based on her but Quigley found their story too depressing and Duncan didn’t like that it meant one of the triplets would get left out. Quigley suggests ‘Alvin and the chipmunks’ as a group costume earning instant “no”s from his siblings. They end up dressing in individual costumes based off historical figures (A poet, an investigative journalist and an explorer) but create their own story involving time-travel that connects the 3 characters.

Isadora loves Halloween as she is a goth(headcannon) so it really goes with her vibe. Quigley takes information about monsters/spooky creatures like vampires or werewolves and uses it to decide on which part of the world would be best for them to inhabit. Duncan then uses Quigley’s theories to research newspaper articles from the area, searching for any sign of the creatures.

Style/Fashion sense 🌟🧥

Duncan 📰:

Comfy green jumpers/sweaters or sweater-vests, white short-sleeved dress shirts and dress trousers/pants. (Pre-canon)

Comfy green polo-neck jumpers and (usually brown) corduroy pants/trousers and either dark green or white high top shoes. (Post-canon) Occasionally wears neatly applied eyeliner. The slight change in style is bc Duncan doesn’t want to wear clothes that feel so similar to a school uniform after spending so much time with those as his only clothes at Prufrock. He’ll occasionally wear hoodies but not if he’s to be seen in public.

Owns a few T-shirts with Dorothy Parker quotes which he cherishes and wears daily, even if they can’t be seen under the jumper/sweater. One quote he’d have is: “The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue”

Isadora+Quigley once bought him a quirky reporter’s hat with a feather in it as a joke but Duncan ended up adoring it; convincing himself it gave him an extra boost of inspiration when writing articles. 🪶

Has a Polaroid camera looped round his neck 📸

Quigley 🗺:

Initially, he struck me as a rucksack guy but I was reading over TSS yesterday and discovered he canonically uses a totebag, “I was putting an atlas in a totebag I found”-Quigley Quagmire (‘The Slippery Slope’ Chapter 8, page 148) so technically that’s a canon not a headcanon but oh well 🙃

Wears clothes more so for practicality than for style, although if he has a choice he’ll get things in dark purple.

He’d wear cargo pants bc of all the pockets; this would inspire Isadora to write a poem titled ‘Two and a half’ about a scientist who was trying to clone someone twice but messed up, resulting in one of the copies (Quigley) having no legs.

He would also wear a jacket with tonnes of pockets bc it’s practical for the explorer’s life he leads plus it looks cool. Although, it looks a little less cool when he stitches on a hood with fabric that doesn’t even match.

He drew maps on a couple of T-shirts and wears those, unfortunately he has to redraw them every time they get washed.

Wears exclusively boots bc of their grip+durability, one boot would have purple laces and the boot on the other foot would have black laces bc the original lace got stuck in a thorn bush so he stole borrowed one of Isadora’s.

As for accessories; a compass on string looped round his neck, clips shoved in at random to keep hair from falling in his face as he climbs, a hat/beanie with pins on it

Also: Frayed fingerless gloves!!! I saw this in one of Quill’s art pieces of Quigley and like the idea immensely ( @lemonysnicket ) :))

Always has the most RANDOM items in his pockets; will reach in looking for a packet of gum and come out with binoculars.

Isadora 📜:

Goth.Goth.Emo.Goth.

Wears almost exclusively black: Black boots or high top converse (with doodles on the white toe bit in sharpie),

Wore black nail polish pre-canon. At Prufrock she improvises using black markers+pens on her nails. She once tried the same trick for mimicking eyeliner…it did not turn out well and Duncan brings it up at the WORST times.

Wears winged black eyeliner, smudged under the eyes.

Likes long swishy skirts (midi skirts). They’re sometimes a bit impractical but if she’s just spending the day writing poetry it’s fine. Otherwise she likes cuffed shorts with leggings underneath.

Violet once bought fishnet gloves bc she liked how they looked but gave them to Isa after they kept getting caught in her inventions. Isadora loves them even more bc they’re from Violet.

Has a really cool leather jacket but doesn’t wear it much bc she secretly worries that she isn’t cool enough for the jacket.

Has a T-shirt with all of Sappho’s poems printed out really small and arranged into a picture of Sappho herself. Quigley owns a similar one but his contains the bee-movie script.

Cooking abilities ranked🍳:

1: Quigley 🗺- he’s the best bc he had to cook for himself while “dead”. Granted, he did just eat canned peaches, toasted marshmallows, almonds and carrots but he had to find his own food anyway so that’s a start.

2: Isadora 📜- Her meals at Prufrock were cooked for her but it’s possible she had to cook for Duncan and herself at previous guardians. This task would fall on her as Duncan used to be afraid of stoves for a while after the fire

‘ “For a long time,” Duncan admitted, “I was afraid of any kind of fire. I didn’t even like to look at stoves.”’ -The Austere Academy, Chapter 3, page 47.

3: Duncan 📰- For the reason above and also bc he seems like the kind of guy who would mess up simple dishes by trying to apply extra information, “I read in a news article once about a famous chef who’d put mozzarella in porridge for extra flavour, let’s try that!” (Made-up quote)

Choice of stationary 🖊

Isadora: Fountain pen ✒️ bc it makes her poetry look fancy

Duncan: Biro bc it doesn’t smudge easily and he needs to writes down a lot of info quickly for his journalism 🖊

Quigley: Coloured biros bc they make maps easily decipherable+they don’t smudge easily which is useful for accuracy

In a modern AU Quigley has a 6 hour screen time average and it is ENTIRELY Google maps. Duncan listens to podcasts. Isadora’s Pinterest is made up completely of quotes.

Books/Literature 📚:

Apart from atlases, Quigley reads fantasy books with maps. He would adore books in the Grishaverse bc of this, especially obsessing over the canal system of Ketterdam which can be seen in detail in a map in ‘Crooked Kingdom’ by Leigh Bardugo. 📚 🧙‍♀️ However, with the Grisha triology (Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm + Ruin and Rising) he would be disappointed by how little the cartographer/ex-cartographer protagonist mentions maps.

Duncan would enjoy the ‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’ series due to the strategic, organised layout alongside Pip-the protagonist- ‘s note-taking skills. As Duncan aspires to be an investigative journalist he’d be enthralled by the investigations that are central in these books. He would annotate the books as he reads them; filling them with his own theories as well as highlighting important information.

The poem ‘Long Distance II’ by Tony Harrison doesn’t consist of rhyming couplets but I think Isadora would find its portrayal of grief powerful regardless of whether it’s in her preferred poetic format. Especially as it’s about the loss of family members.

Quigley would create his own fantasy map using tea-stained paper with rice spilled on it, drawing around the rice to get the outline of a country. He’d be really strategic about the details he draws though; having mountains before rivers so the water runs off of them etc. 🗺

Favourite Colours 🎨:

Isadora: Pitch black 🖤

Duncan: Dark green 💚

Quigley: Dark purple💜

(Bc of their notebooks 📓)

Thanks for the ask!! :) <3

I wasn’t sure what to include so I wrote quite a bit, this was me restraining myself tho. I think about the Quagmire triplets a LOT :). This is only the tip of the iceberg ;)! :) I also have kind of detailed hcs about injuries the triplets would have after the eagle fight if u want to hear about that.

Please send more asks if you like! You can be as specific as you like, especially if it’s about the Quagmires! :D

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blurryfce300 · 2 months

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i had several thoughts while driving so here those are:

blurryface and ned’s connection

this started with me noticing a weird pattern in my blurry glasses (official merch btw) and it reminded me of another character, ned. it looks like green and purple waves or almøst glitchy? anyways it reminded me of what we saw ned’s vision look like in chlorine.

(legitimately the only place i could see the pattern was in a bathroom stall i have no idea why)

ned’s vision is blurred arøund the edges, which isn’t all that interesting but what is intriguing is how ned’s vision has a chromatic abberation filter on it (its kinda glitchy.) blurry’s glasses even løøk like ned’s eyes, or i guess ned’s eyes look like blurry’s glasses, with the white rim and huge black circular lenses.

visual similarities aside, ned and blurry have deeper ties to one anøther. firstly, what they were born out øf.

blurryface is a being created as a physical manifestation of things such as depression, anxiety, self-døubt, negativity, and møst importantly to this discussion, insecurities. the areas øf blurry that are painted black have meaning, and his hands specifically are representative of the insecurity related to things that tyler creates. ned on the øther hand is a being made to represent creativity and the ups and downs of the creative process. ned stands for neuro expansion device, too.

blurry and ned are created from the same things, but from opposite ends of the spectrum when it cømes to those things.

lore-wise, they’ve got søme connections tøø. there are nine bishops and nine neds. we’ve seen 8 of them, with keons holding the antlers of the ninth one. with keons’ death, there are 8 bishops too. however, with the disappearance of the ned who gave tyler his antlers in the outside, there’s once again øne fewer ned than bishøp. but initially, there were an even amount øf neds and bishops.

bøth blurry and ned have somewhat similar writing/typing styles, with blurry’s all caps and weird spacing and ned’s all caps writing and incorrect spelling/missing letters.

they were also introduced in similar ways. we met one first (one singular blurryface entity in his era and one ned in chlorine) and then were introduced to eight more in the following era (the nine bishops in trench and the øther eight neds in the outside.)

———————————————————————————

this is where i get into more theory-ish territory. we never see blurry use antlers to control anyone. now maybe they just hadn’t created ned or laid out the specifics of psychokinesis at that point, or maybe blurry døesn’t need the antlers to use psychokinesis. maybe that’s just sømething he can do naturally without any help. the bishops need the antlers. they cannot use psychokinesis on their own.

given the connections blurry and ned have, is it possible that they came from the same place? or that they were once part of the same being? when trench was created, and when blurry was put into that world and split, was he split even further than i had previously thought? was he not just split into nine bishops who hold the title of blurryface and represent the same things he døes, but also split to create nine neds?

or were the neds created as a respønse to blurry’s split into the bishops, taking some of his abilities (namely his ability to use psychokinesis without antlers) and giving them to a new type øf entity to keep the power out of their hands? this clearly didn’t wørk as intended, and wøuld that be yet anøther instance of a bishop or the bishops as a whole trying to regain sømething they lost from when they were blurryface?

(the first instance being nico calling himself blurryface i made a whole post about that already so tldr nico wants to høld øntø the past by using the name blurryface because thats what his song, stressed øut, is abøut)

#blurry thoughts #blurryface.txt

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nine-of-diamonds · 4 months

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A List of References in Keep Your Enemies Close (Wait, Not That Close)

Since it’s somehow been a year since I posted KYEC (to the warmest reception I’ve ever gotten from a fic!! Seriously y’all are the best—I can’t believe I’m still getting comments a year after publication), I compiled a complete (as far as I can remember, at least) list of all of the references (with a few explanations about my writing choices) within the fic for funsies (and also bc I put Way Too Much effort into melding all of these elements together and wanted a full list of all the things I put together that were not intended to be put together lmao)

Oh, and if it wasn’t obvious… spoilers for the fic lol — if you haven't read it but are interested in what the heck I'm talking about, it's here on ao3!

(I’m just calling every segment separated by a line break a scene even though some of them aren’t reallyyy an actual scene for the sake of clarity)

Scene 1:

One line in and I’ve already name-dropped the Watchers: not much to say about them at this point since it’s pretty much the usual “godly beings that resemble indigo biblically-accurate angels that watch people.” All I really added here was the threads of Fate mention that’ll become relevant later

Scene 3:

Grian-proof vault: this one’s a double reference! The obvious one is from Season 9 (Grian’s ep 10) where Mumbo challenges Grian to get into his vault without breaking blocks and it turns out to be a decoy vault, but the second one is from Season 6 (Grian ep 100), where Grian, Bdubs, and Iskall (as the Dragon Bros) break into Mumbo’s vault to induct him into the cult club by guessing the code to be 1-2-3-4 (the “I didn’t plan for someone to come in and start jamming codes in” and KYEC!Grian’s response, “It was the second thing I tried” are reworded from their follow-up convo about it in the next episode)

KYEC!Grian’s stolen diamonds: okay I’m pretty sure this Season 6 arc started in Grian’s ep 73, where he mentions for the first time that his diamonds have “mysteriously gone missing” — KYEC!Grian’s got the same problem, only most of his diamonds are accidentally stolen and are causing more problems than economic deficits lol → we’ll get to the completion of this arc wayyy later, but this was the very first plot point to fall into place for this fic

Detective Grian: going even farther back into Season 6, we have the Sherlock Grian arc (begins in Grian’s ep 56) — once again, we’ll get back to this one

Fun fact: the moment where KYEC!Grian’s “skin prickled with the distinct sensation that someone was watching, waiting for him to do something” was meant to be foreshadowing that would become obvious at the end bc I originally planned to have KYEC!Grian’s time traveling be onscreen — that scene was meant to show Future Grian traveling to the past to steal his diamonds, but getting the timing slightly off so he was still in the apartment when this convo takes place, and is therefore the mysterious watcher mentioned here; I didn’t end up writing out that scene, though so now it just looks like another surface level Watcher reference

Scene 4:

KYEC!Grian’s powers: the wings don’t require explanation but here’s my rationale for the “perspective-shifting” (which, lemme tell you was cool in theory but SO annoying to figure out what to call/describe) → it’s basically just being able to go into F5 mode (the range limit for him is basically that he can move what I’ll call his mental camera to any point provided that at all times, his body is visible to the mental camera from some angle, i.e. he can’t see into the next room if there are no doors/windows but he can see around corners and objects); this power’s another Watcher parallel but also a contrast to Scar’s in that it’s good for revealing “the truth” while Scar’s power is deceptive in nature

Scene 5:

Hotguy!: fun fact, I actually started writing this fic before I knew about Scar’s Hotguy persona (I was grievously behind on Season 9 when I started this fic in mid 2022) so KYEC!Scar’s original hero name was Goodfellow and he used a staff, not a bow — but obviously, I swapped it to fit the Hotguy we all know and love (and for the sake of keeping track of episode references, I’m naming Scar’s Season 9 ep 5 as the first Hotguy mention in canon, don’t @ me if I’m wrong lol)

KYEC!Scar’s powers: alright, here’s a lil secret, there’s actually smth going on with his bow that never gets brought up in this fic and that I will be keeping secret bc I may or may have smth in the works. I can, however, talk about his illusions! While KYEC!Grian’s power lets him change how he sees things, KYEC!Scar’s lets him change what other people see. The illusions are also a nod at Scar’s terraforming + building skills since he can create intricate landscapes

Xelqua (as KYEC!Grian’s villain name): other ideas for KYEC!Grian’s villain name included Poultry Man + Watcher but I settled on Xelqua since it’s commonly associated with Watcher!Grian but feels more like a name than just plain Watcher, and then afterwards, I developed the actual Xelqua lore

Xelqua (the lore one): obviously we have the nod at our tried and tested fanon “he was only meant to watch” but the mention of him “engineer[ing] countless games… with gods and men alike” is a blink and you’ll miss it Life series reference (I suppose it could also be a reference any of Grian’s other minigames but the Life series was what I had in mind lol) → also, the whole “Ultimately, the Watchers located Xelqua after he succumbed to his nature and began stirring up trouble again” bit of lore was just me riffing off that fable about the frog and the scorpion, which traumatized me as a kid and therefore lives in my brain rent-free

Scene 6:

Harmless pranks: rapidfire references, let’s go! “a bit of ‘misplaced copper’” = Mumbo’s copper “lagging” into Grian’s inventory (Grian Season 8 ep 13), “a few disappearing doors” = Grian being a chronic door thief (...pretty much all of Season 7), “a few chests filled with eggs” = Grian + his quest to clog up his messaging system with Mumbo (Grian Season 6 ep 22 + many, many more instances)

Scene 7:

Roofed forest: very, very random but I did write this scene with Scar’s first Third Life episode in the background and was imagining the roofed forest he and Grian decimated as the scene he projects here

Also, I need you to know this fight scene was fully rewritten at least four times ;-;

Scene 9:

Mumbo unlocking Grian’s handcuffs: this wasn’t a reference when I wrote the fic but now it’s a reference to the Mumbo side fic I wrote for this au that writes out this scene

Scene 11:

KYEC!Grian’s comment: “I was broke and in need of a flatmate so he could’ve been an arsonist for all I cared, as long as he didn’t touch my stuff” → can I just cite all of the Life series here

Okay, I SWEAR the line, “You watch, Mumbo, I’ll be so subtle that you’ll forget I’m a supervillain” was based on an actual Grian line (or several) that start the same way but I can’t remember where it’s from

Scene 13:

More stolen diamonds: here’s the unofficial start of the Jangler plot lol — the moment this fic’s foundation really “clicked” for me was when I noticed mysterious diamond thievery appeared in both the time travel arc and the Jangler arc, and I was like “I can work with that”

Jellie: I want you to know the staging of this scene was specifically so I could have a reversal of the “villain stroking a cat while scheming” trope where Scar is a) wanting to do a good deed not a villainous one and b) basically getting a plan fed to him

Scene 14:

Okay pretty much this scene’s basically the transcribed version of a scene from Grian’s Season 6 ep 56 lmao but ig I’ll just talk more about how I thought to include the Jangler plot in the first place; originally, the premise of this fic was adapted from an abandoned non-MCYT fic draft I had floating around in my WIP folder, where the two characters were university dormmates who were unknowingly also vigilante partners + there was a whole Miraculous Ladybug style love square going on (on second thought, I was basically just making MLB with vigilantes lmao). When I got the idea to adapt it to a Desert Duo-centric superhero trying to catch supervillain fic, I wanted to make it platonic since most of the superhero aus I’ve read for the pair are romantic and I wanted to do smth different — the problem was that getting rid of the romance also got rid of a lot of the tension between the characters, so I needed smth to replace it — hence the detective/Jangler dynamic being included to make sure both characters were actively hiding a secret from the other at all times

Scene 16:

This is probably a little obvious on second read but I did leave a comment to myself on one of my draft docs pointing out that KYEC!Scar decided to continue going out as the Jangler (even though he’d already technically fulfilled the returning diamonds thing he’d invented the persona for) because he overheard Grian talking about how he’d prefer to have more to work on + would get money from it

Scene 18:

Attempted murder: back on the Season 6 reference train we go! This is from Grian’s ep 12 where he pranks an AFK Jevin by putting him on a flying machine and the game glitches and sends Jevin falling to his death

Scene 20:

The foreshadowing here is very obvious but this scene was a last minute addition I did not plan to include but was compelled to write bc I needed something to lighten the mood a bit since it was getting too serious and also bc I wanted to include the “sweet job” pun. Yes, I know it’s terrible. Yes, I laugh at it every time.

Scene 21 + 22:

Cookie trail: here’s another “mostly transcribed” scene from Grian’s Season 6 ep 57 — I ran into a little problem logistically since flying isn’t the norm in this world but is in Hermitcraft, so I had to shove in the whole “flying machine to reach the top of the cookie” thing lmao

KYEC!Stress: she does not make an appearance but I gave her ice powers bc of her ice castle base in Season 6

Scene 24:

This entire scene is just Desert Duo dancing around each other trying to keep their secret identities secret but KYEC!Scar’s comment, “I always forget what information’s public” is a bit of irony that made me laugh while writing bc it comes straight after he accidentally reveals he knows where the cookie was

Scene 25–28:

Hitman after KYEC!Grian: yep this goes back to Grian’s Season 6 ep 14 where Jevin puts out a hit on Grian after the AFK prank that Iskall tries to carry out

Grian’s trap: this is obviously just the trap for Iskall that Grian makes to stop him but I would like you to know that I went back to the episode to count the number of pistons used to make sure it lined up lmao

Scene 28 is also basically just a very dramatic version of the chase scene in this episode with some Watcher paranoia for spice

Scene 30–31:

Time machine: time to circle all the way back around to this plot lol — I didn’t think it made sense for KYEC!Grian to build a time machine himself during all of this but he still gets access to one in the end thanks to Mumbo. Grian’s Season 6 ep 79 has him go back in time to stop his diamonds from being stolen, only to realize he’s the one who stole them in the first place, and I thought it was a fitting way to end the fic after all the diamond stealing shenanigans

And hey, that's it! That list totally didn't take me like two hours to write up and find the episodes for! No wonder I had to restructure this fic like seven times when writing it!

Anyway, if you read this far, thanks for indulging my madness :) And to anyone who's engaged with any of my fics, thank you thank you thank you for every hit, kudos, comment, and bookmark!

#fanfic writing #ao3 #KYEC #hermitcraft fic #wow this list is longer than anticipated #okay then #i had to dig through all my notes and draft docs for this #it was an experience

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queerxqueen · 2 years

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I don't understand why the wrote Will being in love with Mike. I genuinely don't get it.

I'm going to bulk post a bunch of asks I have right now, all from presumably different anons, to illustrate the outrage:

stranger things s4v2 spat in my face and called me a queer that doesn't deserve love and a happy ending :/

I don't know why we thought the Duffers would write something good with Will when they didn't have anything to do with Robin and her coming out scene. I'm sorry I put faith in them. They're hopeless.

Wait until all the interviews start coming up, they will say that we, of course, misinterpreted everything and that they didn't intend on going that way at all. All while patting themselves on the back for that they think is an amazing story.

The fact that Mike was only able to give his speech to El at all was only because of Will... It's tragically hilarious and heartbreaking. If I shipped M*leven I would be upset that a third party character had to come in to push them along in the first place. Awful writing from the Duffers.

How dis the duffers think that what they wrote in vol. 2 meant Will’s sexuality was addressed??????

I mean — what did we expect from straight white men?

Why didn’t they just give Will someone else to like? Why did it have to be Mike? Even no one at all — it wasn’t necessary for his sexuality! This is a mess

Wow . Really fucking disappointed. They literally ruined mikes character, bye . He was my secon favorite now he is just like ….. idk my 7th favorite

Not only did Byler lose, Will stans in general lost because he STILL never came out as gay

Stranger Things is the Eleven show. Other characters can suffer as long as Eleven gets the center of attention. Only Eleven deserves happiness. Fuck other people's character development as long as El gets all the screen time and the hero worship. Other people can die and cry as long as Mileven gets to be the end game.

You know, I’m absolutely speechless about this. This makes me think they may kill off Will in the last season cause you know, why not kill of the gay boy. I couldn’t even enjoy the rest of it because of these scenes. What was the point of this???

yeah I'm just gonna leave the Byler tag and purge my follows list. I was excited for vol 2 but having been on the queerbait train before I'm gonna get off here thanks to you though for making the hiatus fun! I loved all your posts and theories!

this isn't even all of them

#byler #st spoilers #stranger things #stranger things 4 #antimileven #anon

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arinaco · 1 year

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Romelle: her story in the past and in the present. Part II

Translated and edited by @ Nadezhda932

Link to the part I.

IV. Heroine of the New Age

Before proceeding to the analysis of the biography and personality of Romelle today, I’ll clarify one point. Subsequent assumptions have emerged based on data from the VLD. They already existed when I started researching the plot of GoLion and DOTU, and before writing this article, I had never watched the old series.

That is, the plot of the old series served for me as additional(!) proof of the correctness of my theory, but wasn’t the reason why I came to such conclusions.

Where do we start? With Lotor, of course - Romelle is tightly attached to him in the plot, and when the writers decided to turn his personality inside out, she followed him.

If you compare VLD with the old series, you can see that Lotor hasn’t only changed as a character - he has become a completely different person. Neither Sincline nor his dimwitted counterpart had ever looked like scheming or tempting snakes. Yes, Sincline clearly could and knew how to make cunning plans, but nothing more. He didn’t possess the gift of oratory, and didn’t feel any need to have it. Sincline supported his father until he blamed him for the defeat of the Galra Empire, beat his own subordinates, and killed and raped the victims without a shred of remorse.

In GoLion in particular, Sincline never set up colonies to deceive the civilian population. Why invent something if you can openly let slaves in experiments? Sincline had no reason to do something secretly from his father, and even more so to take care of his moral character, and therefore he calmly used the resources of the empire.

That is, “Lotor creating colonies” is, to some extent, an invention of VLD. And if you’ve read my previous articles, then you know that in my opinion, the second colony was the home of Luca and Merla, not the first. And that the first colony, where the millions of Alteans declared by Lotor live, never appeared on screen.

If you think about it, Romelle's story looks like complete absurdity. Even in the initial episodes of the first season, it was explained to us that virtual reality technology only imitates form without content - people can see objects, touch them, but nothing more. Coran pulled Allura out of her half-sleep when he pointed out the lack of smell in the flower. And if it had occurred to Allura to chew this flower, then, most likely, she wouldn’t have felt any taste.

This technology was intended to create scenery and couldn’t fully replace the real planet in conditions where people literally lived next to the forest and (most importantly) were engaged in farming. Just think about it: according to Romelle, for ten thousand years the Alteans have been planting illusory potatoes in illusory soil not noticing any trick. They didn’t notice that the flowers don’t smell, the berries have no taste, and the forest rests against the wall.

Only a very emotional and impulsive person could believe in the stupidity of the poor, unfortunate Alteans, who for a hundred centuries haven’t been able to distinguish real nature from the local analogue of Stardew Valley.

For example, such as the red paladin. Keith... or Allura.

What about Krolia? Krolia had no idea how this technology worked, she had never come across it...

So neither the Romelle’s base nor the pod space base were real colonies. We can only guess about their true purpose. The space base looks like a stand-alone laboratory/medical unit, but the Romelle’s dwelling is more like a staging post - hastily built according to the standard Galran template and abandoned long ago by the Alteans as unnecessary.

But where’s the truth buried here, Holmes?

The idea that the planet of Luca and Merla isn’t the first colony occurred to me when I began to correlate Lotor's words about millions with what we’re shown. Honerva apparently landed at the point where she could attract the most attention, but she came out to meet almost no one. Moreover, water meadows with low houses stretched around, obviously not designed for a large population. This place couldn’t be the capital of a multi-million advanced race. For ten thousand years, the Alteans had to not only multiply, but also build normal modern buildings for their own comfort.

But if we assume that this place is a secret second colony, then it’s easy to conclude that all the important buildings were simply hidden for security purposes, leaving a few insignificant and inconspicuous houses on the surface. So insignificant and imperceptible that when the BoM arrived at the coordinates of Keith, they didn’t notice any signs of life on the neighboring green planet.

Lotor has always been a paranoid and overcautious person, and he must have put a lot of effort into keeping his hidden colony a secret. So he would never leave the pod base undisguised and protected if he wanted to hide it from the Alteans.

What’s also interesting is the presence in the colony of a huge number of well-trained specialists.

Alteans of Honerva:

managed to create white mechas;

Which means, at the very least, smelters to work with heavy-duty materials and skilled workers who know how to organize the production process. While the Earthlings spent several years perfecting four fighters, the isolated farmers showed unexpectedly deep knowledge in the field of metallurgy.

What wonderful building elevators are there in the background. Is there a second floor? Or is this smelter located underground?

What's more, the white mechas had a striking resemblance to Sincline mecha, suggesting they were designed by the same people. More specifically, Alteans.

And it turns out that in addition to professional metallurgical engineers, they also had design engineers who were versed in modern technologies.

professionally used these mechas in battles;

The white mechas weren’t animated creatures like the Lions and didn’t help their pilots with training, but the Alteans fought well, competing with the Voltron team. The preparation of such personnel requires many years of practice under the supervision of good trainers - but Honerva couldn’t provide anything of that. She flew in alone and had no idea how to pilot combat vehicles. That’s why her personal mecha was equipped with teludav, and as we remember from Allura's ordeals, the control of combat and conventional spaceships was significantly different.

From which it follows that Romelle's statement that the Alteans can’t pilot spaceships smacks of brazen lies. The colony maintained and trained its own small army.

What conclusions can we draw from this?

Lotor built a second colony because he knew that Zarkon's appetites were insatiable, and sooner or later the Galra empire would reach the Quantum Abyss. There lived not just abstract Alteans, but qualified pilots, scientists and engineers. Lotor conducted research in the field of quintessence, designed war machines, and generally increased the combat potential of the Altean people.

“Just remember, we suffer this isolation so the next generation may not have to”.

In particular, Lotor tried to build his own Voltron, as he understood that this was the only weapon capable of fully resisting the Ghalra armadas, and in particular the monsters of his mother.

And here, to complete the picture, I turn to the plot of GoLion.

To the sister planets: Altea and Hercules.

Altea is an unfortunate planet. When Golion was defeated, Altea didn’t have enough combat power left to protect itself from enemy attack, and the population had to hide undeground for many years until the Lions again found pilots for themselves. Apparently, the inhabitants of Altea relied too much on the power of Golion, and therefore didn’t develop their army.

What about Hercules?

Hercules was a former colony of Altea and was considered a militarized and very dangerous state. Even Daibazaal (aka Zarkon) recognized the power of the Heraclians and therefore didn’t try to attack them in the same way as Altea.

Only the beasts of Honerva were considered by the Heraclians to be serious opponents.

Also distinctive features of the Heraclians:

martial arts as an inseparable part of culture;

selfless service to their people and royalty;

fearlessness in the face of death;

And… it actually looks a lot like the Altean VLD civilization.

Yes, Allura said that the Alteans are a peaceful people, but in fact we see that they, just like the Galra, used edged weapons in the space age, and the standard education of the princess included martial arts. Why was the princess staying in the palace was taught to handle edged weapons? Because it was part of their culture.

In addition, the VLD Alteans had a cult of selflessness, and testing for loyalty to this cult was a major part of the trials on Oriande. Willingness to give up personal benefits for the sake of a higher goal. And this is also similar to the behavior of the Heraclians.

As a result, if outwardly the Alteans of the VLD really looked like the inhabitants of peaceful Arus/Altea, then inside they looked like people from Hercules, ready to attack armed Galra with sticks so that their princess could escape.

And this is a very interesting approach of the scriptwriters, if we remember that the Alteans and Heraclians are one and the same people, they just went in different ways of development.

Alteans in VLD are like a tiger raised at home. It’s sweet and kind ... while well-fed and no one offends it.

In addition, when Voltron fell into a trap, the Heraclians themselves made the decision to take over the defense of Altea. Hercules came to the defense of its sister planet, and really saved it when developed a weapon in time that could change the flight path of a dangerous planetoid.

And this already looks like a prototype of the relationship between the second and the first colony. The second colony existed to protect the first.

By the way, do you remember why the Heraclians decided to cooperate with the Galra? To build their counterpart to Golion, which they were going to use not only against Altea, but also against the Galra themselves.

Moreover, if we compare Samson and Sincline...

Don't feel it yet? What if we compare them like this?

You know, Sincline was the first mecha which main weapon was dual blades. Voltron learned it only at the very end of the series in order to defend himself against Luca's attacks.

And for some reason, I think that it wasn’t just that Sincline was painted in the colors of Samson - in a gray color of a bluish tint. And even red inserts, with due imagination, can be considered a reference to the hair of the elder prince of Hercules.

Why did I describe all this? In order to clarify the conditions in which Romelle was born and lived.

Romelle didn't quite lie - she was born and raised in a colony with her brother. Only not in the first colony, but in the second. For her, the second colony was the only homeland, as the planet Hercules was the only homeland for Princess Amue.

Where everyone worked for a common cause under the leadership of Lotor, to create weapons together to protect the Altean civilization. The colony was founded not just by settlers, but by people who came to live there for a specific purpose, and their children were growing up in this reality and with varying degrees of enthusiasm joined the common work.

I’d like to ask one interesting question: how will a person whose enthusiasm is equal to zero feel in such a society?

Who was born in a second - specialized - colony, where everyone works on one project, and no one asks new members of the society if they want to do the same. Where the cult of sacrifice was considered the norm...

...and where Romelle didn’t fit. Let's remember everything that Romelle said about her people.

First of all, she presented them as people who don’t see the true nature of things and don’t notice that they live in a cage from which it’s impossible to get out.

“My brother Bandor was always faithful, but I had questions”.

The colony really looked like a cage in the eyes of Romelle, but not for all Alteans, for her personally. Of course, no one kept her there by force, but she couldn’t just leave, and her brother wouldn’t agree to fly away.

And where to fly away when there’s an almost uninhabited Quantum Abyss around? It was impossible to enter the first colony - its inhabitants believed that traveling to the second colony was a one-way road, and no one would let her into the explored universe, and even more so, they wouldn’t give a spaceship capable of flying there for personal use.

So, if for Princess Amue, Sincline was a literal jailer, then for VLD Romelle Lotor became a mental jailer. She blamed Lotor for creating a society where she felt like she was in prison and didn't understand why others felt differently.

“...but I also knew that no one would believe me without proof”.

But why (!) she began to break out of the general system is a topic for speculation.

As we already know, it was extremely difficult to build a second Voltron. Lotor was unable to do this, even using the material of a unique comet. Something didn't work, something was missing. And this something, most likely, was the knowledge of alchemy, lost along with the old Altea.

Moreover, the main problem was not the lack of a soul capable of turning a machine into something more - white mechas weren’t animated mechanisms, like Voltron or Sincline. But on the other hand, the white mechas were finalized by Honerva, the greatest alchemist of her time.

The mechas ran on the quintessence of their pilots. Voltron had an extremely high efficiency, and the process of return was exclusively voluntary - as much as the pilot was ready to give to their Lion. Shiro gave everything during the battle with Zarkon, and therefore not even a corpse was left of him - for the sake of victory, Lion dried him.

But what if some mecha isn’t (!) intelligent and simply draws energy from its pilot in the amount it needs? What if the efficiency of this mecha is much lower than we would like, because knowledge about alchemy is critically lacking?

Then attempts begin to understand how to increase the efficiency of the mechanism. And then comes testing on the most enduring volunteers to find out how long the pilot can last in this mech. And not always the pilot had time to return to the hangar and get out of the mecha before it turned them into a mummy.

Finding volunteers among the Alteans was the easiest thing to do, but that doesn't mean their families didn't mourn their loss. The names of the dead were engraved on the monument to forever remember their sacrifice.

As we remember, pink was considered a symbol of military sacrifice. Honoring the dead, not the living.

Romelle said that by the time her brother agreed to the “great honor”, her parents had already “gone”. In her story - to the base with capsules, but in reality, most likely, they died during the testing of the prototype.

The entire Romelle’s family were professional pilots who took part in the tests. And, having lost both parents, she thought about how justified this sacrifice was, and Bandor's desire to repeat this feat completely plunged her into despair.

Most likely, she didn’t believe that the Galra really posed a threat - the colonies had quietly existed for ten thousand years, and no one had attacked them. The Alteans had no idea what was happening in the explored universe, and Lotor was in no hurry to back up his words with some evidence.

And Romelle began to get angry. To be angry from hopelessness, because she couldn’t influence the decision of her younger brother in any way. She hated Lotor for the idea of building a new Voltron and the dedication with which her relatives reacted to this project.

After all, she almost directly called Luca a fanatic. The best pilot of the colony an example to follow for everyone else. Who calmly activated the bomb on her mecha when she realized she couldn't defeat Voltron.

True, Romelle tried to be polite when she was alone with Luca. She didn’t yet know that Honerva had told the Alteans about everything, and, apparently, before this event, her relationship with Luca was at a relatively sane level.

Seeing no other way out, Romelle strove to at least outwardly fit into the society around her. She copied the behavior of others, adjusted, hypocritically. She didn’t want to become an outcast, and therefore she had to lie to others about her attitude to what was happening.

And she learned to lie masterfully.

She was sincere only with her brother, and - like her prototype from the old series - spoke out against the preparations for war and convinced Bandor that Lotor didn’t deserve such blind admiration.

But Bandor… what about Bandor? Even though he was the younger brother of Romelle and the namesake of the little boy from DOTU, but… what colors were his clothes dyed? In the colors of Samson. The same Samson who decided to sacrifice himself for the victory of his homeland in the war with Altea and the Galra. And for some reason, I think that VLD Bandor wasn’t a defenseless naive child, because they didn’t take random Alteans to the test.

And when the moment X came, and Bandor was injured during the next test, he, like other pilots in such cases, was taken to the space base. What exactly was done with them is unknown, but most likely they were kept on artificial life support until they returned to a stable state.

And Romelle decided that this was her chance to forcibly take her brother to a safe place. Perhaps to that same abandoned base, or perhaps she planned to get to the first colony and start a new life there.

But she failed to bring Bandor alive. He died on the way, because it was absolutely impossible to take him out of the pod. And that's why when Lotor was chasing them, he was doing it in the company of medical robots. Not because he was afraid of a lonely woman with an unconscious guy in her arms, but because he took a team with him for urgent resuscitation of a dying person.

If Lotor really wanted to catch Romelle, he would have done it. She had nowhere to run, but he had zero desire to catch her. He didn’t perceive Romelle as a threat, and made a fatal mistake when she found grateful listeners in the face of paladins. And given the whole story with the advent of Keith, here again the old series is remembered.

Episode 21, where Amue tried to escape from Sincline's prison in the company of friends in misfortune.

Amue’s emergency landing on a desert planet – Romelle’s emergency landing on an abandoned base;

Amue sent a signal for help – Romelle sent a signal to the explored universe to bring the curious to her;

The paladins were met by the witch, who pretended to be a princess – Keith met Romelle, who pretended to be a defenseless Altean;

The witch forcibly took the unconscious Alor away - Romelle took the unconscious Bandor away from the space base;

Too much coincidence, don't you think?

It’s also very interesting that Amue was exchanged for Farla, who pretended to be Akira. Just like in VLD, the paladins decided to trade Lotor for Holt, who turned out to be a hologram.

And it was also for the sake of Lotor that the Alteans were ready to die, just like the Heraclians were ready to die for their princess.

And it was Lotor who came to the aid of the paralyzed Voltron by attacking Haggar, although he could simply fly away, saving his own skin. Just like how Amue turned the ship around and went to ram the Galra to save Voltron in the old series.

And the scriptwriters followed the same pattern when they wrote the death of Bandor. It wasn't his transformation into a robeast that killed Samson, but Sincline's order to shoot him. It wasn't the trials that killed Bandor, but Romelle's attempt to take him away from the base.

But since by that time she considered Lotor the reason of all her troubles, she convinced herself that it’s he who killed Bandor, ignoring her role in this tragedy.

She didn’t want to return to the colony - there she would have to answer uncomfortable questions and pretend that nothing had changed. Therefore, Romelle decided to try to get out of the Quantum Abyss into the explored universe - to the place where the "jailer" was losing his power.

Moreover, Lotor had been so conveniently absent for many months and couldn’t prevent this in any way.

Most likely, Romelle didn’t even hope to find those who would be able to kill Lotor. The chance that a real Voltron paladin would fly to her signal was well below one percent. I think she just wanted to lure someone with a capsule of quintessence, and then bargain for her way into the explored universe.

Nor had she planned for the Alteans to ever learn of their saint's murder. Romelle thought that they would continue to live in the colony in blissful ignorance, and considered these ends cut off. That’s why she was so surprised when Luca accused her of betrayal.

She was already in amazement and horror when, in the wreckage of a white mecha, they found a painfully familiar Altean woman. Alive and relatively unharmed, which provided a chance to talk to her, which Allura and the earthlings decided to use.

Allura was very worried about the fate of the Alteans, and Romelle - that the truth might come to the surface.

By that time, the universe had suffered greatly due to the loss of Lotor, and if the paladins (and most importantly Allura) found out that he didn’t use the Alteans as a source of fuel, and indeed didn’t deceive anyone, then Romelle would have been waiting for a real massacre.

Therefore, she sharply grabbed Allura and began to follow her, pretending her best friend. Firstly, she wanted to convince Allura that Luca was inadequate and her words couldn’t be trusted, and secondly, if not to drive Allura away from Luca, then at least control what they would talk about.

I think Lance and his love plans have become a real gift of fate for her. She had no idea what kind of past connected Allura and Lance, but she took the opportunity to kick Allura out of the Garrison for at least one evening.

And of course, it was on this evening that Luca came to her senses. It remained unknown how Romelle entered Luca's room unaccompanied. Maybe while Coran was looking for Allura, she hung around and offered to talk to the Altean instead of the princess. And the earthlings decided that this was a good idea, since Romelle and Luca already knew each other.

While talking to Luca, Romelle was obviously nervous and spoke ingratiatingly. She realized that the situation had gone completely in the wrong direction, although more recently she was sure that a new life was beginning for her.

Plus - Luca died without having time to give out some important information, minus - she said that the Alteans know about the murder of Lotor, they’re angry and thirsty for revenge.

As it turned out, the ends weren’t cut off at all, but were dragged along from behind, having managed to catch on a huge fragment along the way, which became a heavy burden and almost a stone around the neck.

We don’t kbow what Romelle was doing on the Atlas while the whole company dealt with current problems. It’s quite possible that she not only portrayed ballast, but also thought about how she should behave in the new realities. So far, the Alteans haven't looked like people to sit down at the negotiating table with, but that doesn't mean the paladins and Allura won't try to do so.

And then Honerva managed to pull Sincline out of the Rift and showed Allura that she was in complete control of him...

And after all, the Alteans also saw this, and were unlikely to be delighted with what was happening. They didn’t help Honerva at all so that she would turn their prince into her obedient slave. Such behavior wasn’t very similar to the joyful meeting of mother and son.

This was the moment when their trust in Honerva gave the first crack.

However, not so big as to feel the desire to communicate with a traitor.

In fact, the Day 47 episode, although it seems filler, is of great importance to Romelle's plot. It very clearly shows how she reacted that not one, but a whole bunch of Alteans were dragged into the Atlas. It was already much more difficult to expose a whole group of people as inadequate fanatics, especially since Tavo didn’t make such an impression. He was calm, polite and much older than Luca.

And... Romelle was freaking out.

She appears near Allura, portraying her best friend, exactly when she wants to chat with the pilots, and then immediately disappears, leaving the princess alone with the deepest stress.

When the earthlings try to question her about the Alteans, she says that she has no idea why they’re attacking, breaks into a scream and is clearly worried, with her lies getting more and more rude, such as claiming that the Alteans are scared.

...the same ones that built white mechas and flew to smash the universe...

“But you must understand: my people were haunted nearly to extinction”.

And it’s very curious that in the next episode, Clear Day, she isn’t among the vacationers, and in subsequent episodes she did appear only in edited scenes.

Why did she suddenly disappear? Where’s she?

Romelle constantly pretended to be a cheerful fool, and couldn’t help but go to the festival with the rest of the paladins. Unless, of course, she was doing something else at that time.

For example, running away.

Yes, I believe that while all the earthlings were resting during the Clear Day, Romelle escaped from the Atlas. It was the most logical decision in her situation. She could easily hijack a ship (and even turn off some of the cameras), because in fact she was very good at piloting spaceships.

After all, what happened at the very beginning of the Clear Day episode? Tavo decided to talk to Allura. Personally, without a company. Perhaps Romelle's absence was discussed separately, but that doesn't matter.

The important thing is that Tavo, unlike Luca, survived, and Allura realized that he was ready to share information. It was foolish to wait for them to raise the topic of Lotor in a conversation, but then there was such a great opportunity to run away while the entire Atlas team was walking at the holiday.

What happened next? Here begins guessing without an evidence base.

Theoretically, this story could have ended in an instructive style, where the villain went unpunished, and the only thing left for the heroes is to fully feel their stupidity and pay for their mistakes. But I don’t think that such endings are VLD-style - so, most likely, the fugitive should have been caught and returned to the main characters for a heart-to-heart conversation. Or rather, for a public conversation with Lotor, since such a meeting was required by the symbolism of the plot.

And despite the fact that many Lotor fans quite naturally dream of punishing Romelle in various inhumane ways, I think... that Lotor would forgive her.

Firstly, because he’s not a vindictive person. Throughout history, Lotor never took revenge on anyone, and if he got rid of someone, it was only because he considered this person a threat. Lotor never considered Romelle a threat - for him she was just an offended woman.

Secondly, Lotor really felt guilty for the death of the pilots during the tests. He called them martyrs, and didn’t deny that they suffered because of their participation in his project. And he could sincerely sympathize with the grief of a girl who had lost her entire family.

And that would be a very powerful moment. After 7,5 seasons, where someone constantly took revenge on someone, Lotor would have forgiven his offender and lowered in peace. He could, I believe in him.

#vld #golion #voltron dotu #romelle #Allura #lotor

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healerelowen · 1 year

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Healing Elm’s 1 year anniversary!

Hello Hello my dearest readers! With my blog’s first year anniversary now here, I want to have a bit of a deep discussion about my journey through the year that I’ve been on the Inscryption side of Tumblr. This is going to be a bit of a wild ride, so just hold onto your hats.

Tw for a bit of talking about sewer slide and self ouchie

So, February in 2022 for me was rough. The months before it were just awful for me and my mental health was down in the dumps. I was not in a very good state of mind. I was very isolated and I had a tendency to neglect my needs and avoid people as much as humanly possible. I was also prone to self harm at the time and I was also struggling with a lot of suicidal thoughts and temptations. And one day, I was thinking about Game Theory’s video on Inscryption that I had listened to a couple months ago because it made good background noise. But this time I wanted to actually listen to it and perceive what it was saying.

That’s when I remembered Jacksepticeye’s video about it and I rewatched it, and I loved it! I loved everything about it, the story, the characters, the setting, it all was very fascinating to me. So sometime later after playing it, I was neck deep in hyper fixating on it. I wasn’t new to Tumblr at the time, I had been on it for quite some time now, but I never thought about making content myself. That was until I decided to search up Inscryption on Tumblr out of pure curiosity, and oh boy I was not disappointed.

I saw so many amazing things there. Art, writings, fanfiction, silly little rants or shit posts, and I would scroll around on it for hours upon hours. I’m talking from 10pm to 2am. I loved seeing what people had to say, or what to share about this amazing game. I stumbled across a little imagine post that someone made, and I responded to it albeit a bit flustered. I was then thinking about it for a couple days after that, when I thought of an alternate meaning for that post they had made. So I made a post about it, and they replied positively to it!

This urged me to write my own headcanons and oneshots. The longer I stayed in the fandom, the more and more fanfictions came during the months. This is proven with my archive, with February only containing like three while March has much more, and then April with even more than the last and so on. It wasn’t long until I started making this into more of a passion rather than a small hobby of mine. Which, fun fact, was my original intention because I didn’t think I’d write that much. But here I am 700 posts later in the span of a year.

I started doing my own ask games, and answering requests given to me. All the while making other things like my own little ideas and oneshots with some art sprinkled here and there. I did this because I found comfort in it. Because for the first time in months, I had found a place where I felt welcome. There was little to no judgment, people were very welcoming and accepting of new ideas and Aus, and it felt more like a home than a small website. I had helped create a welcoming force in the community, which I hadn’t entirely intended to do, but I don’t regret doing so. I made new friends, and I had become a role-model for others in the fandom.

I love this community more than anything, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I have made so many good memories during my time here. My mental health improved greatly, I was eating more consistently and I kept myself more clean and organized. In fact, my self harm rate went from every couple days to once in the span of four months. I personally think this is a massive improvement on my end. But I most certainly couldn’t have done it without this community. You’ve all been so supportive and as cliche’ as it may sound, I truly couldn’t have done it without all of you amazing people. So for that, I must thank you, for being the caring people that you all are towards not just to me, but to everyone else who also enjoys what I do.

While yes, it’s true that things will never be the same when I first came here, that’s fine by me. So long as this community keeps flowing like it has, I’ll be just fine. I’ve seen many creators here come and go, some were close friends while others were not. I still loved their content all the same, and I will never forget the inspiration they gave me to start writing my own ideas and sharing them with others. It honestly doesn’t feel like only a year has gone by, it really feels like five years just flew right past me. It feels like I’ve been here for so long, and I’ve seen so much happen in this fandom.

I’m very happy here, I love writing and drawing and messing around with mutuals on here. It’s all been a great experience and I hope that there will be more going forward. For a single year, I had just about the best damn moments of my life and all of it was because of random people on the internet who liked the same game as me, people that I’ve grown to love and care for. What’s funny is that when I first came here I was actually considered to be ‘baby’ and just starting out (mostly because of my height of 4 '10 but we don’t talk about that-) to now being seen as a more older figure in the community. How time flies.

Thank you all, and have a good rest of your day/night!

#inscryption #healer elowen #healing elm's 1 year anniversary

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paigemathews · 2 years

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I was intending to write a post about how I was really disappointed in what they did with the sisters’ powers in the last few seasons, but then I got into Phoebe and this needs an entire post because legitimately: what were they doing? Phoebe’s powerset is so weird and then they legitimately just stripped all of them and started over. Like, let’s look at all of them:

Premonitions: legitimately, they did this pretty well. It progresses kind of slowly over the seasons, but that’s more because they have to develop it and two other powers with it. They do absolutely nothing with it, but they tie empathy and astral projection to it really well with astral premonitions, psychic connections, etc. I think that it’d have been nice to see her grow more control over it, because a lot of the time, it feels like she’s still being smacked with a premonition but I don’t mind that much.

Levitation: look, I love levitation in theory but in practicality, this was the weirdest power to give her. I’ve seen other people say that they should have given Prue levitation and Phoebe astral projection, and they’re right! One, because of the aforementioned astral projection ties to her premonitions, but also because it’s just so random. It has nothing in common with her other powers, and is also a really weird active power on top of it. It’s fun for fight scenes, sure, but they really don’t know what they’re doing with it after season four or five. They give hints of it progressing to flight, with stuff like Limbo, but it doesn’t really grow after that.

Empathy: I am forever irritated at what they decided they were going to do with empathy, because it’s so stupid overpowered, and for what? She literally did not even have it for a full season. I really feel like they just so massively fucked up what empathy could be to let Phoebe have active powers instead of leaning into the reason why Phoebe would rock as an empathy. The progressions are weird and make no logical sense, and then they have to strip it anyways. Empathy would have been an absolutely phenomenal power for Phoebe to have if they’d put forward two seconds of thought about what it’d look like.

Huh. It’s really them giving Phoebe active powers that screw up her powers. It feels like they wanted to give her active powers and didn’t really think of how that’d fit into her existing powerset and her character, because Phoebe really shouldn’t have gotten any active, offensive powers through the show. She did better when her powers were more passive and it let her show off her creativity and passion in figuring out new ways to use them and to fight.

#charmed #phoebe halliwell #abi speaks #powers #i have an entire idea about what they should have done with phoebe's powers but that's a separate thing #i have a rewrite of the show running around in my head just to flesh out stuff and fix continuity issues and all that #and i wasnt originally planning on fucking with their powers but honestly i think that i may bc phoebe's powerset is already so messed up #and i think that my idea for it is better than what the show did #i say this as if i have a concrete plan for this rewrite instead of just a note in my fic ideas notebook with some ideas #also i will get to the stuff i have in my askbox i was just finishing finals going on a retreat and then graduating!!#and now im sick af and this is the first time since i got back that i feel not sick as a dog #also i have realized that i have no idea what to do with my life so answering asks feels like something at least

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flowerandthesongstress · 2 years

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Psst. Hey. You. Yes, you, the person who plans on doing NaNoWriMo. Clean your place today if you still haven't. You won't regret it. Dew it. DEW IT.

Right, so for the next month, or however long it takes me to scribble 50k words — if I do manage — I'll try my best to avoid distractions and not post anything lengthy here. Maybe just some funny screenshots or something.

But before I start on the brutal exercise in self-poking that is NaNoWriMo, I wanted to say a few words about what you miGhT hAvE guESsed is my favorite TV-show. Not just because ‘I won't have time later’, but because the thing I've been writing for the last 11 months, the thing I beat the last NaNoWriMo with, and am intending to repeat the trick, is as Harmon-esque as I could manage, in ways so convolutedly — and sometimes idiotically — meta that I can't even begin to describe. But as long as it helps me process stuff, right? Anyway, I owe this to my favorite auteur, and I owe this to Community. ❤️

I am not a fan, I am not a groupie, I am an academic ©

I’ve seen people write fanfiction, theorize about the plot and the setting, ship characters, i.e. treat this show in a normal way, as a TV show. A regular story about a bunch of characters. These people are within their rights, of course, go ahead and perceive in any way you wish, not everyone’s brain is set into overthinking mode 100% of the time, duh-doy.

But I can’t. I’m only capable of perceiving Community as a TV show about TV shows. In my eyes it’s not a story about characters, it’s a story about stories. About media of all types, about writing and storytelling and structure and tropes, about how fictional narratives shape our lives and our thinking; and for me personally writing fanfiction about the immediate archetypes involved in it, for instance, would be like writing fanfiction of a textbook about the place of postmodernism in the general literary theory. So to me, Community is a work of nonfiction. It’s entertaining and witty, yes, but it’s Not Real in any way; it’s a page-turner study that provides the viewer (me) with brilliant and memorable examples as the viewer learns.

In general Community is not the playful or heavy-handed sort of meta we’re used to these days, that type that rewards you for understanding references and then goes on to give you exactly what you expected; it deconstructs everything within its reach, it challenges and sometimes even punishes the viewer for their preconceived notions and for blindly submitting to them. 😈

I bought into (what I now think of as) the charade at first, just binging it in an idle manner — what am I saying, if it didn’t start out the way it does, tricking everyone into thinking that they’re watching another sitcom, this time about a bunch of goofs in a community college, I bet Harmon would have never gotten it greenlit; plus, in hindsight, it needed to build its own comprehensive mythology — but I squinted pretty soon, when the show itself started to call me out. For instance, when Shirley addressed the whole ‘two attractive white people are bound to get together, that’s how it always goes’ situation, and I found myself thinking: huh, I am expecting that to happen, I am absentmindedly ‘shipping’ those two, but why, what outside influence had led me to this? And just look at what the show did with my trained expectations, how brilliantly it called me out. I applauded and I wheezed.

When the shift in perception happened, I couldn’t undo it.

As I was watching for the first time, trying to pace myself (quiet fart on fourth), I re-read several works of non-fiction that had been my holy tomes in uni and beyond — literary semiotics, comparative mythology, creative writing; but I was also spending hours on the TV tropes website, absorbing and re-absorbing, and looking up articles and essays, and just generally, all jokes aside, watching this show as an academic would (look how Community predicted and lampshaded this, too, and even mocked me a little, with Professor Sheffield). I, too, was raised by TV, but not the American TV; and I guess the fact that I grew up watching something completely different, just added to my interest.

Sidenote: now I can quote Community in my sleep.

And I still think that the ending was perfect in every way. It called me out, it challenged my perception one last time for the road, it asked if I really wanted from my media what I’d been taught to want, and it offered me to engage in the ultimate introspection of this sort, learn to compromise, and remember that real life is real life and fiction is fiction, and neither owe me happy endings, and that comfort, closure, and acceptance are instead to be found within me — and then *I* hugged my teacher goodbye, twice, one for a gripping course, one for what the course had taught me, and my teacher left to teach someone else. But now there's a river that winds on forever: I'm gonna see where it leads.

That’s why I said I worship Abed. To me Abed is not a character per se, and not even (not just) a raisonneur; in the confines of this piece of media he’s a mechanism, he’s a book spine, he’s a table of contents, he’s the narrative that holds within itself every narrative that’s ever existed, guiding you through the learning process.

Right, that’s it, I love kettle corn and Community, Community is a fun time show. 😁

Jokes aside, sidenote 2: if you want a true masterpiece of postmodernism, but can't be arsed to read stuff, especially if it's a tragic borefest like Campbell, and Kaufman's movies make your brain tie itself into knots: Community.

Imma go vacuum some more.

Good luck if you're doing Nano, too.

#nanowrimo #community #dan harmon's community #community nbc #tv show recommendations #recs #television #writing #literary theory #storytelling #abed nadir #dan harmon #and an addendum er I mean #and a movie

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theoristsden · 2 years

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Theorists Den revival

Welcome to the Theorists Den 2.0

What is it? A blog dedicated to archiving all the major JSE community theories, observations, and “what if”s. Yes you’ve read right, community’s.

The blog has been inactive between 2019 and 2022, but still it contains over 400 links featuring all the JSE community’s discoveries and ongoing hcs/theories I managed to gather since the beginning of ego lore on the channel till my hiatus. And as the title says - I am intending to revive it.

Ever wanted to get into theorizing but didn’t know where to start? Want to catch up with all the lore and ideas that have been in the community since the start? Well this is your lucky day. The archive of this blog is separated into:

fully fledged&lengthy theories,

shorter hypotheses&thought dumps,

observations&confirmed hints,

masterposts and full timelines of videos, posts, and literally everything ego.

This is not a personal blog and will not clutter your dashes with spam, but will only be a place for theories and operate whenever there’s new discoveries.

Can I use this archive for my theorizing needs? But of course. This archive is fully accessible on both desktop and mobile and will be updating as the lore progresses.

How can I contribute?

Reblog. Either this post, or the archive itself (in the description). The more people know this archive exists, the more it’ll evolve, the easier it’ll be for people to catch up with events and find theory material! You don’t find this archive useful? Well maybe this is exactly what your followers need, let them know it’s a thing.

Submit theories! Asks, submits and dms are open. Think you’ve noticed something new? Have a theory you think others should read? Tag @theoristsden . The posts will be added as soon as I get the time.

See a “broken link” or “link gone” note in the archive and have a reblog of the post you think was there? Maybe the OP renamed their url and you happen to know what their url is currently? You’re welcome to contact me. This blog has been open for a while and a lot changed on the platform since...

As an ex theorist myself, I know how disheartening posting theories can be- especially when your blog is new and your audience is small. Hopefully this blog can become a platform for those wanting to reach the community but lacking the means :) especially when this website is so broken.

All opinions are welcome! If you disagree with someone, feel free to provide your opinion and ideas. But no bullying of others for having different opinions than yours will be allowed here. An opinion can’t be right or wrong, same way a theory can’t be right or wrong. (assuming it’s not denying existing canon, of course… then it’s technically not even a theory…)

You might notice that I never took any theories down, even if they ended up being “wrong”… That’s because we don’t write to be “right”, we make theories for fun. An idea that you think is dumb, might be exactly what someone else needs in order to finish a theory. Sharing our thoughts and findings are the only way to understand the overly complicated hints that are being thrown at us.

Do not contact OPs of old theories intending to prove them wrong and definitely not to call them out over “freaking out” over something that turned out to not be a hint. This community existed for years, of course not all theories are correct, we used to jump at shadows back in the day and the current attitude might be completely different... even the ones who wrote the posts might not even believe in them anymore so remember to stay mindful and check what dates posts were posted on before contacting OPs.

Don’t want your theory to be in the archive? No problem, pinpoint the exact post you want me to take down.

And lastly, @therealjacksepticeye hasn’t been active here in years but its a tradition to write this so: if you end up stumbling upon this blog- feel free to use it. This can be a good place to check what the community has discovered so far or look for new ideas! *whispering* the community doesn’t need to know if you use it… It can be a secret y’know…

Signal boosts are extremely appreciated, again- this is not a self-gain personal blog. This is a community blog. I may be operating it alone, but the entirety of this archive wouldn’t exist without this community...

- @aceofspades-lena

Old notes:

Update 18/01/2019: An experimental theme is now up!

The archive should be back to being fully accessible on desktop. This theme was checked in advance, but I’m human too and could’ve missed something so if you happen to see posts appearing on top of each other/images that seem to be in the wrong place/or just random havoc and broken pages- please let me know!

Update 14/01/2021: Activity.

As you might have already noticed, the archive has been inactive for a very long time and unfortunately it’s probably going to stay that way… But it’s going to stay up regardless so that current theorists who might want to get into older theories that existed in the community in the past :3

Update 24/06/2022: Revival + theme bugs

I’ve went through the archive and double checked how many links are still working… Seems to be somewhat okay XD Added a few new posts to the archive but there’s still a p huge gap between 2019-2022, which will likely stay forever ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I’ve also noticed a few visual bugs in the blog’s desktop theme but that’ll have to wait. It should be usable for the time being regardless… just sometimes shows the wrong avatars on posts.

#jacksepticeye #antisepticeye #jse egos #jse theories #jse community #theoristsden

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re-readingcomics · 8 months

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Comics Read 08/13- 20/2023

Over this period I of time I read Rockstars written by Joe Harris, art by Megan Hutchison-Cates, colors by Kelly Fitzpatrick, designer Tom Muller, letters by Michael David Thomas, and edited by Shawna Gor. The edition I read this time was Rockstars The Complete Series as published by Vault. Years ago I read the first arc, “Nativity in Black Light”, in the trade paperback as published by Image Comics. I intended to get the second arc’s trade paperback, “Children of the Beast” as published by Image, but somehow missed it. Anyway, I am glad I got this edition as it encouraged by to reread the first arc which I otherwise remember next to nothing about. The page I scanned to illustrate this post, with its myriad references to our world’s rock ’n’ roll icons and legends may be the part I most clearly remember.

A quick search on my tags reveals I have never written about Joe Harris on this blog. This really emphasizes how long it has been since I have read any of his work. I have been writing about all the comic books I read for the better part of four years, and even though I was reading most of what he wrote for a while, none of it was during this time! I first became aware of Harris around 2013, when I was preparing to attend my first New York Comic Con. I went to a signing at Forbidden Planet the same week to get some comic books signed. There were four comic makers there. For some reason I now only remember the two that I was not there to see. One of them was Joe Harris, who at the time was primarily promoting his The X-Files season 10 comics (before the revival meant there was a tenth season of the television show). I have a complicated relationship to TXF. It was the first show I really obsessed over, it’s the first I feel angrily disillusioned over. I’m writing something about it in my other Tumblr for the anniversary. That night, I bought the trade paperback Great Pacific, one of Harris’s other creator owned comics. I liked it a lot and started following his creator owned output. I bring this up because the lead characters of Rockstars, Jackie and Dorothy, have a Mulder and Scully-esque dynamic. Jackie is driven by his family history and seeks answers through mystical uses of cards. Dorothy is a journalist, and seeks answers that she can safely publish. These two character arcs were not really developed enough either of them, but Jackie gets to a more interesting crossroads.

More directly relevant to this book, between reading the first arc the first time and reading this all now, I have steeped myself more in rock ’n’ roll legends than I was doing the first time around. Among other things I watched Brian De Palma’s The Phantom of the Paradise which reminded me about how often Faustian bargains and early death have been staples of rock legends since nearly the beginning. The plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson pretty much solidified this. This event is included in Rockstars, though the way is in questionable taste. (Coincidentally, that plane crash was also important to the plot of a famous episode of TXF.)

The plot of Rockstars, starts with investigating the mysterious deaths of a couple of groupies decades apart. There are ghost gangs of the groupies interfering with the investigation and they tend to be herald by the wrong lyrics of famous songs. The deaths of the murdered ones are related to demonic champions of the bands. Each arc covers a different demon in relation to a different band. The first band is an arch-typical second wave British invasion bad from the 1970s, and the second is arch-typical early hair metal band from the 1980s. I am more familiar with the former than the latter, despite actually living through parts of the 1980s. The plot didn’t really add up for me. But I love a lot of the details in the drawings, nods to famous theories and art. I also am touched by the concept of how generations are bonded because we each go through the same cycles of cultural events. I just wish that Dorothy’s character design wasn’t so close to some of the groupies in flashbacks or ghost form. It was needlessly confusing.

I feel like, of what I have read, the best comic books about loving music are Kieron Gillan and Jamie McKelvie’s Phonogram and The Wicked + The Divine. This isn’t like either of those, and that is a good thing. For all it’s flaws, I wish there was more of it.

#what i’m reading #comic books #comics #image comics #vault comics #RockStars #Joe Harris #Megan Hutchison-Cates #Kelly Fitzpatrick #Tom Muller #Michael David Thomas #Shawna Gor #nycc13 #NYCC memories #The X-Files #Mulder and Scully

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ultradespairgay · 2 years

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i dont intend for this to be hate so i apologize if it comes off as such, im just a little confused — i cant see how any of the points brought up in your post about saionji debunk the theory you were talking about or confirm that saionji is the same age as her classmates. her growth spurt is proof that nobody really died in sdr2 [excluding nanami] because they were in the simulation, and it hints at the time class 77-b attended hopes peak before they were put in the simulation, but it doesnt prove that shes the same age as the rest of class 77-b; she could very well have had a growth spurt if she were two years younger than the rest of her class, for example. its worth noting that growth spurts associated with estrogen-based puberty most commonly occur between the ages of 10 and 14. also, just because she never explicitly states her age like hagekure doesnt mean the author meant for that information to be left out — it makes sense that saionji and hagekure would have different responses to similar situations because theyre two different people. hagekure doesnt make himself any more of a target in the killing game by revealing that hes older than his classmates; saionji, though, is someone who is very averse to being seen as vulnerable — her being unwilling to admit she was having trouble with her kimono and her joining the rest of the class in criticizing the memorial she'd made because she didnt want to admit she was the one who made it both illustrate this behavior of hers. her being the youngest is something that she believes her classmates might see as a weakness if they knew about it. again, i don't intend for this to be hateful, and please tell me if ive misunderstood anything.

More will be underneath the cut for potential spoilers.

I’ll start by saying this, I never got the feeling that this came off as hate so you’re good on that end. However, I honestly don’t agree with the majority of what else you said.

For starters, the growth spurt doesn’t just prove that they were in a simulation and that nobody really died, but when Hajime sees the picture in the news article of the more “mature-esque” Hiyoko, he refers to her having a “child-like” appearance. When Hajime shows this to Kazuichi, they refer to Hiyoko having “child-like” features”. This was because they didn’t recognize Hiyoko at first due to having their memories taken away. Alongside Hiyoko’s fanbase mainly liking her for her “un-high school-like appearance”, why would anyone use these descriptors on someone who’s much younger than the rest of her class? Yes there are people who look more mature than they actually are, but like I bring up in my post the opposite can be true as well.

These next few points I’m going to be honest, were in my opinion flawed. It feels like you missed the point of me bringing up Hagakure in my post in the first place. The point of me bringing up Hagakure wasn’t about how the characters would react differently if they were in similar situations {I don’t know how that conclusion was made tbh}, this was very clearly from a writing standpoint. Something like Hiyoko skipping a few grades would be very important information, so why would they just not include that? It doesn’t make any sense that it wouldn’t have ever been revealed at some point. This isn’t even implied in any DR media that Hiyoko’s in, so how would this even exist in the story if it’s not outright confirmed in text or at least be implied?

I will say that I do agree that Hiyoko is someone who’s afraid to be vulnerable in front of others, however it’s not because of the reasons you listed. Hiyoko has been through quite a lot according to her FTEs, due to her very overbearing grandmother and many jealous people who’d often play cruel & sometimes even life-threatening tricks/make threats towards her… sometimes even carrying out said threats. The only person she truly felt safe around/trusted was her father. But eventually her grandmother took Hiyoko away from her parents and she was separated from him. Hiyoko isn’t afraid of being vulnerable because she worries about her class finding out that she’s younger, therefore seeing her as being weak. Hiyoko is afraid to be vulnerable due to trust issues because of what she had to experience in her past. It also resulted in her developing a very mean personality in order to protect herself, so that people didn’t get too close because of that very fear.

Also, bringing up Hiyoko not being able to tie her own kimono and the memorial situation isn’t even related to Hiyoko being younger at all. The reason Hiyoko can’t tie her own kimono is because as the heir of the Saionji clan, she developed feelings of superiority. It’s not that hard to believe that she had people to help tie her kimono for her because of that feeling of superiority. As for the memorial, in my post I brought that up as an example of Mahiru’s kindness rubbing off on her when discussing the nature of their relationship and how it’s not gross or unhealthy {which no it isn’t}. The reason Hiyoko didn’t want to admit that she made the memorial was because she didn’t get the kind of response that she was hoping for. She thought the others would be impressed with her work, but due to it looking unsettling the others reacted negatively instead. She only admitted that she was responsible for the memorial after Chiaki said that there was honest intent behind it, despite looking very off-putting.

Overall, I feel like you misinterpreted/misunderstood the majority of what I said in my post. What you were trying to counter against was neither stated/implied in my post. A lot of the evidence that was brought up to support your claims was also flimsy/false/lacked proper context and there’s nothing in DR media that would back any of it up.

I hope that I explained myself well enough and I hope that I didn’t come off as incredibly harsh.

#asks #replies #sdr2 spoilers

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buckyownsmylife · 3 years

Text

I've Told You Now - Lee Bodecker smut

The one where Lee seduced his sister's babysitter.

Warnings: smut, dubcon, age gap, innocence kink, dirty talk, loss of virginity, blood

Word count: 1.7k

A/N: This one is a part of my kinktober celebrations. My original intention for this October was to work exclusively around prompts that my wonderful friend @darkficsyouneveraskedfor created for her challenge and dedicate each story to a different friend. My new plan became then 31 days of different kinks, which expanded on a poly relationship with Stucky, as you might know by now. However, some of the stories I started were already truly loved by me, and so I kept on writing them. It worked well because as it turns out, I am fortunate enough to have more than 31 friends on Tumblr, so here is the story I wrote for @slothspaghettiwrites! You were the biggest reason I fell for Lee and it was only appropriate I wrote you this! I only hope it doesn't disappoint! Special thanks to @sweetkingdomstarlight-blog who helped me believe this was good enough to be posted! @sweeterthanthis also has a big hand at this!

Y/N’s P.O.V.

I was finishing packing up the toys in the living room when I heard the door slam, startling me into dropping the box of legos on the ground. Looking at the clock, I considered the time before looking back at the hall again. When no one appears from the hallway, I get confused. If the Hendersons hadn’t come home earlier than they intended, who else could it be?

“Waiting for me, bunny?” I immediately straightened out at the sight of Sheriff Bodecker, trying to resist the urge not to flush and keep eye contact, but ultimately failing to do so. I hadn’t seen him since the night he offered to give me a ride home and I ended up with his cock in my throat, his cum in my mouth.

“I-I didn’t even know you were coming.” Silence followed my confession as he slowly approached, eyes never leaving my body while I tried to keep myself up. He’d always had this effect on me. I remembered being a young girl and Sheriff Bodecker being the crush I knew was too old to be mine, the guy I’d never have even in a million years, but that didn’t stop me from daydreaming about him.

If I thought that maybe having him would help this infatuation disappear, it’d become clear by now that it wouldn’t be the case at all.

“And here I was, thinking you wanted me just as much as I wanted you.” The Sheriff tsked, and the sound went straight to my already dampened underwear. I couldn’t process his words very well, given how close he was and how loud my own heartbeat was ringing in my ears. Did he mean to say that he actually really wanted me?

“If that was really the case,” he taunted, circling me like I was some sort of prey. “You’d always be expecting me, wouldn’t you? But it’s alright, honey. You know why?” When I shook my head, he answered his own question, a single finger running down my jaw to guide me to look him in the eye. “Because I think you were expecting me. You’re always expecting me, looking for me wherever you go, just like I do. And there’s an easy way to prove my theory.”

Before I could question it, his arms embraced me from behind, hands slowly running down my stomach until they reached the edge of my skirt. I started sweating in anticipation. I knew what he would find.

“Let me check.” His fingers went over the fabric first, and he chuckled when he noticed how wet it was. “Would you look at that?” I was already trembling when he pulled my panties to the side and ran that same digit over my lower lips, just lightly grazing them. “Soaked already.”

Although I couldn’t see it, the humming sound he emitted after taking his fingers from under my dress didn’t leave me any doubt about what he did with the moisture he collected. Just the thought of him enjoying my taste that much had me weak in the knees, and I tried to keep myself up by reaching for a chair nearby.

Lee’s P.O.V.

I chuckled to myself at how sensitive she was, barely able to keep up with the little I’d done so far. Then again, it was clear I had a particularly strong effect on her. That had been obvious for a while, ever since she started working for my sister, probably - around the same age her womanly features began to stand out.

She seemed unable to look me directly in the eyes, always averting her gaze and biting her lower lip when I decided to stop around here for a coffee or check in on the little rugrat. I began doing this a lot more often after she was hired, but neither her nor my sister seemed to connect the dots.

Her innocence, her beauty just left me so fucking hard. I was hard right then, and I wanted her to know it. So I pressed my body against her back, lightly grinding my member against the curve of her ass.

“I suppose you’re finished for the day,” I speculated, knowing once the kid was out all she had to do was wait for my sister and her husband to arrive. “Guess I can help you unwind…”

She gasped when she felt my hardness, making me chuckle. “Your sister and her husband should be back soon…” She tried to reason, but I wasn’t having any of it.

“We’ll be quiet anyway. Can’t risk waking up the kid.” I gripped her wrist and pulled her on the direction of the guest bedroom, now fully unable to control myself. I was so close to having what I had wanted for so long.

She looked unsure of herself as I closed the door behind us, and I raised an eyebrow in a questioning look. “What’s wrong?” She shifted her weight from one foot to another, fingers playing with the hem of her skirt.

“I-I don’t know about this…” Chuckling, I approached her to cradle her face between my hands and deposit a kiss on those sweet lips.

“Don’t you trust me, pretty girl?” I had caught her now, we both knew it. She’d never risk disappointing or offending me, so when her mouth opened to explain herself and I raised an eyebrow in warning, it was only a matter of seconds until she closed it altogether and nodded, her eyes dropping to her feet.

“Yes, I do.” My smirk was full of victory, and I could taste it in my lips now. It was as sweet as the nectar between her legs I’d only had a taste of.

“There you go.” Approaching her once more, I settled my hands on her hips before leaning to kiss her shoulder. “Besides…” I continued, already bunching up her dress to get rid of it as quickly as possible. “You obviously need me to take care of you and this little wet hole.”

She bucked when my fingers rubbed her this time, dress already forgotten on the floor as I slowly shoved down the fabric of her underwear to join it. Once she was completely naked, I ran my digits over her cunt, verifying that her wetness was already so overwhelming that it was threatening to drip from her.

“So sweet.” I hummed once I wrapped my lips around those digits, tasting her on my tongue again. Yes, I was already obsessed. I think anyone who had the chance to try her nectar would understand my situation - but no one ever would.

She was mine now, and I would never let her go.

“C’mon, bunny.” Patting her ass, I directed her to the bed, chuckling at how embarrassed she seemed, being this exposed to my hungry gaze. “Be a good girl and spread your legs. Be my little angel, won’t you?”

I wished I could have done this somewhere more private - my own house, instead of my sister’s. But I just couldn’t wait anymore. My cock twitched inside my pants. I felt like I was drunk on this, drunk on her.

“C’mon, honey!” I repeated, lightly slapping the outside of her thigh. “I wanna fuck you. And I know you want to be mine, pretty girl. You can’t hide it from me.”

When she finally relented and slowly parted her beautiful legs for me, I nearly melted at the sight. Driven by my desire, I unbuckled my belt and worked to whip my cock out as quickly as possible, smirking at the wide, innocent eyes that settled on my member as I fisted it in preparation.

“Doesn’t it look good?” I teased, climbing on the bed to take my spot between her legs, rubbing the head of my dick against her slit. “I’m gonna have you taste it next time. But for now…”

Resting my forehead against hers, I slowly started to penetrate her tight pussy, slipping only the head at first, even though I was aching to fuck her throughly.

“This is gonna hurt a little,” I warned, not able to stop mid-way to let her adjust but keeping my invasion of her maidenhood slow until I had bottomed out inside of her. “Sh…” I tried to calm her, gently wiping away the few tears running down her soft cheeks. “I know it hurts, bunny. But you can take it, can’t you?”

She managed to nod despite her whimpers, and I brushed her tears away as I warned her, “I’m gonna make you feel so good, honey.”

It took a little while, but at last, she opened her eyes and I waited until she was able to focus them on me again. “You look so pretty, bunny…” I whispered, kissing her while I finally started to move inside of her, stopping only to moan out loud at her overwhelming tightness.

“I’m gonna train you until all you can think about is my cock,” I warned her, slowly pulling out until only the head of my cock was keeping her open.

“I can’t wait any longer.” Slamming my dick all the way in, I felt her nails running down my back, leaving trails of blood behind - trails I wouldn’t mind wearing under my shirt, sting as they might.

“I promise you, honey…” I panted, sweat already dripping from my forehead onto her pretty face. “You’re gonna miss me when I’m not inside of you.”

I kissed her cheek, rubbing my nose against it as she held me tightly against her. “I know you don’t want any of those boys you used to go to school with touching what I’ve already taken.”

She nodded quickly, my pretty little honey. Yes, she was mine already and she knew it. “It’s alright, pretty girl…” I soothed her as she started to whine, her cunt clenching deliciously around me. “It’s alright, cum with me…”

She closed her eyes when she met bliss, but I kept mine wide open so I wouldn’t miss her perfect expression of pleasure. It was almost enough to keep me hard, but I wasn’t as young as I once was.

I never pulled out of her tight heaven, keeping her body snuggled against me. I was happy that I decided to be patient, if it meant I now got to have her like this.

“I hope you know that you’re mine now, bunny.”

#my fics #lee bodecker #lee bodecker smut #lee bodecker reader #smut #lee bodecker reader insert #lee bodecker x reader #lee bodecker reader inserts

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digital-dhampirs · 2 years

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a somewhat coherent breakdown of VnC 55 (part 1): The Teacher

VnC 55 is a short chapter.

But holy shit, so much happens in it. We get so much information and the art is so pretty and I’m very very scared and I Need To Know More and when is January again.

So much stuff happens in this chapter that while I was writing this breakdown I realized I was going to have to split it into two parts just for my own sanity (and also for readability reasons). Part 1 will primarily focus on the Teacher, and then we’ll get into the other characters, along with a few predictions for upcoming chapters, in Part 2.

Before we start, three warnings! : 1) this post contains many spoilers for vnc chapter 55; 2) i will refer to the teacher as “teacher” and “comte” interchangeably during this post; annnnd 3) this post is very long. even for me. i… the teacher is my new Ruthven and the fact that his story intertwines with Luna’s makes my already meager ability to control my rambling even worse.

With that, let’s jump into the wild world of…

Mur— I mean, The Teacher

Let’s start by breaking down our first Teacher Fun Fact: his face reveal. The Teacher’s left eye is copper sulphate blue, the same color as Vanitas’s. His right eye is some unspecified other color but (judging from the fact that the way his eyes are colored matches up pretty much perfectly with Human! Murr’s eyes in the volume 8 cat cafe omake) is very very likely to be magenta/ purple.

This isn’t quiiiiite confirmation yet, but the matching eye colors plus the Teacher’s line about meeting Vanitas in a different form makes it incredibly likely that the Teacher is indeed Murr. And this. Uh. I. /stares at various panels of Murr eating cat food, playing with cat toys, cuddling up to Amelia, and having a crush on a cat./ I will once again generously refer to him as a method actor.

Of course, there’s always a chance that this could be a red herring and Murr is a separate entity from the Teacher in some way, but there’s a lot of evidence pointing to them being one and the same.

The Teacher and Names

The next massive piece of information we get on the Teacher is the name he’s currently going by— the Comte de Saint Germain. After some very brief googling, it turns out the Comte de Saint Germain was a philosopher and adventurer who lived during the 18th century. And this guy was an oddball. Nobody truly knows who he was or where he came from (although there are various theories going around). The Comte constantly lied about his true identity, switching names and personas at the drop of a hat. He made absolutely insane claims about himself, one of which was that he was multiple centuries old; and had strong ties to alchemy, stating he could melt diamonds and create gemstones. Despite his constant lying, people frequently found themselves drawn to the Comte, and thought he was fascinating rather than just a run of the mill charlatan (pun somewhat intended).

And that? That name sounds kinda perfect for the Teacher. Nobody knows where he came from, he changes his name and form at the drop of the hat, he’s centuries old, and he has strong ties to alchemy.

It follows to ask, though— in the universe of VnC, did the Teacher meet the Comte, find him interesting, and take on his name after he died? Or was he actually running around as the Comte throughout the 1700s, just a version of him reimagined as a vampire (similar to the characters we meet in the Gévaudan arc)? If the latter is the case, he’s likely been using this name for over a century by 1889, when VnC is set— does he cycle through a specific set of names/ identities?

Another odd thing to note is that so far, all of the names Teacher has used haven’t really been…. names. “Grandfather” and “Teacher” aren’t really names, they’re more like titles, and “Comte” just means “count”.

And wait. That’s weird too. Didn’t the Teacher already turn down the title of “count” and give it to his kid, Count de Sade? Why would he toss his own title away only to name himself “count” again later?

I think this is an indication of yet another detail on Teacher we see displayed throughout this chapter— he has a Thing with names. I don’t quite know what to call it— a preoccupation? An obsession? Either way, there is absolutely something going on with the Teacher and names.

Chapter 55 shows us that Ruthven’s line way back in Chapter 19– “if anyone calls him by the wrong name, he beats them within an inch of their life on the spot…”— was absolutely not an exaggeration. The Teacher’s grin turns from cheery to absolutely horrifying when Vanitas refers to him as “Shapeless One”, and he threateningly tells Vanitas to not get it wrong the next time.

The Teacher, despite insisting Vanitas call him by the right name, seems to completely refuse to use Vanitas’s name— as a matter of fact, throughout this whole chapter, he never actually refers to another character by their own name. He calls Noé and Dominique “mes chatons”, refers to Jeanne as “hellfire witch”, and calls Vanitas “kin of the blue moon” and “heir to ‘blue’” [more on that second one later].

This insistence on not using anyone else’s name starts to paint a lot of the Teacher’s previous actions in a very different light. In chapter 14, Ruthven says that the Teacher “hated even saying [his] name”, to the point of crossing Ruthven’s name out of every book in his castle. Ruthven seems to take this as a sign of the Teacher hating him, but what if this is just normal behavior for our dear buddy Comte? We do see the Teacher occasionally call Noé “Noé”, but whenever he refers to someone by their actual name he seems to almost always speak in a possessive sense— “my dear Louis”, “my darling grandchildren”. His cute pet name for Domi and Noé is similarly possessive— “mes chatons”, my kittens. The Teacher seems to have an intense preoccupation with naming others— and not allowing others to name him.

This is (I think) why the Teacher refused to accept a title and then contrarily chose to include that same exact title as part of his current name. If the Teacher had accepted a title, that would mean someone else was allowed to “name” him— and to the Teacher, that’s completely unacceptable. But if the Teacher is the one who chooses that title, he’s the one naming himself, and that’s ok.

Weirdly, the Teacher only applies this rule to himself and doesn’t extend the same courtesy to anybody else— he’s furious when anyone refers to him by a name someone else gave him, “shapeless one”, but proceeds to almost exclusively refer to others by names he (or someone else) made up for them. “Hellfire Witch”, “Kin of the Blue Moon”, and “Shapeless One” are all quite similar, as they’re all sort of colloquial street names for Jeanne, Vanitas, and the Teacher, but for some reason the Teacher has massive objections to one and is totally fine with using the other two.

Why might this be?

My first thought is that it could be some kind of power/ respect thing. The Teacher sees calling someone their proper name as a sign of respect, and since he seems to solipsistically see himself as above others, he refuses to allow other characters to disrespect him while constantly disrespecting them. But that doesn’t seem quite right to me. The Teacher refers to Noé by his name during the chapter 9 flashback— why would he call Noé “Noé” and then call Luna (whom he seems to like a lot) “Blue”?

Maybe it’s something to do with the Teacher seeing others as possessions/ not quite the same as him? Maybe he sees others as inherently below him, as sentient items he can control? But that feels a bit off too… hmm….

Unfortunately, I can’t really think of another explanation for the Teacher’s preoccupation with names at the moment. I’m sure I’ll have more theories in the future, but for now I think I’m gonna have to leave it as a very weird character quirk we’ll likely learn more about in the future.

With that…. /cracks knuckles/… let’s get into that whole “Blue” thing.

The Teacher and Luna

First and foremost! Comte here might be a very bad horrifying manipulative murderer who psychologically tortures all of our beloved protagonists on the daily, but his take here is based as fuck. Luna is 100% the most beautiful being in this world and I love them and if the Teacher manages to actually bring them back from the dead I will be very very happy (even though they will probably Not Be) and Luna is super pretty and I could talk about how pretty they are for multiple days—

So. There’s definitely something going on with Luna and the Teacher.

Ever since the very first chapter of VnC, the Teacher has shown a strong interest in the Blue Moon. He grins widely when a young Noé tells him that he thinks the blue moon is beautiful, even reaching over to pat his shoulder in a way that seems almost proud. He laughs delightedly when he sees Noé cheerfully tell Domi she shouldn’t be scared of the blue moon. All of the Teacher’s experiments seem to revolve around either Luna or Faustina (who, according to Noé, looks very similar to Luna. ngl I don’t see it but if Noé says so it’s probably relevant).

And, oddly enough, Luna, Faustina, and Comte all have a preoccupation with names.

Let’s put Faustina/Naenia and her interest in hunting for true names aside for now, and just focus on Luna and Comte.

For a while now, I’ve been kinda lowkey wondering if these two character act as foils for each other. They’re both parental figures to our dual protagonists and they’re both exceptionally powerful to the point of being legends in and of themselves. Luna is initially seen as dangerous and cruel, but seems to have been a truly kind and cheerful person. The Teacher, meanwhile, seems to act kind and cheerful but is actually incredibly dangerous and cruel beneath that exterior.

This change in readers’ perception of the Teacher and Luna follows a similar timeframe— in chapter 1 we’re introduced to the Teacher as benevolent and Vanitas of the Blue Moon as evil, we slowly learn more about both parties and how their true natures don’t line up with these initial impressions, and then during the exposition universalle arc we finally get to see both of them as they truly are/ once were for the first time.

The Names Thing just further solidifies Comte and Luna as foils for me.

They both seem to have started out nameless/ without a name they were satisfied with. Comte frequently refuses to refer to others by the names they prefer; while Luna immediately calls people by whatever they want to be called, referring to Mikhail as “Misha” when he tells them the nickname. Comte insists on not accepting any name someone else gives him, to the point of turning down a title only to give himself that title years later as part of one of his names. Luna, meanwhile, seems to accept any name they’re given— “Vanitas”, “Vampire of the Blue Moon”, “Father”. The name Luna ultimately finds satisfying and chooses to keep is a name someone else accidentally gave them.

This now brings us back to that same question from before. Why do these specific characters have such an interest in names? Why are their approaches to names so completely different? Is it something to do with respect? With how one sees themselves in relation to others? With the very first line of the manga, where the Teacher tells Noé that his “true name” is his very being?

If I was gonna pull a wild guess out of a hat, my current guess would be that Luna and the Teacher don’t actually have true names. Maybe Comte is indeed exactly what he’s called by other vampires— a shapeless being, without a true name or known nature. Maybe this is why the two of them are so closely tied to the concept of names— they’re both searching for a metaphorical formula that shapes who they are. Maybe this is why Comte is so upset by the name “shapeless one”, maybe this is why Luna tries on any name others give them.

But that’s just a theory, a manga theory!! Let’s drag my levitating theorist self back on to solid ground and talk a lil more about the Teacher and Luna and what’s going on between them. (*winks in shipper*)

SO. We’ve established that Comte has some sort of connection with Luna. It’s very possible he gave his current form one blue eye just because he liked the color, but considering he also gave Murr this type of heterochromia, I can’t help but feel like it goes deeper than that. I think there’s a very real possibility that Luna and the Teacher have met before, and may have even worked together at some point.

Firstly, there’s the fact that the Teacher’s obsession with Luna feels like it goes a liiiiittle bit beyond the scope of “oh I saw this really pretty vampire from afar one day so I decided to spend the rest of my life studying them and working to bring them back from the dead”. Assuming his line in Chapter 55 is about Luna and not just him… liking the color blue… or talking about some other entity, it sounds like he probably spent a nonzero amount of time with Luna at some point in the past.

For a little while now I’ve had a running theory that the Teacher was the one who gave Moreau the Books of Vanitas, along with Luna’s blood. Comte and Luna working together in the past could explain why he managed to acquire those items. In a chapter 51 flashback, Luna states that they once tried to find out what they truly were, but now deeply regret it. Could they potentially be referring to a time when they worked together with Comte?

With that, I think we can start piecing some puzzle pieces together about Luna and Comte and their past relationship. They likely worked together at some point, but Luna came to regret doing so. Luna never seems to have mentioned Comte to their adoptive kids, but the Teacher often told Noé the story of Vanitas of the Blue Moon and praised him when he said the blue moon was pretty. Luna died, and now the Teacher is trying to revive them.

Suffice to say, Comte seems absolutely infatuated with Luna.

The question is… does he actually feel any love or attachment to them? Or does he just want to possess them?

This is where we once again return to that delightful running theme throughout this post— names. Comte refers to Luna as “Blue”, probably a nickname stemming from “Vanitas of the Blue Moon”. But Comte’s probably been stalking Luna for a long while, watching them from afar while they traveled with the boys— does he really not know about their new chosen name? Not to mention, even if he doesn’t know about the name “Luna” for some reason, why does he have to be contrary and call them “Blue” rather than the usual “Vanitas”?

I doubt Luna minded this name, just like they didn’t mind “Vanitas” or “Father”, but it starts to raise red flags in my brain when it comes out of the mouth of the guy who constantly refuses to call others by their actual names and frequently refers to people in a possessive sense. It could be an affectionate nickname, but it could also be yet another sort of power/ respect/ possession thing. He also doesn’t refer to Luna as a person or a being or a vampire, he calls them the most beautiful “creature” in the world. It’s sus. It’s all very sus.

In addition to this! Even if Comte truly does feel something resembling “love” for Luna, there’s another interesting little knot to this tangled sort of love. Comte’s actions towards Luna feel remarkably and amusingly similar to the way his protégée acts around Luna’s adoptive kid.

(We’ve seen something else like this before, haven’t we? A protégée taking on a lot of the qualities of the vampire that raised them?)

Throughout VnC, Noé and Vanitas both have a bad habit of sacrificing themselves to save each other without putting any thought into how this will affect the other party. In Vanitas’s case, this is largely driven by his own self hatred and belief that he is inferior to or worth less than others.

And in Noé’s case, this is primarily driven by selfishness.

Noé is a selfish character. He loves Vanitas (whether this is platonic or romantic is largely irrelevant to this post so take it either way), and he doesn’t want Vanitas to get hurt. Seeing Vanitas upset makes Noé angry. And since Noé is selfish, if he has to do something to protect Vanitas that goes against what Vanitas wants (@/ slashing Mikhail in the previous chapter), he will do it. “I will never set you free” is, in context, a very moving statement, but looking at the line itself on its lonesome it’s practically scary.

I think, just like Jean-Jacques’s jealousy was learned from Chloé, Noé’s selfishness is something he learned from Comte.

With this I think we can start to parse out a little bit of what’s going on with Comte and Luna. I highly doubt Luna wants to be brought back from the dead— especially not if that process involves Comte manipulating and torturing a group of innocent randos and Luna’s adoptive kids. But Comte wants to bring Luna back anyways, and he’ll do whatever he needs to do to make it happen— because Comte, like Noé, is selfish.

a few more assorted notes

This is the section for fun observations that don’t really fit anywhere else in this meta!

Firstly, the Teacher seems to have to reveal his true “face” in order to manipulate the world formula. The image of his eyes changing color as he slips out of his ordinary form and into his monstrous one is horrifying and I love it, as is his insane amount of power— he seems to literally tear open a portal in the world and walk through it, something on a completely different scale from what we’ve seen so far in the manga.

Interestingly, though, the tendrils surrounding Teacher’s eldritch horror form look completely different from the ones we saw back in chapter 9. They’re actually eerily similar to Ruthven’s black flames, which is… very concerning, but I’m convincing myself it’s just something he taught himself how to do and not an indication of anything else nope nope nope noep—

I do indeed have more things to say about the Teacher, but!!! Those thoughts will be left for part two of this post. With that I think we’ve finally reached…

not the end! (but in conclusion,)

It’s Christmas Eve. I just spent the past three hours losing my mind over a manga character.

I have no regrets.

If you made it this far, holy shit thank you so much for reading this post. Please take everything here with a massive grain of salt— this is all just my interpretation of the manga so far and will likely be proven completely wrong as we learn more about Comte and Luna in the future. If you’d like, please tune in for Part 2, coming soon to a vnc tag near you (hopefully I can get it written today but uhh…. hmm…. various preexisting conditions may get in the way of that), which will include my thoughts on Vanitas, Noé, and basically any part of the chapter I didn’t go over in this post (including, rather upsettingly, yet more Teacher).

Thanks again for reading, and happy holidays!

update: here’s a link to part 2..!

#vanitas no carte #vnc #the case study of vanitas #vnc spoilers #vnc 55 #vanitas no shuki #meta-ish #the teacher #comte de saint germain #i know I should be calling him The comte and not just comte but i prefer the latter ngl #happy holidays; i say; at the end of a post all about a murderous monster who beheaded his own grandson #will link part 2 once it’s up #also I’m very sorry for constantly switching between ‘teacher’ and ‘comte’#there’s no logic to the switching beyond ‘brain wants to call him comte/ teacher in this sentence’

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