#I am intrigued about how the next part of the story will unfurl tho

[briarthorns]

Spitballing a Head Canon with no in-depth research after the recent events of Chapter 7 because AAAAA—

Spoilers for Chapter 7 (naturally) and unreleased events for the EN servers:

From a meta standpoint, we know that the Limited Events/Cards are ‘characters’ you can pull for Twisted Wonderland. They cast different spells/have different stats.

But I wonder if some (if not all) of these events within universe are things that would happen within a Sleeping World Malleus created due to his Unique Magic. A way to pass the time/distract the residents of the Dream. As noted, after Malleus finishes singing Once Upon a Dream (holy shit dude, why he gotta do this to me), we cut to the title card that is shown when the Game Boots up.

Repeating Birthdays/New Years/annual events are the biggest evidence of this. We started getting Birthday Events back in 2020, with each year adding a new “variation” on the theme (the white dress coat and sash, the varsity jacket, the Broom Bloom get up and probably a new one come August for Riddle). Most, if not all the main student cast should have graduated if we went by a time scale of “this world”.

Cutting back to meta, this is just us being fed pieces of lore to make us fall in love with the characters. But Riddle Rosehearts on his way to celebrate his 4th ‘birthday’ on the NRC campus? Plus, his personality isn’t like that of the Crimson Tyrant we say in Chapter 1. For that matter, none of the OB Gang are like this. They’re no where as severe as they were when their Chapters were rolling,

There is also the matter of ‘offsite’ events happening. Some are in line with the school curriculum (e.g. Beans Day, the Camping Event and debatably, the Masquerade Event), but others like the Arabian Sands event, Harveston and the Sunset Savana…that would eat away at school time. Crowley may be bird-brained, but Professor Trein takes no BS. Plus, we have to consider everything that is happening in the main game (the Sports Event, the VDC event, holidays, potentially even exams). It would be a lot that happens within the space of one year, and it just seems like too much to fit in.

Malleus is considered one of the most powerful mages in the world of Twisted Wonderland, so the idea of him creating a functioning dreamscape is possible. He did say that he would make them sleep for a millennia so there’s plenty of time to happen in a dreamworld (and dreamworld logic is known to be funky at the best of times).

As for NPCs we’ve only seen (e.g Rollo, Epel’s Grandma), it could be that Malleus’s spell allowed for students and staff to have.. ‘input’ so to say. The Dream is able to draw on previous memories/experiences, creating scenarios for NRC to experience. For example, a school exchange may have happened with Noble Bell College in a previous year, with Trein as chaperone and Rollo in attendance. This would mean that the Spell to create the NPCs we interact with. I

There has been an element of danger involved with the story events. But honestly, I think it could be that Malleus’s Overblot has an effect on the spell or could just be how the dream works. Everything got resolved in the end and no one died/got seriously hurt.

The Time Loop Theory could also be integrated into this, as the dream will repeat the one year that everyone is together. And when Lilian’s retirement rolls around, boom it’s Rewind Time. Thus, a Groundhog Day but the length of a school year. Sometimes certain events happen, some don’t. But there are key events no one can avoid. The events of the Main Story line.

Granted, this is mainly conjecture and my own observations of the game. I could be well off the mark but it would be interesting to confirm this to be the case; everything happened but didn’t actually happen. Saying that I had suspicions about the events in correlation to the actual story line after the fact may be a bit cowardly, but hey it is what it is