#I do not like dream theory

[egophiliac]

crossing my fingers and wishing upon every star that chapter 10 finally brings us the tweel cards 🤞🤞

[miss-americanbi]

in the mansion. straight up “blanching it”. and by “it”. haha, well. let’s justr say. girl we blanchin.

[momowoah]

I could write an essay on Doctor Odyssey and how the fantastical aspect of the ship isn't due to it being the purgatory or a dream but rather linked to the metatextual plot of the show and how the Odyssey is meant to be an in-universe representation of what the show aims to be in our reality, a direct answer to the effects of the COVID pandemic on our world that aims to create an atmosphere of escapism in a medical environment to create hope and happiness while still acknowledging current events. The weekly themes, along with the very goal of the show, are the strongest indicator of a meta narrative, very clearly designed with the show's weekly nature in mind. They wouldn't work as well in a show designed for streaming. Captain Massey himself says the ship is carefully built to show itself as a heaven to its guests, explaining the unrealistic scenarios and vibe of the show, but by focusing on the emergencies that happen on board the show allows the viewers to explore the cracks in that illusion and creates a place in which both serious themes and mindless fun can be equally approached. We see that contrast in 1x06 when the screen cuts from a threesome straight to the suicidal hotline screen; the episode successfully indulges in the hedonism of the cruise ship established early on without detriment to its more serious storyline, which includes one of the best portrayals of panic attacks I've ever seen on tv. Although both concepts are more clearly separated throughout the episode, the cut-off from one to another at the end is jarring, reminding the viewer of how both concepts coexist both in the Odyssey and in real life. As silly as it might be at times, the show isn't mindless, but rather a well-executed reminder that there is light at the end of every tunnel, and that maybe that light comes in the form of a Ryan Murphy network tv show about a throuple solving medical emergencies on a cruise ship.

[creative-robot]

I know The Founders Cut, generally, is the edited scrubbed over version of genloss from Showfall in-universe (as well as a not-8-hour-long-three-stream-binge-night whenever we want to watch it again) but something that struck me as odd and I haven’t seen anyone mention yet, is this warning

It shows up right at the junction where the third act starts, where it appears the Hero is breaking free of Showfall thanks to Hetch. But here’s the thing, while a LOT less than the previous acts the audience still played a significant role in this act, even when really only given two audience interaction choices. Which makes me wonder, how real is this warning, and who is it for? Obviously the audience involved knows what happens past this point, but the audience is also implied to be an integral part of the Social Experiments, which is part of why things start to tweak out when the Founder removes them in the Founder Cut as the Generation Loss generation loses.

My first thought, was that obviously this is another bait and switch, a way to draw the audiences attention, seeing something that’s secret, something that’s not “meant for them”, which is a tactic I could see Showfall using in universe to keep people’s attention and add an air of mystery to their shows.

But

Showfall is doing all their experiments and these shows with a LOT of help from their censors to show it off, displaying a fun silly show that is definitely not uber fucked up and that is 100% just slime don’t worry about it, it’s kid friendly if it’s green! And I don’t think they’d want to bet all their cards on this one experiment doing well enough to their audience to not question the sudden shift in tone that follows this warning. Which makes me wonder.

They did their test, they did their experiment, and the evidence of this last act? I think it was a one time run, they don’t want anyone seeing this, it isn’t for the audience. Act three is specifically to both test and play with their Hero, Hetch’s new lines add a level to this, never once does he call the Hero by their name, just refers to Ranboo as their Role, and he’s not exactly. Nice? About literally any of Ranboos concerns, which wouldn’t really seem conductive to making an audience trust him, especially with his monologue at the end. Ranboo has escaped before, possibly right before act 1 started, they tightened the security on his mask to be unremovably part of them, Hetch doesn’t like the Hero but they’re a fan favorite so he can’t just get rid of them.

Act three is the cumulation of Ranboo being punished for things they don’t remember, for daring to break free from Showfalls control, this is Hetch taking the Hero and essentially majorly fucking and manipulating them to take his frustration out on a fan favorite they can’t otherwise get rid of or give a smaller role like Slimecicle. which is exemplified by the fact that we now know Charlie most likely was never able to actually able to fully snap out of the control, that even in act three in panic and confusion there was at least still a part of him being influenced by Showfall.

So the first two acts are the usual show, they have their posters, they have Squiggles to introduce them, they have goofs and silliness and only a couple slip ups that’re quickly dealt with, the usual rose tinted curtains. Act three?

Do not watch the following material

[random-ln-stuff]

A short thing on both current possible theories:

Both of the most possible theories (My Prophecy Theory and Dream Theory) have massive holes in them.

Prophecy Theory: Noone’s dreams are prophetic, just like the other dreams in the LN franchise, and they show what the world will become once the Eye shows up and corrupts everything. The Ferryman is essentially the herald of the Eye.

Dream Theory: Little Nightmares is a world that children get pulled into when they sleep, essentially being comatose in the real world as they wander a nightmarish wasteland ruled by the Eye. The Ferryman is trying to pull kids into the dream so they never wake up.

For Prophecy Theory, you have the question of how it all works.

Why is the Ferryman here and aware of everything?

Why is he trying to get Noone to “Give in to this world”?

How do Noone’s dreams work?

Why?

There’s probably more but I’m biased because I made the theory.

For Dream Theory, you have a couple different questions that are significantly harder to answer.

Why is Noone still waking up (is it because they haven’t given in?)?

Why don’t children die of thirst, hunger, old age, illness or anything while they’re presumably comatose in the real world? Mono aged like 80 years at the bottom of some tower and Six has been running around for so long that they presumably grew to fit RCG’s raincoat in between VLN and LN2.

Speaking of death, Noone has died twice now in her dreams, being killed by the Lady In Chains and a chemical spill. How is she still alive and able to just come back again to the same world another night? Why can’t any other child do that? RCG and RK would have benefited from that significantly.

Why is the Ferryman the only thing attempting to keep Noone asleep? Shouldn’t other, equally powerful entities like the North Wind, Lady, Broadcaster or literally just the fucking EYE be trying to keep her asleep as well?

And most importantly: Why is everything Noone describes so far symbolism about the Lady and Maw? Episode 1’s dream shows the Maw (The Stone Giant), Nomes (The workers that keep the Stone Giant running), The Lady (The Lady who stretches their face to remove signs of age with control over chains) and Souls that the Lady has consumed (The thousands of people chained up inside the stone giant by the Lady’s chains) through symbolism and representation. Episode 2’s dream shows Guests (Literally just Guests) heading towards the Maw (The Bathhouse) through the same methods. Unless this dream world has 3 legally distinct versions of the Lady, Maw and Guests, it just doesn’t make any sense.

So I have no idea which theory is true, but I’m pivoting towards Prophecy Theory because those questions can probably be answered in time.

My thoughts and theories on the LN Podcast: Episodes 1 and 2:

Putting all this under a readmore because spoilers for Episode 1 and 2 of The Sounds Of Nightmares:

General Stuff.

The way people talk and the way things sound make me think that the story is talking place in the past, I’d date it to somewhere around the Late 40s or Early 50s, so that’s another point to Little Nightmares taking place in 1948 specifically.

This whole thing is very interesting. The world isn’t corrupted. Children and Adults don’t hate each other. Otto acts like a human being. The corrupted stuff is in Noone’s head, but I don’t think it’s all a dream.

I think the dreams Noone is having, showing the actual world of Little Nightmares, are either visions of another world, or are visions of something that’s going to happen. Either this non-corrupted world is a separate one from Little Nightmares’ world (which I will call Nowhere for now thanks to the Little Nightmares 3 Description) or my personal theory that I will be going with until it’s disproved: The Non-Corrupted world IS Nowhere, but before everything goes to hell. Noone’s dreams are prophetic.

My reasoning for the Prophecy Theory was started because of 3 things, and there’s more evidence to come in specific episodes.

Names for people and places follow a very similar pattern to in The Nowhere. The Place the story takes place in is simply called: The Counties, similar to places like The Nest, The Maw, or the Pale City. Otto (an Adult) is supposed to be referred to as “The Counsellor”, but doesn’t mind being called by his real name, and Noone (pronounced Noon) is mentioned to have chosen her own name, which is implied to be the origin of most child names.

In Little Nightmares, many of the dreams that children have are prophetic, showing events that will eventually happen or vaguely warning of future events. Six has a dream of the Lady the same day she encounters her, Mono dreams of the door before he ever starts seeing it and begins heading towards it, RK has a nightmare related to The Granny and RCG has a nightmare about barricading a shed door with something banging on the other side, which happens later exactly as she dreamt it.

The dreams Noone has are rather symbolic. The first episode is the better example of the two, but both aren’t really real locations in Nowhere. They’re symbolic representations of The Maw and Guests specifically.

Ep 1:

In this, Noone ends up inside a massive stone giant, and encounters the Ferryman for a brief moment. Like literally just the Ferryman. Fully described in the coat, hat and melted face and later referred to as the Ferryman (and the Candleman, a reference to the cut Wax Bellman from LN 1, who was initially cut from the game and then was remade Into The Ferryman and got put back in).

After that she goes deeper inside the giant to find a giant clockwork structure that keeps the giant alive and maskless shadow children working on it, keeping all the gears moving. After that she finds a starved, rotting man chained inside a bedroom and then she encounters A Tall Lady wearing chains with a face that’s been purposefully stretched out to remove any wrinkles or signs of age.

After that is more travelling before Noone and a Child she encounters in her dream find a courtyard where thousands of screams can be heard from other people, chained up and starved in their own rooms like the one Noone saw before. Then the Lady in Chains shows up again, kills the other kid and Noone wakes up.

Like I said before, this dream is heavily symbolic, but it’s obviously about the Maw and The Lady.

First off, the Ferryman is here. No symbolism, no speculation, he’s here and that immediately draws connections to the Lady.

Then there’s the Shadow Children, or the Workers, who I don’t actually think represent Shadow Kids found in the Maw. The workers represent Nomes, who keep the Maw (or in this case the Stone Giant) running. Despite being seen as antagonists, the Workers don’t actually do anything to Noone in the dream. They head towards her when she draws attention to herself, which scares her, but they never actually attempt to harm her. They just want a closer look at Noone in all of their appearances and they immediately back off once Noone’s dress tears and a piece gets stuck in the gears.

The Lady in Chains is very, very, VERY obviously the Lady. They’re a tall woman who is desperately trying to appear younger, stretching their skin to remove wrinkles. The chains that the Lady can seemingly manipulate may also represent her powers, and I’ll get into that in a moment.

Then there’s the chained man and the thousands of others just like them. They may represent Guests or something like that, but I think they represent something else: The souls of both Guests and Children alike that the lady has consumed after countless Maw Feasts.

My logic for this is that both the chained people and the Lady’s representation in the dream specifically involve chains. The Chained People are chained to walls in specific rooms, rotting and starving, and the Lady In Chains is constantly surrounded by chains, with chains literally coming off of her clothing and flowing underneath her dress. The Lady In Chains can also control those chains, manipulating them however she wants to, and using them to ensnare a child and pulling them away to kill them. Now if the Lady In Chains is The Lady, then the Lady In Chains’ ability to control chains probably represent the Lady’s own ability to control her unique soul stealing shadow magic. And if chains in this dream represent the Lady’s Soul Stealing Magic, then it makes sense that the rotting, starving, tortured souls all chained up throughout the Giant in the dream are people that the Lady consumed. That’s what the Lady stealing your soul feels like. You are chained up by magic, starved and tortured by the Lady slowly breaking down your consumed soul until you no longer exist.

And the Lady In Chains has THOUSANDS of people chained up. Think about that in relation to the REAL Lady. Horrifying.

Also with the revelation that the Chained up people are souls that the Lady consumed and is slowly digesting/using up, you can make the claim that the Giant in the dream may ALSO be a representation of the Lady. After all, those people are chained up and imprisoned INSIDE the Giant, and Nomes may keep the Maw running, but by doing so they also keep the Lady running just as much.

Ep 2:

Here we hear a tiny bit about Otto’s beloved Cici (Sici? Sissi? It’s pronounced See-See), who could honestly be a lot of things right now. A lost lover, a lost child, a lost friend, a lost family member, but the important part right now is that Cici had similar dreams, or at least encountered the Ferryman in some them. Definitely going to be important later.

This dream is a lot more straightforward. Noone finds themselves in a town with another Child she’s never seen before named Jester. They wander for a short while before Noone sees the Ferryman again, exactly as he was before, and runs, separating from Jester in the process.

Also while in this town, Noone sees “Contraptions that resemble fish carrying large, extremely fat people wearing wooden masks and brown robes towards a Market and Bathhouse” (Seems familiar, right?)

When Noone enters the Bathhouse, she finds dozens of monstrous people washing themselves, and finds one of them using Jester to scrub themselves. When that monster sees her, it immediately forgoes cleaning and goes straight for her, chasing Noone until she accidentally brings a bottle of cleaning chemicals down onto both of them, killing them both and waking Noone up.

If it wasn’t immediately obvious, those are Guests. Extremely fat, Masked people wearing brown robes. The masks are wooden instead of whatever the hell actual Guest masks are made of, but everything else matches. Even the fish shaped contraptions moving the Guests towards the Market and Bathhouse make sense once you realize that the Bathhouse represents the Maw.

In this dream, Guests are brought to the Maw to feast, but some things are slightly off. Instead of food and gluttony, the Guests we see are obsessed with cleaning and cleanliness, but they’re still very clearly guests, endlessly heading towards a place that claims to be able to fulfill their endless needs.

Even their behaviour when seeing Noone matches with real Guests. When a Guest sees, Noone it immediately forgets about cleaning itself or the child it’s carrying and goes straight for Noone, just like how real Guests always go for the freshest meat they can see, forgetting about the 5 star meal right in front of them when they can see meat that’s even fresher and harder to come by (a live child).

Prophecy Theory:

But then, why is everything slightly different and more symbolic than any other child dreams we see. Most of them are pretty straightforward? And what’s with the Ferryman? If these are all prophetic dreams, why does the Ferryman seem to be aware of it all?

Well, first I want to point something out.

In all Child Dreams in the games, the most powerful entities seem to have have some sort of awareness or control of some sort over the dream. In Six’s dream, the Lady turns towards her before she wakes up, seemingly aware that Six is looking in her direction, and when Mono dreams of the Door in LN2, the TV next to him turns on, possibly because either the Thin Man or Broadcaster (two separate, yet similar entities) was aware of what Mono was dreaming about.

Now with that in mind, The Ferryman IS as powerful as the North Wind, another extremely powerful entity, so it makes sense that in a prophetic dream, the Ferryman could be still aware of things.

As for why these dreams are so symbolic and hard to understand when most prophetic dreams are pictures and images of what’s to come, it’s because these events are VERY far away from happening. The Lady doesn’t appear as THE LADY despite possibly having awareness because The Lady doesn’t exist yet. The world hasn’t fallen under the influence of the Eye, and we KNOW that the Lady and the Maw only start everything they do AFTER things like the Signal Tower are built, which happens presumably AFTER or RIGHT AS the world goes to shit.

Noone’s dreams are all symbolic because her dreams don’t even know how to process or comprehend what’s coming. It can’t show the Lady or the Maw because Noone’s dreams can’t look that far and that accurately into the future, so they create the Lady In Chains, The Stone Giant, The Workers, and a dozen other representations of what’s coming because it can’t say for certain what things are going to look like. Only a rough guess at the eldritch horror that’s coming. Vague representations of The Lady and The Maw and the Nomes that keep it running. Somewhat accurate but still slightly off depictions of Guests heading towards the Maw in droves, etc.

But the thing is, the Ferryman is there. And the Ferryman is unchanged. And the Ferryman is aware that Noone is dreaming. That means that Noone’s prophetic child dreams are depicting the actual Ferryman.

And that means that the Ferryman actually exists somewhere out there in either Noone’s world or whatever dark corner of the universe that the Eye resides in.

We know next to nothing about the Ferryman besides the fact that he’s as powerful as the North Wind and chooses to work for the Lady (mean that the Lady is probably just as powerful). And now we know one more thing about him: He’s existed longer than any of the other monsters besides maybe the North Wind. Probably created by the Eye itself.

And keep in mind, in the actual games, There’s evidence that a world was here before us. Viewers couldn’t exactly have built the Pale City after all. And in those buildings, all over the place, you can find evidence that the Eye has been here for a VERY long time, it’s symbol found on many things from before the world presumably went to shit. The Eye has always been here, it’s just that relatively recently it went from “passive influence of various types” to “Plunge the world in chaos and darkness”. So the Eye definitely exists at the time that the podcast takes place, and so does the Ferryman and presumably the North Wind.

Also: The Ferryman has apparently been in ALL of Noone’s recent nightmares, and he wants her to “give in to this world”. Does he want Noone to give in so he can drag her further into it and probably claim her soul for the Eye, or does he want her to give in so he can escape THROUGH her, possibly bringing the Eye out along with him?

Anyways that’s my somewhat coherent rambling. Enjoy.

[accirax]

last night i had a dream that it was Friday, and i was watching Chapter 2 Episode 15. it was nearing the end of the episode, and Teruko had accused Ace in the Closing Argument. however, Ace was nonstop arguing with MonoTV that he didn't do it and that everyone had it all wrong. MonoTV laughed cryptically, and the episode ended on the cliffhanger...

...that MonoTV was about to introduce Ada Tobisa, Eden's secret twin sister, as the seventeenth student in the killing game.

no, i don't know what role Ada would have had in the murder.

earlier in the dream episode, we had seen the left photo as its own CG, and were led to believe that it was a photo of Eden as a baby (i have no idea how this came up in the Trial). however, the end stinger was showing the CG with the two of them, and that the left picture was actually Ada all along.

anyways, call me the Ultimate Fortune Teller, because i'm pretty sure i've foreseen exactly what's going to happen in Friday's episode drop 😎

[confirmeddead]

Seeing as Lestat technically wrote the Devil’s Minion chapter, how do we think this will play out in the show?

Lestat is no longer writing his book but rather telling it to Daniel via the documentary.

So if we get a version of the Devil’s Minion chapter in a potential season 4- and Lestat is no longer telling his story but living the QotD arc- would this be changed to a Daniel first person account?

[pianostarinwonderland]

Now it's likely we will enter everyone's dream what do you think azul dream would be?

rubs hands Ohhhh anon, you're in luck because I have so many thoughts.

Since I also have ideas for the tweels, I'll take this time to write what I think all the Octavinelle dreams will be like. Most of these are my own thoughts, but some ideas are from friends. And because I love the trio so much, I'll also write my own ideas of what would possibly get them to wake up and such.

General notes before listing the individual dreams:

May be an obvious point, but I think all 3 of them will have each other in their dreams. Octa trio are very close, and I don't think they can imagine not having each other in their lives. It also matches how their initial dorm card art have each other + how all three of their stories are tied together.

I think that Jade is going to be the Octavinelle dream segment's SSR because of the twins, Kalim and co. will likely have an easier time waking Floyd up. Jade may need some prodding from someone more familiar with him.

However, I do acknowledge the argument made by my friend that it is possible for Floyd to be the SSR as he's the rightmost one in the order you find at the lessons (if you notice, the order goes Ortho > Lilia > Rook > Kalim (though Kalim is an exception) with Sebek in between Lilia and Rook, and they're the rightmost ones in their dorm order seen in lessons. Floyd is the rightmost one in the Octavinelle order). And I wouldn't be surprised if TWST decides to pull that out. But admittedly, I don't know what exactly would make Floyd's dream deep enough that he needs to be woken up by someone more familiar, so I write the dreams with the assumption that Jade will be the SSR.

Though not necessarily going to be important in the following ramble, I have a feeling that they will release Coral Sea's hometown event to be able to use certain assets (i.e. backgrounds, possible official reveal of Azul's merform) in book 7, just like Vil's hometown event was used for the Pomefiore dream segment.

As a disclaimer, I don't have full translations of the last two updates so I may not have the most accurate ideas for how the Octa dream segment can turn out because there are patterns they're following here. Many of these are still brainrot induced (even though I think I make good logic wheezes).

Ok, with all that said, here are my thoughts for the Octa trio's dreams :>>

Floyd Leech: Living underwater with Jade and Azul

It's not a secret that Floyd is at his happiest when he's in his merform. Among the trio, he's the one who transforms the most often into his merform. Some incidents include the time that he transformed during swimming class according to Ruggie (Book 3) and Vargas Camp where he transformed to get fish. Floyd is also the one who tells the most stories of his time under the sea with Jade and Azul. We know about their middle school band because of him (Robe Kalim vignette); we know about Azul's actual size in his octopus form because of him (Beans 2 main story); we know about the music contests they used to join because of him (Portfest Floyd vignette).

So it makes sense that his dream would be in the sea, where he's in his merform. It's also going to be pretty simplistic, depicting a happy life underwater.

TWST tends to be very comedic, especially with the first dream. So my friend suggested it would be fun if there were literal fish versions of the cast in his dream 😂 so we could have live2D assets of a literal goldfish Riddle, crab Ace, sea snake Jamil, etc.

Jade and Azul of course would be in merform along with him. Maybe they might be playing in their middle school band: Floyd on drums, Jade on bass, and Azul on piano (and maybe their audience is composed of the NRC cast as fish).

In this dream, maybe Floyd has no memory of ever being on land with Jade and Azul. So that may be what the others will use to wake him up.

Jamil would probably remind Floyd of basketball club days + dancing, and Ortho would probably remind him of his love for shoes. These could be pretty reasonable as the permanent card vignettes (so SR Robe/Lab, R Uni/PE, SSR Dorm) seem to be compliant with the canon of the main story. Grim would probably remind him as well of Book 3's events and how he'd do fun shit with Azul and Jade at the Mostro Lounge. They would probably remind him as well that Jade and Azul love what they do on land.

I don't know where to insert this, but it's very likely that Azul in this dream does not hate his merform. Floyd talks highly of his merform (whether it looks yummy or very strong), so it's possible that he wishes that Azul loves himself just a little bit more (I really want to say it is hinted at, but at the moment, I have no idea if that's correct, let alone say where it is hinted at, so I won't say it like it's canon). And by extension, this can be Floyd's way of sharing that maybe Azul wouldn't have OB'd if he was more accepting of himself.

Jade Leech: If Azul never overblotted

Jade's dream would take a similar path to Rook's dream, in which the premise for the latter is that Vil never overblotted because he's not in conflict with Neige. And for Rook, that's okay, he just wants Vil to be happy, even if he looks on from afar. Except that for Jade, he wants to be the reason that Azul didn't have to overblot.

See, it's very subtle, but Jade is probably upset or even traumatized from Azul's overblot. While he never shows this (this motherfucker istg) the one small bit of evidence of this is in Book 4. Jamil's hypnotizing everyone, and Kalim, Azul, and the rest are frantic as they don't know what to do. But as Jamil is about to overblot, Jade tells him to stop, or else he will overblot. And that's a very interesting thing: why is it Jade who's the one telling Jamil that he'll overblot at the rate he was going? Why not Azul, who's both fascinated with Jamil and the one who underwent overblot? Or even Grim and Yuu who have 3 experiences of overblots by that time? Of course, that's not necessarily a guaranteed indication that Jade is upset from Azul's overblot, as in general, overblot is very dangerous and could kill a life. Jade may have been saying this to prevent Jamil from entering a life-or-death situation. However, I still find it intriguing that it's Jade who's warning Jamil, especially when another instance of another character trying to stop an OB was Kalim, who followed Vil since he was reminded of Jamil's own OB (and we know Jamil and Kalim have been together since forever).

There's two ways that this can go: either (1) Jade's dream follows like Rook's, or (2) it goes the opposite of Rook's.

In (1), Jade (and consequently, Floyd) would not be friends with Azul, and Azul would continue on as he is, only a lot more independent.

(1) stems from the fact that the plan Yuu hatched to destroy Azul's contracts was hinged on separating the twins from Azul. Jade might have realized this, either in Book 3 or off screen post Book 3. And in a similar fashion to Rook, he might blame himself a little bit for Azul not being able to get the contracts off of Leona on his own due to the fact that he and Floyd are always with him. So in his mind, he thinks he might be dragging Azul's potential down, and he knows how much Azul wants to become the best version of himself. So maybe he looks on from afar as well. Maybe he's still an Octavinelle student, but not the vice leader.

(2) also stems from that same fact, but it also has an additional element: In Book 3, Jade asked Azul if they should do anything about Leona, since it was unexpected for Yuu to stay in Savanaclaw. Azul replied that he probably won't act on anything, so he says not to disturb him. What if Jade might have been hooked onto this? That maybe he should have acted more upon his suspicions? That maybe he should have been more attentive when spying on Yuu and co to find out when they hatched this plan? So maybe in dream (2), he had a countermeasure or he just knew when to nudge Floyd to go back to the dorm before Leona destroyed the contracts. Then once that was dealt with, they deal with the photo and bam, Azul wins and they get the Ramshackle branch.

Both (1) and (2) are connected by Jade's wish in the Dances and Wishes event, where he expresses that his wish is for Azul's and Floyd's wishes to come true. In a sense, (1) fits this a bit better than (2). There's also the idea that moray eels have a cowardly nature, according to Floyd. (1) could be an expression of said nature within Jade.

But if you ask me, I think (2) is a bit more in line with Jade. Firstly because I doubt he can imagine not being close to Azul, secondly because I think in his ideal world, I think he'd wish he had more control over what happened (and Jade has a thing for control).

Thirdly, it matches in terms of how his dorm card and Rook's dorm card are both same and different. The gameplay of TWST tends to be intermingled with the story and characters at times. Dorm Jade and Rook both have first spells where they boost their ATK stat for 3 turns, with fire as their duo element. The differences between them are (a) card typing (Rook Attack vs. Jade Defense) and (b) M1/M3 elements (Flora/Water Rook vs. Water/Flora for Jade). This parallel can be reflected in their dreams vs. the reality of their situations. Rook dreamt of never being involved with Vil, but in real life he was in time to intervene and save Neige. Meanwhile, Jade would dream of being on time to stop Leona, while in real life, he was too late and only in time to kick Azul's ass out of his overblot.

And fourth, this is where you may wonder: Isn't Azul's second dream going to be the Book 3 AU, based on the patterns with Idia, Vil, and Jamil? To which I answer: yes! Definitely! But here's where I'm going to point out something: Jade and Azul not only have similar ish mindsets but also have the same paintings in their initial Platinum card art, just with flipped positions. I like to think that this is reflective of their dreams, where both of them wish to change the same events of Book 3, except that they'd go about it differently.

Jade would definitely be woken up by Floyd, who would remind him that what happened has already happened. (On this note, I wonder if we'll get to see one of their vicious sibling fights so Jade can wake up, but I'm just dreaming at this point)

By virtue of him being the SSR, we gotta think of what's the scenario that would make Jade cry! Him having to fight the fake Azul and Floyd might break him. Yeah, he's fought Floyd and all, probably dueled with Azul too, but it could be different when he has to be 100% serious about it. Either that or, there might be some part of him that hates the fact that it was a dream. And Floyd would have to snap him out of it, saying that everything is okay.

Azul Ashengrotto: Ultimate business owner + Book 3 AU

The first dream we enter, in typical Azul fashion, we're likely going to see him owning a whole chain of Mostro Lounge restaurants! And maybe not only that: he's probably running a hotel or two, he's got a delivery service going, he probably has a monopoly running while we're at it. Basically, it's all the stuff that he lists down in Book 6 before he sleeps on Riddle's shoulder.

His businesses expand over both land and sea. Since Azul prefers being on land, we may see him on land first before diving to the sea to check on business there. And that's where the first confrontation happens.

I think Azul would feel practically invincible by this point! And by invincible, he not only has everything he wants, but there's not a trace of his past to be discovered, so people think he's always been this intelligent and strong. So when he's confronted by Jade and Floyd, who share memories of his past (his shared past with them, from middle school to NRC), that's the first instance of Azul slowly starting to wake up and him panicking about his perfect world being fake. And it almost works until the dream versions of Jade and Floyd come in and remind Azul of the kind of invincible person he is.

Then they descend to the second dream, which is the Book 3 AU where Azul got his contracts from Leona and probably beat his ass. Except that the difference between this and Jade's dream is that Azul does this all by himself. When dream Jade and Floyd get back to him with the photo, they're praising him, all like, "Good job Azul! You're so strong and powerful! I'm glad I get to hang out with someone as awesome as you are!"

But the real Jade and Floyd would try to stop him from destroying the photo and tell him that it's a reminder of who he was, and how much he's grown. And if Azul succeeds in destroying that photo, Jade and Floyd would pull out the photos that they carry with them (think the album from the opening). They want him to accept the person that he was, and realize the person he is now is someone who's grown stronger. He has become better.

On how his dream would collapse, this is tricky. I would want that Azul destroys his contracts (thereby breaking the deal he made with Yuu, which would entail that his happy end has been broken), but him not destroying the photo would also cause the dream to collapse since the way to his happy end involves removing all ties to his past, namely the photos. He could do both. However, the trend so far is that foreign influence affecting the happy ending is what would break the dream. If anything, if Jade and Floyd do have their own copies of Azul's past photos, that means that the presence of those indicates that Azul's ties to his past are not broken at all, and therefore they would break the dream.

Then as per pattern, the others leave while Azul sinks deeper to try and wake himself up. He meets his OB self, who's steeped in his insecurities and is very unaccepting of his past. And this is where Azul accepts those insecurities and accepts his past but will continue to move forward with his life and grow to be a person he can be proud of, and fight his OB self. Then he faces his first dream and dream Jade and Floyd, and then he wakes up eventually.

[mofsblog]

Scratch is Lillith Evidence

I've kind of accepted this as canon but I havent really seen anyone compile all the evidences so uh here for anyone curious

Kayne first references her in Part 20 which does reveal that Lillith exists in Malevolent:

In part 37, when John, Arthur and Oscar are exploring the barn, John sees a painting of a woman with pale skin and dark hair and seems to go into a kind of trance when he looks at her (which. Gestures. Lillith. Gestures. Succubus-y powers. Gestures)

Later when they open the gateway in Part 38, Scratch merges with a woman who looks exactly like the one in the painting and she's described as having "alabaster skin", aka world's most highly specific descriptor, which also happens to the same description used in the Lillith entry in the Malleus Monstorum for CoC seventh edition (BIG THANKS TO @/unsafewaters for sending the images to me)

And then in Intermezzo, Kayne directly mentions having a daughter and claims that she would "love" Arthur which could tie back to him being Her Favourite. Also I don't like using evidence that isn't in the source material but in the post season 4 QnA, when Harlan's reading out the notes he wrote for Intermezzo, one of the things he reads out is the daughter line, which implies it was important enough to mention (and wasn't just a throwaway joke)

And last but not least, Yorick mentions that Scratch/Owlexander/the entity watching them is close in power to Kayne which would make sense if he created her

Also earlier in the episode, Yorick implied Scratch may be working against Kayne specifically which does imply they have a pre existing relationship which would make sense if she was Lillith:

Extra evidence: In the fake Edward Willaim Allan's journal, he has an entry where talks about how, despite the fact he distrusts his "dream dweller" (who we know is Scratch pre fracturing), something about them still fills him with awe and he feels oddly seduces by them:

Which is likely Lillith using her powers to influence him and make him easier to manipulate (since it's heavily implied, if not basically explicitly stated, she was using him to open a gateway for her to enter the world)

Also! Semi unrelated but while I have your attention and talking about theories! I just wanna highlight a minor theory of mine that there's a high chance Kayne trapped Lillith in some kind of pocket dimension or prison of sorts because the prison line (from the second to last screenshot in this post) feels like foreshadowing and I find it odd that if she supposedly is close to him in power, she would need a humans help to travel through worlds (Also, she's framed as getting "freed" in part 38 when they do eventually open the gateway which leads to the question: free from what?) so that's something to consider

[greenerteacups]

oooh please someday tell us what you think of GOT

oh, no, it's my fatal weakness! it's [checks notes] literally just the bare modicum of temptation! okay you got me.

SO. in order to tell what's wrong with game of thrones you kind of have to have read the books, because the books are the reason the show goes off the rails. i actually blame the showrunners relatively little in proportion to GRRM for how bad the show was (which I'm not gonna rehash here because if you're interested in GOT in any capacity you've already seen that horse flogged to death). people debate when GOT "got bad" in terms of writing, but regardless of when you think it dropped off, everyone agrees the quality declined sharply in season 8, and to a certain extent, season 7. these are the seasons that are more or less entirely spun from whole cloth, because season 7 marks the beginning of what will, if we ever see it, be the Winds of Winter storyline. it's the first part that isn't based on a book by George R.R. Martin. it's said that he gave the showrunners plot outlines, but we don't know how detailed they were, or how much the writers diverged from the blueprint — and honestly, considering the cumulative changes made to the story by that point, some stark divergence would have been required. (there's a reason for this. i'll get there in a sec.)

so far, i'm not saying anything all that original. a lot of people recognized how bad the show got as soon as they ran out of Book to adapt. (I think it's kind of weird that they agreed to make a show about an unfinished series in the first place — did GRRM figure that this was his one shot at a really good HBO adaptation, and forego misgivings about his ability to write two full books in however many years it took to adapt? did he think they would wait for him? did he not care that the series would eventually spoil his magnum opus, which he's spent the last three decades of his life writing? perplexing.) but the more interesting question is why the show got bad once it ran out of Book, because in my mind, that's not a given. a lot of great shows depart from the books they were based on. fanfiction does exactly that, all the time! if you have good writers who understand the characters they're working with, departure means a different story, not a worse one. now, the natural reply would be to say that the writers of GOT just aren't good, or at least aren't good at the things that make for great television, and that's why they needed the books as a structure, but I don't think that's true or fair, either. books and television are very different things. the pacing of a book is totally different from the pacing of a television show, and even an episodic book like ASOIAF is going to need a lot of work before it's remotely watchable as a series. bad writers cannot make great series of television, regardless of how good their source material is. sure, they didn't invent the characters of tyrion lannister and daenerys targaryen, but they sure as hell understood story structure well enough to write a damn compelling season of TV about them!

so but then: what gives? i actually do think it's a problem with the books! the show starts out as very faithful to the early books (namely, A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings) to the point that most plotlines are copied beat-for-beat. the story is constructed a little differently, and it's definitely condensed, but the meat is still there. and not surprisingly, the early books in ASOIAF are very tightly written. for how long they are, you wouldn't expect it, but on every page of those books, the plot is racing. you can practically watch george trying to beat the fucking clock. and he does! useful context here is that he originally thought GOT was going to be a trilogy, and so the scope of most threads in the first book or two would have been much smaller. it also helps that the first three books are in some respects self-contained stories. the first book is a mystery, the second and third are espionage and war dramas — and they're kept tight in order to serve those respective plots.

the trouble begins with A Feast for Crows, and arguably A Storm of Swords, because GRRM starts multiplying plotlines and treating the series as a story, rather than each individual book. he also massively underestimated the number of pages it would take him to get through certain plot beats — an assumption whose foundation is unclear, because from a reader's standpoint, there is a fucke tonne of shit in Feast and Dance that's spurious. I'm not talking about Brienne's Riverlands storyline (which I adore thematically but speaking honestly should have been its own novella, not a part of Feast proper). I'm talking about whole chapters where Tyrion is sitting on his ass in the river, just talking to people. (will I eat crow about this if these pay off in hugely satisfying ways in Winds or Dream? oh, totally. my brothers, i will gorge myself on sweet sweet corvid. i will wear a dunce cap in the square, and gleefully, if these turn out to not have been wastes of time. the fact that i am writing this means i am willing to stake a non-negligible amount of pride on the prediction that that will not happen). I'm talking about scenes where the characters stare at each other and talk idly about things that have already happened while the author describes things we already have seen in excruciating detail. i'm talking about threads that, while forgivable in a different novel, are unforgivable in this one, because you are neglecting your main characters and their story. and don't tell me you think that a day-by-day account tyrion's river cruise is necessary to telling his story, because in the count of monte cristo, the main guy disappears for nine years and comes hurtling back into the story as a vengeful aristocrat! and while time jumps like that don't work for everything, they certainly do work if what you're talking about isn't a major story thread!

now put aside whether or not all these meandering, unconcluded threads are enjoyable to read (as, in fairness, they often are!). think about them as if you're a tv showrunner. these bad boys are your worst nightmare. because while you know the author put them in for a reason, you haven't read the conclusion to the arc, so you don't know what that reason is. and even if the author tells you in broad strokes how things are going to end for any particular character (and this is a big "if," because GRRM's whole style is that he lets plots "develop as he goes," so I'm not actually convinced that he does have endings written out for most major characters), that still doesn't help you get them from point A (meandering storyline) to point B (actual conclusion). oh, and by the way, you have under a year to write this full season of television, while GRRM has been thinking about how to end the books for at least 10. all of this means you have to basically call an audible on whether or not certain arcs are going to pay off, and, if they are, whether they make for good television, and hence are worth writing. and you have to do that for every. single. unfinished. story. in the books.

here's an example: in the books, Quentin Martell goes on a quest to marry Daenerys and gain a dragon. many chapters are spent detailing this quest. spoiler alert: he fails, and he gets charbroiled by dragons. GRRM includes this plot to set up the actions of House Martell in Winds, but the problem is that we don't know what House Martell does in Winds, because (see above) the book DNE. So, although we can reliably bet that the showrunners understand (1) Daenerys is coming to Westeros with her 3 fantasy nukes, and (2) at some point they're gonna have to deal with the invasion of frozombies from Canada, that DOESN'T mean they necessarily know exactly what's going to happen to Dorne, or House Martell. i mean, fuck! we don't even know if Martin knows what's going to happen to Dorne or House Martell, because he's said he's the kind of writer who doesn't set shit out beforehand! so for every "Cersei defaults on millions of dragons in loans from the notorious Bank of Nobody Fucks With Us, assumes this will have no repercussions for her reign or Westerosi politics in general" plotline — which might as well have a big glaring THIS WILL BE IMPORTANT stamp on top of the chapter heading — you have Arianne Martell trying to do a coup/parent trap switcheroo with Myrcella, or Euron the Goffick Antichrist, or Faegon Targaryen and JonCon preparing a Blackfyre restoration, or anything else that might pan out — but might not! And while that uncertainty about what's important to the "overall story" might be a realistic way of depicting human beings in a world ruled by chance and not Destiny, it makes for much better reading than viewing, because Game of Thrones as a fantasy television series was based on the first three books, which are much more traditional "there is a plot and main characters and you can generally tell who they are" kind of book. I see Feast and Dance as a kind of soft reboot for the series in this respect, because they recenter the story around a much larger cast and cast a much broader net in terms of which characters "deserve" narrative attention.

but if you're making a season of television, you can't do that, because you've already set up the basic premise and pacing of your story, and you can't suddenly pivot into a long-form tone poem about the horrors of war. so you have to cut something. but what are you gonna cut? bear in mind that you can't just Forget About Dorne, or the Iron Islands, or the Vale, or the North, or pretty much any region of the story, because it's all interconnected, but to fit in everything from the books would require pacing of the sort that no reasonable audience would ever tolerate. and bear in mind that the later books sprout a lot more of these baby-plots that could go somewhere, but also might end up being secondary or tertiary to the "main story," which, at the end of the day, is about dragons and ice zombies and the rot at the heart of the feudal power system glorified in classical fantasy. that's the story that you as the showrunner absolutely must give them an end to, and that's the story that should be your priority 1.

so you do a hack and slash job, and you mortar over whatever you cut out with storylines that you cook up yourself, but you can't go too far afield, because you still need all the characters more or less in place for the final showdown. so you pinch here and push credulity there, and you do your best to put the characters in more or less the same place they would have been if you kept the original, but on a shorter timeframe. and is it as good as the first seasons? of course not! because the material that you have is not suited to TV like the first seasons are. and not only that, but you are now working with source material that is actively fighting your attempt to constrain a linear and well-paced narrative on it. the text that you're working with changed structure when you weren't looking, and now you have to find some way to shanghai this new sprawling behemoth of a Thing into a television show. oh, and by the way, don't think that the (living) author of the source material will be any help with this, because even though he's got years of experience working in television writing, he doesn't actually know how all of these threads will tie together, which is possibly the reason that the next book has taken over 8 years (now 13 and counting) to write. oh and also, your showrunners are sick of this (in fairness, very difficult) job and they want to go write for star wars instead, so they've refused the extra time the studio offered them for pre-production and pushed through a bunch of first-draft scripts, creating a crunch culture of the type that spawns entirely avoidable mistakes, like, say, some poor set designer leaving a starbucks cup in frame.

anyway, that's what I think went wrong with game of thrones.

[feelbetterlove-books]

Okay I've rewatched episode 2 and I have some thoughts, forgive me if this has been done, but here's my take on how the Tommy Lands That Plane theory can still win!! Keep in mind I'm not a writer or a pilot 😅 I really know nothing, I'm just having fun, as del(o)usional as I may be. Putting this under a cut because it got long!

I've been thinking that this plane disaster honestly could have been wrapped up in one episode. I know it's a three part premiere but episode one had a different focus and episode three could have gone back to bees or done something else, imo there doesn't seem to be a huge reason to drag it out another 40 minutes unless they were going to do something big (for example, having Tommy pull a wild stunt like rappelling into the plane) (aside from the fact that Angela Bassett is arguably the biggest star and they're possibly dragging it out just to give her something cool and dramatic to do).

Here's why:

First, the bees, where did they go? They obviously caused the crash and they were in the plane when Athena first got to the cockpit, but then they disappeared?? We don't see them on the plane later on even through there's plenty of holes for them to come in through, and we don't even see them on the ground in Bobby's plot line or anything.

If they had wanted to cause more drama on the flight to extend the emergency with the passengers, there could have been bees on board, and maybe more people who were allergic. Instead, the disasters from episode one and two only overlap a little bit.

Second: the on plane emergencies. Only a few passengers were critically injured and they've been dealt with, all that was really left for them to do was wait and hope the plane didn't fall apart around them. They could show more passengers getting injured now, but at this point the 118 aren't on their phones prepared to talk them through it, they're on the move and ready to see the plane land.

The plane could crash and then we'd have plenty for everyone to work with, but idk they've already done a plane crash recovery and I think if it was going to happen, it would have been a better cliffhanger then the copilot going down.

I'm not sure, maybe Athena could still get the copilot back, but it didn't seem like it to me, and if she did idk what the point of him having a heart attack would be in the first place. Unfortunately, that man does not have Bobby's plot armor, and I really don't think he's going to be able to help with the landing. And if he can't, then they're pretty much back at square one as far as getting the plane on the ground goes.

Most of the episode we saw Athena reluctantly planning to go along with landing the plane herself, or working with Jem, who is much more knowledgeable, but I think if he was going to be able to land it, they could have shaved off some time from other scenes and it could have already been done at the end of this ep. The two of them and ATC have already worked together, tried, struggled, and ultimately failed to land the plane, and the situation is only getting more dangerous. I think they need a new idea and a new person to come in and help pull the landing off safely. And I think that person could be Tommy!!

For a start, I believe it has been confirmed that these episodes are in fact, inspired by Airport 1975, and my understanding is that the pilot rappelling from a helicopter into the plane is quite an important part of that movie, so it just makes sense that it could happen in episode three!

Now we might say, but Tommy flies helicopters, not planes! However, it is at the very least implied in season two that he can do both when Chimney called him to drop water on that neighborhood. And I'm choosing to believe for the sake of this theory and the invisible string, that it was really him.

We also know that the 217 is likely involved on the ground and it's possible that Tommy was working and he or someone else came up with this idea, and he got sent up. He's definitely brave and crazy enough to do it if the unsanctioned search for a cruise ship in a hurricane is any indication. Plus, he's becoming a part of the 118's found family, he has even more reason to do this than he did at the start of season seven and he'll be damned if he saved Athena then just for her to die now!!

Another main reason I think Tommy could land the plane is that one, it would remind the GA that he's a cool and competent pilot, and two, involving him in a big scene like this could go a long way towards establishing him not only as Buck's boyfriend, but also a character in his own right. One who can just fit into calls like Athena and Maddie do, one who could expand the range of what can be done in future episodes by linking the streets to the sky. We could even have a plot line with Buck taking those flying lessons. With the way they all get into accidents, it sure would be useful to have a certified pilot or two on hand to help the 118 as needed!!

Tommy might not be a main character now, but depending on how many seasons 9-1-1 has left, and taking into account how much Tim loves working with Lou, I mean, I think he could be one day and this would be a great way to set that up.

There's also the fact that Buck and Bobby are together on the site of where it seems the plane will be landing and this would give us the perfect opportunity for parallel Bucktommy & Bathena big dramatic kisses!! Plus there has already been reason to speculate that Lou was working with Angela and I mean just imagine it!! THIS WOULD BE SO COOL WE'RE THIS CLOSE TO HAVING IT ALL BUCKTOMMY NATION!! Tommy lovers, we could live off of this for years!! And I am going to keep my fingers crossed until we either fail to see Lou's name in the opening credits, or the plane is landed another way!

[egophiliac]

YOU MANIFESTED THE TWEEL CARDS CONGRATS

YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYBODY!

seriously though I was probably like. 60-80% thinking we'd get at least one tweel for chapter 10. but I was NOT expecting it so soon! both of 'em! in August! a shame we're not getting a Coral Sea event after all...but I guess I can be resigned to that and ALSO excited for getting shiny sparkly glowing(!!!!) mertwins along with Azul fighting his inner demons and going right for the eyes! AHHHH I CAN'T WAIT

(also heeeey I recognize that rowboat... 👀)

[loudmound]

i think where people are losing the plot in terms of making james and jim characters that have suffered more than what is initially apparent in the narrative of sh2 is that it tends to absolutely consume how they see those respective characters and takes that shit to the absolute extremes. james and mary having a tumultuous relationship when she was sick turns into "mary was james' abuser when she was sick." conversely, for jim, it's entirely possible that she was institutionalized and sa'd while she was there, then that somehow turns into "none of what she experienced in silent hill was real and she's been locked in that mental hospital for 20 years, actually." it's deeply unserious.

[talkingadult]

HAVING ACTUAL HEART PALPITATIONS RN

[b0ylik3r]

why was there a proshipper defending r*pe and age gap ships in the zadr tag

[moongothic]

Look I just had to get this out of my system man

I keep on thinking about what kind of theoretical hoops Crocodad would have to jump through to happen in canon and I figured being able to actually visualize the known timeline would help

And that's what this post is about. We have a visual of the timeline. Now let us think about it a whole lot.

Minor notes about the timeline graph; Luffy's birthday is on May 5th and Croc's is on September 5th, so both would get a +1 to their ages by the end of this year in the timeline. On this note, if I am not mistaken, the year Luffy was born Crocodile would've been 27 at the time of his birth and would then turn 28 a few months later. But this is assuming Crocodile is already, at this moment, 46 years old (as opposed to if he was only turning 46 this year in which case he would actually be 45 at this moment, which would further mean he would've been 26 at the time of Luffy's birth and would've turned 27. It's slightly hard to tell what the case is exactly since we don't really get those exact timestamps during the actual story, but I think he's supposed to be 46 turning 47, and that's the assumption this post is written with). (Further sidenote, according the Vivre Card Databooks (appearently), the Strawhats got to Whiskey Peak in February and by late March had obtained Thousand Sunny. Thing is that Luffy was implied to have left on his adventure around his 17th birthday, which would mean that 8-9 months would've passed between Luffy setting out and arriving at Whiskey Peak, and he would've been a few months away from turning 18 already. Which, like, is plausible, but I'm personally willing to ignore this trivia information, not gonna fucking lie)

Anyways, to recap the timeline

We don't know

When Crocodile set out to become a pirate; since he was present at Roger's execution I think the implication would be that he would've set out soon after that, at age 22, but it's entirely possible he might've already been a no-name pirate before that or he could've set out a few years after the execution

When he met Ivankov and if their meeting was like a one-and-done thing and that they never saw each other again until Impel Down, or if that's just when they first got to know each other. (In Iva's own words (in Japanese), they knew Crocodile "during the era when he was still considdered a rookie")

When he got humbled by Whitebeard; it was "soon after" he became a Shichibukai (in Oda's words), but we can't tell if that was like 2 days or 10 months after becoming a Shichibukai

What we do know is that

Crocodile made a name for himself fast "much like Luffy" (in Oda's words); you could interpret that as him causing just a ton of chaos within like a year of entering the Grand Line

He rose to fame and became a Shichibukai in the first half of his 20's (in Oda's words), so before he turned 25?

He supposedly "calmed down" / "went quiet" (again, in Oda's words) for an unknown period of time

By the time he was 30 he was appearing on the news for his heroics; we don't know when he started appearing on the news, just that by this point he was appearing on the news

So I believe the implication is that Crocodile set out on his adventure between the ages of 21-24. If you wanted to push the Crocodad angle, you might want to push it to that 24 (since his Rookie Adventure happened so fast), which would also be around the time of the Revolutionary Army's founding. And while it is entirely plausible Crocodile could've had his ass kicked by Whitebeard VERY soon after his promotion, or it could've been around the time he was like 25-26, if you really wanted to push it for the Crocodad angle. And indeed, we don't know how Crocodile and Iva-chan knew each other. The implication I think is that he transitioned before he rose to fame as a rookie, but he could've just befriended Iva-chan at the time and gotten more well acquainted with the Revolutionaries after his ass kicking and transitioned later. It would just push the "knew him in the era he was considdered a rookie" to an absolute limit, but it would be technically true, just. Kinda pushing it.

And indeed, the Problem Point; Crocodile would've transitioned at age 27 after having Luffy, already a Shichibukai, a public-ish figure.

So if you wanted Crocodad to be canon, either

A) Crocodile being trans isn't a secret, it's something else that Iva-chan tried to blackmail him with B) Crocodile being trans is a secret, so how the fuck did he keep it if he transitioned at 27

If A); Indeed, if there was a scandal about a Shichibukai suddenly transitioning, it would've been like 17-19 years ago. Arguably that would not be something worth bringing up by anyone anymore considdering he had spent at least the past 14 years (pre-timeskip) being a hero to the masses, followed by his warcrimes. Like, it'd be old news. Which would just leave us wondering what the hell the "weakness" Iva-chan mentions really was about (a child, maybe? Or a threat of detransitioning him? Something else?)

If B); Although he was clearly a menace as a rookie as he got himself a relatively massive bounty relatively fast and became a Shichibukai at a young-ish age, we don't know how many bounties he went through before he was offered the position and how he appeared on the news at the time. Like if he went through 2-6 bounty updates before becoming a Shichibukai and appeared in the news A TON it'd feel unlikely he'd be able to keep transitioning later a secret. But if he only had like 1-2 bounties in a short span of time without being photographed too much, it'd definitely feel more plausible. Especially if his OG bounty photos were either shitty sketches (like Sanji's OG poster) or like otherwise poor photos that didn't show his face/features too well. This could also be helped if pre-T (and pre-pregnancy hormones)!Crocodile was kind of androgynous (like Cavendish) and people confused him for a man to begin with On top of this, if Crocodile lost his left hand and got his scar from Whitebeard, if he just went "missing" and then came back transitioned 2-4 years later, he could maybe argue that he was like. A late bloomer. And had hit the gym after Whitebeard kicked his ass. Like yeah he had changed a lot but it's not like there's other Sand Sand Fruit users around claiming to be Crocodile. And it is worth reminding that Iva-chan ability to change people's bio-sex isn't super well known in-universe. So even if people saw him on the news and were like "wait wasn't Crocodile a chick", without knowledge of Iva's abilities people could've been like "no way, surely not, that's not possible". And although the Government maybe could've found it suspicious if they knew about Iva's abilities (which they might've, as Ivankov was a Revolutionary, and their Warlord interacting with a Revolutionary would be sus), as long as Crocodile played nice (which he did, during his Heroic Era) they might've just let it go? (Also if Crocodile was rich at the time he probably could've bribed Morgans to make sure whatever news they published about him didn't ever question his gender or anything)

So all of this to say,

The Most Likely and Most Viable Timeline for Crocodad to be canon would be, approximately;

24-25 Becomes a Shichibukai, gets his ass kicked

25-27 Enters his Quiet Era, Romances Dragon

27-28 Luffy is born, transitions, back to Shichibukai'ing

Of course, this is not an absolute timeline, it's just the one that seems the most viable to me. 'Cause even this timeline is really pushing what Oda and Iva have told us about Crocodile, both the "first half of his 20's" (as opposited to mid 20's), and the "when he was considdered a rookie".

It's pushing it. But it's kind of plausible. And I can't imagine how else it could work in canon.

I do find it interesting though how Crocodile's "quiet era" does overlap nicely with when Luffy was born. Like we don't know how long that era lasted, for all we know Crocodile could've started to get Alabasta like a year after getting his ass kicked by Whitebeard. But it's interesting! And interesting coincidence!

Another interesting note is that 17 is an... interesting number. Like Oda's first one-shot, WANTED! was published when Oda was 17 and that in some ways marks the begining to his adventure as a comic artist. Similarly, Luffy set out on his adventure at the age of 17. A lot of people have been speculating if the God Valley Incident is what caused Dragon to leave the Marines because he would've been 17 at the time. And... It's not quite the same, but if Crocodile transitioned at 27 (as in, started a 'new life', a 'new adventure' as a man at 27)... IDK it'd be an interesting coincidence

Sitenote Re:Missing Kuja Empress

19 years ago, the year Luffy was born, Hancock and her sisters were kidnapped off of the Kuja Pirate's ship when the previous Empress was still the head of the crew

15 years ago the Boa sisters escape slavery and return to Amazon Lily, the status of the former Empress is unknown

13 years ago Hancock becomes the new Empress, the former Empress is presumably dead by this point (as she is said to have died from Love Sickness)

Point being; I reaaally doubt Crocodile is the missing Empress. Like if the former Empress had also been a Shichibukai and had transitioned and was still around, there's no fucking way people wouldn't know about that, right. Like surely they wouldn't say she had died specifically of Love Sickness, right. Like it's not impossible but surely not