#My thoughts during this got derailed halfway through so sorry if this is a disjointed read

[illmoraineakoi]

This was a really clever way for them to confirm Victim's identity, and it's always fascinated me ever since I noticed it.

Victim counts as a symbol in the Box, but not once is Chosen's name ever shown in the list even though he is also in The Box.

This is the most of the list we get to see, and it foreshadows everything that will eventually be used in the fight and the subsequent interrogation: Victim's clone's weapons, the chair, lightbulb, and photo.

Well, ALMOST everything. Because what in the world is "OBJ_Item"?

The Chosen One is noticeably absent.

(Though, for the benefit of the doubt, there IS a scroll bar on the right, implying that there is more to the list we just aren't being shown. They also aren't in alphabetical order. But in the OP's screenshot, which shows a narrowed down list, Chosen STILL doesn't show even though he is still an 'object' in 'use' in that scene.)

So it's strange, isn't it? For the AB Team to go to the effort of including Victim on the list/screen whenever necessary, but not Chosen. That has to mean it was an intentional decision to exclude him. So that begs the question: Why?

Why does the Box register Victim as a symbol but not Chosen?

Is it simply because he could've added himself as a symbol to the Box's registry? The Box IS his tech, after all, so it's not out of the question that he or his employees did something with him that they hadn't done with Chosen. By that logic, Orange probably wouldn't show either if he was taken into the Box.

But it still feels so weird. Because the Box, and it's controls, are clearly meant to mimic an Animation program. That list of symbols is as much of a callback to AvA1 as Victim himself and the repetition of the fight themes is. We've only seen the symbol library panel twice in AvA: AvA1, and AvA2.

And symbols are important to early AvA stuff, because:

That's how Alan brought Victim, Chosen, and Dark to life. By converting them into symbols.

By default, they should automatically register AS symbols in an animation program or animation program adjacent. Y'know, like what The Box is.

But Chosen doesn't. So that can't be how the Box works.

EDIT: I originally started this reblog to speculate on why Chosen isn't considered a Symbol, but in my rewatch of the episode, I think I might've figured something out. Or, I at least noticed something else that I think might tie in.

During the entire fight with Victim, not once does Agent manipulate Chosen's actual body. Only his powers and the sliders that correspond with them.

Victim, on the other hand?

Agent is actively manipulating Victim himself. Increasing his strength and his speed beyond it's natural level/limitations.

I think that's why Victim is a symbol and Chosen is not.

Victim was registered as a symbol into the Box's system specifically to allow for this advanced physical manipulation. That is what the functionality of being a symbol is. Total control over everything about the symbol.

They did not do this for Chosen likely because Victim was cocky enough to think that controlling/manipulating his powers would be enough to allow Victim to overpower/dominate him.

And he was right.

As an aside, the Box is capable of detecting Chosen's powers automatically; hence why Agent could manipulate them without needing to register them first. So the Box can detect things like powers and abilities within it on the fly, but not stick figures who weren't potentially added to it's registry beforehand. Kinda neat!

Now to wait until they inevitably shove the Cursor in there and see how it gets manipulated.

[These is also the possibility that Chosen IS OBJ_Item; it just defaulted to a template label that Agent just didn't care enough to rename. That could also explain why Victim doesn't have a prefix before his name; he HAD been renamed in the Box's database.]

So I was watching this with my AVA Obsessed friend for the first time and they were talking about how it hasn't been confirmed that the guy in charge is Victim and I instantly pointed out that it had. They got really confused and I scrolled back to this frame so um. Yeah.