#but it doesn’t rlly come up outside of the fact that it exists unlike other things so i allow it

[emberglowfox]

If im understanding that the things connected to their back are meant to house the dragons? Can I ask how? I am feeling a little awe-horror about the implications that a Robot Dragon that I think are the size of a barn ish fits into a tiny spine box.

HI HI yes! that is a very good question

while not the size of a barn (unless you’re 09, in which case it’s arguable) the DRACOs are certainly way bigger than should be able to fit in that Little Fucking Thing (shown in pic below)

in original (VERY original way long ago) versions i wanted them to just fold up. that ended up being just. not really feasible, so instead we’ve got DISINTEGRATION!! yaaay!!

as shown above (and more artfully in the link below bc tumblr is being finicky) the DRACOs (and the PULSARs (aka the v2s, idk if i’ve used that name on here yet) since they’re derivative) dissolve into… i don’t even really know. light? plasma? something of the sort. either way, 8 foot tall, several hundred pound robot now fits in a 10 inch rectangle and weighs maybe a couple ounces. useful!

HERE IS THE EXAMPLE OF THAT IT WONT LET ME LINK PROPERLY BC IM ON MY PHONE

“how the fuck does THAT work?” not a clue! as far as hand-waved futuristic technology in shr goes, this is one of the more egregiously unrealistic examples.

“but wouldn’t such an advanced, versatile technology have a profound effect on the world, even outside of the DRACOs?” it definitely would have, had everything not immediately gone to shit! see, on-core (pre-war megacompany responsible for a lot of things, but notably the DRACOs) developed this technology alongside a lot of others. the DRACOs were basically the culmination of all their advancements; not made to be actually useful, but more to be like, hey, look at all this crazy shit we can do! aren’t we cool?

now defenex, maker of the PULSARs slash v2s, has a monopoly on it (and is the only group that like. has access to the technology, really) and won’t let anyone else use it. lame.

[archaeopter-ace]

ok you seem like a rlly good person to come to for arcadia meta. so. Unless it's been addressed in canon and i just forgot it, do you think trolls tried to remain hidden from human society still after the eternal night? Personally i can see that even if they TRIED, they'd fail because well. literally everything about that brouhaha was absurdly attention-grabbing. not to mention all the changelings over the world suddenly poofing back into trolls after their familiars were retrieved.

Aw, thanks! ;D What a good question! We see that the people of Arcadia, at least, are not going to be able to stick their heads in the sand regarding the swirling vortex of doom and the gumm-gumms and all the structural damage done to the town. But we don’t know anything about how much attention the rest of the world was paying to them on the Eternal Night. The eclipse Morgana created was not global - it was more like some intense magical cloud cover, as we see from some aerial shots when Darci was lifted above it by a stalkling. Do magical clouds show up on doppler radar? Probably - but that wouldn’t immediately lead people to think ‘trolls,’ just that Arcadia was meteorologically interesting for a day. Similarly, the tremors could be dismissed as earthquakes, and while seismologists might be scratching their heads over the fact that none of their instruments gave them advance warning, it too could be brushed under the rug.(that’s if the shaking in Arcadia even registered as an earthquake at all. Maybe the Darklands don’t have an actual ‘depth,’ being a different dimension, and all the shaking was only at the surface. And while they could certainly be felt by townspeople, the quakes themselves hardly did any damage. A shallow earthquake might occur at a depth of 20 km; a deep one might occur at 500 km. If the shaking in Arcadia only happened at the literal surface, perhaps the vibrations didn’t radiate outwards very far)Social media is another matter. We could imagine that the magical energy in the air interfered with cell signal, but it would be a herculean effort to then convince everyone in town not to say anything about it. On the other hand, the Arcadia Museum openly displayed paintings of trolls in their gallery, so maybe Arcadia has a bit of a reputation not unlike the Bridgewater Triangle (200 square miles in Massachusetts where a lot of paranormal activity is said to occur), and people outside of town are more willing to dismiss the claims coming from the town as nothing more than a media stunt. 

The fact that almost all the trolls have left would help. Aaarrrgghh could help clear the gumm-gumm rubble out of sight (maybe drop them into the giant hole in the ground?), at which point, nothing in the town says ‘trollpocalypse,’ specifically. Just general weirdness. 

There’s just so much that needs to be swept under the rug, though - one or two things I could imagine, but not everything. Like, maybe we don’t know how many surviving changelings there are after Gunmar’s massacre, and maybe there were few enough left that they coincidentally weren’t out in public when the familiars were rescued. And maybe the whole town does agree to keep the secret. And maybe FEMA does give the town disaster relief to get themselves back on their feet and for some reason does not conduct any sort of investigation (Also there’s a doctor with a thousand babies???). The trolls, being unaware of how human society operates and observes things, would definitely assume that humans don’t know about them, until proven otherwise.

All that being said, from a showrunner point of view, they very rarely overturn the status quo so completely, especially in children’s shows. Kids are smart, and deserve more credit than they often get, but they aren’t usually the ones picking apart what the appropriate disaster response would be to an explosive show finale; they just roll with it. Two exceptions that come to my mind are from the Daredevil comics, and the Gargoyles tv show. In the Born Again storyline way back in 1986, Daredevil’s secret identity gets outed - and notably, this doesn’t get retconned or reversed or otherwise undone as happens so often in comics. Instead, writers have to deal with with a superhero whose identity is an open secret, a rarity. 

More relevant to our Trollhunters case, the Gargoyles cartoon is an interesting example to look at to see what might happen when a nocturnal group of monster-like creatures is discovered to have been living under everyone’s noses. Now, the third season of Gargoyles is not considered canon by fans or by its creators. It suffered from a low budget, executive meddling, poor continuity, and from having most of the staff who worked on it replaced (including creator Greg Weisman). It was a hot mess, that could have had so much potential. But it did at least try to address the question of how the revelation of the existence of gargoyles would unfold. Step by step, how the information would spread, and how people would react in stages. How the media would hype it, the protesters and the counter-protesters. How gargoyles would have to defend their personhood over and over and over again to hysterical people who would rather see them rounded up. And it’s been too long since I’ve seen it but I’m sure the government was pulling strings in there somewhere. 

It really comes down to what story the creators want to tell. If digging into all the ramifications of Trolls Becoming Known would sidetrack them from whatever awesome plot they’ve got planned for Wizards, if it would bog them down too much from a different story they’ve maybe had planned since before the final details of The Eternal Night were hashed out, then I think they’d gloss over the fallout from that night and let the rest of the world remain ignorant.

A part of me would like to see the trolls get to keep their secret, because I love them and don’t want to see them harassed. The realist side of me says there’s no way the town would be able to keep a lid on that secret for long, not when that funnel cloud would have been visible from miles away (and ‘tornado-slash-meteor shower-slash-earthquake’ just doesn’t sound like a very probable explanation). The part of me that tries to guess what the show’s writers are thinking gives it 50-50 odds that the trolls just carry on as they have been. 

Thanks so much for the awesome question!

[marinedream]

...SO could that mean that yellow phosphor has some kinda property that causes robots to be self-aware?? or something??? would that mean NIKO is a robot too? ,,this sounds rlly stupid shdjssjdjs im sorry but this is an idea i had a while ago; sorry for spamming u :''3

,No need to apologize at all- it’s always a blast talking about theories, especially since there’s only a number of things in Oneshot that are really concrete!

FUCKING WALL OF TEXT AHOY

(apparently these don’t always show up in mobile so I’ll tag it)

A little sidenote about speculation that the three children are robots- it is very possible, since there is a spritesheet in the game’s files of Rue with a little wind-up key inserted into her back- which is a possible implication that she was designed to more physically resemble a toy/robot, which would further accentuate that she too, is artificial. It’d be trickier gathering proof for Cedric, as he resembles a human on almost all accounts (I guess if you exclude his matter-of-fact nature, which doesn’t too much as Proto is a lot more insensitive but is still canon tamed) so I can’t say I really know much about that one, except how it is... odd, that his shirt glows like that.

BACK ON TOPIC THO LOL

I can definitely see why that’d be a theory- it’s plausible since Alula does outright say to Niko that their eyes are like the sun- meaning they are a bright golden-yellow like.... yellow phosphor, lol. More backup is, while this could have been purely for aesthetic reasons- Niko’s eyes are the only thing visible in the darkness when walking into another section of the map. Eyes.... don’t really give off light like that- unless they were artificial and giving it off themselves. Sort of like a light....So Niko’s eyes being made of yellow phosphor AND being a robot is... quite plausible, really!...The only prominent issue with this theory is- well. Okay, it’s actually not a problem so much as it’s a personal quip of sorts with storytelling- and few very minor plot holes that make this theory a little less plausible.  

Bear with me a little and imagine that, yes, Niko really IS a robot. Let’s assume they were built by someone in the world, most likely the Author or even Cedric. The world is in need of a Messiah as the sun has gone out, so Niko’s purpose for being built is to act as the savior and bring salvation to the refuge with the return of the sun. 

The room Niko wakes up in is strange and decrepit, like an abandoned or bombed out house. The pretext for this was always confusing to me- and the only real theory I had for this was that they woke up in a house that was of a similar state to perhaps, the houses of the real world- as it’s been revealed in Solstice that it had been destroyed or annihilated by... something. The strange light outside seen from the window is a little similar to the glow of the light from inside the Tower; meaning it’s possible Niko awoke inside the tower in the first place. Presumable, only someone like the Author could probably gain access to the Tower, so it makes a little sense, maybe....Thing is, Niko’s memories of their hometown, their friends, family, their mama, and their fervent love for pancakes- these memories are pretty.. deliberate and vivid, to give to a robot. It IS possible that Niko was planted with fake, artificial memories in order to gain pity from the God/Player, so that they would feel more inclined to help Niko. But uh... then, here come some of the plot holes I was talking about.1.) A robot in the Barrens says that robots do not have digestive systems- and that some do not even have mouths! Niko is... clearly seen eating pancakes at Ling’s cafe (unless you say no, but what kind of fucking heartless beast deprives Niko of their pancakes??? ugh) so that’s uh. yeah. Not really a hole, but a silly inconsistency. I suppose you could technically look over this one, but...2.) None of the characters are capable of interacting with the God/Player. The “sun” is the Messiah’s connection to the world, and based off later events in the Tower, it is clear that Niko can only speak to their God IF they are holding the sun. The sun is obtained in that mysterious, dark room- so my question here is... how exactly did Niko manage to wake up in the exact location needed to get the sun? What prerequisites are needed for this to happen? What made Niko more suitable than any of the other children, if they were robots as well?3.) The “return home” ending. Again, I’ll bring back one of the laws of robotics. “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” Niko is quite able to discern between what is human and what is a robot, and remarks that in their world, robots do not exist except only in movies and tv shows. Once again, of Niko really IS a robot and was planted with fake memories, it’s... a little too elaborately done just for a single task. By smashing the sun and returning home, Niko is, effectively and quite knowingly, hurting and ending the lives of many, MANY people- but is willing to do so because of the orders of their God. I feel like the only way Niko would bypass this is if they were a rogue robot- which seems HIGHLY unlikely as Kip described an event such as to be “volatile”. Niko is anything but- they’re caring, emotional, and sweet.

Last but not least- the concept of Ad Infinitum. Niko is sent on this quest, over and over until Solstice had the opportunity to rear it’s head- they’re only supposed to have ONE SHOT. And yet, after they make their choice, they’re thrown back to square one with zero recollection of the previous loop, while you, the Player, retain all knowledge but cannot impart them with it. You’re essentially forced to watch Niko do the same thing over and over, with only two possible outcomes. Exhausting yourself for details to look for a better ending does not work, and eventually, the whole concept of “choices matter” becomes null. You have, technically, infinite shots. Nothing is of any consequence anymore. Your choices are in truth, pointless in the end. You’re always going to come back to square one, fixed only by Solstice which... frees Niko. After you beat Solstice, Niko... really is gone. They went home, which is certainly not anywhere back in the world that the game takes place in, as we never see them.

For a long while, despite playing the key role as Messiah, which is literally a savior prophesied to save people from ruin, their efforts don’t mean anything for a long time. Niko is essentially built as the ‘hero’ of a shaggy dog story, where even if you played for the first time after Solstice, the option was not presented immediately, but shows up in the second playthrough. This means Niko must be forced through a reset once. When speaking with Proto, they even get defensive and turn towards the Player, accusing them of making a world that could be reset infinite times, 

“What kind of God makes a world like this?” 

Niko’s heartbreak is... very palpable. You wouldn’t expect a robot, even a tamed one- to react that harshly, especially towards their own directive, if Niko was one. They even tell Prophetbot that they want to go home- that they don’t even want to do this, but are biting the bullet to go home, and winds up loving the people they meet on the journey and their passion grows on it’s own. Niko undergoes quite the metamorphosis through this journey- but it simply doesn’t feel necessary to build a robot this in-depth for a single task. You’d think it’s be easier to build a robot that didn’t feel, didn’t question- it makes things easier.TL;DR- It’s a cool af theory but personally I don’t think Niko is a robot