#i need to do a hard factory reset on my brain i can't go on like this😭😭

[aintnopartylikeaprideparty]

i was scrolling the stanarrator tag and thought this ad was abstract stanarrator art. its actually so fucking over for me dude

[personwithatophat]

Intresting concepts, I love where you're going with that idea. I needed some expansion on that ngl and you fully cooked there /pos (Also hi Tophat)

What thoughts do you have on the idea Austin can see everything/the fact he either has no filter or a broken filter? Why would he be given this ability by Showfall besides the idea of an entertainment asset?

Hello! o/ thank you and good followup because austin is my crutch so i appreciate making me take it head on. (feel free to challenge my theories it helps me build them! :] ) As for austins filter being broken, I think the theory is good but incomplete. Austin does have a filter and has involvement, but it clearly works differently. in fact most of the 'filter items' have their own rules that they go by, its not a uniform model.

and a bit of this has to do with just how the show works sneegs hat isn't wired into his skull because he takes it off a couple times during the show or moves it around charlie has some kind of base program where he can run multiple items at once since during episode 2 he was wearing the glasses and the headphones and there are theories that details like this such as placement, hardware, etc have an effect on the items' limitations. for example, sneeg doesn't have surgically implanted hardware so he can't run two items like Charlie can and when they try, it shorts out and we get the ep 2 hat scene. or that other cast members couldn't be 'The Hero' since ranboos mask is necessary and capable of more complex sequences. that being said I've seen people speculate that Austins item is his jacket, which is entirely possible but it makes it confusing when he actually takes it off in the dressing room. so I'm going to pivot to the theory that he doesn't have a formal item. "so he doesn't have a filter?" not what I said. During the beginning of ep 2 before sneeg gets soft rebooted he doesn't actually have a filter item either and is still very much in character, he doesn't even recognize ranboo, we have hard proof that this is possible. and we know Austin is filtered/playing a character just by how he's acting in general. Austin as a showfall media victim has no reason to lie about having a wife and several children. why wouldn't he have a formal item? maybe because he was originally written to get double-tapped in Nikki's place in scene 1. Its very up for interpretation still but I believe a lot of this stems from the way that Austin is compared. Specifically how he gets compared to ranboo and sneeg when Ethan dies. i would like to counterpoint this with the way that Austins character is built for the episode. desperate, afraid, ......straight. but at the same time, he stalls to catwalk in the closet, mouthes off to puzzler questioning him having children, and is also very gay. so I think there might be some difference in writing. So yes, Austin is the only one who has a normal and more aware response to Ethan's death. Austin is also the only one there that isn't 3 layers deep in meta.

during this moment Austin is the only one freaking out but consider the company. ranboo is an NPC at this point. he got factory reset and basically has a cap over free thought, right now the only thing in his brain is the objective to go through the show. Austin is still in his role of character trying to escape this actual saw trap he's stuck in, his panic is as warranted in character as it is out so he panics and when the others don't it freaks him out more. sneeg on the opposite side of the spectrum is knee-deep in lethargy. sneeg is actually the one seeing everything how it is and can't respond to any of it so he doesn't care about anything anymore. after his soft reboot sneeg can still see but he's confined to the roll, I want to make a separate sneeg post because he's actually the one I think people view Austin as. so yeah I think that Austin has something going on but I think it's a step to the left of the current theories. sneeg is where the real awareness is feel free to ask me for any clarification on this since I jumped around a lot or if you have other questions/theories because this is epic :D -Tophat

[undead-potatoes]

I've been trying to figure out just who Aurora is, or rather why she is the way she is and why she fights the Urge the way she does.

I think she was always going to be a resist Durge, both bc of the way I make characters, but also bc of my own issues with intrusive thoughts. Like it have gotten so bad at times that it have brought on borderline suicidal thoughts for me, and playing a resist Durge has been strangely cathartic while still having fun with it bc it's taken to such silly extremes (and it's fun to be unhinged about shit sometimes). To fight the demons in your mind with everything you've got, and fucking win? Because at the very core of you there's a good person? That's the real power fantasy right there.

The basic idea is that getting non-consensual brain surgery and tadpoled caused a sort of factory reset in her brain, reverting her back to a version of herself similar to the time before the Urge.

I need to write a post about her background and all, but tl;dr: she grew up in a small, but close knit community in the poorer areas of Baldur's Gate, consisting mostly of other dwarves. So much of her upbringing was about the love and joy forged in human? dwarven? connections, and in looking out for one another. Her adoptive mother was also of the altruistic sort, which might be where some of Aurora's more self sacrificing tendencies stem from.

It's a funny little case of nature vs nurture. On one hand she's a child of Bhaal, his literal flesh and blood, with death and murder at the very core of her being. On the other there's years and years of learned empathy and kindness, genuinely felt and displayed, and it has wrapped itself so tightly around that bloodstained core that it can't simply be cut away.

She've also been fighting the Urge for a long time, I think, since before she was an adult. This has no real base in canon, but I love the idea of it starting small when she's a little kid, and her having to learn to live with it, to suppress it the best she can. That she would work so hard to be so good, in opposition to the depravity boiling hot in the back of her mind, which is partly why she's so good at resisting later on; it's second nature to her, as natural as breathing.

When she wakes up on that beach it's just her again, a ghost of her former self, but it's her nonetheless. The Urge is there too, trapped among the threads of her former life once again, and held in check for just a little bit longer.

This feels like a lot of words saying a whole lot of nothing, like there's about 19 layers of further explanation and nuance that naturally connects to all of this but is hard to explain simply. Reading through all of this feels so fucking cringe, but I'm trying to be sincere here so I'm just pushing through it. It doesn't have to be good, it just have to make me feel good (and a little insane).

Kinda unrelated, but it's also important to me that Aurora just has all the weird little tics, like doing the etch-a-sketch head shake, loudly telling her Urges to shut up, or doing a bunch of weird fidgeting when she's especially stressed out. And then ofc doing her very best to hide or mask that when other people are around and can see/hear her. Baby girl I'm giving you so much of my mental baggage, I'm so sorry and I love you.