#i'm gonna be finding miniscule connections and writing dissertation-length bullshit speculative essays about them for the next few years

[kelasparmak]

i’ve been relistening to campaign lately since i’ve been spending a lot of time on trains, and here are some dumb thoughts that i wanted to unload on y’all (spoilers for bounty above bespin - just after episode 53 in regular campaign - and probably for all of the evil campaign episodes) :

when i first listened to leenik's flashback arc i was convinced that zero would turn out to be venton. that's been looking less and less likely to me as the show's gone on, but i'm relistening to the show now and i recently got to zero's first appearance and i just. i am so worried that he really will turn out to be venton.

like:

both played by tyler davis

kat casually asking johnny 'what colour do reptomammals—what colour do you people bleed?', cause like... are the gank reptomammals? wookiepedia says that they're furry, which doesn't sound very reptilian.

the gank are also typically v short (supposedly their average height is ~5'3") and bulky. zero is 6'3" (venton was about six foot tall) and i don't think his build has been specifically described but i think marian churchland's art is at least semi-official, and in that he's pretty willowy (so, y'know, more rodian-looking).

obviously, the important one: 'he's johnny's dad, right?' 'well, he's covered head-to-toe, he could be anyone', 'yeah, but this is star wars, you don't just cut off your not-kid's hand'

on the same note, zero's a bounty hunter and an assassin and works for the empire and was tasked with eliminating the kaiburr crystals and any rebels there. so it seems weird that instead of just straight-up killing or capturing leenik he'd specifically cut off his hand on the same side as his eyepatch so that they'd match.

zero's been working with blue for 5-6 years, which would line up

i don't think the specific age difference between leenik and venton is given, but zero's five years older than leenik which seems about right

it makes a LOT of sense for venton-as-zero to want hover boots after that fall

both missing an arm and an eye – zero's are both on left; venton's severed arm was also on the left. his eyepatch was over the right eye iirc, but zero's one visible eye seems to be cybernetic, and the other is just completely covered. rodian eyes and gank eyes look very different, so if zero were venton that'd explain why he'd want to cover the biological one.

not that there needs to be more justification than canon gives for blue and zero being close, but their relationship has a very similar combination of pettiness, bickering and ride-or-die protectiveness as there was between venton and leenik (and both pairs also have private/secret conversations during group interactions) (this doesn't necessarily mean that zero sees blue as a little brother, personally i ship them, but it does fit how we see venton interact with people he cares about)

they both like giving people nicknames (nikki, char, sy)

the reason leenik handles (or, uh, tries to handle) the talking in their flashback episodes is that venton doesn't like (and seems to get kinda anxious about?) talking to people. one of zero's first lines in evil campaign is, sarcastically, 'yeah, i need to talk to more people. more distressed people. that's what i need.'

zero does not like mining planets (he does like jungle planets, though!)

0ni a) rhymes with tony and b) sounds an awful lot like 'onii' as in 'big brother'. also zero rhymes with geelo (sort of, anyway – consonance/alliteration/rhyme of l and r is perfectly acceptable in early-ish medieval irish/welsh so maybe that's biasing me re: how similar they sound)

zero is a good bounty hunter and holds a pretty powerful position in the empire (not quite ruling the stars, but hey, he's not too far off)

 [wild-haired guy saying 'ALIENS'] conspiracy theorist level hints:

stazi was a kaiburr crystals fan; zero first turns up at a kaiburr crystals show, to capture/kill the kaiburr crystals and their fans

both use vibroswords (and 'the zero system' blue and zero apparently use on the regular involves zero holding his to someone's neck to keep them restrained, which venton also does with stazi)

zero's colour scheme when he was introduced gave him accents in teal, which was also venton's skintone. in evil campaign 5, he's wearing dark blue and red, which... dark blue's not as close, but venton had red hair, so it's still a similar colour scheme.

both have a tendency to repeat statements mantra-like – 'i am a good bounty hunter and i will rule the stars' / 'i love being a cyborg'

i've had almost this exact same argument with myself before, over whether a character who appears later in the show and hides their face was a character previously thought dead, and it turned out that they were the same guy despite very similar counter-arguments to the ones i'm about to raise -

on the other hand:

they’re both played by tyler davis, which is just... almost too obvious? unless it's a double bluff? but then what if it's a TRIPLE bluff? or—[aaaand fade out, fade back in on about the twentieth iteration]. also, tyler davis playing both of them could explain a lot of similarities in phrasing and behaviour.

zero's quite a bit more, idk, confident and rough around the edges and snarky than venton, which could just be development (leenik's changed a fair bit since then too) but that's not necessarily the development we'd expect

on that note, venton doesn't have any reason to cut off leenik's hand – he didn't seem to resent or blame him at all when he fell, and it seems a pretty cruel way to just incapacitate someone, especially since he used a vibrosword to do it

rendezvous is pretty friendly with zero and she's worked jobs with him in the past, and it also seems like she knew venton, at least in passing. so if they were the same guy we might expect her to make the connection, and it's unlikely that if she did she wouldn't have told leenik.

bossk and zero apparently know each other too, so he could have recognised him too (though idk if bossk would actually care enough to recognise him, or tell anyone if he did)

chartreuse presumably goes to bhikke every year, so if zero also goes regularly she might have recognised him? but also he'd probably make an effort not to be recognised and there'd presumably be no reason for her to suspect.

aava and zero get along fairly well and she's a force user, so though he probably wouldn't have told her, she probably would've noticed something was up and might've made the connection between them. on the other hand, force powers probably aren't that specific, and they didn't get to know each other properly until a week before bhikke, and honestly even if she did know i very much doubt she'd have told leenik

the fact that tobi turned out to be obito in naruto means absolutely fuck-all because naruto’s writing and plotlines are terrible  and make very little sense