#if this is fucking incomprehensible and/or inaccurate although i fact checked it I THINK? My apologies i was literally sloshed.

[calebsbian]

puts on my tin hat...Here’s the essay i drunkenly sent to my friend who asked why I think Molly’s body may walk back into CR2

Spoilers for the most recent episodes lmao here we go:

essentially, as a character without any memories, Molly’s backstory was free to be woven throughout the lore of the campaign, and it seems it was: eye tattoos, the number nine, back of the neck power areas, themes of rebirth and iterations/continuations of the self, etc are pretty prominent this campaign. Nonagon/Lucien/Mollymauk REALLY reads to me as the natural momentum of a pact with something powerful, and 🅱️erhaps also evil. Can’t die, forced to keep climbing out of graves without any memories, etc. I’m just thinking: if I need to do something that requires immense secrecy, deception and obfuscation, (Tharizdun’s whole deal, Yasha adjacencies, etc.) I need to make it so that not even I can ruin it. I need to assure the loss of the autonomous self.

so, whether I’m a big powerful god or a weird-ass tiefling with a plan, I’m gonna do this shit in stages. And once each stage is done, I have to make sure the parts stay unconnected, at least to the casual observer or adventurer on the lookout for evil or whatever. No one should be able to come looking for whoever carries out the plan. So they’ve gotta die. Not in any meaningful way (contract’s not done 🅱️erhaps?) but the people they’ve hired should bury them, and not hear from them once they inevitably crawl out of the grave. So they shouldn’t be able to remember anything about their past, and maybe should even develop a drastically different personality for this iteration. But, dammit, even with all this, they still remembered that they crawled out of a grave. That could ring the alarm bell for the old crew if they’re still in the area. How bout a grace period of sorts: for a week after, they can’t really talk or develop clear new memories.

AND here’s a mysterious magic user woman from Rexxentrum with whom he’s working on this ritual who disappeared after (and there’s a mysterious magic user woman from Rexxentrum who healed Caleb’s madness and disappeared after, and there’s a mysterious magic user woman who told Beau’s dad what would make him successful and disappeared after, etc.) ANYWAY. Re:Yasha adjacencies, if the ritual is in a specific area, and Obann/the Chained Oblivion pseudo-own Yasha and track her, it can guarantee the body’s left in her path. No fuckin clue what that could mean but it’s true and it could be related.

we also have barely scratched the SURFACE of the Molly Lore. As @mollyglock once posted, “molly's death is so funny to me. all his lore was in shady creek run. lucien was buried by shady creek run. gustav is from shady creek run. according to cree one of lucien's pals is in shady creek run. and he died RIGHT before they reached it! and by funny i mean infuriating.” And Shady Creek Run is being mentioned time and time AGAIN....as they say...the lorecuckery IS real. What in fuck was Gustav up to? He ended up with TWO AMNESIACS with POWER AREAS ON THE BACK OF THEIR NECKS and then TRIED TO GO TO—and FOUGHT TO STAY IN—JAIL. And then the Jagentoths are tied in with ALL THE FUCK SHIT HAPPENING...they’re rivals of the Marduns/the Gentleman (who work with Cree and the Tomb Takers) and they employee The Iron Shepards AND Avantica, and then Reani said they’re fucking with UTHODURN...Imagine me gesturing wildly at my Pepe Silvia board.

final thing that has rung some bells in my head was those 3 bigass murals they found in the temple during the piracy arc. One of them had a giant purple and red bird, with multiple eyes on it, and its feathers were burning and reforming like a phoenix. (Tal also signs stuff with “A bird thought to be extinct, but isn’t. -Molly.” I don’t really factor that into my consideration at all, but it IS interesting.)

i could be super wrong and I’m open to that, but even before his death, I figured that, what with bloodhunters’ whole purpose being to sacrifice their own vitality to destroy enemies, Molly’s arc is so closely tied to death that dying doesn’t really end his momentum with regards to story. (Not to mention Bloodhunters, especially older orders, like Ghostslayer, have direct ties to the Raven Queen. Not saying Molly is part of the Claret Order or anything but it’s something to keep in mind, and also I just love some delicious bloodhunter lore.) I don’t know if Mollymauk as we know him is alive, but his body probably is, and whoever made him probably isn’t done with him yet. Re:Nonagon, the nines of the tarot mean a completion and fulfillment of the suit’s meaning, and Molly got cut off early. Doubt that’ll just end it all.

that’s basically it. Ik it’s very much a conspiracy—Fellow Molly Truthers Rise Up—but Matt’s storytelling has ways of weaving back around on itself, and, as he’s said, just because Molly died doesn’t mean his story is over.

[albatris]

alright so

I have removed the spoilers from this ramble and adjusted accordingly so it’s not quite as good of a ramble as I’d hoped but it’s still somethin I wanna talk about

this turned into a fuckin doozy of a long post though and I might end up deleting it later because although I took out the spoilers it’s still just, like, full of SO many spoilers and I should really Stop Posting Rambles Like This Lmao

bc you know WHAT though

I have made a lot of posts that reference the whole........ “unfeeling cosmic machinery” thing, and the idea that the whole universe is completely indifferent, but that’s not necessarily........ proven, yeah

like, it would be inaccurate to imply that in the ATDAO canon it is Confirmed that the universe is completely indifferent and cold. I, in fact, for reasons I’ll go into, prefer the idea that it’s quite the opposite. but like. the point IS that the universe is big and incomprehensible and in the throes of apocalyptic doom, there is a LOT going on and humans have no hope of knowing For Sure one way or the other what the universe’s deal is

I will say that the idea that it’s all just a big churning mess of gears that doesn’t think twice about human existence, that there’s no meaning behind any of it and The Universe Does Not Care About You, that’s not an INACCURATE take on the ATDAO world, from the perspective of the tiny human lives inside it - it absolutely is a universe that’s callous and cruel and indifferent, perhaps quite senseless, and yeah, those big ol’ cosmic gears WILL keep grinding on and on and probably won’t notice all the people that are gettin caught up in them

I’ve talked a lot about this with Tris in particular, ‘cause he absolutely has some brushes with forces that are just..... completely horrific and senseless, for instance, the entire unreality, and one particular creature inside it. and like YEAH, I tend to emphasise this in terms of the unreality not being evil, not intending to cause harm, but simply being “indifferent and inevitable”, and that’s definitely Tris’s interpretation of it, and it checks out

n I know I’ve framed a lot of the plot points that kick the story off as just... freak accidents, fucked up twists of fate, or simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, etc etc etc. and they are. they are!

but to make the blanket claim that the universe is completely indifferent? that it’s just machinery? hm. that’s awfully bold of me. and it’s not even true in the story itself, like, the fault is in how I’ve talked about these themes ‘cause it’s not. it’s not a concrete fact, that’s not what the book is Saying

the book is just people scrambling to deal with existential terror and make sense of a reality that makes less and less sense every day, whatever conclusions they come to

and also - it would be rather disingenuous of me! like, that’s not how I see the world at all, that’s not how I experience it, and for me to ignore that in a book that also functions as my way of processing and exploring my own existential terror, it’d be a weird move

The Universe Is Indifferent is certainly one interpretation, and an interpretation that’s probably shared by three out of four main characters at some level or another

but I wanna talk about Shara specifically

‘cause she has this Theory

or not so much a theory as, like.......... a belief system she’s piecing together, a way of navigating the world and understanding it, she’s been messing round with some ideas and seeing how she likes them

n like. the way she navigates her life, the way she makes sense of the world, her insistence that the universe has a voice, that it speaks through coincidence and synchronicity and patterns, that there’s hidden significance and meaning in every corner and crease of reality

that’s absolutely part of it, that’s a part that I’ve really leaned into and kinda drawn from my own schizotypal experiences

but the theory she lands on is that this is simply The Kindest Way For A Universe To Die. or it’s supposed to be

you already know this fact (do you already know this fact?) which is that Ports are cracks in the fabric of reality, cracks between realities, and ur universe accumulates these naturally, but obviously the more cracks in the fabric u get, the more ur universe struggles to hold itself together, blah blah, this is just how a universe naturally dies, and it takes FOREVER. it takes ages. the ATDAO universe has now hit this point and is Noticeably Unravelling

but like, re: Kindest Way To Die?

like, when you look at the circumstances that need to be met in order for a Port to form, which are [SPOILER, and also which unfortunately give context and an explanation for a lot of what I’m about to say], and the fact that a reality dies by gradually coming apart and becoming amalgamated into other realities - as in, your reality becomes so unravelled and spread thin that it ceases to exist as its own and its energy just feeds into other realities and becomes part of them

The Way This Reality Is Ending, and the SPECIFIC SPOILERY SITUATION in which Ports spring into existence, all of this, at its core, is the universe’s attempt at comfort, this is the universe’s attempt at easing the process and being gentle, this is the universe’s way of saying “it’s okay, you’re not alone” in the leadup to your reality just sort of....... flickering out of existence

it’s an attempt at kindess, it’s an expression of love. Even At The End Of Everything You’ve Ever Known You Are Not Alone

and it’s comforting, but it’s also like. Shara is HEARTBROKEN about it because it’s just........ it’s nice to think about the intent, but the execution is so callous

and this is also an incredibly fun concept to me, the idea of - this universe, shit, the entire MULTIVERSE of this story, is full of such an intense love and it wants to be kind, but it’s just so BIG. it’s on a whole other scale compared to these tiny human lives, or the lives of any other creatures in any other reality, it’s this huge, cosmic, all-powerful force, it’s Everything, its attempts at kindness are just......... clumsy

clumsy isn’t even the right word

just. the forces of the universe are so big, they’re on such a different scale, they have no way of relating to a human brain or comprehending human feelings, human lives go by in the blink of an eye compared to entire worlds. or they can’t see the details in these worlds because the individual pieces are just so small and they’re looking at such a big picture..... or they see the pieces but they’ve just got - got such big ginormous metaphorical fingers that any attempt at being gentle is likely to have clumsy and destructive and unintentional consequences

and like, are Ports an attempt to be kind? were Ports set into motion as a universe’s in-built pre-programmed death, under the assumption they would be a comfort? ARE they a comfort? maybe! but they’re also just? horrifying and incomprehensible most of the time. do the machinations of the universe even notice? can they comprehend that?

I don’t fucking know! but something about the idea of forces so massive and powerful and incomprehensible to tiny human people with tiny human lives, any attempt at kindness and love is going to be clumsy and terrifying, and it’s operating on such a broad scale that it has so many unintended consequences

the idea that the universe is not indifferent, that the universe is full of love, made of love, that the universe is BUILT on connection - not just in the way lives interact with each other, but the way realities overlap and flow into each other, the way [REDACTED, SPOILERS, AGAIN] - but it’s so vast and complicated that any attempt to express that love in a way the inhabitants of the universe can understand fails

but then! like! the tone around Ports DOES shift through the novel, because - yeah, they DO come into existence because [SPOILERS], and the protagonists use them as tools to bridge between realities, to help each other, to save each other, to tell each other they’re not alone, WHICH IS ARGUABLY THE WHOLE POINT

n idk!!!! idk man

like, I’m not saying Ports are good, but Ports aren’t EVIL, they’re not bad, they’re just........ there. whether they’re meaningless or not. whether the fact that they appear when [REDACTED] is an intentional attempt at comfort or just a convenient way to spread

good fucking night everybody I am going to bed