#ik that's not exactly how it works but

[sweetnnaivete]

fuck you inflation why are books $20 and cds $40 this is insanity

[timespacegirls]

diversity win!! the doctor just asexually reproduced

[chiyune]

a fully-worked interior of asra's shop!

feel free to use this design, just use credit (tag me or smth)! id love to see people using it :]

[demodraws0606]

Guys...I think Whit is the culprit.

Sorry guys this is gonna be a long one

You know I'm a big believe of Whit mastermind theory and depending on how the trial goes he could still be the mastermind despite being the culprit but uhm...

Mf has like an 80 pourcent chance of being the culprit

My theory of Levi being the culprit kinda has went down the drain though i'm not really that upset about it because it was admitidely the most generic route.

I still do not buy for a second Eden is the culprit mainly because it contradicts a lot of her behaviors and also is only really based on one piece of evidence that could be explained by something else.

I think the most credible option to me right now, is Whit, especially because with how certain things are laid out for us we can actually make out a concrete motive for why Whit would do this.

I'm gonna write down what I think and explain why I believe Whit is most likely the culprit (also i'll deal with a couple of holes and explain why the theory still works alongside them) and also i'll use a couple of speculations made by other people as well

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I think it's known by everyone that the way Whit's secret was revealed is extremely strange, for like two reasons.

One, it means that it's impossible for anyone (including Whit himself, we'll get into that later) to have known what Whit's secret was, or to confirm it with certainty in the trial. We only have Whit's word for it.

Second, Whit takes a very strange amount of time until saying what secret he has, like right after Hu denied to say which secret she has. Which is extremely weird because if his life was so uneventful wouldn't he have managed to pick out a secret as blatant as this.

I thought this would be meant as a red herring to put suspicions on Whit however with Levi revealing his secret and this loose thread still not being addressed, I think it has to be important to the case at hand.

Now, despite people pointing this out every analysis that tries to handle this kinda goes into a brick wall because it immediatly assumes that Whit is lying about the dead mother secret being his. However there's too much pointing towards Whit having the dead mom secret.

No, I think we're going about this the wrong way. It's not about us not knowing what Whit's secret was, it's that Whit had no idea what secret actually was his

In fact that's mentionned before trial on how Whit just didn't know WHAT his secret even was, and no one could really tell him what it was because Rose threw it away

But that's weird right ? You would think Whit would know that his dead mother would be the likely secret, you could argue he just didn't want to share with everyone but that still doesn't explain the strange amount of time until he revealed he had Rose's secret.

And if he didn't want to share that his mom was dead, why did he let everyone the opportunity to say if they had his secret and to spill the beans...

Unless things are more complicated than just Whit having a dead mom, after all if it was just that wouldn't he have known immediatly that was his secret ? After all Teruko had the same issue as well as she didn't know what her secret could actually even be.

You could argue that I put my back against the wall here. If Whit not knowing his secret was his motive as to why he commited the murder then why did he let a bunch of people the opportunity to air out a potentially incriminating secret. Wouldn't that mean he wasn't worried about it ?

However, you have to keep in mind Whit had no idea how bad the secrets were, the only secrets that was revealed was J's which in retrospect of other secrets seemed like a much lighter one.

You could argue "Well Whit had David's secret which was pretty bad" however despite how bad that secret was it was also very vague and since Whit didn't know how much about David it doesn't really mean much on how deep the secrets were.

Considering Whit's personality as well, it was possible he was in denial or some deeper reason as to why he wasn't thinking about it. "Bitter things need to go down the drain" and all that.

In fact Whit was one of the first ones to say they shouldn't reveal their secret before J's secret was immediatly revealed.

I also don't think Whit being in denial has to be rooted in logic either (especially with how inconcistent he seems to be about the secrets), the murder was commited right before the deadline and although there was planning behind it, it was still a last minute decision (aka not done immediatly during the day of the motive reveal). You could argue pressure got to him or he overthought it as it became increasingly clear how much deeper the secrets went and how much the people who set this game up knew about them (something Whit investigated himself).

I think the way Whit acted about the secrets is too contradictory to really use any of what he says as actual evidence against the secrets not being his motive basically.

Now, let's go into the other point and how it works with the potential motive, the speculation that Arei was waterboarded.

Yeah, this seems to hint heavily that this is what happened and Arei's actual cause of death would be by drowning instead of strangulation like expected.

But why not strangulation ?? Why do a technique that is much harder to kill Arei, unless they were trying to get something out of drowning her. I mean we don't technically know if it was actual waterboarding but considering how planned this murder was and how we do actually have pieces of clothing that would serve for waterboarding, it seems to be likely.

(I'm not exactly sure how it stuck together with the starch afterwards but considering how the playground's ventilation works it's possible it dried up quickly) (There's also Arei's missing glove if you don't believe Teruko and Hu's clothing where used for it)

There's also no reason to drown her instead of strangling her with the rope unless there was another justification for it. But the episode actively goes out of it's way to say that there probably wasn't an attempt at tricking people into thinking the murder happened during 7:30 PM.

Anyways, why would the culprit waterboard Arei then ??? Clearly this means they were trying to get information out of her...

Which makes 0 sense unless it was Whit who would at least have a small justification for it, aka him not knowing what his secret is. I do admit it is a bit blurry on what type of information Whit would've truly wanted or why he did this before just killing her. However out of anyone (that already isn't pretty much confirmed innocent) it would only make sense for it to be him.

Now onto other stuff unrelated to the secret thing, like how unhelpful Whit has been this trial to a suspicious degree. AKA :

-Trying to distract away from the letter framing Eden and then just throwing her under the bus immediatly when he's questioned about it.

-Refusing to reveal David's secret

-Coincidentally having an excuse for not seeing Arei's body swaying

Now all of these could be argued to be in character reasons, after all didn't he do something like that chapter 1 with Charles (kind of). However this is a new level of trial interferance that really isn't justifiable at a certain point.

You could argue "well wouldn't talking about the note and David's secret be useful to make them seem guilty"' and while that'd be right to an extent. However everytime Whit witholds something like with Eden and David, he seems to cave eventually so the only thing he has achieved in this trial so far is to stall for time. Which could potentially be intentional if he's the culprit.

Now that I've kinda covered the major points, here are a list of suspicious things, mostly things that Whit knew before I get to my final point (how this would fit the narrative this chapter).

(I do wanna say most of this things isn't technically necessary info that the culprit needed to know but it definitely helps).

Whit was present during Teruko and Hu changing, meaning he would have known about their old clothes and could have found out where to get them.

Whit was present during the fight in the cafeteria, which is when Arei demanded to have her rope thrown away leading to Mono-TV putting it in storage

(Eden was busy helping J and Arturo so only Teruko, Charles and Whit could've known this information by listening in)

Whit also is the reason David is in the relaxation room leading to his conversation with Arei although idk how much of that would even possibly be planned or how that would help him, still important to note though.

There is probably more I could say however I want to get to my last point, I do think Whit being the culprit fits this case more than anyone else.

I know the question of the tape is still unanswered, if Eden did take it wouldn't that mean she is the culprit ? Well I don't think so but overall I just don't think this one singular piece of evidence is enough to say Eden's the culprit especially if we look at the bigger picture.

I'm probably just repeating the same things people probably have heard already but Eden committing such a gruesome murder for pratically no motive at all (outside getting out but it would make the secret motive useless) just doesn't really make sense.

However it is true that from what the title of this chapter suggests "all that glitters (is not gold)", it would mean a character isn't as innocent/good as they seem.

But wouldn't that title make more sense with Whit ?

Eden and Whit both are seemingly the positive vibes character of the cast, both being seemingly "normal". However Whit's positivity is a lot more toxic than Eden's, cracking jokes at innapropriate time and seeming to not let himself show even negative emotions (contrary to Eden who has let herself be upset multiple times).

Narratively speaking, Whit being the culprit, would put Charles in a similar situation to Teruko perhaps deepening their bond further without having Teruko going through a regression arc (she was way closer to Eden than she was with Whit).

It would allow Eden's message to not be lost/contradicted while also going with the apparent theme of the chapter that things aren't as they seem.

And also "all that glitters is not gold" would be a very smart saying for Whit, the one who died his hair blond (would be a very fun double meaning)

[marshmallow-biscuit-blog]

Nightmare Cinnamon, just in case he never lets go instead of forgiving. Griefful Rancor ig

[transingthoseformers]

................

What happens if we shoot a Quintesson Judge with the sparkeater gun🤔🤔🤔

[journey-to-the-attic]

bold of you to assume we (or atleast i) dont want to read paragraphs about ik's and belphie's dynamic 😈😈

if you feel like writing that, i'd absolutely love to read about it!!! ^^

RIGHT YES this took me a hot minute but let's go!!!!

so the main points that this is all built around:

belphie is someone who is absolutely shit at understanding himself

ik is someone who has a knack for understanding anyone she talks to for long enough

belphie's first resort is usually to leave things to someone else, but easily asserts the things he wants

ik will actively pursue you if she thinks she can help, despite usually feeling guilty about requesting anything

they both have very simple views of very complicated things

building from point 1: this is not entirely belphie's fault - i've talked about this before, so i'll just paste the pertinent bits here:

belphie, as the youngest brother, has been detrimentally coddled in regards to these things, and has NO fucking idea how to properly deal with loss the others haven't tried to talk to him about his grief for lilith, nor about their experiences during the celestial war; when they all had to support each other after the fall, they comforted him, but never ever discussed the pain of it all it's like the doctor refusing to talk about your actual symptoms because they're afraid of making you uncomfortable, and instead just soothingly going "it's okay, just take some ibuprofen and see me in the morning"

belphie underestimates himself and, at the start of the year, is convinced that there's no way forward - 1. he feels he's left it too late, 2. he feels he's the only one still hung up on lilith's death, which only makes him more bitter, and 3. he thinks that the hatred and grief is just who he is now

now take ik, who finds him in the attic and takes worryingly little convincing to help him - even more concerningly, she decides to go through with it even upon finding out he was lying about his identity. this is a direct contradiction to his conviction that humanity is selfish and cruel - more than that, the more ik visits and chats with him, the more he remembers why he'd been so fascinated by humans as an angel

except it also reminds him of how much lilith loved humanity. belphie doesn't think he's capable of letting go - he doesn't think he's allowed to, and to him befriending a human and moving on is the same as betraying his sister's memory. so he represses any feelings of good-will and continues to nurse his hatred

i think it's important to note that belphie's hang-ups have always been self-destructive before this, but the more he lets his own grief fester, the more it threatens to burst. his threat to lucifer about destroying humanity is an early indicator of this, and it culminates in a moment of extreme emotional distress where it finally all implodes

so ik - in the wrong place and the wrong time (in the literal sense) - finds him in the middle of a nightmare, wakes him up, and gets murdered for her troubles

belphie shuts down immediately after, because to him this is a point of no return. he's already convinced himself that nothing can be done for him, and this is the proof. except then everyone else forgets what's happened, and, panicking, he goes along with it - out of fear of losing his family if he comes clean.

so: point 2 - consider that a big thing with ik is that she just doesn't get why belphie acts the way he does after killing her. she's been able to get into the heads of his brothers before him, and even now can somewhat rationalise them forgetting, but she has no idea why belphie - who first killed her and then acted like he'd forgotten about it - would suddenly seem so wracked with guilt upon finding him in the dreamscape

belphie does not think he is strong enough to move on. ik, somehow, intrinsically, already knows this is not true. this is why she's so bewildered by belphie telling her lilith's story. he's convinced this is some kind of damning evidence, but ik doesn't get how this explains anything. and because she doesn't understand, she seeks answers.

now take point 3 and 4. belphie does not attempt to seek forgiveness - he just sits in the cell solomon locks him in. he doesn't try to get out, he doesn't attempt to repent, and he doesn't want to, because as far as he's concerned there's nothing to be done

ik, on the other hand, is going to put her home back together by force if necessary, so she goes to find him. multiple times, she climbs up the tower stairs to rescue him from a waking nightmare - the same thing that killed her - because her family is still his family, and she knows too well what it's like when you go without.

belphie has been sitting stagnant for millennia on end, and now ik has decided that she is going to KICK him along until he figures out that he can stand on his own two feet and keep going. and it works, because for some reason digging demons out of emotional pits of their own creation is ik's specialty

and now point 5: ik and belphie fall quite easily into a typical sibling dynamic of the "i'll make fun of you constantly, but if anyone messes with you they're dead" kind. they never really sit down to talk out all the residual Baggage of everything, because neither of them are the type to overthink these things

but EVEN THEN. they may be simple-minded but the complication of the everything that led up to this means there's little hidden meanings even in the normalcy of their behaviour, and neither of them ever register it

for belphie it's "i'll never understand you. thank you for understanding me. i don't know what to say, so i'll tease you for tripping on your laces instead. i'd throw someone down a gorge if they made you cry. let's go shopping. i think i'll spend the rest of my life wondering if i can ever close the wound i tore in your soul."

for ik it's "i'll never forget what you did to me. i see you in my nightmares sometimes. thanks for waiting for me after school. quit making a show out of helping me reach the top shelf. sometimes i'm glad you regret things so much. can you help me with this homework? i think we're alright."

and for both of them it's "i like hanging out with you. sleep well. i'm glad we're home."

in conclusion,

i am crazy about things i made up entirely. perhaps i am cringe but i am free

[mukuberry]

I know I like posting about Kotoko already being a system, but she's recently went from feeling like she's breaking to actually breaking and it's got me thinking- what if she splits an alter like Mikoto has?

Assuming they'd be similar to John in the sense that all they care about is protecting the other, how would they go about it? Would they take Kotoko's justice in their own hands to get her to rest? Or would they not care about justice, and be more than happy to throw away everything she's worked towards to stop her from breaking completely?

Kotoko is already afraid of herself and views herself as monstrous, and she's clearly shown she holds very ableist beliefs about DID- I wonder how she'd react to finding out she's ended up just like Mikoto?

[frozenhi-chews]

I cannot wait to go back to college, LEMMIE GOOOOO

[luvuomi]

( slight spoiler for my kuni omori smau on writing blog ) yuomi’s process of building out character connections in smaus:

[pepprs]

acnl is a superior game to acnh in almost every way except the graphics. it’s actually making me mad

[magnusmodig]

||. me, still waiting for updated confirmation that thor will be in avengers 5...

[justinefrischmanngf]

it’s not that it makes me sad per se but i really could’ve been dating someone i did actually kind of really want to date since JULY. and now the moment is literally so far gone and i didn’t realise until the moment was so far gone !!!

[phagodyke]

ykw actually I am angry + disappointed w them. I've been pushing how I feel aside and trying to make it my own fault so it's all contained but I think theyve just been mean. and they really should know me better ik I try to pretend I don't expect more from them so I feel less hurt when they do things that upset me but we've been friends for years by this point. like come on.

[the-acid-pear]

The grind just never ends OT2

[my-artblog-is-ssjumi]

still so baffled by hazbin and how it felt there should've been at least another episode between 4 and 5?? how did we get from one to the other?? i mean the overall writing already hasn't been stellar so far so i don't expect much but this was. idk. just. ????