#or else shit just don't make sense

[butterflysonnets]

crazy that in s1 we had mike getting clocked as queer by his homophobic deadbeat dad at the dinner table, only keeping a weird girl he found in the woods (that he was trying to get CPS called on initially so he could get rid of her and go back to looking for will) in his room ET-style because she has intel on will's location, and sobbing in his mother's arms over will's "death" to the lyrics and we kissed as though nothing could fall and the shame was on the other side (from a song that also has lyrics about being secret lovers at risk) and yet people still denying byler

[xbraveheartx]

Suddenly smacked in the face by the implication of Romeo's message where he says "I remember you, so there's no reason for us to fight. I suppose."

I always thought the wording was weird, but didn't think too much on it... Until recently after we discussed some datamined stuff in the Carmeo/Promeo server. There's a scrapped line (where P was supposed to speak) that says "I may not remember, but I'm still your son" during the NP fight, and while the scrapped lines are their own can of worms, let's focus on the memory parts.

I had always thought that once a puppet woke up, they would just get their memories back. But the fact seems to be this: There are select memories that come back to give bits and pieces of their past that "wake" them up-- cause them to change, as we see with P and the necklace; As we see from the spliced memories at the Black Seaside. However, it might not be all one's memories that come back. Whether those spaces stay blank or come back over time, who knows.

What I'm trying to get at here is...

Romeo's memories might only consist of Carlo at the time of waking. Carlo was what woke Romeo-- "I remember you"-- He had the necklace, he knew from who it was; He recognized the face P was modeled after. "So there's no reason for us to fight, I suppose"-- there's a lack of confidence in the wording here. Friends aren't supposed to fight, right? That's what his memory tells him, at least.

And the only memories P tends to get in regards to his past? Those in relation to Romeo, his aspirations, and of his own death. Seemingly, these are the things most important to him.

They were the most important people to each other; They remembered each other, just one too late than the other.

[demodraws0606]

Whit and Eden Accomplices Theory (or mostly just rambling about how Eden could be the culprit in a way that makes sense to me and also how Whit's strange behavior could be explained alongside it but that's a way longer title, oh wai-)

(I'm so sorry every DRDT theory I have involves Whit maybe if he was fucking normal and also not my fav character I would stop putting him in everything)

My entire mindset about theories is just throwing shit at the wall until it sticks, and it seems that this one has really stuck in my mind.

I feel like this post will be long bc there has to be a lot of explanation as to how I got to this theory.

See, I have an issue with the Eden motive from mostly a character perspective as Eden coming up on her own such a cruel method to kill Arei just does not feel in character even if she did snap. It also doesn't help that there isn't much of a motive for her. I've seen people justify but I just don't buy it and I personally just find it a bit boring. I also don't believe she would be fully distrustful of Arei unless being pushed to believe so.

However, the idea that she might have an accomplice could help that justification but it ends up creating a lot more problems. Because you'd need to find a character who would be willing to put their life on the line for seemingly no good reason. This is the issue I had with the Levi/Eden accomplice theory and now for me that theory is pretty much debunked since Levi admitting to his secret just drives more suspicion around him (it also doesn't match with his behavior in the trial, he does seem to genuinely want to help).

I can't deny that Eden definitely is the most suspicious despite me throwing Levi and even Whit under the fire purely because I just don't buy narratively that Eden murdering Arei makes sense. However undeniably, Eden could have access to both Teruko/Hu's clothes and she could've gotten hold of the tape, doesn't help that she was also quite suspicious when Teruko snuck up on her.

So I start to go back to the idea of accomplices, if it's not Levi, who could it be ?

Now before I get to Whit, I do want to propose the kind of other thought I had that didn't quite work out but also is interesting.

Eden culprit + Hu accomplice theory

Now this one is purely because of the fact that we know Hu and Eden hanged out a lot the day before the murder happened, Hu and Eden talked about the clothes as well. There's enough of a connection to make them planning a murder make sense.

However, it doesn't make sense with Hu's character so far. We do know she seems reluctant about her secret however we run into the problem that she has no reason not to just admit it on the spot when the secrets are now already revealed. It works especially not well with the fact that her whole thing is that she wants to live and blows up at David for wanting to play with the cast's lives. In fact her secret quote emphasizes how much she wants to live.

Her having also an alibi makes it impossible for her to have committed/contributed to the murder directly though if she's an accomplice that isn't much of a rebutal, it just makes it impossible for her to be anything more than just a distant accomplice.

Anyways, that really just doesnt leave us with a lot of viable accomplices to help Eden, at least not ones that would make actual sense except....

*sigh* Whit...

I would like to say this is kind of an evolution/building up of my personal theory of Whit being the culprit, as he was linked with a lot of suspicious behavior and also would be the only one with a hypothetical motivation (which in this theory there is a potential second motivation possibly here).

Now my main argument against a lot of the accomplices is the threat of death, who would willingly risk or give up their lives for someone's murder ??

The thing is...Whit already has multiple times refused to tell the truth both in the first case and second case, to the detriment of the survival of everybody. Trial 2 being the most obvious with him being reluctant about Eden's note and David's secret, if he truly continued to keep it shut he had potential to risk people's lives by leaving out information. In the first trial it's him being reluctant to divulge Charles's trauma despite it being the key reason as to why he couldn't have commited the murder.

In fact it's such an issue that Charles hands his secret to Teruko and not Whit because he can't trust Whit to divulge the secret in the class trial.

This would also give Whit a motive, his strange disposition to not unveil anyone's secret could potentially expand to him having personal motivation to not have everyone's secret revealed.

But I think the real motive lies in the strange subject of Whit's secret, his secret being thrown away by Rose without her looking at it, making it impossible for Whit to ever know what his secret was. Interestingly enough he also takes a strange amount of time to indentify that secret as his, like to a point of it no longer just being carelessness.

Therefore lies a potential motivation of him overthinking what his secret actually is. If you want more I go into Whit's potential motivation more in the Whit culprit post (specifically his strange behavior) but let's get onto other information that's smaller but works well with th

Another thing that like, while is mostly based on vibes and circumstancial evidence is still an interesting thing to think about. There's the fact that Whit and Eden were both the people chosen with Teruko and this is something I want to bring up for three reasons.

One, it is important to bring up the counter argument of "them orchestrating Arei's death would go against the body announcement rules right ?" and that is correct. However, the rule is extremely vague to an almost ridiculous degree, if Arei died of suffocation or if Whit and Eden weren't looking when she actually died would it not count as "witnessing the murder" ? In fact I believe this rule being there more so hint at it being subverted especially since we know how unreliable Mono-TV is. Also if we're going with that argument, it is interesting to also note that Eden and Whit were weirdly reluctant about Teruko going to the playground (aka Whit asking if she even really is at the playground and Eden telling Teruko to please wait when she opens the door).

Second, is Whit and Eden's closeness due to this trial, well that wouldn't be the right word, the more correct word would be proximity. Whit jumps to comfort Eden, although in a quite strange apathetic way (no whit saying "there there" doesn't count as actually emotionally being there for someone whose friend just got hanged). They both are in charge of the evidence by Teruko with Rose being grouped up as well. Whit tries to avoid the subject around the note that is incriminating to Eden. They also both "coincidentally" didn't notice Arei's swaying.

Third, more shorter and "funny" little subject would be Teruko's bad luck, especially with Min in the first trial. How unlucky would she be to have picked both of the people responsible for Arei's death. It would be an interesting running theme. However there's not much evidence behind that.

Now here are like short little bullet points that I think kinda cement my thoughts on how Whit being an accomplice can work (bc a lot of people have talked about Eden being the culprit already)

-Whit again one of the few who knows about Arei's rope, everyone could've technically gotten their hands on it but only a few would really know about the rope itself and it being taken away

-Whit is the one to question about acomplice thing and in fact actually manages to get Mono-TV to accept his criteria on who would be considered the blackened. Aka the one that was the most "active" in the crime. If Whit managed to do less than Eden this could be a potential attempt at him for the rules to be in his favor in case Eden gets found out (or vice verca, if he did most of the work he'd be the one to escape).

-I feel like Whit would be high in the spot of being able to manipulate Eden, they both have similar ideologies, plus his intuition seems to get him to read people like a book (or see the future ? were still not sure about that one chief /j). Along that it would be really funny if the Ultimate Matchmaker was the one to break down a relationship. Similar irony to the Ultimate Student killing the Ultimate Rebel.

Anyways I'm sorry about these incoherent ramblings, i'm trying to piece this whole thing together and Eden just being the culprit just doesn't sit right mainly because it feels like the story doesnt justify itself enough.

So here's some spice

By the way if Whit's motivation seems strange throughout my ramblings is mainly because I don't fully know what they are, what I was trying to get across is mostly that it wouldn't be out of character for Whit to have motivations that would lead him down to helping Eden. Unlike, say, Hu whose whole theme of being someone who probably having taken their own life before considering the secrets, has an immense determination to live.

[codacheetah]

5 for the isat ask game!

5 - What's your favorite optional event?

VERY TOUGH ONE TO ANSWER. I'm gonna go right ahead and disqualify twohats bc it's a predictable answer. If I had to choose just one though I think it'd probably be the sus event. It really got my goat on my first playthrough bc I didn't realize you had to do it in ACT 4. If I remember correctly I think sus is the only optional event locked to ACT 4??? Now that I've actually done it though I'm quite fond of it.

Sus event is one that you really have to go out of your way to do. It kind of reminds me of the True Ending in SASASAP but More and I'm sure that's intentional. Like the requirements for sus quest necessitate that you're going to do it, if not the loop before ACT 5, very soon before it. You have to know pretty much everything about Time Craft and Wish Craft already, so whatever you're doing in the loops now is basically taking out any optional stuff before you hit the end. You have to pretty thoroughly remember how the script goes just so you know all the best ways to break it. I feel like if the True Ending route is Loop going through the motions so many times that they can't deal with holding their facade together any longer, the sus route is Siffrin waving a big red flag around for help. There's just no way you're going to stumble into sus without preplanning what to do to rack up your points and make Odile aware of how Wish Craft works.

So I think it's interesting how much Siffrin pushes back against Odile trying to figure him out. It's a pattern of behavior that I am well aware of where you're desperately going "HELP ME" but you're not willing to accept it when it's offered to you.

Siffrin spends an entire loop screwing everything up, to a point that's frankly kind of egregious even by Late Stage Timeloopers standards, and then they can't reckon with the consequences of it. I don't think sus event is as intentional of a cry for help for Siffrin as it is the player, mind you. But I do think it's. Very tragic. Yeah of course "it's too late" in the sense that Siffrin's about to talk to Euphie and the whole journey will end, but moreso it's that by the time that Odile can piece together all the information necessary to figure Siffrin out, Siffrin is just far too deeply entrenched in his self hatred and fear of abandonment to be dug out. I think if Odile could somehow figure it out in, like, early ACT 3, or if Isabeau was just a bit more pushy in getting Siffrin to do a feelings talk, maybe they'd actually be able to reach Siffrin a little. But they're always just a little too late, every single time.

I think the fact that you start really getting a bunch of weird points in ACT 3 gives this event a lot of buildup. For potential dozens of loops you'll see Odile brush against the truth of the situation, and then just barely miss. By the time she figures it out, it's too late. Explodes

Expounded upon slightly more in tags bc I don't like typing in post bodies I feel like a fish on land. eek

[witches-come]

"A prenatal person does not use a pregnant person's body."

What.

[brittlebutch]

actually it's kind of funny how people will say Alex's fatal flaw is that he 'doesn't ask for help' and that it's his determination to handle things on his own that leads to his deterioration and eventual death when his whole introduction to the present-day timeline was a very literal cry for help that simply went ignored

[mashmouths]

so i started this show and it just gets worse and worseeeee not only did it lift the romance subplot directly from twilight (and not well) but they also are trying to play the forbidden love angle hard in the fantasy racism vein except it's a "cross-species" relationship between the two whitest people i've ever seen in my life and there are three people of color in the whole (first season of the) show who aren't villains and it seems that every other episode (and sometimes ebery episode and sometimes twice an episode!) there is a man physically or magically subjugating a woman and i keep waiting for the big reveal at the end to be stolen from fucking rainbow rowell

[skunkes]

unsure how to word this but there is something about having ocs with unsavory events happening in their past where it's like. talking about it, even when asked, seems almost gratuitous and inappropriate. and i'd much rather describe it through the oc themself and/or draw Them saying it. which is like. fitting for the subject matter? like of course its weird to talk about somebody else's business...!

and falls back into humanizing em/exploratory writing and development where u consider the impact of words said/words unsaid/HOW those words are said etc etc

[icewindandboringhorror]

Lineup of all of the characters that appear long enough to need a visual representation of them in the game lol

[iholli]

"weh weh Alastor is canonically aroace you're being disrespectful" I'm ace and probably aro-adjacent get the fuck out of my space and let me foam at the mouth in peace

[ratwars]

End of an era. I donated my instruments today.

[pa-pa-plasma]

okay i just marathoned the entirety of ATLA live action & i might do an actual review of it explaining my thoughts more in depth, but the TLDR version basically boils down to this:

if you want to watch Avatar: The Last Airbender, just go watch the 2005 cartoon

[dimiclaudeblaigan]

For anyone annoyed by the Tumblr changes, if you're on desktop I would recommend using XKit Rewritten (and New XKit for any other odd changes you'd like to try out, including even older aspects of Tumblr). It's the older version of Rewritten but most of the extensions on it are still supported/do work). I can't guarantee they'll definitely make a fix for it/a direct fix for this particular UI change, but it's possible that they might since they usually make extensions that allow you to essentially revert changes made to the UI. Other various UI extensions (such as old ones from Tumblr's past UIs that the extensions basically just revert you to) may also help fix up your UI.

As you might expect these extensions need to be on to work/revert the appearance of the UI (so if you turn them off you'll revert to the current state of Tumblr), but while they are on you can curate your UI to look how you want it. This goes for both New XKit and XKit Rewritten. I use both and I couldn't live without them lol. You can get some big oldies of Tumblr's, like classic search on Rewritten or the Tweaks extension (full of various UI tweaks) on New XKit (including the old shade of blue Tumblr used a long time ago that I never stopped using!).

Unfortunately I don't know of any solution for mobile if it affects mobile at any point (or if it already has), but whenever you're on desktop, I would definitely recommend both these versions of XKit. I have so many extensions from them that I often don't even realize when there are UI changes (remember how Tumblr added themes for your dashboard? I didn't even notice for the longest time because I've had New XKit on the whole time) because Tumblr's default coding is overwritten by the extensions I have on.

[byanyan]

ㅤbeen thinking today about how byan's anger can be really scary to witness... it's very... raw. anger is the emotion they feel the most intensely, and the one they filter the least. it's raw, it's heated, and it's very instinct-driven — they have very little control over it, and they're certainly not thinking before they do or say anything. impulses are followed, whether it's to lash out and cause harm to whatever has hurt them, or to throw or break whatever is within arm's reach just to release even a little bit of the energy that's overwhelming them. they don't know what else to do with it. literally no thoughts, all that their mind can focus on is the emotion; they just want to get it out and stop feeling this way (and/or ensure the person who's pissed them off gets what they deserve) and they'll do whatever it takes to ensure that. i think that lack of control really shows too, like it's palpable in the air and adds an extra layer of discomfort and uncertainty if you're in the same room as them. concern for one's own safety is valid in such a scenario too tbh, because they have hurt people in the past who they never would have caused harm to normally (both directly and indirectly; sometimes by their own hand, other times as an unintended consequence of them throwing/breaking something). it's not something they're proud of, but they also just... don't know what to do about it. ...they're honestly afraid of their own anger, at times. afraid of what they're capable of and what they might one day do.

[lorephobic]

idk how to even like. put this pain into words and i would normally vent about this shit on twitter, but the person its about follows me on there so like. anybody have skills for coping with the crushing realization that the person u love most in this world and have built ur life around sees ur current situation together as a temporary hurdle that's preventing them from their truest and happiest self which. is separate from u entirely? anyone know how to deal with this?

[kkujo]

something i don't see people talking about is the way hyperfixations come in like stages and cycles like it's not just "i'm obsessed with this thing" it's like. euphoria from finding something new and it brings you so much joy and then as that initial dopamine rush wears off you start to get more and more down and feel isolated as you start to realise that no one else cares about it as much as you do and you feel silly for being so into it and the thoughts become repetitive and boring so you get more and more depressed and lonely and then you inevitably lose the hyperfix which leaves you drifting feeling miserable and hopeless until you start the cycle again. idk if i explained this well or if other people will understand but it brings genuine phases of euphoria and straight up depression and this is why i get annoyed when neurotypicals use words like hyperfixation to describe like, an interest. bc it's not. just an interest it becomes who you are and when you lose it it's like losing yourself and you spend so much energy thinking about it that it interrupts your daily life and it's so fucking draining 👍