#since we were discussing their theories after stream

[sword-swordswordsknife]

i cannot believe

that between two of my friends currently experiencing isat rn

(one who is streaming playing thru properly

the other watching off their streams, spottily mainly but now also joining the streams)

the one who has LESS information has somehow managed to guess loops deal which is SO FUNNY TO ME ADSFFSAA

squid was on the right track…. on the wrong fucking train </3 (king instead of loop </3)

[bluerosefox]

Striking of the Clock

BrainDead or DeadTired idea.

During Tim's BruceQuest he uncovers hidden texts/tombs of a being that controls and watches over the Time Stream and Tim knows this being will have to be his best bet of finding Bruce while also trying to figure out on his own how to get Bruce out of the Time Stream as well.

However the being doesn't have a summoning sigil due to being an Ancient.

He does find the sigil for the Ghost King however, a being that borderlines into Ancients power territory and could in theory grant Tim an audience with the Time being if Tim plays his cards right.

In the end, Tim decides it was worth a shot. He convinces Ra's to 'help' him summon the Ghost King. Ra's wanting to see if such a being could be real and to see how far Tim is willing to go to bring Bruce back, allows League resources to be used.

It takes a few weeks, with Tim also making plans to undermine not just the Council of Spiders but Ra's as well, but eventually the time to summon the Ghost King comes.

Tim honestly was expecting the large eldritch like being that showed up, he just wasn't expecting the being to be basically a formed galaxy mixed with ice and the northern lights itself.

He also really wasn't expecting when he negotiated a deal with the Ghost King, and taken into a place called the Infinite Realms when they shook hands (Tam and Prue is also taken with him, he refused to leave them with Ra's), for the being to shrink down and turn into a white haired, green eyed teen around his age who starts flirting at him.

Nor was he expecting for another being, one that apparently is able to shift aging forms, and a grandfather clock in its chest to appear next to the teen and bonk the white haired teen with a staff and tell him to stop flirting with his future new apprentice....

Wait what?

-x-x-

Danny is rarely, very rarely summoned since taking the mantle of Ghost King. Due to being a new Ancient most old sigils that was once connected to Phantom (mostly teens from Amity tired summoning him a couple of times) no longer worked and the only ones that did were the ones he gave to his friends and family or the Ghost King ones (but again rare due to how rare texts/tombs to the Ghost King is written down)

So when he felt the pull of a summoning he made sure to go in his eldritch form, mostly to see if he could scare them or at least intimidate.

Honestly he was expecting the cult, given the fact they summoned a being known as the (freaking) Ghost King, maybe not them being assassins/ninjas but still a cult.

He wasn't expecting the cute, same age as him too, guy in the room.

(CW totally paused time for a second, gave Danny a file on who and why he was summoned, discussed getting Tim Drake out of Ra's hands (and maybe allowing CW to finally have his own future apprentice because Tim is a smarty smart whose been slowly able to figure out the freaking Time Stream itself.), and then started the timeline again)

Danny decided, after striking a deal, that since he's going to be working with Tim, aka Red Robin (who Danny found out used to be Robin! From Gotham), from now on he might as well shoot his shot and flirt with him and-

"OUCH, CW REALLY?!"

"Stop flirting with my new apprentice for now My King, we have work to do."

[eriexplosion]

Yesterday everyone was posting their feelings on TBB. I'm glad I waited, because there's a lot swirling around. Cut for negativity again.

I was introduced to The Bad Batch in August 2022 and fell instantly in love. The characters, the story, the complex family dynamics, they all spoke to me. I wasn't even a Star Wars fan but I went through and devoured The Clone Wars, Rebels, The Mandalorian, all of it. I threw myself into this world and adored every second of it. I must have rewatched season one over five times before season two even came out.

When season two premiered I loved it. Every Tuesday night I stayed up until the episode drop and devoured it immediately. I looked ahead at the schedule and took days off work for the double episodes, for the big Crosshair episodes - he was my favorite early on and season two only made that grow. But season two also really brought Tech into my radar even more. I had always liked him, but here he was shining. The Crossing really solidified it, as an autistic person. I'd never heard someone describe the difference in processing so succinctly before, so clearly, and it spoke to me like very little had. Here was a character that was like me. Here was a character that I needed when I was an undiagnosed child, someone that would have made me feel like I had at least some way of describing my differences.

Then, well. He died. It was an affecting scene, but it felt out of nowhere, it felt unfinished. Tech didn't even get the climax of the episode. He just fell into the clouds, the Batch grieved for a few minutes, and then the plot steamrolled right along.

I didn't believe it, not after the mad scientist presented his goggles and claimed not to salvage anything else. It seemed like such an obvious fake out. The longer I sat with it the less satisfying it felt. It felt so brushed over, so pointless, all for a mission that they accomplished nothing on. Then came the social media circus. Again and again his fall was shoved in our faces on Twitter, demanding we stream it. TikToks were made that were so out of touch they felt like parodies, the wound ripped open again and again, and I thought surely there had to be a purpose to it.

So I waited for season 3 as interviews were done that seemed to almost intentionally avoid calling him dead. As tweets were made promising we'd be so fulfilled if we could only see who was onscreen in the mid-season! (A tweet that immediately garnered dozens of people hoping it referred to Tech, all without a single comment to try and quell the speculation.) It felt already like we were being toyed with, but I thought it had to be for a reason or a purpose. More weirdly vague discussions went up about his Sacrifice, his Fall, his Anything But Death, even as everyone insists that it was so meaningful, the way he died on a mission that accomplished nothing. Jokes were made around Valentines Day.

He Fell For You, get it?

The first official use of killed went up on the databank right after the trailer, on Hunter's page of all places. The first time the interviews used dead was the Friday before the premier. It all felt too late, theories had already grown for months by that point.

Season 3 finally came and I waited up for every episode drop just like I did for season 2, hoping for him to come back or at least for him to be properly grieved, since we had barely a couple of minutes in Plan 99 before it was swept away for the next plot point. Surely Tech's impact deserved an episode of focus, if he were really gone.

The previously on plays his last words twice. But then we skip months into the future. We don't see Crosshair find out the news - even though Tech died on a mission to retrieve him. We don't watch Omega grieve. She barely seems to notice she's missing a brother. We got a brief allusion in episode two. It took three episodes to even mention his name in passing. Five episodes in everyone got their chance to look sad about him, but only for a few seconds and only when his skills were relevant. Compared to the gorgeous callback to Mayday in the same episode, it felt shallow. He had to have been more important than this didn't he?

Episodes 6 & 7 felt like maybe there was a reason. We see a new masked assassin that gets extra focus, who got put through a series of Tech-adjacent situations, whose beef with Crosshair was just a little too personal, who survived longer than all the rest but stayed masked. Rex talks about losing brothers, but Hunter says nothing about the brother they lost. I hoped it all meant something, that this was the reason that he felt so much like he was thrown away, so that he could come back in.

More one off mentions that only really come up when it's about how useful Tech would have been. More poking at the wound that still felt open and raw because we'd never gotten any closure. The closest we get is a single scene in episode eleven, so late in the season and so brief that I thought that couldn't possibly be it.

CX-2 comes back, and he talks like Tech. He's still not unmasked. I really need him to be something because otherwise what was it all for?

The most emotion comes in Juggernaut, from Phee. Its a highlight because it actually feels like it was about him, like he mattered as a person. It's episode twelve and we finally talk about him like a person. We never saw her get the news either.

Episodes thirteen and fourteen pass without any mentions at all. We're running out of time. Episode 15 hits and we get one raw one from Crosshair that Clone Force 99 died with Tech. It's the first time they directly say he's dead in so many words. It's the season finale. CX-2 is a nobody it turns out, and he dies faceless. Everyone gets a happy ending and after over a year of wondering if we'd ever get closure, it turns out Tech's just dead. But look how happy everyone else is!

Everyone gets to grow old. Except the autistic one of course. He's just dead and it hardly feels like it mattered at all. Did you know Wrecker and Hunter don't use his name once in season three? Omega and Echo mention him once each. Crosshair twice, only once with any emotion behind it. Phee tops the charts at three mentions, two by name and one by nickname. We see his goggles four times. I kept count.

There was never a bigger plan, this was just all he was worth. We spent two seasons on Crosshair's absence. We spent a whole episode dealing with it when Echo decided to go with Rex. Tech dies though and all his life amounted to was a handful of mentions when his skills would have been useful, some shots of his broken goggles, and endless cooing out of the text over how meaningful his sacrifice was. Too meaningful to take back, of course, even as Ventress is brought back from her own sacrifice.

I had really, really thought that this time autistic life would be worth more than autistic death. That a character that felt so carefully handled couldn't have just been thrown away for shock value, barely to even be mentioned again, his memory used to string us along to keep us watching. If you added up every mention and shot through season 3 it might actually clock in at less time than was spent on Mayday's send off.

I'm an adult. I'll survive, though the sting of seeing yet another character like me used as a stepping stone for everyone else's happy ending will take a while to fade. But I think about the child I used to be who needed a character like Tech. And I think about how it would have felt to actually get that only to watch him die a handful of episodes later as a side note to his family's story, barely even mentioned again. How badly it would have hurt, how deep it would have scarred.

I'm not that child anymore. But there are a lot of autistic kids out there that are the same as I used to be, and they're learning for the first time that people like us don't get happy endings. Instead they die so that everyone around them can rise up, and they might even get mentioned a few times. But don't worry. Everyone will tell you how meaningful and special it is and how delusional you were to ever hope for anything else.

The Bad Batch still means a lot to me. I think it always will. I love the characters. I love the family, and all the potential they had. But the sting of not belonging in this happy ending is there, and it's deep. It's been a long time since I trusted a show. It'll be a long time before I risk trusting another. And I hope that the autistic kids trying to learn how to close their hearts off behind new walls are doing okay.

[ladyluscinia]

I know my last experience with a season ending on a note everyone hated and unanimously tore to fucking shreds for destroying the story on every level was... atypical. Lockdown. 6 month mass hysteria at minimum. Conspiracy theories that were, like, real things we had on camera. There was a Twitter wedding. Creative fervor that broke 100k fics on AO3.

Like. I know this is not a rational point of comparison and I'm not going to expect anything in my lifetime to match it 🤣

But.

If that was the highest high of post-season fandom engagement built on a cocktail of tasting everything you ever wanted AND the absolutely lethal levels of spite and swearing to eat showrunners' hearts in the marketplace, then whatever the fuck is going on after OFMD S2 is the opposite of that.

OFMD S1 was a huge fandom explosion. One silly little streaming show that had a gay kiss and then it skyrocketed. Fic numbers were soaring, high activity fic and meta engagement lasted for at least four months, it was constantly trending and flooding the dash... Like, fucking hell, over a year and a half after the immediate finale fervor it beat Stucky in the top ships bracket?!? To the point I was willing to give it what felt like due credit toward its potential as a future juggernaut ship. Not guaranteed, of course, but the potential was there.

In that context, new content should be a blow out party. Which it kinda was pulling off as it was airing, but looking back now? Not even quite a month later?

The effect of S2 on the fandom is like... a blip. Possibly over already.

New fic numbers started dropping off the moment the finale aired and have returned to deep hiatus levels. It's dropped off trending and streaming leaderboards... I'm very curious to see the first tumblr Week in Review since the finale, though we're still waiting due to the holiday.

Like, I've even popped on to scroll a few Izzy hater blogs that I know loved the finale out of morbid curiosity what they were up to, and I'm telling you... if I hadn't just watched the new season I'd think they were still over a year into hiatus. Saw some standard bitching about the izcourse / Edward takes (aka the one thing that kept them going all hiatus), they're currently passing around posts mocking one specific long OFMD version of TJLC I'm just hearing of, the same BTS gifsets everyone else is thrilled by... But barely any new meta or discussions. There's like 2 people posting actual analysis of S2 that's getting reblogged and they aren't even names I recognize from the hiatus. Nor is it particularly interesting to read. 🤷‍♀️

In July of 2022 I could pop onto a random OFMD blog and scroll through a dozen enthusiastic Stede or BlackBonnet metas about jacket colors or that moth from 1x07 or lighthouse symbolism or whatever. Now the new stuff has the same energy as posts from June 2023. It's borderline dead. And this is what it's like when there's an active campaign to engage fandom and Renew as a Crew?

(I will say fanartists are bringing some energy and there's some lovely pieces being passed around, which I do think the Renew as a Crew campaign is helping to boost?)

Even the hundreds of people saying it was a beautiful season and they loved it so much don't seem to be finding it a very engaging or inspiring season.

It's such a turn, like, what the fuck.

[tree-obsession]

2.2 SPOILERS!! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK

this is a small lore discussion! mostly speculation and theories- i have not seen leaks about 2.3 plot yet, but i have seen a couple about boothill's character stories, so please keep that in mind!

trigger for mentions of suicide(aventurine) and mega corps(the ipc)

we have to talk about the ending cutscene with aventurine and boothill more! i'll start with my fav parts that no one really has brought up yet:

Aventurine intimidating Boothill after mentioning the guards are out- Boothill sounded so offput and hasty while reassuring him they were just knocked out, and we have to talk about aventurine himself just being intimidating more honestly his glare actually did kind of scare me.

Boothill pointing a gun at aventurine was. well. i'm sorry i did actually laugh at that. boothill i think you should research your targets a bit more honestly that guy is NOT afraid of guns. he fully walked into the nihility and pointed at least one gun at himself, and just got out of his own meticulously-planned suicide. threats of death won't work, sorry. also he has good reason to hate oswaldo schneider as well- threats didn't even have to be used, probably! he would kill him too, probably(revenge arc go go go!!)

the convo between aven and jade was. yeah. why he's betting his life again, i don't know (maybe sarcasm? or it was really just banter?) but it does seem like the two of them aren't super close at all, at least from what little i could gather. also if diamond hurts aventurine the entire fandom will kick his ass, emanator or no, so he better be prepared for that too lol. also, it was a pretty common theory aventurine would leave the ipc after exiting nihility, since acheron presumably broke his ties- i wonder why he went back? perhaps he had no plans as to where to go, or he has some ulterior motive?

how did he get out of nihility so unscathed? (for context, i haven't gotten aven's text messages yet, but i'm aware of some of their contents since they've been floating around w/out spoiler tags. the messages are mentioned a bit here if you wanna avoid spoilering!) i know argenti got him out, but 1) why was argenti there, or where did he even find him? and 2) that seems so random- both argenti and jade confirmed it, but plot-wise what's even the point of argenti pulling him out? also argenti said he was in a "woeful state" when he got out, and apparently the stonehearts are willing to give aven a break (which i'm assuming is major, since stonehearts are super important and have a lot of responsibility, plus he just destroyed a cornerstone) so him already being back on his feet when we see the phone call is a bit weird right away. he doesn't even sound sick, and ratio or any other doctor is nowhere in sight! (message spoilers start here) i'm aware the aventurine cornerstone was fully shattered/destroyed while protecting him from nihility- was he really in there for who-knows-how-long without any protection at all? he's apparently having nightmares and the ipc needed to call in a doctor of chaos to treat him, which is concerning considering his mental health and general will to live were extremely low even before walking into the nihility. like he genuinely has some of the worst will to live i've ever seen in a character or human being- walking through the nihility should have utterly destroyed him mentally and physically, but it didn't. 2.3 HAS to give us a whole lotta context, especially with nihility lore (my favorite aeon, i may be biased) and more about the ipc!

anyway, thank you for reading this poorly formatted, stream-of-consciousness word vomit about 2.2's aventurine lore. hope you liked it! drop ur thoughts in replies and reblogs plz they give me life(although i will be very busy next few weeks, so please don't be offended if you want a reply and don't get it, im so sorry!)

2.2 was peak- a bit slow, but the story was some of the best, if not the best stuff hoyo has given us in terms of writing quality. so great! i cried for sure, and that boss battle was just everything- especially the music. robin my lesbian queen if i didn't have to pull for firefly i would get your lightcone for sure...

see you all next time! thx for sticking around (:

[askdacast]

Life Series SMP/Eyes and Ears AU Thematic Discussion + Theorycrafting (pt. 1)

WARNING: Extremely long post

Kachow what’s poppin fellas, I’m back at it again talking about boomer block Youtubers and their surprisingly in-depth improv series. Now that the Life Series’ 5th season has finally concluded, I’m back on the lore train and poor Scar is left to suffer the consequences, and Martyn’s concluded yet another lore stream, I decided to compile a long master post of lore notes and theories about what we have so far.

Obviously all the ‘lore’ of the Life Series is purely unofficial; Grian has not approved any of it as being actually official/set in stone for what he intended the series to be. Most of it has been us in the crazy fandom extrapolating their really good storytelling, and also “semi-canonized” by Martyn in what he calls the Eyes and Ears AU (and this post assumes you are familiar with it). As someone who’s been a fan since the beginning way back in 3rd Life, I’ve pretty much hopped on the lore train since the beginning as well (if casually) and enjoying all the different extrapolations/analysis/angst written around the players. Rather than just theorizing lore details in a vacuum, however, I’ve always liked imagining the lore based around the reoccurring themes, symbolism and arcs we’ve seen across the series. I’d been bouncing my various thoughts and theories around these themes for a while, and finally I decided to compile my notes together.

This post is basically my imagining what the Life Series/Eyes and Ears AU story is “about,” as if it were a fleshed-out, long-running and story-driven tv show. Initially this post started as simply a gigantic “Eyes and Ears Theory,” me trying to sus out my own theories/ideas of what the Life Series’ mysteries were based on Martyn’s lore. However, considering that Martyn is ALSO writing the lore on the fly, and I have some details I would interpret differently or change, this ended up less a ‘theory’ and more ‘me writing an entire AU/interpretation of the Life Series as a whole.’ My intention is NOT to ‘correct’ Martyn’s lore, nor to claim my theory as the ‘right’ interpretation; rather, this is my personal interpretation of what the Life Series story is about, based on information shown in the original SMP and in Martyn’s AU.

One last disclaimer: I am ONLY drawing on lore details from the Life Series, Martyn’s lore streams, and Minecraft EVO, and also references to the iRL creators. I am not drawing on any story from other SMPs such as Pirates or Empires; there may be some Hermitcraft references here and there.

This is going to be very long, and a multi-parter, because I can’t summarize to save my life. And I promise I’ll come up with a proper name for my series of posts another time. If you’ve stuck around to read, I thank you.

Part 1: The Overall Plot + Understanding the Watchers

Recap of official lore details

Although Martyn hasn’t given specific details on the Watcher + Listener species (he hasn’t come up with a name yet), we know the following details for sure (from EVO, lore streams etc.)

Watchers + Listeners + The Council are all deity-like beings of the same species, and they all consume human emotions

The Council are the upper ranks/possibly leaders, whereas the Watchers + Listeners are separate factions

The Watchers are at LEAST two high-ranking members of the species (the two dots being outcast from the wider circle, as is their logo)

The Watchers were behind Minecraft EVO, where they gave all the players tasks (much like Secret Life) and eventually ending in them fighting the Ender Dragon separately

While the Watchers may not have been evil in EVO, they certainly became so AFTER, when they began to crave more negative human emotions, viewing them as “tasty” (Martyn’s words), s p i c y

They first kidnapped Grian at the end of EVO season 1, turning him into a Watcher to possibly have him join their ranks, but he’s gone rogue after realizing what their plans for the Life Series were, and plans to rescue his friends from them

The Life Series was the Watchers’ ploy to trap the players in an infinite death game where they betray and cause each other pain, all to harvest their negative emotions. Grian, in defiance to this, takes control as the ‘game master’ to make the whole thing…well, a game, so that his friends can enjoy, have fun and ease their anguish. In Martyn’s words, this is like “pouring ketchup all over the Watchers’ sundae.”

The Listeners (EVO season 2) are an opposing faction to the Watchers who disagree with their methods, although why is unknown. They’ve attempted to contact some players (e.g. Jimmy) before back in EVO in order to oppose the Watchers, but it’s not known how successful they were. They’ve also tried to swap in players in the Life Series before (e.g. subbing Lizzie and Gem for Pearl and Cleo in Lim. Life) in order to sneak them in and try to subvert the game. The Watchers kidnapping Gem for Secret Life is partially in retaliation to the Listeners. The Listeners may not be good and may have nefarious intentions also, it is as yet still unknown.

There’s potentially a third faction, the Speakers, but very little is known about them and Martyn doesn’t want to elaborate on them yet.

Okay, but what are the Watchers even after?

"Accept your fate."

From here on out is my real conjecturing/theorizing. The main question on my mind has been why are the Watchers doing what they’re doing? Obviously Martyn has confirmed that they are malicious deities who find negative human emotions tasty, but this raises further questions. Why exactly do they desire such emotions, or need them to survive (if they do, anyway)? Why do they favour negativity, when the other members of their species consume a wide range of emotions? They were confirmed to be outcast in some way from the other factions for this ploy, so what does that say about them then?

The whole species fundamentally do not understand human emotions (or perhaps do not even possess them)

This seems to me the most logical conclusion. These are powerful deities who can create miniature worlds/dimensions, life, and time to an extent (death loop). They should theoretically be self-sufficient, so I doubt that their consumption of human emotion is for survivability reasons (i.e. I don’t think Watchers will literally die if they don’t consume emotions, the same way humans die without food). What seems more likely is that human emotions bring them some benefit to their intelligence or power that they’d otherwise be quite non-functional without. (Think like the demons in The Promised Neverland, who regress to feral natures/lack of sapience if they don’t eat humans)

The Watchers’ powers and their lab-rat experimentation on the players gives a huge vibe of not being able to understand human emotions in an involved way, but only from a distance. They know methodically things like murder and betrayal cause panic and anguish, so they enforce these experiences through the game, mechanics like the Boogeyman, the Secret Tasks etc. But they don’t really know internally why these emotions come about the way humans do. Being above time, they probably don’t understand why the funny small animals have so much attachment to their transitory experiences and memories (more on this later).

world's angriest pumpkin

The Watchers are Losers, Actually

Going further, don’t you think the Watchers have a very misanthropic mindset all around? “Anguish and panic are s p i c y.” They conversely have a complete disgust for positive emotions, and can’t stand Grian making things fun for everybody. It almost feels like they have the mindset that only things like hatred and fear are exciting, bringing motivation and life to the humans, whereas things like happiness and fun are ‘useless’ because they don’t bring about the same results. Let’s also not forget their name – Watchers – and that Martyn’s confirmed them to be symbolically based off us, the audience. It’s almost like a commentary of the worst of the entertainment industry, of an audience who crave watching anything and everything to satisfy their own desires, even at the expense of the privacy and safety of the entertainer. Given the current state of the internet and social media, I don’t think I need to elaborate how awful things can get.

In other words, I believe the main motivation the Watchers are eating humans emotions is because they WANT to understand and ‘take into themselves’ such emotions. I don’t think they’re totally emotionless – Martyn does portray them with moments of glee and anger. But their understanding of emotions is superficial (self-centered, if you will) at best. As deities with no needs, being above time, they have nothing to be afraid of and nothing to feel sad or anguished over. It’s a boring, dull and empty existence. And that’s precisely why they’ve set up the Life Series game: by kidnapping a few humans and putting them through the artificially constructed wringer of panic and betrayal, they think they can create a human farm of such rich, complex and exciting emotions, all for themselves to enjoy at their own pleasure and fill the void they have.

(Listeners’ side note: If all that is the philosophy of the Watchers, it’s probably not difficult to see how/why the Listeners oppose them. The Listeners likely disagree that negative emotions are the most optimal state of humans, and unlike the Watchers do not think human suffering is just tasty popcorn one can eat at one’s pleasure. Their name – Listeners – implies they’re a more sympathetic faction, as in they listen to one’s troubles and heart rather than take delight in suffering at a superficial level. But if they are the same species, it’s very likely they have the same lack of instinctive understanding of human emotions that the Watchers do, and this could cause…problems.)

Why turn Grian?

All this is also why I believe the Watchers kidnapped Grian + turned him into a Watcher in the first place. Firstly, if they were going to concoct their plan to trap humans, they needed a collaborator from the humans in the first place. Secondly, and most importantly, this collaborator was going to be their only direct source of how human emotions work/feel like, and therefore what were the most optimal conditions needed to ensure their death game would generate the most pain and anguish. They picked Grian because he’s always the ‘leader’ of the SMP players, the person gathering and organizing everyone, so logically, he is the most ‘representative’ of the humans, and the one with the greatest ability to control them.

Of course, it’s also true that Grian was a little $#@% throughout EVO and actively rebelled against the Watchers’ tasks, so making him their collaborator might seem strange. Ignoring the meta reason that the ending was written to explain Grian’s exit from the series. But I figured in this case, they considered the benefits more than the costs. Grian’s chaotic nature is not unlike the Watchers’, considering how much he loves causing pranks and trouble to others. So, as a huge oversight, they think Grian is just like them: he loves to see people suffer, so they think. Additionally, the Watchers are desperate to understand how Grian gets his fellow humans to follow him and do what he asks with little effort. You’ll notice the Watchers have very direct, authoritative ways of trying to wrest control (e.g. the tasks, “do this or you fail”), and they get very petty and upset when people rebel against them (re: Scott’s refusal to be the Boogeyman, their motto is a very demanding “OUR WILL BE DONE.”) They see Grian’s charisma as yet another aspect of human emotions they fail to understand and thus WANT to possess for themselves.

Pictured above: The Watchers, coping and seething

Of course as we know, the Watchers believing Grian would help them is a major oversight. Becoming a god doesn’t just fundamentally change who Grian is, and he definitely doesn’t want to consign his friends to an infinite death loop of suffering. That being said, I don’t think Grianhas truly gone ‘rogue’ so much as taken as much advantage as possible of his ‘deal’ with the Watchers. We can guess the Watchers promised to him some kind of control/leadership over his friends’ circumstances as long as he worked for them, which led to them giving him the keys to the Life Series. In other words, so long as he fulfils their requirements of things being a death game that will generate ‘food’ for them, and lets them revive everyone each loop, he gets to decide how the games go.

And we know exactly what Grian’s done with this: he created the green-yellow-red lives system, he creates a fun gimmick each season, he inserts himself into the game as a player, all to bring out the best and most creative side of his friends rather than the worst. The Boogeyman probably is the only gimmick the Watchers added on their own initiative (re: Martyn’s POV in Last Life) in order to make things more spicy. Probably Grian’s conversation with the Watchers each time goes, “hey, I got an idea on how to bring out the most creative ways for everyone to cause pain in each other, [comes up with some bullcrap justification for the game’s fun mechanics].” I like to think the Watchers were going to make the death games even more vicious, cruel and competitive, but because of Grian’s wrangling he’s convinced them that a slow burn from joy to horror creates better results, and they tolerate it as long as they see him useful.

Memories and Emotions

There is also one BIG detail of the Watchers’ plan I’d like to mention: Martyn claims that the Watchers do NOT erase the players’ memories. At the end of each season, they consume everyone’s emotions so that there’s no more angst/ill will towards each other, and they start each season afresh. The players remember what’s happened in past seasons, but they don’t continue to hold the pain and negative feelings they had towards each other.

I don’t buy this, for numerous reasons.

For one, Martyn has confirmed the Watchers ARE capable of removing people’s memories. The one memory they have outright altered was the ex-EVO players’ (Martyn, Jimmy, BigB etc.) memory of what happened to Grian: they don’t remember that Grian was taken to be turned into a Watcher, and instead remember it as him either going missing or dying after the Ender Dragon fight. All this presumably to not give away the Watchers’ schemes and to ensure they still listen to Grian as if nothing ever happened.

More importantly, however, memories are vital to humanity’s emotional experience and mental health. I am not an expert by any means, but there are studies showing how people with amnesia, PTSD or other conditions affecting memories have flashbacks/emotional reactions to trauma they don’t remember consciously. The Watchers have (supposedly) done something far more simplistic yet fantastic by just eating up everybody’s emotions. All this, even though they see humans as emotion factories, constantly able to generate emotions just by existing, by their ability to draw and create meaning through emotional experiences, and by creating memories – the clearest embodiment of a mortal’s attachment to time (which if you remember, I believe the Watchers have no concept of).

You cannot just tell a human to stop feelingcompletely (under normal circumstances anyway), but especially not if they remember something very very traumatic.

Besides, there ARE clear instances when some of the players remember the events of past seasons and are STILL not over them! Impulse and Tango still being bitter/distrustful after Bdubs betrayed each of them separately, Cleo distrusting BigB for the same reason, Scott referencing Flower Husbands a lot, Pearl feeling betrayed by Cleo/Scott when they supposedly broke up the Gaslight/Gatekeep/Girlboss trio at the start of DL, Bdubs’ “I wanna be your favorite son” in Secret Life, the list goes on. Note that I’ve only listed negative/bittersweet instances; there are plenty more cases of the players remembering past seasons and alliances positively which the Watchers may have ignored. The point is, if the Watchers truly consumed everyone’s emotions to the point of a clean slate, they haven’t exactly been thorough. Nor do I think it’s very conducive for them either – don’t they want players to have enduring, unending, unresolved pain, the sweetest of all (to them)?

No, I think the Watchers HAVE been erasing/suppressing the players’ memories – they’ve just been very selective which ones. Martyn’s said that the Watchers do not care what families or connections they separate so long as they get the people they want and the plans they want. I’m going to assume the players in my theory/the Eyes and Ears AU are exactly the same as their CC counterparts. In other words: they’ve stolen Grian away from his wife. They stole Martyn away from his and his daughter. Ditto with Skizz, Impulse, Tango etc. They stole Scar away from his family. Joel and Lizzie are the only couple they didn’t separate, perhaps because they needed both for their plans, and also so they can inflict the most torture on them by ripping them away from each other, over and over again. And in order to ensure the complete submissiveness of the players to the game, the Watchers have taken away their memories of their past lives, their families, basically anyone who isn’t a fellow player in the game. The Watchers don’t erase the memories of bonds between seasons, because it’s a pain to have to teach the humans how to play all over again, but they erase any memories they find disadvantageous to keeping the game running.

They might even go one step further: while they haven’t erased the players’ memories of who each other are (so as to not cause confusion), they do try to suppress important memories. Things like how they met, the times they confided in each other after a bad day, cried on each other’s shoulder, laughed in each other’s successes, the times they hung out with each other’s families. Imagine the different alliances constantly gravitating to each other, but never being able to remember why they care about each other so much. Imagine Bdubs’ “Come on, you know you and I go way back!” when trying to justify taking Cleo’s stuff, and Cleo laughs back, even though she can’t quite remember what exactly Bdubs has done to warrant that. Imagine Joel or Lizzie trying to remember why they loved each other so much.

They fight and kill some of their friends, and protect others, because…because why again? It’s for survival value, surely, so the Watchers whisper. It’s because the strong must congregate with the strong and leave the weak to die, surely. It’s because Martyn’s always been a loner, and always will be, and should remain so. So they tell him. So they whisper, this is a deathmatch for a reason.

Grian’s Fundamental Rebellion

I think all this is the real reason Grian is rebelling against the Watchers. The most immediate reason is obvious: he wants to free his friends from this death loop. But the deeper reason as to why he’s rebelled is that the Watchers are torturing and robbing his friends of their humanity. They’re taking a tight-knit group of friends who love and would do anything for each other, and turning them against each other in a cruel and unescapable death game. On TOP of this, the Watchers have constantly messed with their heads in order to make them obedient and submissive to their schemes and the worst of their human nature, trapping them in fear, pettiness and paranoia. Of course Grian is upset. Of course he wants to save them from this fate. It’s an insult to who he knows these people to be.

This all leaves Grian in a pretty precarious position. While outwardly the Watchers want to make him a lackey as the “game master”, both he and they know he really wants to save his friends (they probably see it as their ‘cattle’ showing a bit of resistance, which once again they need to suppress). And while on one hand he’s making the games fun to ease his friends’ pain and bring the best out of them, this is just a hotfix rather than a real solution. In order to really rescue the players, Grian’s got to get them to rebel against the Watchers as well. Refuse to play by the rules, by the expectation that they must murder and kill without mercy, without any attachment to their alliances or past friendships. Make everyone like Scott refusing to be the Boogeyman, or Skizz constantly trying to be wholesome (until the bloodlust gets the better of him anyway).

Ironically in order to achieve this, Grian’s best bet is to try to jog everyone’s lost memories of each other and the things they lost, both good and bad. But ultimately, this is going to make them (in the short term) suffer more. This is where you can insert all your Desert Duo/Flower Husband/whatever alliance you like most angst. But more practically, I like to imagine when “the cameras” are not watching, when Grian knows no one will notice or catch him, he sneaks around to the different alliances, even the ones he’s not part of, to ask them how they’re doing, if they remember anything from the past etc. (in a meta sense, the players edit and cut stuff from their videos all the time; who’s to say he isn’t trying to catch a quick chat while everyone’s mining?!) It also reflects in why Grian is constantly trying to make alliances with different people instead of just gravitate to one person, he needs to check on everyone and capitalize on every single opportunity. (besides the meta reason, being that cc!Grian wants to be creative, and sticking to the same person all the time isn’t very entertaining from a content creator perspective)

One last detail about the winners: I don’t have much to say about the fragments yet, because Martyn (sneaky boi) hasn’t yet revealed the significance of the fragments nor of their healing, although he has hinted Bad Things™ will happen if a player gets too fragmented. But I do think the winners are important: with the game finished, they give Grian a very short window of time to talk to one person directly, without Watcher interference. They’re always the last to be killed/swept away/revived by the Watchers, and I can imagine there’s a brief period of time when their souls are being transferred to The Void w/e where Grian can step in and interfere. In my theory, Grian passes on some sort of clue/push to the winners, as like a subtle message about what they can do to stand up to the Watchers. I’ll detail on what I think these individual messages were in part 2. Needless to say, 3rd Life was a traumatic experience for Grian for many reasons, but the nail in the coffin was the fact that he won, and therefore there was no way for him to pass a message onto anyone.

Conclusion

Hooooooo jeepers that was long @A@; Thank you so much for your patience reading this if you made it to the end, I really appreciate it. As I said, I’ve had these lore ideas bouncing in my head for a LONG time, and with the end of Secret Life I couldn’t get out of my head the different trends/symbolism that was popping out of an improv series. It honestly speaks a lot to how genius our favorite block dudes are at improv, that they can turn their improv nonsense into a coherent narrative. I really wanted to try my hand at fleshing out such a narrative, and with Martyn constantly drip-feeding lore to the fans, I had more than enough material to not just put out guesses but construct something a full XYZ. As I mentioned, I enjoy workshopping themes and characters a LOT more than just worldbuilding or “what if this or that” details in a vacuum, hence why I’ve written all that I have, so this was a fun exercise for me all around!

Next time in part 2 I talk about Character Development™, or character specific notes and details I’ve noticed and extrapolated from what we’ve seen of each individual player, as well as what their different arcs across the seasons mean for them within the lore. Stay tuned for another wordbarf!

Bonus list of works I was inspired by for this loredump:

Log Horizon

The Promised Neverland

Danganronpa (ironic as I’m not really a fan of this franchise, but the first game has an otherwise solid premise which I found really similar to the Life Series)

The Fate franchise (when Martyn asked “what’s Fate?” on the latest lore stream, let me tell you I couldn’t stop laughing; NO MARTYN DON’T GO INTO THE WEEB RABBIT HOLE)

Various amazing animatics from the Traffic fandom: Earth, Bang!, most of Melloz Heist’s works, and of course all the amazing fanart

Way too many conversations with my friends about fantasy species

[minus-plus-zer0]

The Bakusquad Gaming Group - Ch. 3 - Shipping O-o

| Masterlist | The Bakusquad Gaming Group Masterlist | | Previous | Next (TBD) | ♡ Genre: Fluff, suggestive ♡ Pairing: Gamer!Bakugou x Gamer!Reader ♡ Tags: Crossover (MHA x multiple franchises), gaming AU, Quirkless AU, aged up

Ever since your gaming channel started collaborating with Dynamight's, both of your fanbases have noticed your shared chemistry together.

And as your onscreen interactions increased, so did the shipping.

Shipping was never a big thing within the Bakusquad, especially considering Bakugou's near violent reaction towards anything sweet or romantic. But you were both sweet AND romantic, and yet Bakugou didn't have a problem with you. Everybody collectively raised their eyebrow at that.

Ever since your fans noticed, they ran wild with the ship. Fan accounts tagged your social media with new fanart of Bakugou and you, mashing your names together to form a title for the ship as it sailed beyond a point where you could even dare to stop it.

Your previous streams together didn't help matters as you flirted(?) on-camera. Given your growing feelings for Bakugou, obviously you didn't mind the prospect of actually dating him later on. You also flirted just because it was fun for you, for him, and for the chat.

But the shipping grew intense, and maybe you should've seen that coming.

Needless to say, you worried about how this would affect your actual relationship. At least the fanart was tame. The fanfics were NOT. You didn't know who wrote those wretched things, but you made the biggest mistake of your life by opening one of them. You could never unread what was once read.

You recalled the words from that single fanfic excursion, the ones that made you cringe.

"Bakugou nuzzled his girlfriend on stream, declaring her to be his one and only super duper true love. It was then that he asked her to marry him. But neither of them noticed that the camera kept rolling as they made out, and the chat went wild when they--"

You threw your phone across your room. You didn't check it for hours out of pure shame.

Most of the analyses regarding your relationship included any number of misinterpretations. You couldn't get their fan theories out of your head. Was Bakugou too close to you while you played games together in his apartment? Did Bakugou try to hold your hand during your last playthrough, like the fans suspected? Did Bakugou like all of your social media posts because he liked you in particular? You just didn't know anymore.

The real life shipping put a lot of pressure on your relationship. Your chat moderators (the other Bakusquad members) always had to deal with the shipping discussions that inevitably ensued afterwards. You felt like a bug underneath a microscope sometimes. Bakugou recently texted you about a restaurant he wanted to show you, but you declined. You didn't know how you could show your face to him after all this.

Unlike other content creators, you two previously helped fueled the fire of the shippers before realizing how bad it would get. Originally, you thought it would just be good fun, that it wouldn't get out of hand if you leaned into it as a joke rather than trying to dissuade people from it. And having people supportive of your budding relationship with Bakugou felt nice. But clearly that was the wrong move, and both of your fanbases had transformed greatly as a result. You never expected the shipping to reach this extent so soon.

Days later you denied a few more hangouts, just to give yourself some time to think. You didn't ghost Bakugou, you just put your friendship on hold temporarily.

But Bakugou wouldn’t let you avoid him for long. One day, he texted you something serious.

“We gotta talk about this.”

He posted a link to a social media account detailing the "Bakugou x You" ship. It was filled to the brim with "hints" of your relationship, fanart, wedding theories, romantic video compilations, and more. You cringed at the sight of it, but you couldn't leave Bakugou hanging.

You texted back. "Okay ;-;. I'm at my apartment, wanna meet me there?"

He agreed. Half an hour later, Bakugou showed up at your door. You opened it, meekly.

Bakugou stood there, expression impassive but unusually silent. Then, he spoke.

“You wanna let me in?”

You sighed and sidestepped, gesturing for him to enter. He followed you over to your living room couch, where you both sat. Your cute, pink home was much smaller than his apartment, and so was your couch. Thus, there wasn't much space between you two and there was little else in the room to distract you.

Bakugou stuck out like a sore thumb against the prettiness of your house. It made you uncomfortable to look him in the eye, but reluctantly, you did. He was already staring at you, looking quite serious.

"Those fans are a little embarrassing, haha..." you said.

"They're really fucking stupid."

It kinda hurt to hear him say that. You couldn't help but take a liking to the boy as your friendship progressed, so you almost hoped he would have a different reaction. But him egging the fans on would've been more strange...

"Um, I can tell them we're not dating, I guess?" You twiddled your thumbs. "Maybe that will help, if only a little."

Bakugou exhaled through his nose. "You don't have to tell them anything, at least not for my sake. The rumors stop my old hag of a mother from asking when I'm gonna get a girlfriend, so that's actually a benefit. I always tell her to fuck off, that I'm never dating anyone, and I've stuck to that my entire life. Now I don't gotta do that. But I know you, and I know you're probably not always comfortable with how people see ya."

"Well have you seen the fanfiction?" You shook your head. "Are you proud of your mother seeing that too?"

"Wha--she hasn't seen that shit yet!"

"So you have read it!"

"You have too!"

You both glared at each other, now flustered. His glare was much more ferocious, but yours was equally unwavering. You couldn't believe what you were hearing.

"So we both read it..." you said. "...What tags did you choose?"

Bakugou squinted at you. "You first."

"No, I asked before you did."

Bakugou groaned loudly. He rested his head in his hands. "...Rivals to friends to lovers, fake dating, mafia--"

"Mafia?! Why--"

"--Soulmates, and domestic fluff. There. Happy? What about you?"

"Why would you read about us in the mafia?!"

"Hey! I asked you a damn question!" He poked you in the stomach. "Now you gotta answer! What were your tags?!"

Now it was your turn to look ashamed.

"...It was smut."

"Wha--How can you look me in the eyes and say that?"

"I couldn't!" You covered your face with your hands. "That's why I was avoiding you..."

Bakugou raised an eyebrow at you.

"...What did you read, exactly?" Bakugou asked, quietly.

"I don't know! I didn't even finish it, I threw my phone away before I could even reach the end. You know, the 'smut' tag was recommended everywhere. Don't tell me you didn't check it out too!"

Bakugou remained silent, and that spoke volumes.

"So we're both guilty," you said.

"...Does it bother ya?" Bakugou asked. "I can get the rest of the Bakusquad lackeys to moderate the chats better so they quit talking about us."

"That'd never work, and you know it." You slumped against your small couch. "Since our shipping fanbase isn't as rabid as others, maybe it'd be better not to poke the bear and try to fight them off. My main concern was originally how this would affect us..." You both looked away from each other. "But... now that I know we're in the same boat, I guess I don't feel as uncomfortable as I did before. Like it's easier to deal with this if we're both on the same page. Does that make sense?"

Bakugou looked at you. "No. Not at all. But if you don't give a shit, then I don't either. I only needed to know this shit wouldn't come between us, and that it wasn't creeping you out. So long as they don't progress to stalking we can just keep the finer details of our relationship a secret. Just don't go telling them everything we do."

"But you already had that rule in place, didn't you?"

"I fucking did. And clearly it was for a good damn reason." He wagged his finger at you. "It'd be easier to hide stuff if we got all my lackeys in on this. I'll get the Bakusquad to at least try and moderate more shit and suppress how much these extras invade into our lives, even if we can't stop 'em completely. In fact, we've got a convention coming up and you can go there to see the squad."

"I heard about that!" you said, sitting upright. "I actually wanted to surprise you guys by popping up at your panel at the convention, but since the shipping got stronger I thought it'd be better to lay low..."

Bakugou shook his head. "Hell no. If you already thought of going, then it only makes sense to have you come directly with us. We're not gonna let that shipping stuff mess with ya or creep ya out. I'll protect both of us. Besides, me and the guys already talked it over and they'd love to meet ya in-person after moderating our streams for so long. Just put on a disguise if you're still worried."

"A disguise, hm?" You playfully stroked your chin. "You're about to see a whole new side of me! Oh... but there is one last thing I wanted to discuss..."

Bakugou looked at you, concerned. "What is it?"

"...Can I read the mafia fic you read?"

"You're still fucking on that?!"

You shrugged. "I just wanna see what they wrote! Like, who would even think to write that about us? Isn't that interesting? Isn't that why you checked that fic out?"

Bakugou glared at you, but didn't say anything. You knew you were right.

"Hold on." Bakugou pulled up his phone and scrolled through his search history.

You tapped your feet happily, clapping your hands. "Oh this will be so much fun!"

"Don't go fucking judging me for this," Bakugou said.

"What did you think of the fic? Did you think it was your favorite? Did you leave a comment talking about how much it changed your life for the better? Did--"

"I did exactly none of those things!" Bakugou snarled at you. "Now quiet down and look."

Bakugou roughly scooted over on the couch to you, bumping against your hip. His phone displayed the mafia fic, clear as day. There were multiple other tags such as "Fluff", "Love at First Sight", "Soulmates", and more...

You looked at up, with one question clear on your silent face. "Why?"

"You wanted to read it so freaking read it already!" He shoved the phone in your face.

"No." You folded your arms. "We're reading it together. I wanna see your reactions."

Bakugou looked like he could die.

But he did as you asked.

(This isn't meant to offend any shippers of the fictional Bakugou x You ship, for I am one OuO. I bet Bakugou would love tooth-rotting fluff Bakugou x You fics as his guilty pleasure. Btw the next chapter will be longer than this one and is already in the works!)

[digitalgate02]

(Rough) Fact Checking on Rui & Ukkomon's statements in 02TB

Tbh I'm kinda concerned about people taking Rui's statements for granted and not realizing the movie is unclear what is legit and whatnot.

This is not Kizuna-like levels of screwed up, but this is still bugging me as i've been discussing about this movie with friends who managed to watch it before me, and once i watched it by myself i completely understood their thoughts and theories regarding the movie and the Rui & Ukkomon lore.

We still got no actual news of digital releases or EN subs (tho i believe fansubs might appear once the JP Blu-Ray/DVD is released in May) or any other country digital release (or Blu-Ray/DVD ones) so i can’t completely make a detailed lore busting post about Rui’s statements and what we know or were presented in the original Adventure’99, 02 and their extra materials like Drama CD and movies.

But i do remember tiny bits of the movie… And stuff said in the pre-release stream.

I’ll do my best here.

[WARNING FOR SPOILERS AHEAD]

The movie staff released a timeline for this movie, which indicates Rui met Ukkomon in February 29 1996 → I don’t think this is a contradiction, because if the Korean interview with SekiP is reliable (i mean, we can’t check what she said in JP, and the telephone game from JP to KR and to EN means something might have been lost in the process!), she said they changed a bit of the lore for this movie. Btw, the OG lore of Digimon Partnership count starts in 1995 and then it doubles year by year is still present in the movie, as there’s a scene where the current number of partnerships in the year of 2012, but the number stated is not exact since the movie takes place in February only. So of course the count wouldn’t be the full year number, which is 131,072 partnerships in total.

Rui and Ukkomon form a bond, and Ukkomon grants Rui the wish of having many friends, which he tells the 02 group that partnerships with digimon were the result of this wish → This is completely uncertain, and it is also doubted by the 02 kids in the movie. In Adv’99 and 02 we learn that there’s multiple sources for becoming a Chosen Child: Homeostasis (Adv Eight, possibly their predecessors); Holy Beasts (Daisuke, Miyako & Iori); unknown sources (Menoa, Meiko, Ken, Wallace, Worldwide Chosen, Dark Seed Children perhaps?)

Rui claims he’s the first person who was partnered with a digimon → Well, this is not wrong! Now, if he were claiming to be the first to have met or interacted with a digimon… He would’ve been wrong: The first human to get in touch with the Digital World and the digimon were actually two – Oikawa Yukio and Hida Hiroki (yes, Iori’s late dad), in the 1980s. Despite that, they never had digivices at all. Then in 1995 we possibly had a double digimon encounter happening: Wallace meeting Gummymon and Chocomon briefly ¹, and the Yagami siblings meeting a Koromon. This could mean Rui and Ukkomon were actually the fourth digimon encounter in the timeline. But what is correct is that he became Ukkomon’s partner first because he got the very first digivice in the world. Taichi and Hikari weren’t partnered with that same Koromon ², but they got their own partner digimon + digivices in 1999. And Wallace probably became Terriermon’s partner years after, possibly in 1996 and after Chocomon’s disappearance ³, or post-1996.

Rui claims Ukkomon is a special digimon because he can grant wishes → Okay, but i definitely remember the 02 Kids going like “sounds cool bro but we doubt it” when he said that. And the movie itself quite shows the opposite later: Ukkomon did not cure Rui’s father, and he was possibly manipulating everyone else like puppets (besides Rui’s parents i meant) – so what kind of digimon who can grant wishes is this?! He has no magical god-like powers at all! And his null lore (Bandai’s) profile points out that part of granting wishes are just rumors. But you know what said profile mentions too? That Ukkomon is able to hijack the opponents’ minds. It’s his species’ special move – Liar Dream – besides spinning like a beyblade to attack (Whirlpool Spin).

Rui claims he killed Ukkomon a long time ago → Also not totally true. Rui tried killing Ukkomon, but he couldn’t commit to it. He tried to destroy the digivice, which resulted in his injury in the right eye. Ukkomon did not… “die” apparently. Yes, he was melting, but one detail you might not know is that when a digimon dies, everything from their body, or their weapon is also erased too. Check Adv’99 death for Pumpkinmon and Gotsumon. The eye Ukkomon slapped into Rui’s face was still there after his “death” so this was the biggest hint for the audience. It was also implied in the Audio Drama #3 (released in the Japanese theaters, and soon in the BD/DVD deluxe box as bonus with the other two theater ones) – But it’s okay, he possibly never had a contact with another digimon or even a Chosen Child before meeting Daisuke & co, so we can’t blame him for believing he had killed Ukkomon.

In a flashback, Ukkomon tells Rui that he’s connected to something bigger → This might be the only legitimate truth he had told Rui, besides that Rui was the first person partnered with a digimon. Somehow, Ukkomon is connected to some god-tier entity because once BigUkkomon is destroyed, the digivices are not needed anymore. This part might be completely confusing for everyone else, but it’s not confirming Rui’s claims that the digimon partnerships were caused by Ukkomon, and yes the part of Ukkomon’s claims to be related to some higher up god-like entity.

The notes within the text:

To my biggest surprise… Wallace never mentions when his mother found the egg. But he definitely mentions when Chocomon disappears – 7 years before, which means 1995. I’ve seen many people think this movie goes against the canon in different ways… But now i’ve reached the conclusion that what Wallace meant is that he met Gummymon and Chocomon in the same year Chocomon disappeared in the flower field. Plus, Wallace is shown in those flashbacks as a 4 years old kid (stated in the Memorial Chronicle) and we know via a CD bonus card that Wallace’s age is 11 years old in 2002 (same as Daisuke, Takeru, Hikari and Ken) – so i guess if he had gotten the egg before 1995 he would’ve been too young to remember it (unless you opt for 1994, but i think this wouldn’t be possible…)

The Koromon who met Taichi and Hikari is implied to not be the same who was partnered with Taichi 4 years later in Adventure'99: the TV series Agumon knew Taichi’s name because of the data inserted on his egg by the Agents, which were also manufacturing the Crests and Digivices, according to Homeostasis’ analysis on the children from the Greymon vs Parrotmon fight.

Since Chocomon went missing, i suppose Wallace became partnered with Gummymon only, but if we go with Adv’99 and 02, the Chosen Children can evolve non-partnered digimon as well: Leomon mentions he only managed to evolve into SaberLeomon because of the Chosen Children’s digivices being used on him previously in the series, and in 02 we witnessed the Digimon Kaiser using his digivice to dark evolve Agumon into both SkullGreymon and MetalGreymon virus (the latter only when he created the Evil Spiral, of course).

[crazycoke-addict]

Solving the death of Glamrock Bonnie Part 2

Continuing with my previous post, one thing I found interesting is that Glamrock Bonnie's eyes are white, and the only time we ever see this in Security Breach is with Glamrock Freddy. For Glamrock Freddy, it's possible that his eyes are glowing because he’s still on recharge since he wasn't fully charged after malfunctioning during performance.

However, this isn't the first time we have seen white eyes. We saw this with the classic animatronics, the puppet, scrap baby, and golden freddy. The glowing white eyes appear to be a debate with the fnaf community. However, the classic animatronics, golden freddy, puppet, and baby were at one point possessed by a child. Freddy, Bonnie, Chica, Foxy, and Golden Freddy were possessed by the five missing children incident, The Puppet is possessed by Charlie Emily and baby was possessed by Elizabeth Afton.

The tangled is an augmentation of robotic body parts that it has been collecting throughout the pizzaplex. It also has the mask of the puppet, who doesn't have glowing eyes, and the streaming tears are gone. It is worth noting that chica, Bonnie, and Circus Baby are actually animatronics used in the AR delivery.

Meanwhile, the Puppet was never seen in promotional posters of Ar Delivery, and we know that the puppet was present when Henry Emily burned the down the pizzeria because one of his goals was to let the soul of his daughter to be put to rest.

But what does this have to do with Glamrock Bonnie. Well, one of the main theories involving Glamrock Freddy is that he is possessed by Michael Afton himself. This back by his protectiveness towards Gregory, how he isn't controlled by the mimic or vanny who is mimicking his Michael's father, William Afton ans how when Vanny made him dig up the path, he said that he saw himself for the first time.

Is it possible that Glamrock Bonnie was possessed, but the question is, who? A lot of people die in this game, mostly children. So it is going to be hard to dissect on who would it be. Whoever they are, why does it have anything to do with the decommission of Glamrock Bonnie?

In Security Breach, we get a message where it appears to be a security report involving Glamrock Bonnie whereabouts. It says, "SECURITY REPORT - 12:24AM - Bonnie is seen leaving his green room in Rockstar Row heading East towards the atrium. 2:40AM - Bonnie enters the East Arcade. 4:12AM - Bonnie enters Monty Golf."

When looking at this report, the most obvious thing is that this happened after the pizzaplex was closed. Another thing to notice is that it says Bonnie entered Monty Golf, and that was the last sentence of the security report, yet when we do see Glamrock Bonnie. He's in the back of the bowling area. If they were tracking Bonnie's movements, then wouldn't the security report also continue with him heading over to Bonnie Bowl. Well, one will discuss if the other animatronics have a tracking device.

In Security Breach, Gregory had to get a hall pass in order to release Glamrock Freddy from his green room. It's possible that the other glamrock animatronics were also locked in their rooms, and it was Vanessa who released Chica, Roxy, and Monty to help her hunt down Gregory. So, it's interesting that within 24 minutes, Bonnie managed to get out. Well, the only thing that makes sense is if he crawls through the vents that Gregory did in order to get out.

Another thing to point out is that Bonnie spends a lot of his time in the arcade until he heads over to gator golf. So, was he spending that time playing every arcade. Well, yes and no. I don't think he played every arcade. But he did at least play certain games. While roaming around the arcade, you'll notice that some of them have a purple screen.

Through the dufflebags, there are messages talking about specific arcades and how they appeared to be glitching. Glamrock Bonnie may have overheard an employee discussing it but wasn't too sure which arcade game he was referring to. Why is the glitch important? Because glitchtrap, aka the mimic itself, is controlling the arcade by using those wires that you see around the area.Whoever is possessing Bonnie is connected to glitchtrap himself. Yes, I believe that Glamrock Bonnie was possessed by no other than Jeremy himself.

For those who don't know, there's specifically three Jeremy's in this franchise. But we are talking about the "Remember Jeremy" back in help wanted. In Help Wanted, by the time we are hired as beta tested for the fazbear virtual experience. Jeremy doesn't work with the game company anymore. He's mentioned by tape girl that Jeremy seems to enjoy his job as a beta tester, but as the day went, one went. Jeremy starts to become numb, and everything that even jumpscares didn't affect him. Tape Girl mentions how it sounded like Jeremy was talking to someone through the headset. Glitchrap was trying to control Jeremy.

One day, the tape girl comes to work, and she sees Jeremy, but she also sees some sort of Halloween mask and spilled ink. We both know that was a Halloween mask, nor was that black ink. Jeremy cut his own faces off. However, I don't believe it was under glitchtrap's control.

Here's why I think that. We don't know if there were other beta testers before Jeremy. So, Jeremy would have to be the first beta tester. It's interesting how tape girl and later on, Vanessa just accepted Glitchtrap and let him take over. Tape girl manipulated Vanessa to do so, but it shows that the tape girl herself was already accepting the control of glitchtrap. Also, at no point in the game, do we have to harm ourselves. Jeremy was trying to break from glitchtrap, so he did the only thing that he had to do. He cut his own face off because glitchtrap was scanning him.

You could say that because Jeremy was his first person , and he tried to control and brainwashed. He learned the trials and tribulations because it was still on murder mode. However, I don't think this is the case. Jeremy cutting his face off is similar to how Vanessa ordered those thumb screws. Vanessa is aware that there's something dark inside her that she needs to control, so she harms herself by using the thumb screws.

Jeremy passed away due to his injuries, but his spirit was hanging around. The thing about ghosts is that the reason why they may roam around earth is because of unfinished business, and they never felt like they got justice. That's why the five kids, Charlie Emily and even Elizabeth Afton, hang around because they all die tragically. I believe that's what is happening to Jeremy. Jeremy was the first victim of the mimic, aka glitchtrap, when it comes to brainwashing.

When it comes to choosing the animatronic to possess, I think that Glamrock bonnie was pretty much hand-picked, but Bonnie Bowl itself appears to be the only place where it doesn't involve Vanny camping out there nor an arcappearing there. Vanny camp out in fazerblast and possibly the room behind the daycare attendant's room. They mentioned how there are three arcades in Gator Golf, the bakery, and the daycare attendant's room.

Not to mention that Roxy Raceway was built on top of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza Place, and we know that Roxy was the last security node to shut down M.X.E.S by completing phase one of releasing the mimic. So Chica, Roxy, Monty, and to an extent Moon were controlled by the mimic through the arcades or in Roxy's case, they are near the mimic itself. This is why she was chosen to be the last security node.

Speaking of security nodes, it's interesting how the only one to deactivate the wet floor bots is through the V.A.N.N.I mask to put Glamrock Bonnie. The V.A.N.N.I isn't something that Vanessa made for herself, but rather, it appears that there were many made for the technician employees. The technician employees are responsible for the animatronics, meaning that they upgraded Glamrock Chica, Roxanne Wolf, and Montgomery Gator.

Remember when I said that Cassie's Dad was a technician? He never told her why bonnie was decommissioned and how the statue of Glamrock Bonnie is him cowering way something. I think that Glamrock Bonnie got decommissioned through the virtual reality of the V.A.N.N.I mask. This is why he managed to connect to the wet floor bots, and that's why you have to have the V.A.N.N.I mask to deactivate them.

However, we still have answered who or what decommissioned. Yes, the technicians who were probably controlled by the mimic through the V.A.N.N.I mask made sure that Glamrock Bonnie was decommissioned, but the statue in Help Wanted 2 and the area that he was found. It's telling us that nobody could cause that damage unless they were an animatronic themselves.

When looking at the crime scene itself, the biggest clue is the whole on Bonnie's chest, where it appears to have claw marks. So, we know that the animatronics has to have claws. There are three animatronics that were given claws based on the animal counterpart. They are Montgomery Gator, Roxanne Wolf, and Glamrock Freddy.

I'll start with Montgomery Gator. The main theory involving Glamrock Bonnie is that Monty killed Bonnie. This is because the last time we heard about Bonnie was that he was in Gator Golf. Monty ends up replacing Bonnie and how unlike Foxes and Wolves are in the same dog family. alligators are apex predators, while Rabbit was prey themselves. However, there are certain details that contradict the theory.

First of all, Glamrock Bonnie is found behind the bowling area even though the report stops at him going to gator golf. Another incriminated evidence that Monty did it is his claws himself. While yes, Monty probably did have claws . They didn't get upgraded until Monty got replaced Bonnie in the band. It is mentioned that when Monty's claws got upgraded. According to Freddy, bassist claws require the animatronic to slice through things, and that's interesting because how would Glamrock Freddy know that?

Next up is Roxanne Wolf, there are no evidence that Roxanne Wolf ever wanted Bonnie wanted to be decommissioned. She likes her position as the key guitarist of the band. The only thing we have is that she's an animatronic with claws, and her claws probably help with her playing the key guitar. You could say that because Roxanne may have jealous of Bonnie's popularity, which is why she's always says she's the best and how she confidentially believes that she's Gregory's favourite animatronic, But I don't believe this to be the case. So, Roxanne Wolf isn't the culprit. Which leads to Glamrock Freddy.

Throughout the security breach, Glamrock Freddy is shown helping Gregory, and the only time where he attacks him is when his battery is low or during the afton ending. However, this isn't to say that Glamrock Freddy was free from the mimic's control. I mentioned how Vanny was camping out over at the fazerblast. But why was she? It's also interesting that the three places where she camped out are Fazerblast, Daycare Attendant's room, and underneath the pizza place in the basement. The daycare attendant's room as the BB world game, and it seems to be the most glitched game of them all. You play this game last. You are now fully under the mimic and Vanny's control. The basement is where the boss battle itself happens. What is if the afton's ending ever happened, but doesn't mean Vanny's hideout in the basement is non-canon. So, we have two places that Vanny was hiding out involving a connection to The Mimic , so why campout in Fazerblast. That's because Princess Quest III is located, the game that Vanessa is trapped in.

The princess quest games appeared to be located in places where they are protected because it will be the last place that somebody would ever find. However, the princess quest appeared to be hidden well since, according to a message, somebody only played two of the games but didn't complete the third. It's also worth noting the only to get access to Princess Quest III if you win fazerblast and get the faz laser. What does this have anything to do with Glamrock Freddy.

Because Glamrock Freddy was probably under the control of mimic and Vanny at some point in time. When Glamrock Freddy was ever under the control is when the task involving the mimic becoming William Afton and bringing William afton. Meaning that Glamrock Freddy was the animatronic who decommissioned Glamrock Bonnie.

The technician programmed Glamrock Freddy by connecting him to the V.A.N.N.I network, and the reason why Glamrock Freddy didn't have any memory until he was upgraded is where he remembers what he has done. However, Freddy does appear to have some guilt about what happened. Glamrock Bonnie had to decommission through the V.A.N.N.I network since we know know he activates the wet floor bots, but the wet floor bots can't deactivate unless you're in the V.A.N.N.I network.

Another animatronic that helped with the decommission of Glamrock Bonnie is the moon animatronic. The last location that Bonnie was seen is Gator Golf, but he was found in Bonnie Bowl. Because this was the night that Glamrock Bonnie was decommissioned. Similar to what happened to Freddy in Security Breach when he got knocked out and dragged by the moon to parts and services. So, Glamrock Bonnie was knocked out, and the moon animatronic took him over to Bonnie Bowl. Glamrock Freddy decommissioned Glamrock Bonnie so bad that there was no way for the technician to repair him.

Glamrock Bonnie was still activated through the remnant of Jeremy, so he connected to the wet floor bots through the V.A.N.N.I network, just waiting for someone to deactivate them and find his body.

[tatumrileyslover]

SPOILER THOUGHTS ON THE FNAF MOVIE

You were warned

First off MR MATTHEW PATRICK

That man had EVERYONE CONVINCED HE WASN’T IN IT, the group of teenage boys beside me were as equally excited and we all gasped when he said, “well that’s just a theory”

I had my lore brain on when I watched it and let me tell you the second I saw the DREAM THEORY book I thought it was a matpat reference because I had assumed he wasn’t in it, (I was obviously very wrong)

I absolutely loved seeing my one true love Matthew Lillard as a villain once more, the springlock scene was so good, especially with that scene with golden Freddy boy just staring at him as he quivered in agony

Also the William Afton reveal was very funny because the teenage boys beside me just said “I would have never guessed that” I loved the commentary <3

Abby was honestly adorable and I saw a lot of myself in her, with her drawing 24/7, I loved how her and Mikes relationship were explored, the stress of trying to look after his little sister, while juggling a job and then the aunt trying to take Abby just for a check. The way Mike feels Abby doesn’t really care for him, but (as the teacher points out) Mike is at the centre of almost all her drawing.

The Vanessa as William Zafron’s daughter reveal kind of obvious to me, but I mainly think it was because I was planning a fanfic where the main character was Aftons daughter so a lot of things she done were thing I was thinking about (stuff like knowing her way around the place and knowing about the springlock suits)

The horror aspect of the movie is very pg13 as expected (as someone who loves horror movies) which is good in a sense because I think it’s a very good introduction to horror for tween/young teens. Nothing is crazy graphic (except for Maxs death which I thought was very unexpected for a pg13 movie but I mean it really added to the horror aspect) most of the jump scares have the (what I like to call) “delayed visuals/sounds” which let the audience brace themselves for the scares. I do kind of wish the animatronics were a little bit more “bloody” after killing the break in gang, I mean Freddy bit Max in half, you’d think he would have a bit of blood somewhere on him.

I loved Josh Hutcherson acting in the movie though, he was really enjoyable to watch (but I also absolutely LOVE Josh so :P ) i think he portrayal of his trauma relating to his brother is very clever, this deal golden Freddy boy made with him, capitalising on his desire to fix what happened to get to Abby.

Speaking of Abby, the ending when she puts up the drawing she made, is very clever but I think the way it was portrayed was a bit strange. We see Abby making drawings for the animatronics so we see that they value her art, and I think the idea of her drawing their actual fate to counteract the image of Spring Bonnie being their friend is very smart. But just replacing the image is a bit weak, I think if Abby tried to run around to show them, or get their attention is some way would work better but it’s only a small flaw.

I think since Vanessa was stabbed, and she doesn’t wake from the coma by the end of the movie it’s probably setting up for the next movie, it’s a bit of a lacklustre ending for her. On the note of Vanessa, I feel her relationship with William Afton wasn’t explored nearly enough, just a small part of dialogue, discussing what he did and how she didn’t want to clean up after him anymore.

Final note: the part where William Afton (as Steve Raglin the career counsellor) reads the file for Mike Schmidt, the way he doesn’t even finish saying his last name foreshadows how he knew that he was sitting in front of one of his victims siblings. I just love Matthew Lillard and everything he does

I will most definitely be seeing it again, probably streaming it online so my little sister can see it because she really wants to see it

[katyspersonal]

I had @val-of-the-north stay in a VC with me while I was replaying Elden Ring (mostly for rare drops) and he was doodling, my fav quotes from it:

1) "See, Val, this is what annoys me about you so much! Every single time I suggest a solid theory and reading of the character that makes sense, you start complaining! "Blahblablah but it is heavily unethical experiments blahblahblah but many people died D:" EVERY. GODDAMN. TIME. Can you actually think before you speak?!" (me after explaining Fauxsefka, Micolash and Sellen)

2) "Dammit, D would've been so hot, but him having an actual fair, justified reason such as avenging his brother ruined everything 🙄🤦‍♂️" (me after Devin's monologue upon beating Fia's body into a mess)

3) "Dear God, they can't stop fucking even in death! Come on, guys, this is just embarrassing!" (Val after I suggested the idea of Basylisks being babies of Godwyn and Fortissax, since they all have Deathblight, Godwyn's eyes virus looks same as their eyes and Basylisks are connected to Dragons since like DS1)

4) not a quote, but there was a Crucible Knight in Farum Azula under the bridge, and when he used his wings attack he flew off the cliff and fell to his death gggtjfjgghjvm

5) "People insisted so much on blaming the Greater Will for a bunch of specific things like oppressions and injustices in the Golden Order! It is already in opposition to another thing: the non-existence! Blaming something abstract is easier and helps to keep the characters clean, but like... Greater Will just created life itself. It doesn't care what the order is, it just... hoped that things would sort themselves out. It doesn't care, it is too big- AND THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID, and" (Val's stream of consciousness xD)

6) "Of course your gut reflex was to instantly go for the dark version. You evil bitch." (Val when I was doing that SOTE thing about turning stone-sheated sword into either light or dark one)

7) "The only thing that I've liked about Promised Consort battle is that all haters backpedalled and said "Actually Malenia was right in using the Scarlet Rot against him, because what the FUCK?"" (Val while we were discussing the built I used to beat Radahn-at-home)

[random-meme-bot]

Ok so there are some ideas about Epithet erased that have been bouncing in my head after reading Prison of Plastic and I just need to get them out

(Spoilers so beware)

Ama just be clear on this, I think Marty (Molly's & Lori's Dad) was the reason for the fire on the old "Blyndeff Toy Emporium", or at the very least the reason the fire alarm didn't activate.

So first of, let's start with what im more confident:

The Fire alarm

Marty's main job on the store is supplying it with toys to sell, the way he does this is by building them himself.

I believe the guy either was missing some pieces for some project he was working on and just took them from the fire alarm thinking "Eh, I'm sure it's not that important"

Or decided to do a little "peek-in" to inspire himself, either breaking it on the process or jut not being able to put it back together afterwards.

I mean, if he broke the thing he would just thought nothing of it and then forgotten about it

None of the other members of the family would have done something as careless as break the fire alarm and don't say anything, especially Molly or Calliope since they are the most responsible members of the family, and Lori has no idea why the fire alarm didn't went off

And, I know what you're thinking.

"The fire alarm could just be defective, or the battery could've just runned off, not everything has to be because of someone"

And while yes, it's true that things like that coud happen, I don't think Jello would take something as important to the plot as "They couldn't escape from the fire in time because the fire alarm didn't activate" and just brush it off as "It didn't activate because it just so happened to be broken, bad luck" (My source's are his streams playing Ace Attorney Investigations, so take it at your own risk)

But this is just a small part of the biggest picture, let's discuss the Phoenix in the room:

The cause of the Fire

Ok so first of all, I don't believe Lori was the "Firestarter", while her Epithet activating during the night without her knowing makes sense, there are two things that shows that, that wasn't the case

First of all, that night she was sleeping on a dream bubble.

Which means the fire couldn't have come from her, when shes on the bubble everything she creates appears on the bubble, on top of that everything created on the bubble disappears outside of the bubble (as apparent by Trixie, Feenie & Rick going back to normal form outside of the bubble)

Even if that wasn't the case, I doub the fire could have gotten out of the bubble on its own since the bubbles are indestructible for anybody except Lori, Molly (and sometimes Rick)

As for who started the fire, I'll admit I don't have that much in terms of concrete evidence, and the few I have point to (unsurprisingly) to Marty.

Let's analyze the few things we know, at some point in the night a fire started somewhere on the "Blyndeff Toy Emporium", the fire alarm was not working that day so we can assume that someone gott awakened by the fire and alerted the rest, after being alerted, Molly got into Lori's room & tried woke her up from her bubble, event that caused her to discover her epithet

after Lori was woken up they both got out of the house, after some time Marty came out with Calliope on his arms.

There's a lot of information missing since we only know Lorelai's version of the story, but It doesn't add up doesn't it?

How coud Molly have gotten into Lori's room, awoken her epithet & gotten out before Marty & Calliope?

This is especially weird if we assume that like most family's both parents were sleeping on the same bed or at least the same room, meaning they would've been alerted at the same time.

Ok let's put all the pieces together and finally unveil my theory.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE HAPPENED THAT DAY

Marty Blyndeff had gotten himself the bestest of toy's ideas, "A Robot toy" he had been working night & day on it and it was finally finished! He just needed a battery to test it, he got out of his workshop and started looking for something that really didn't need the battery, he's eyes stopped on the Fire Alarm,

"Of course" he tough "That thing is just there for aesthetic, I mean if it is sooooooo important, why would there be only one on the whole store", he took the battery out of the Alarm and then used it to Power his creation.

The little robot made some weird noises and moved a bit before releasing some sparks which led to it catching fire, maybe going from simple wood toy's to complicated robots was not as good as an idea as he initially thought, this was bad since most of the things in the workshop ware also made out of wood, thinking quickly [For maybe the first time in his life] Marty grabbed a nearby bottle of acetone to try and put off the fire, after all, all liquids are strong against fire right?

Acetone as the flammable liquids that it is only made things worse, it made it so the flames started to spread faster, the fire had gotten to the rest of acetone bottles and other flammable chemicals causing a huge explosion that knocked Marty unconscious, the entire workshop and part of the store was now covered in flames that were quickly expanding.

Molly Blyndeff was sleeping on her room as usual when a noise woke her up, she had always been really susceptible to sounds due to her great hearing, she opened her eyes and found her room getting filled with thick black smoke, "FIRE!" She shouted, she came out of her room yelling "MOM, DAD, LORI!" she heard some noises coming from her parents room so they were awake, but she was more worried about her sister's room, no sound was coming from it, "WHAT IF SHE WAS HURT OR WORSE?!" Molly entered her sisters room, and found one of her sister's dream bubble surrounded by fire, "WOULD THE BUBBLE PROTECT HER?!" Molly didn't know, she started punching the sphere with all her force as she screamed "LORI WAKE UP, PLEASE!" a green aura started to emanate from her hands and the walls of the bubble started to disappear revealing Lori's bed with her on top still sleeping, without thinking it twice Molly grabbed her sister and started shaking her, "LORI PLEASE! WAKE UP!" Lorelai woke up just to find her sister crying, shaking, screaming, and glowing, that last part would had caught her attention a lot more if it wasn't for the flaming inferno that was surrounding them, they both got out of the room, got down the stairs and escaped the store.

While this was happening Marty woke up, he was on his workshop, his head hurt and he couldn't remember much, he was finishing his Robot toy and something happened...? It didn't matter, what mattered now was getting away from all the fiery situation he had found himself into, he got up and started to make his way out of the workshop and up into the middle floor of the store, he made his way to the stairs and started to go up into the bedrooms, he had important things in his room that he didn't want getting burned, when he opened the door he found his wife laying unconscious om the floor, the building was collapsing, there wasn't enough time to save both his wife & his stuff, so he picked up his wife and escaped the building reuniting finally with the rest of his family.

Conclusion

Here's my (more or less plausible) theory of what happened that day, It's very rough as the only version of the events we have is Lorelai's which is not much, we also don't know how their old toy store was in terms of architecture so I kinda just had to assume it was similar to the one they have now and use the layout of that one.

I'm sure this is how it happened?

No, not in a million years the amount of information I had to fill up to make that Fanfic Theory makes the story as a whole pretty unreliable.

I'm sure Marty is the responsable of the fire and the fire alarm not working? Yes, absolutely, maybe not the fire though as again, not much prof, but the fire alarm was definitely Marty's thing.

So anyway, here are my ramblings about Epithet Erased Prision of Plastic, please give me your opinions on this theories and the book as a whole I'm really interested on what other people think.

[soratsuart]

QSMP Day 47 Lore Summary

Wooo been a while since I've done one of these!! Before I start, fair warning! This time I haven't been able to watch any streams so some of the information might not be in order, but I actually got a fair idea of what happened yesterday, so it should be good enough.

We start the day with the theorist club which at this point is made up of half the island, and we get some interesting developments. Particularly, Cellbit has come up with a plan to get more information; breaking a rule to attract Cucurucho's attention so they can question them about the island and the Federation. Spoiler alert: this will go horribly wrong.

Cucurucho did indeed appear before Cellbit when he was making an illegal iron farm, however they were not very happy with this and they ended up teleporting Cellbit to a strange hallway and started hunting him down with a chainsaw until killing him. After this, however, Cucurucho did take Cellbit to some kind of lab and allowed him to make them a few questions, the most relevant one being whether the island is real or not since Cellbit theorises it to be a simulation. Cucurucho said the island is real. Cellbit also noticed the lamp in the lab was blinking in Morse code, which I'm pretty sure has already been decodified by Twitter's theorists.

Speaking of theories by the way, the Tazercraft duo suspect there might be a mole among them all, a theory Bad shares as well. He, along with Foolish, also discuss Quackity's state of mind, with Foolish believing that Quackity might still be in denial over Tilín's death.

Ironically enough, while they had this conversation, Quackity went to Tilín's grave to finally move on. He has broken Tilín's bed and now has their bow around his arm. He would later tell Maxo about this when he interrogated him, admitting that he doesn't like the way he has become vengeful and resentful after losing Tilín. Quackity also asks him to cease the case Maxo had against him over his plan to kill all the eggs since he doesn't want to carry out that plan anymore. Everyone else was spying on this conversation too, and after it Quackity and Bad had an argument about the vandalism to Tallulah's house, with Quackity admitting he did that to get Wilbur's attention (he still believes Tallulah to be his daughter btw).

Cellbit also interrogated Quackity about the Federation and Cucurucho, with Quackity telling him some information he wasn't aware of (how they met Cucurucho the first day and the weird questions they asked everyone), as well as told him that he was invited to the island like everyone else.

After that, everyone, including Quackity, tried to summon the binary code entity to get more information. However, they only got a thunder in response to their attempts. After this, everyone started theorising some more and Bad ended up asking Cellbit wether Cucurucho was rainbowed when they hunted down Cellbit to which he answered no. This makes Bad theorize there might be more than one Cucurucho since he had rainbowed them the previous day. We know this to be correct since we've already witnessed as many as three Cucuruchos at once in Roier's house a long while ago.

For now this is all regarding the theorist club as they all are trying to find out what is going on with the island and the Federation. As a side note I can tell you at the end of Quackity's stream he put a code which translates to 'X'. Do with that what you will.

As for any other relevant stuff? Foolish and Bad had a bit of an argument in chat while talking to Roier with whom they have scheduled a therapy session for today, which promises to be hilarious.

And I believe that's all! Hope this helped a bit with everything going on. Share this post so more people can catch up with the lore, please! :)

[cresentcube]

Howdy there! I'm a bit late to the party, by like, a few years by my estimate, but I'm absolutely in love with your Nine in DQ11 AU. I had a similar thought because DQ9 was the one other DQ game I've played. But yeah, I've been tearing through your AU, feeling a little betrayed that I'm just finding this now T_T. I'm not sure if you're still taking questions for this AU, but there's one thing I'm wondering that I'm pretty sure I haven't seen yet. Apologies if you've already answered this. What are Nine's general vibes with Serena, Erik, and Jade. Like what's their relationships and interactions like?

HELLO WELCOME!! YOU'RE NOT LATE THE TRAIN IS STILL RUNNING

I still have this AU in my heart, yes! I'm so glad you loved it!!!

It's an AU I always hold dear in the corner of my heart and if anyone leaves a like on my post I immidiately just leap up in joy. Just haven't been posting since life was really busy but it's still one of my favorite pastimes to just think about it for a while. Your ask filled me with pure joy! if you have any more questions or ideas or just random thoughts about the au, anything, just dump it on the ask and I'll be there with you in an instant. Feel absolutely free to barge in, I love getting asks. Thank you again.

Now, to your question!

Serena: They've got a lot of things in common: mainly, that they're the team gluttons. If left unsupervised they will drift to a bakery unprotected and return after spending half the team's budget. They're also both absentminded as all hell, so you can constantly see Veronica chiding the two of them at the same time- Nine and Serena side by side, slightly looking like soaking wet puppies. Like partner in crimes- but the crimes are just things like disappearing into the crowd and being lost, only to be found hours later, sharing a pastry, blissfully unaware how much the other party members were frantically looking for them in concern.

They're very good friends! She's the one who Nine makes the most casual conversation to, due to them having a lot of common interests- Nine's affinity to healing magic brings them together to discuss healing magic theory together, too. Nine enjoys braiding her hair if there's nothing to be done! Serena very, very much enjoys listening to his nighttime stories of stars and constellations.

Erik: If you leave them together, their bickering will NOT end. It's a constant stream of roasts and roasting back. Despite all this, it's all in good fun- in truth, Nine is very, very fond of Erik. Ever since Erik helped El bust out of the dungeons, Nine is always very thankful to him. He's also... aggressively protective of Erik, but does not seem to realize the fact himself. Their usual conversation is on the bickering side, but they're all good-natured and both know it. ("Nine, you know your plans make no sense." "Sure, mister 'I jumped off a cliff and would have died immediately if not for El's miracle powers', tell me your wisdom, then!')

Since Nine usually has his head above in his clouds- El's a bit too used to Nine's casual chaos- it's usually up to Erik to try and "save him from himself". "Nine, stop trying to eat that loaf whole. We have a bread knife. We're not savages." "Nine, for the love of- how did you burn the cooking pot down?? It's made of copper!!" Erik is also fond of Nine, but in the way of "Good God. My partner's brother needs a leash(affectionate)" kind of way.

In return, Nine cares a lot about Erik's wellbeing: he constantly asks Erik whether he ate anything, quietly mends his clothes, forcefully sits him down to check for his wounds and tends to them personally. As I mentioned, Nine almost gets aggressively protective of Erik from time to time- Erik notices this but does not mention it.

Jade: Jade views El as a brother: and the fact that Nine had dedicated his (jade's percieved sense of) entire life to keeping Eleven safe has won her respect. She doubts his motive at first, because she instantly recongized he was a man that was hiding a bit too much inside his seams- but the fact that Nine gets hurled off a cliff just to give them a time frame to escape erased her doubts right away. She does have her own blazing questions about Nine's true identity, but she decides to keep silent in the behalf of the respect she holds against him.

It's a relationship of solemn respect, at first, Jade respecting Nine as a protector and Nine viewing Jade as a lineage of royalty and treating her as such.... but it slowly melted into something much more friendlier over the time.

Jade does not speak of it, of course, but by the time act 1 is coming to a close she already came to a point where she considers him as her second younger brother. She (half jokingly) tries to appoint Nine to come be her royal knight beside Hendrik after she is crowned queen- Nine politely refuses.

(Nine still holds a bit of regret in the fact that he could not help any of the tragedies made in the day she lost the grip of the basket.)

Another tidbit is that albeit not daily like Hendrik and Nine, they spar quite regularly. Hendrick and Nine's sparring usually follows the same routine: Hendrik, with his physical wall of defence and his slow but devastating blows, tries to brute force his way through Nine's shield spells. Nine, with his floating movements, utilize his dexterity and small form to dodge his attacks and tries to find an opening. It's a calm conversation, almost, and since they both know each other's limit, they usuallt let go of their weapons when either of them looks drained and end the sparring in a peaceful handshake.

Jade and Nine's battle, however- not so much. Jade's blows are quick, very quick, and absolutely merciless. Since Nine's go-to battle strategy is to glance off attacks by dodging, parrying, and putting up shielding spells, this means Nine have to dodge a LOT. When they spar, it's a constant flurry of movement, sounds of split-second parrying, and the dust sifting around them as Jade metaphorically chases Nine around to land a strike: it's chaos. The only thing one would be able to make out of this mess is an occasional, frantic chant of SKARA! as the gold tint of Nine's shield spell surrounds himself, only to be deftly broken by Jade's roundhouse kick. Jade does not have mercy. To her it's either a win or a loss: Either Nine puts up a shield a second late and gets flung across the field like a rag doll by a kick, or Jade loses her balance for a split second after Nine's parry and gets a sword hilt smashed against her stomach.

Nine very much enjoys sparring against her! Erik is very concerned for his sanity.

That's what I can think of of the moment. I'll add more when I have more ideas, and if you want more details feel free to ask!!

[asiadoesstuff]

Ok then.

Calling all my Fandroid Theory Enthusiasts!!: @splat1987 @1dklikesthings @bluartist @pawsometoons @bugsinspace @killer-arcade @roseverdict @therealdragongirl12 @crossover-fraternity !!

So, the Recent Livestreams…

I’m gonna theorise the heck outta these.

25/3/23

So, the 1st Live…

Before the Live started, there was a poll. It was titled “Lore?” With two options: Yes and No. The Poll’s results ended with Yes having 96% of votes, whilst No had 3% of the votes.

The Live starts. Fandroid and Melody appear to be playing an Obby Game. Everything seems normal; everybody in the chat is asking if there’s any Lore, and debating if they’ve been tricked.

At some point, a message from Chat is read out, about Target. Then Fandroid goes onto talking about a trip he took to Target; he hit himself on something, saying he “hurt his leg-bone.”

Robots don’t have bones. In fact, Fandroid pointed that out himself in the chat.

The Chat starts discussing. A popular theory that was made in these 5 minutes was the Fandroid on the Live is an “impostor.” (I swear if anyone says anything remotely related to Among Us…)

The Stream carries on. After a bit, Fandroid posts another message in Chat.

Business Bot has been missing for a week, apparently. Chat eats this up like a fine meal.

The Stream goes on, Fandroid saying some things which aren’t specifically Note-Worthy, but you know…

After a while, Fandroid & Melody leave the Obby game they were playing and join ‘Shovelware’s Brain Game’. Around halfway-through the round, Fandroid sends this into the Chat. And it sounds good! (At first…)

…Oh.

That doesn’t seem too good.

So Business Bot is gone, and Fandroid found one of his wheels. Either Business Bot accidentally smashed his wheels off, or something must’ve done this. Most probably the second one, since from what I know, Business Bot doesn’t leave his station, and there’s not really anything that could cause this type of damage near it.

…And it seems Business Bot’s disappearance isn’t the only one.

So something’s kidnapping the robots; It couldn’t be humans, because Fandroid already established all the humans are dead. Who could it be?

Cue a couple more silly (/pos) comments from Fandroid, which I will not attach here because there is a limit to how many images you can attach.

Stream goes a while without any Comments from Fandroid.

Then Fandroid sends something to the chat. It isn’t anything important, it’s just… surprising.

?????

Huh???

Anyways…

After 3 minutes of silence from the Fandroid Account, it sends something again.

That’s good! And hey; we know Frogbot’s still here!

Anyways…

Whatever’s taken Business Bot either: Dismantled him, or didn’t need his wheels. For what reason? I don’t know…

Info about the Holodeck!

There’s one thing that’s putting me off, though…

Why is Fandroid talking in 3rd Person?

Anyways: Stream carries on, and there’s nothing Note-worthy from Fandroid for the next 32 minutes.

But I just wanted to say…

…Language Fandroid. 😡 (/lh)

Anyways…

After a while, the Stream comes to an end. It was fun! And Loreful! Everyone is saying goodbye!…

…But it doesn’t end.

Fandroid & Melody start speaking about something, that they assumed was Private. But, we heard everything…

Here’s the Clip of Fandroid and Melody’s ‘Private’ Conversation…

So, the reason why this is a Double-Stream Post was because Tumblr refused letting me post videos, and by the time I tried all the ways for it to work, it was already Friday… so I’m just gonna have to send a link from someone else’s video—

This is alot to take in.

So, there’s a New Robot named 404.

Named after an Error Message.

Frogbot apparently saw 404 and drew a picture of it.

Theories for this Live…

Listen, I know this might sound insane, but…

What if 404 is like an Ennard-Type Situation?

All these Robots have disappeared out-of-the-blue, so it could make sense.

Maybe that’s why Business Bot’s wheels were found, but not Business Bot. 404 maybe didn’t need wheels so it just dropped them somewhere random.

But if 404 made itself a body, then what is it internally? You know what I mean?

There’s not enough evidence to completely prove my theory, but hey; what’s theorising without a risk you’re completely wrong?

That’s all from me. We’ll have to see what happens Next Stream…

1/4/23

What just happened?…

What.

I don’t know how I feel about this.

I think my ‘404 being an Ennard-Type Situation’ Theory is True.

Let’s just see the Clip…

Let's list some facts...

So.

Something tried to hack into ADHOC's System; presumably 404.

Fandroid starts panicking, and Melody is trying to calm him down.

BEEP-0 is the one making announcements.

Fandroid and Melody start to try and make this situation less serious.

Fandroid and Melody eventually end the Stream early.

Now onto some Theories...

So I think 404 might actually be an Ennard-type situation. From what we heard from BEEP-0's announcement roll-call, Business Bot and Frogbot's statuses are unknown. We already know Business Bot is missing, (possibly dismantled), so I'd assume Frogbot has suffered the same fate... I mean, they did draw down a picture on what 404 looked like, so maybe 404 took Frogbot out because of that? Or maybe because 404 needs extra parts for it's new body.

Fandroid at one point questions why BEEP-0 "always is saying that negative things are happening when positive things are going on, but the second the scary things happens he says everything is ok"... I think that might just be BEEP-0, but I'll note this down just in-case something happens with BEEP-0 in the future.

And that's about as much as I can remember...

There's defintetly more Theories in my brain, it's just I'm too tired to remember them... (It's Midnight when I'm posting this...)

But that's as much as I can remember at the moment!

Also, another thing... You know how BEEP-0 said that the thing that was trying to hack the ADHOC Systems was an "amateur" and that how they were "The G.O.A.T"? Well...

I think it managed to hack into something.

[anotheruserwithnoname]

This is a bit of a "throwing cold water" post. I've been seeing a lot of Doctor Who fandom infighting over the future of the show the last week or two after the underperformance of its 60th anniversary and Christmas specials in terms of ratings (you're free to believe 7 million is a good number if you like). One argument i've seen is it doesn't matter now it's on Disney+ and being supported by Disney and anyway they're already filming the upcoming season (I guess it's Series 2 now?) that's expected to air in 2025, never mind the one filmed a year ago that is scheduled to air in the spring, so we should stop worrying. The show is safe, right?

This article is from August of last year. Since then we have also heard about Paramount Plus cancelling Star Trek: Prodigy despite its second season having been completed (a Star Trek series). There was also the case of Warners cancelling the streaming release of its completed Batgirl movie. And there are others (two Disney examples of complete series being binned: The Spiderwick Chronicles and the Nautilus series about Captain Nemo). Most concerning are how many of these shows are being thrown away as "cost-savings measures" especially at Disney, which according to news reports been losing money hand over teacup the last couple of years due to back-to-back bombs at the box office and the popularity collapse of the MCU movies.

And it's not even a case of "well, they'll just give a show time to find an audience" which certainly worked well with The CW and was in theory one of the attractions of streaming. The Willow series was not only cancelled but according to rumours rendered "lost media" by Disney (similar to those many Doctor Who episodes of the 1960s) so soon after it was released, I don't know if Warwick Davis' paycheque had time to clear. If someone said shows were being cancelled after a single episode on streaming (google the TV series "Turn On" for an infamous network example), I wouldn't be surprised.

I'm not going into discussion on Doctor Who the show itself; current quality and storyline debates are for another thread. But I am seeing people swearing on a stack of TARDIS instruction manuals that it's safe because of yadda yadda yadda, when it isn't. On the BBC, people should be watching on night-of, not waiting 2 weeks, a month, or 3 months because their viewership numbers do not matter (yes it's an outdated way of doing things - in theory they should be able to tell whenever anyone opens up an MP4 file on their home computer and yes, that's scary, but as long as they continue to report ratings based on whatever system they use to gauge, it's how things work). And if your only option is Disney+ and you haven't gotten around to watching the Christmas special yet, maybe planning to save it till the season proper starts, I think that's a bad idea. Watch it now so Disney has current numbers to go by (remember Willow. I know people who wanted to see it but planned to save it for later, like holidays, but by then it was too late).

I'm not going to be a hypocrite; I only started watching Loki, the MCU series, over the holidays and it's one of the best shows I've seen in the last 5 years. Too bad I didn't stream it back when Disney was considering whether to keep it going or not. By myself, no, I make no difference. But if a lot of other people held off like me (I never expected there to be a Blu-ray release of Season 1), the collective adds up.

An irony is The Avengers (the one with John Steed) was still popular in the UK when its American network dropped it in 1969, resulting in the UK studio cancelling it. It would be ironic if the same fate befell another series created by Sydney Newman, eh?