#so i texted him and he said hmmm these are old and delicate people... easily frightened

[justconstantly]

just realized I'm gonna see my dad's side of the family this summer for the first time since like 2018-2019 ish, who are older and more conservative than my mom's fam, and I haven't really had the chance to be the Gay Cousin ™️ at family gatherings with them, so I was gonna grow my hair out some this summer and tone down on the dying it for a while but now I think it maybe has to be buzzed and neon pink come july

I just wanna stir the pot a lil you know? give em something to gossip about until I see them in another 5 years. plus I really want my uncle Mike who doesn't believe in climate change to choke on his tongue after all his comments about needing to marry a rich man when I was 12, you know?

[rutilation]

hi I have some theories about the Problematic Rock

In my essay for chapter 82, I said that I had settled on a theory of What The Deal Is With Cairngorm.  My thoughts on the subject are a bit all over the place, so in the hope of presenting things in a coherent manner, I’ve laid out my thought process from the past eleven months or so in roughly chronological order, beginning with the nitpick that started it all.  Welcome to my twisted mind, and all that.

For the most part, the way the series applies fantasy concepts to actual geology has been fairly sound.  For example, tourmaline generates an electric charge when heated, so Melon radiates electricity when upset.  Cinnabar the rock often comes out of the ground covered in native mercury, so Cinnabar the character is surrounded by magical floating mercury.  Alexandrite turns red or purple in incandescent light, so the light the Lunarians give off changes Alex’s color and gives them a mood swing to boot.  It’s exaggerated and fantastical, but it’s nonetheless grounded in some nugget of geology trivia which one might find on the back of a Snapple cap.  But, Ghost and Cairn’s condition in the story does not line up with how phantom crystals work, even within the science-fantasy framework we’ve got going here.  At first, I just filed it away next to other inaccuracies such as Antarc shouldn’t be able to trudge through snow without dissolving in a puddle of their own brine, much less dive into the ocean unscathed.  However, if my theory(s) is correct, then this apparent lapse in the internal logic of the story might have in fact been deliberate foreshadowing.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First, some context. Phantom crystals form by way of two distinct but related processes:

During a crystal’s formation out of a solution, its growth is temporarily halted for one of any number of reasons.  During this time, dust falls onto the surface of the crystal.  As the crystal begins growing again, these tiny debris become trapped within, and if the rest of the crystal is sufficiently transparent, the included material appears from the outside as the outline of a crystal within a crystal.

The other process to which this term applies involves color zoning, and is a bit easier to explain.  During a crystal’s formation, the chemicals that make up the solution change slightly, and these impurities cause one part of the crystal to become a different color from another part.  If the color zoning is concentric, and the different colors in question are visible from outside the crystal, it can be labeled a phantom crystal.  Ghost and Cairn appear to be this second type.

So here’s what I’m getting at: a phantom crystal is not two separate crystals, in much the same way that the rings in a tree trunk aren’t a bunch of separate trees.  Therefore, it doesn’t make sense for Ghost and Cairngorm to be two separate people, and if they are actually intended to be examples of this phenomenon, it raises some questions.  For one thing, watermelon tourmaline forms via the exact same process of concentric color zoning I described in example number two; since you usually can’t see the pinkish part from outside of the green layer of crystal, it’s not often labeled a phantom crystal, but it’s the same phenomenon nonetheless.  So, why is it that Cairn and Ghost are two different people, but the green and red parts of Melon aren’t?  For that matter, why aren’t the two halves of Euclase two separate people? There’s certainly more of colorless-Euclase than there is of Ghost.  If mere color zoning were enough, then why are Ghost and Cairn the only examples of highly-conjoined-twins amongst the cast?  Unless of course, we weren’t given an accurate picture of how these two came to be, and there’s something fishy going on.

Of course, whether or not this little contradiction is actually meaningful wholly depends on if Ichikawa was even aware of the distinction as she was writing.  As I recall she once said in an interview that she wasn’t very familiar with geology in the first place before she started writing hnk.  But, like I said at the beginning of this essay, this is what got me started down the rabbit hole.  From this observation arose two different trains of thought.   One came to me pretty quickly, but the other took a few months to materialize.

The first idea that popped into my head when I realized that this inaccuracy could have been deliberate was that Ghost and Cairngorm might not be separate people, and there was some split-personality shenanigans going on.  I’ll quickly list the things I think this theory has going for it with some bullet points.

Remember that one time, when Cairngorm referred to Ghost as their “former self?”  And that other time, in the official translation of volume 6, when they referred to Ghost as their “other half?”  That is rather curious terminology for referring to one’s sibling.

That one time in chapter 39, where Cairn repeated Ghost’s sentiment about being “tired of praying” verbatim, and the composition of the panels seemingly called attention to it.

It would serve to explain a certain contradiction in Cairn’s personality: despite their aggressive—and at times violent—demeanor, they nonetheless act like a total doormat in all the ways that really matter.  They live their life according to someone else’s wishes, they’re quick to pass off decision making to others, and they fold under pressure pretty easily.  What if Cairngorm is, in fact, Ghost’s idea of what being assertive is like, without any understanding of what it means to actually be independent or confident? 

A common critique of the story is that Ghost’s character was rather perfunctory, and their death felt like a second-rate retread of Antarc’s fate.  Well, if Cairn and Ghost are the same person, then they weren’t actually unceremoniously dropped from the story after all.  Come to think of it, right before they were supposedly taken, Ghost said they wanted to change; what if they actually did?

As many of you have noticed, Ghost is one of the few characters who isn’t ProblematiqueTM .  Doubtlessly, Ichikawa now regrets killing them off before they could do something kinda nasty.  Even Antarc got the chance to cluelessly trample over Phos’s self-esteem before getting turned into road salt.  But, if it were revealed that Ghost was actually the same character as creamed corn, then Ichikawa could drag their good name through the mud with one fell swoop.  (I’m just trying to think from her perspective, guys!  Her cruel, sadistic perspective…)

But ultimately, when I got around to wondering why on earth they would have a split personality in the first place, I found that this line of inquiry raised more questions than answers.  Unlike my second theory, which mostly just raises answers.

(I know I just dumped a big tinfoil hat at my readers’ feet like a cat gifting its owner a decapitated bird, but please keep bearing with me, I’m not even halfway done.)

The idea that I’ve found to be the most fruitful came in the weeks following chapter 75.  I’ve brought up this line from Aechmea multiple times (probably to the point of redundancy,) because it’s the biggest hint we’ve gotten so far that there’s some Cairn-related context we’re not yet privy to.  And the more the narrative keeps reminding us of it—usually by way of Cairngorm bringing it up with varying levels of anxiety—the more it seems to be alluding to something important.  So I got to thinking that whatever my little plot twist was, it would have to account for Aechmea’s cryptic bullshit.  I put forward a couple preliminary ideas in my essay for chapter 75, but I’ve since discarded those in favor of my second theory.

So, somehow Aechmea knew Cairngorm before they came to the moon, and neither Cairngorm, (nor Ghost for that matter,) remembers meeting him.  When I tried to think of how this could be possible, while also keeping in mind my little bugbear about phantom crystals, I developed a theory that’s much more pedestrian by the standards of the hnk fandom.  I am of course, talking about the mysterious artificial gem experiments that the Lunarians conducted.  That sure is a plot element which has been left dangling, huh?  And since no one, least of all myself, believes Stinkmea when he claims that the experiments were a complete failure, it has been a favored pastime of people who write walls of text to speculate on who amongst the cast might have been planted on earth by the Lunarians; e.g. Obsidian, Antarc, new Morga and Goshe… I imagine someone at some point has even postulated that Phos themselves is from the moon.  But, if you pay close attention to how Aechmea, and later, Barbata describe the process by which they attempted to create artificial gems, it lines up strikingly well with what we know about Ghost and Cairngorm, and it also serves to explain the geological inaccuracy I was talking about earlier.

Aechmea describes how the Lunarians tried to create their own gems by grafting pieces of gems they had captured from earth onto artificial bodies, and that they were dumped on earth before being retrieved after they showed no signs of life.  Barbata also mentions it later, in more oblique terms.  He’s speaking vaguely, but his warning to Phos feels a bit odd in its specificity. The use of the phrase “emotionally delicate” also raises my eyebrows a bit.  I may be reading too much into this, but I feel that his hypothetical example is less hypothetical than he’s letting on.  Perhaps, he is in fact referring to a certain someone in particular, who is emotionally fragile, and subsequently lost their sense of self after being subjected to this experiment.  Hmmm…

So here’s what I think went down: once upon a time, probably before the current generation of gems had been born, there was a gem on earth who was just plain old colorless Quartz. I’m going to call them OG!Quartz.  One day, OG!Quartz is captured by the Lunarians, and Aechmea uses them for his little gem experiment, probably with Barbata being the one to carry it out.  He shaves off the outermost layer of OG!Quartz and discards the rest of them. Then, he grafts those pieces onto an artificial body made of black Quartz.  The inclusions from OG!Quartz permeate into the artificial material, and thus Cairngorm is born.  The Lunarians subsequently dump them on earth, at which point Kongou, who may or may not realize what’s going on, picks them up and names them Ghost Quartz, despite the fact that they didn’t come about via that process.

This would explain a lot of things.  If so little of OG!Quartz was used to make Ghost Quartz, they would likely be unable to remember their previous life, or the ensuing events on the moon, for that matter.  And since Cairngorm would be a newborn at the time, they wouldn’t be able to remember Aechmea either, thus solving the riddle of how Aechmea knew Cairngorm before they came the moon.

It would also clue us in to what Aechmea meant by love, why he was quick to swoop in and take advantage of Cairn, and why he kept Cairn’s original arm around.  If they were the one success after a series of failed experiments, it’s possible that Aechmea feels a sense of ownership over Cairn, as if they’re his accomplishment.  (Yikes.)

It would also explain another thing that has stuck in mind.  The way Ghost was taken was kind of weird, wasn’t it?  At the time, the Lunarians were being oddly particular about nabbing Ghost instead of Cairn.  Usually, the Lunarians try to shatter the gems and be done with it, not shave a bunch of little pieces off the outside.  Furthermore, Cairngorm was thoroughly wrecked by the end of that fight.  The Lunarians could have easily grabbed them both and gotten away before help could arrive, but instead, they pushed Cairn off of the vessel and only took Ghost.  If we assume though that Ghost and Cairn are the result of one of those gem experiments, the Lunarians actions during that battle start to make sense.  Perhaps the Lunarians wanted to see if Cairngorm was alive in their own right, or if the pieces of Ghost were just dragging the rest of the body around.  They wouldn’t be able to tell the difference from their distant vantage point.  So, they nabbed Ghost and intentionally left Cairn behind in order to further observe their experiment.  

(I should point out that when I say “the Lunarians,” assume I’m referring to Aechmea, Barbata, and perhaps a handful of other unnamed extras.  Aechmea probably doles out knowledge of his obtuse schemes on a need-to-know basis, and I doubt people like Cicada, or Quieta, or Goshe’s gnarly skater friends know anything about this.)

Going back to this page, Cairn’s expression has stuck in my mind.  They’re trembling, and have a fearful look on their face.  By all accounts, even if what Aechmea just said was confusing, it should still be something Cairn would be happy to hear.  But their immediate reaction is one of understated horror.  It’s almost as if they intuited that there was something very wrong with that statement, even if they can’t put their finger on why. This leads us into another question that’s been on my mind which this theory might serve to explain.

In my very first essay about Caringorm, I ran into a bit of a wall when trying to figure out why Cairngorm’s personality is the way it is.  I figured at the time that Cairngorm’s issues arose from having no agency for most of their life, and that their relationship with Ghost was perhaps much less amicable than we were lead to believe.  And while it’s hard to argue that being a prisoner in their own body for most of their life hasn’t messed them up, I don’t think that’s the only thing going on here.  Furthermore, as far as Cairn’s relationship with Ghost was concerned, we haven’t heard anything about it since, which leads me to believe that it’s not where the trouble lies.  While I still stand by most of what I said in that essay—particularly about how Cairn’s dependency complex compels them to treat themselves as a vehicle for someone else’s desires—there’s a major aspect to all of this that I overlooked at the time.  During their brief tenure in the series, Ghost exhibited a lot of the same issues that Cairngorm does now.

The way they talked about living life following Lapis’s orders—as if they were Lapis’s lackey rather than their partner, the way they latched onto Phos so strongly after they showed them the barest hint of interest, their abysmal self-esteem… It all seems eerily similar to Cairn’s issues, even if it manifested in a more muted fashion.  So, why is it that Ghost exhibited some of Cairngorm’s maladaptive coping mechanisms, despite the fact that Cairn should have been the only one of the two who needed to develop them in the first place?

I haven’t exactly put too fine a point on it since I don’t live with the condition myself, and thus don’t want to risk putting my foot in my mouth, but I can’t really elucidate on this in a concise manner while dancing around the subject.  Ever since chapter 68, I’ve been looking at Cairngorm through the lens of borderline personality disorder.  Since they seem to check more and more boxes off the symptom list with each new chapter, I think it’s a useful lens through which to view them, whether or not it’s one that Ichikawa had in mind.  But, BPD generally arises from trauma, to the extent that many psychologists see it as an alternate manifestation of PTSD.  So, for the longest time, I’ve wondered how it was that Cairn and Ghost ended up the way they did.  There’s no clear answer in the narrative at this point.

This brings us to what Barbata alluded to, that the process of trying to create an artificial gem was damaging to the minds of the those who were subjected to it.  If Ghost and Cairn were (re)born as the result of something terrible, something that destroyed their sense of self, it might explain why they both have mental issues that are indicative of past trauma, despite those issues not having any obvious source.  The only other possible source of trauma I can come up with is that the relationship the two of them had with Lapis might have been an abusive one.  But if that were the case, then there should have been some buildup for it in the chapters following 67.  And while Lapis and Ghost have barely been mentioned in the interim, there’s been a whole lot of incremental reminders that Aechmea’s a shady bastard who’s hiding something from Cairn.  Where there’s smoke, there’s probably a fire.

Well, that’s about it.  Thanks for sticking with this to the end; hopefully, I didn’t make too many flagrant leaps in logic.  Ichikawa, if you would be so kind as to confirm my theories, and also let Phos peacefully live out the rest of their days with their snail friends, I would really appreciate it.  See you all in the essay for chapter 83.