#they are real people in that universe what are the legal implications of this

[cuchufletapl]

The Sonic games (and "all types of media") existing in the Sonic universe is a very funny concept for many reasons and I'm having fun imagining all the implications of that, but also it's given me a lot of peace because I can finally put to rest the unanswered question of how the fuck Sonic X is Sonic's favourite anime

[locusfandomtime]

my favourite headcanon when dealing with whatever the hell mcyt’s names are is that everyone just has a fucking universe assigned string of characters (the username) which everyone knows and is what the universe calls you by, but serves no actual functional purpose by itself

in society, the username is used as the legal name because its convenient - at any given point a username is unique to one person and you can easily identify someone by username

but obviously, the username is random and as a casual name it may not work - “Grian” is a fine name but “BdoubleO100” is a nightmare to say, so people develop nicknames based off these. some people go as far to have nicknames completely divorced from their username - e.g. “Jimmy” for “SolidarityGaming”

usernames probably bring up a lot of questions. they seem random, not affected by environmental or genetic factors in any discernible way. they’re more likely to contain words - or things that are kind of like words - than a truly random string of letters. I imagine there being a lot of meaning ascribed to them - like certain numbers symbolising certain things or certain words detailing something for your future. example: people with “7” in their name are more serious (supposedly. it’s kind of equivalent to our zodiac signs. belief varies)

I like to think about all the implications of this naming system. xB off-handedly said that Joel’s username is “SmallishBeans” so he’ll only be calling him “Beans” and not “Joel”, does this imply that some people believe your nickname must be derived by your username and consider nicknames that aren’t illegitimate? what about people that want to change their username? there’d be less name changes than our world (since names aren’t family or gender related) but it’s certainly possible (as you change the username of your minecraft account), but is there a stigma against it? rejecting the very name the universe gave you? are “rare” names (such as with small character count or palindrome etc) considered lucky or unusual?

(using the term “nickname” for ease of understanding because that’s our closest equivalent but in-universe this isn’t really what they are. better term “casual name”? “nickname” implies it isn’t your real name or is a cute shortening, whilst this would definitely be considered your name, just one of two types)

i just have… thoughts.

[valtsv]

watched inception again tonight and i'm so obsessed with the implied world this movie builds that we never actually get to see. dream sharing was invented for military training purposes but has since apparently moved into the mainstream enough that people use it to design architecture and commit crimes - do people who regularly engage in shared dreaming risk becoming desensitized to things like pain and violence and death because they experience it so much in the dream world? what are some of the other applications of shared dreaming? is it treated like virtual reality? is there, say, dream torture interrogation? dream-based entertainment, providing experiences reality can't? and then there's the implication that dream theft is common enough that high-level criminal organizations build themselves around it and people can receive training to allow their subconscious mind to defend itself (at least, if they're influential and/or wealthy enough). are dream crimes a recognized thing? is there such thing as dream laws? could you make a court case out of things that happened in a dream in the inception universe, or is it a legal loophole because if if happened in a dream it wasn't technically real (no matter how real it felt) and that's why people exploit it? also, regularly engaging with the dream world in favor of real life is shown to have the potential to be addictive and to affect your perception of reality, particularly whether your world and everyone in it is real or not. is this something that's widely recognized and can you get support for it? or is this kept quiet and/or stigmatized in order to promote progress and profit? i desperately need to see more of the world nolan created with this film because it's all just so fucking fascinating to think about

[bradycore]

hello. choose what your primary reason/opinion is, even if you think multiple are true. some options might seem to overlap but they're all distinct reasons. this is a big topic that can have real-world implications; please discuss rather than argue. i respect all of these moral stances and am interested to hear what people have to say. my own stance is that within the supernatural universe, because sam has already died several times over and death is ready to take him, maintaining/restoring cosmic balance by letting him die outweighs anything specific to the situation. have at it

edit: end of s8/start of s9, up to how it comes to a head with dean taking action to keep him alive as he is dying in the hospital. "should sam's readiness to die during and at the end of/after the trials have been respected by dean at the end of/after the trials?" sorry for any confusion!

[galactic-rhea]

I am totally here for Cars worldbuilding ramblings

THANK YOU, USER FAN OF THE SOAP

I'm glad I'm not scaring all of my audience lmao.

Now, let me talk to you about how nightmarish ableist is Cars 2.

You see, I was subjected to a very special kind of torture called "I have two nephews who were obssesed with Cars 2, not 1 or 3 or Planes, but Cars 2. And they would watch it for three times, every day, for about two months. And I had to be with them".

Which I'm sure did something bad to my brain, my standards of what's annoying in a movie are wrecked and I can still hear dialogue per dialogue on my mind.

Cars 2 got away with a special kind of ableism that I want to believe any other movie wouldn't have been able to get away with on our current era, all because is Cars.

But there's also A LOT OF violence in that movie, we see on screen characters violently exploding, being subjected to torture and also the equivalent of open-heart surgery, black market of organs, and a literal bomb being put into an individual. Because is Cars it just could do so.

The thing about Cars 2 is that all the villains are disabled cars. They're unable to function properly and constantly will be unable to turn on their engines, are called slurs and, in the case of the rich-mafia adjacent ones, literally have hired medical assistance (a tow truck). And all of this because we're told that their parts have been descontinued, which technically gives us the grim implication that they're basically left to die slowly as they can't keep changing their parts. There aren't humans, and this isn't a human-post apocalyptic universe (no matter how much people Insist, i refuse to accept that theory). Which means that the fabrication of these parts and thus, the ones in charge of the literal poblation's development, must be other vehicles, most probably Cars.

Very powerful and rich Cars like it goes beyond a comparison in real world, they aren't the ones in charge of meds or health care, they're literally in charge of the whole production/birth of Cars, and by deciding what parts to make and what parts to descontinue they're slso deciding who gets to live and who gets to die.

And this isn't possibly a "new" problem, is probably something rooted in the Cars' universe culture for thousands of years. If let's say the Wright brothers were, idk, bikes. They created the first plane (which then died in seconds), so they're basically Victors Frankesteins and this is legal, this is absolutely completely normal in this universe because otherwise there's no way for new models to exist.

So every generation of vehicles have this deep, ingrained thought of " we're building the generation that reemplaces us, in every way they're better and as soon as there's a better version, we will cease to exist and cease to be produced".

I remain of the theory that parents in Cars basically buy parts and assembly their own child and then as time passes, they change parts until we get the general "adult" model. But this also means some parents might be unable to buy parts and what not, does this stunt the child development? Probably.

In Cars 3, Lightning McQueen is unable to keep compiting because the new gen is of much better tech, so I assume it's already happening to him what I just explained: At some point, the production of their parts/ maintenance becomes obsolete. So Lightning can keep on living, for a long while, but no matter the reparations or even the modifications, apparently you can't completely modify a car otherwise you would have a Thesseus ship predicament.

In Planes, Dusty is capable to get several modifications, but they aren't extreme. However we see a little car that's able to change into a plane, and we see he apparently has a split personality , which makes me a bit icky because -gestures-, Hollywood also loves to make awful reps about DID. But, this seems to support the idea that extreme changes= basically a different person in the Cars universe. And an awful idea is to face the familiars of a vehicle that got into an accident "we can save them by almost completely rebuilding them, but might as well be a different person".

So back to Cars 2, all these villain Cars are disabled and suffering because someone, literally decided that isn't worth it, these models can't continue their existence when our engineers/doctors already created a new version.

And they must go along with it! They must accept it, because their society has been accepting it for hundreds of years by now! And so the movie decided to make them the literal mafia and a violent murderous group of terrorist and spies, what a move.

The movie tries to make Mater to be some sort of disabled character as well, he keeps being called dumb, ugly and whatever for the whole movie, he's all covered in rust and shamed for an oil leak. And nothing of this is resolved or really addressed, because not only his problems aren't even comparable to those of the villains (is implied he's rusty and all covered in bumbs just because he choses to), his character arc is basically that he's capable of solving a mystery not even the spies figured out at the time, the classic "actually i can be useful" that Hollywood loves.

And we learn the motives for the villains, and like, yeah, that's awful! All those murders and a political fraud to try to get rich by owning oil, but no one gives an ounce of sympathy for a group of characters that literally need medical assistance almost 24/7. The mafia guys can afford to hire tow truck and the big multi-millionarie villain can afford his constant surgeries, to the point of being able to disguise himself and look "normal"

And it drives me crazy that no one mentions this, but I can't blame people, most people weren't subjected to this movie three times per day for 60~ days.

If anyone read this far, you should thank to @soapysudz for fueling me (GET IT?!! FUEL?! -recorded laughs-)

[subway-boss-jericho]

Idea for the Fossil au:

What if the other clan members got revived and some getting gem-like scales during the revival process like how some marine fossils opalize?

(Gentle warning! This post and the general Fossil AU will contain mentions of death!) Thanks for the idea! This is a fair question. While it's definitely a cool idea, I think it sort of defeats the purpose of some of the world building I'm going for. The whole thing was orchestrated very carefully so that Ingo's revival was an accident- In the pokemon universe, although they rarely talk about fossil revival and the implications that causes, I figure there must be either: - A biological reason why humans have diverged so much from Pokemon that they cannot be revived. - Legal and ethical reasons that prohibit the revival of humans.

I've decided to go with the latter for this AU and by extension, Ingo's revival by all accounts should not have happened. For that reason, I don't plan to make fossil-ified designs for any other characters. (Or at least, not canonically) Exploring the idea could be extremely cool though!

But again, uh, it's somewhat ethically dubious. I need everyone to suspend their disbelief enough that Real Science People both 1. Would not realize that the dome fossil was not a dome fossil and 2. that they wouldn't do too much poking around before attempting to revive it. Because otherwise, the story here would be Very Very different and substantially less fun.

...I fucking love opalized fossils though 😭 They're so pretty... I just didn't think I could logically get away with that for Ingo because he has not been in the ground long enough or deep enough for that process to happen probably.

Thank you for the ask!! I super appreciate your interest!

[inbarfink]

Before the final episodes of “Fionna and Cake,” there was a theory that Simon would move to Fionna’s world, since that world is normal, and non-magical and Fionna and Cake would live in Simon’s world, that is, in OOO, since that world is magical and full of adventures. Do you think this ending would have been better? Like, Fionna's world is legal, she and Simon can call each other, but they swapped worlds

Hmmmmm... okay, so there's two Things that I think about Re:Endings

Endings can't just get swapped in and out of a story, because Endings are built up to during the course of the entire narrative. To hypothetically change the ending of F&C, you don't just need to change the last few scenes of the show, or even just the last two episodes - you're gonna have to rewrite a lot of the series from the ground-up because it's been building up for that specific ending that we've got.

Fionna and Cake is a series whose core conflicts are not exactly... directly applicable to the real world. All of it's lessons and themes have to be understood via the lens of Metaphor. As such, with Endings in general, but with endings of something like F&C especially - it matters less What Happens on paper and more what does it Mean. The question of which alternative universe Simon or Fionna needed to end up on is dependent on the thematic implications of that plot point.

So, like, the show has already spent a lot of time subtly establishing it's themes of acceptance and self-growth - and the way they relate to Fionna and Simon's issues within Fionnaworld and Mainworld. An ending where they just swap places would probably feel unsatisfying because it wouldn't gel with the thematic and emotional concepts we've set up so far.

Fionna thought the problem with her World was that it lacked fantasy and magic, but her real problem was that she felt stuck, helpless and unable to affect meaningful change in her life and world. So when she learned to think things through and accept that her actions have consequences

She realized that she didn't need the Magical Adventures to make her life meaningful. She can make changes in her world in all kind of wonderful normal ways.

And honestly, if she ended up in Ooo without learning this lesson... she wouldn't have actually being much better off than she was in her old World before the series started.

If anything, she would've been worse off because she was cutting herself away from her entire support network and, as a result of her not thinking about her actions and initially viewing Ooo as just a manifestation of her escapist fantasies and not as a real world with real people... as far as Ooo is concerned she and Cake are violent criminals.

So, like, the only way she could've ended up even remotely happy in Ooo is by learning the lesson that meant that she didn't need to go to Ooo to be happy.

Simon would've been in a very similar position. There's also the problem of him living all of his loved ones behind with just Fionna as a point of contact. And... his depression and trauma would not be cured by just a change of scenery. And sure, maybe he would feel less isolated in a world where he's not the only 'normal guy'...

....or his problems will just end up inverting themselves. Because the experiences of living in Ooo have changed Simon, most notably in the character beat in Episode 3 where he's surprised by the presence of a non-talking cat.

Cause, yeah, Simon is 'just a normal guy' - but he's a normal guy whose been living in a world of Wacky Magic for years now and he survived an apocalypse and he used to be Cursed Wizard and his adopted daughter is a Vampire half-demon and he's technically over a 1000 years old... In an actual Normal World, he might start feeling like a Weirdo.

Which is what he was before the Mushroom War.

Simon never truly 'fit-in' into any 'world' he lived in. So he's better off not searching for the One Perfect Place where he belongs - whatever it's a Normal World, or like a Normal World (with a little bit of magic sprinkled in) like what Fionnaworld ended up being - it's to accept the fact that he doesn't need to perfectly fit-in to be happy and feel like he belong and relate to people.

And the ability to accept change and to stop romanticizing the past is a huge part of the Betty part of Simon's arc. So it just fits in better if Simon also has to accept that the world he exists in and the life he leads have changed, rather than being able to go back to a recreation of the Pre-War World he remembers.

... but I am saying all of this because this is what F&C chose to build up to and what F&C chose as it's themes and metaphors. A version of F&C where Simon ends up in Fionnaworld and Fionna ends up in the Mainworld can absolutely exist and work... it's just that you need to rewrite at least like half of the series to build up to it in a way that feels like a satisfying and appropriate conclusion. But also, like, I'm happy enough with the ending we've got that I don't feel the need to do all of this lol

[kvetchinglyneurotic]

ok i just finished season 1 of daredevil and i will have articulate things to say about it at some point but for now here's the stream of consciousness notes i took while i was watching:

-I like Jack Murdock as a portrayal of a loving but flawed parent — like he clearly cares for Matt so much and he’s doing his best but there’s some parts of a “normal” childhood he just doesn’t really have the resources to provide. That being said being stupidly self-sacrificial clearly runs in the family. Just take the dive and collect your money my guy 

-“you shouldn’t be sneaking around at night you could get hurt”/ “we need to do this within the legal system” Matthew you fucking hypocrite (affectionate)

-weirdly fascinated by the way Fisk & co. translate for their sketchy group meeting that always seem to take place in abandoned parking garages, especially with how Wesley gives the general idea of what they’re saying instead of a direct translation — ok update i suspected this was because Fisk actually understood what everyone was saying and I was right!

-I like Foggy but I disagree with him about the purpose of a defense attorney — he wants to represent people who aren’t guilty/were justified in what they did but everyone deserves representation even if they 100% did the thing and were 100% wrong in doing so 

-Honestly probably worked out better for Matt that Stick was only around for a couple of years at the most. Also symbolic that he left before teaching Matt to use knives — Matt never fully goes down the road of lethal force (I mean some of the things he does definitely would kill people in real life but in real life he’d also be dead so it evens out) or fully cuts off the people he cares about. Also are they implying that the reason Matt doesn’t permanently have broken ribs and/or major blood loss that he meditates? I mean suspension of disbelief obviously but that is. very funny 

-Fisk is, on the one hand, very detail-oriented, but he’s also impulsive and emotionally reactive, so he has to come up with plans to cover for it. Also I feel like his and Wesley’s relationship is going to implode at some point. Or one of them (probably Wesley since Fisk is like. the main villain) is going to die

-are they sponsored by Dell 

-obviously I know why they do this for cinematic reasons but it’s very funny that in-universe Fisk gives his entire speech in 1x08 without actually saying his name until he dramatically announces at the end. Although maybe that’s just for dramatic effect and in-universe he's just repeating it? Also don’t throw your computer Matt you have no money 

-Matt’s smug little smile when Karen says the man in the mask looks badass flipping around :3 

-“the whole wounded, handsome duck thing” 

-i love how much they dwell on the actual implications of finding out your friend is secretly a vigilante/has had superpowers the entire time you’ve known each other, and that knowing they go out at night to beat people up, even if it’s for the “right” reasons, would still be alarming 

-actually not bad on the nighttime colour-grading front! I can see what’s happening which is better than most shows 

-I appreciate that there’s an actual plot about/explanation of how Matt gets his body armour 

-Wow who could have guessed leaving the gun in the middle of the table was a bad idea. I kind of liked Wesley but honestly what a dumbass way to die. Do admire the bluff though “you don’t really believe I’d put a loaded gun where you could reach it?” 

-love the approach to superhero realism here — not necessarily in the abilities or the way the plot is constructed (although that’s good, too) but in the characters’ reactions (Foggy finding out about Matt; Karen when she kills Wesley, Fisk when he finds out Wesley is dead) 

-“I thought your days of being relevant were past” ouch 

-reasons Wilson Fisk is evil: murder, drug dealing, doesn’t like cat videos 

-I do like that Fisk kind of gets the power of friendship thing though? But like it makes him worse 

-I’m very much not the most qualified to make this judgement and I’d want to check what people who actually *are* in a position to judge have to say about it, but I feel like this show has a bit of an… orientalism problem, I guess? But orientalism that also includes Russians, and also I know this is partly an extension of her being a very minor character but Doris (Ben Urich’s wife) is the only character who seems like she’s *only* there to like. encourage others through her wise words and doesn’t have much of an internal life of her own (besides the priest I guess but I feel like with priests that’s kind of their job) 

-Did Foggy not go to Ben’s funeral? 

-Fisk is also going to kill Leland. Maybe stop killing all your allies Fisk 

-I think it’s cute that Matt still holds onto Foggy’s arm when they’re walking even when it’s just the two of them and Foggy already knows that he doesn’t need to do it 

-Why does Marvel keep naming wise mentor figures who die Ben? Matt and Peter Parker should make a club (is Ben Urich in the comics? I haven't read the comics)

-“while actively being arrested” has got to win some sort of award for worst marriage proposal but I guess I admire that he just went for it? 

-Ominously large number of minutes left in this episode after the seeming resolution 

-Matt’s dumbass little horns <3

-Fisk: “You think one man in a silly little costume will make a difference?” bro *you* thought one man in a silly little costume would make a difference when you were the one man. Also I hope the silly little costume protects Matt from blunt force trauma 

-I’m honestly still not entirely sure how/if Nelson & Murdock actually made any money

-I feel like that bit near the beginning where Karen and Matt both have secrets and Foggy’s like “I wish I had a secret” describes their dynamic basically

[extasiswings]

Tim going off on a LS fan on Facebook for their criticism of the Carlos storyline ...

I saw and am honestly just so 🙄🙄🙄. He’s completely missed the point. (Unsurprising, because he doesn’t take criticism well).

The thing is, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter one bit whether it was a “real marriage” (which I guess we’re defining as a love marriage?) in the eyes of the people in it. It was a real marriage in the eyes of the law. The fact that it exists has real legal and financial implications that by their very existence impact the futures of the people in it—it’s not actually a “meaningless piece of paper” as Tim put it. Texas is a community property state, so all of Carlos’s income and assets acquired with that income while they’ve been married is also equally hers. If Iris has debts acquired during their marriage, he’s likely responsible for them. Carlos and TK bought a house together—Carlos being married means that Iris, as his wife, has a legal and financial interest in that property (a fact that TK was not made aware of before buying a house with his partner). Carlos and TK got engaged despite the fact that they would not be able to actually get married since Carlos was already married—again, a fact that TK was not made aware of before getting engaged.

The fact is, what is comes down to is that TK and Carlos have been in a relationship for YEARS, making major decisions about their future together, and with this retcon (because that’s what it is) that means that by not being honest about this, Carlos has basically completely removed TK’s agency in their relationship by not allowing him the information necessary to make informed decisions about his life and future, which is objectively an extremely shitty thing to do to your partner (and which just underscores how bad this writing is because if they had thought it through at all they should have recognized how much the context that he’s been keeping this a secret decimates Carlos’s character (which pisses me off because I love him), reframes and colors aspects of their relationship and major milestones, and just in general makes him not a great boyfriend when before this “twist” he was!).

Like I’m sorry but I genuinely can’t with the “it’s a meaningless piece of paper” argument when even without touching anything else about it that piece of paper at a minimum means that everything you own is owned equally by your spouse. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if Carlos died while he was still married to Iris, she would own part of their house and TK wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. The legal protections of marriage are a big deal—that’s literally one of the reasons why queer people fought for marriage equality for so long.

And look, I know it’s fiction. If they want to pretend LS takes place in some alternate universe where the laws of Texas aren’t the laws of Texas (don’t even get me started on the whole “annulment” thing) they can do that. But a) they haven’t indicated that’s the case, and more importantly b) regardless, it’s not okay to be so fucking condescending when people are rightfully scratching their heads over a plot twist that was never remotely foreshadowed, is clearly only happening for the drama of it all, has more plot holes than Swiss cheese, and makes zero sense.

[thenationaltreasuregazette]

To the editor,

Your response seriously made my day: 10/10!! I am very interested in your analysis of a) Ben’s exact relationship with the Navy and b) how wack his finances must be.

However! I have another question. What do you think Sadusky and co. would have done with Abigail, Riley, and Patrick after Ben flew off to Boston? My personal headcanon is that the Declaration got taken to the NYC branch of the National Archives (on Abigail’s suggestion of course) and Abigail/Riley/Patrick got put up in a hotel for the night where the FBI could keep an eye on them. but I know nothing about FBI protocol and I’m interested in your take on it. Would the FBI have put them up in a hotel for the night to keep an eye on them? Are Abigail and Riley still technically suspects in an ongoing case and would be held in custody?

As always, love your work!

Aftermath, Part 1

Hi anon!

I'm glad you’ve enjoyed this project so far.

So…I sat on this question for *checks watch* about 3500 years. I’ve always wanted to write a fic about the post-Trinity events and I thought, “Well I’ll do that, use the fic to collect my thoughts, and then answer the question.”

Lmao.

The naiveté.

The hubris.

That’s clearly not going to happen any time in the next calendar century so let’s dig in.

I think there would be a lot of aftermath to the events of National Treasure on a lot of fronts. Let’s break them down into:

Medical

Legal

Archeological

Interpersonal

Medical

We’ve already discussed the various injuries Team Treasure might have accumulate here, and here, so I won’t spend too much time on this, but I do think medical evaluations would be one of the FBI’s first priorities.

There are plenty of universes, real and fake, where I don’t think the FBI would very much care about the well-being of the people who stole the Declaration of Independence, whether they returned it or not. But National Treasure is not one of those universes. The FBI in the NT world are basically good guys, and the movie frames Sadusky especially as a good person who cares about the fate of the treasure, and even the people searching for it.

In the 2003 script there’s actually a moment where Sadusky has a chance to take a shot at Ben but can’t bring himself to do it. Which is interesting as hell and paints their dynamic pretty differently. With this removed in the final film, the FBI never poses a physical threat to Team Treasure—that’s Ian’s department. The FBI’s role is more the existential threat of getting caught before finding the treasure.

They also have reason to believe there might be at least one hostage/unwilling participant wrapped up in this mess. Again in the 2003 script, the FBI discusses multiple times whether Abigail is an accomplice in the theft or not.

REPORTER (ON SCREEN) (CONT'D) …Dr. Abigail Chase, a museum employee who has been reported as missing. Police did not say whether Dr. Chase is a suspect or a witness, only that she is the only National Archives employee not currently accounted for…

And later

INT. FBI, HOLDING CELLS - DAY Sadusky moves purposefully down a line of holding cells, stops at one. Inside, sits Abigail. SADUSKY We know you're not involved. You're free to go.

Although this angle doesn't become a plot point in the final film, the circumstances of Abigail's involvement haven't changed, so they would likely still be considering it. And since Ben has been going out of his way not to implicate her ("I did it alone. Dr. Chase was not involved.") they might not know how complicit she becomes in the hunt.

They’ve likely also had someone surveilling Patrick’s house since their initial visit, and might or might not know he’s been taken as well.

I think it’s beyond plausible to say that there’s an ambulance waiting among what I assume is a small fleet of black SUVs parked outside Trinity Church. (They’ve probably even blocked off the street until they know how things have played out.)

After Ben and Sadusky head off to the helicopter, I imagine Abigail, Riley, and Patrick are asked if they need medical attention. I can see Riley pouting and asking for a bandaid for his splinters, and receiving less sympathy from the paramedic than he’d hoped for.

Abigail initially waves them off, until Riley touches her shoulder and it’s clear that she’s in real pain. As I said here, in addition to a killer bruise, I think it’s very possible that Abigail tore the rotator cuff in her left shoulder during the stair sequence. If that’s the case, she’d probably get a sling in addition to pain killers and one of those instant ice packs. There’s not much else the EMTs can do, and it’s not an ER-urgent problem.

Patrick, being a vaguely sensible person who is fully aware that he was the least physically equipped for an adventure like this, lets the paramedics check him out, but they declare him in good health.

Legal

Once everyone is declared Basically Fine™ by the paramedics, it’s down to legal business, and there’s probably a lot of it.

Like you, I also headcanon that the FBI makes Team Treasure stick around in New York. I also know nothing about FBI protocol, and frankly I don’t even know where I’d start trying to look up what they’d do in this particular situation, so I’m just going to make it up.

I feel pretty confident about the fact that the FBI wouldn’t just let them go, because a) that’s no fun and b) that’s a very stupid way to run an intelligence agency. I like to think they were all held in New York for a couple of days of debriefing. The FBI took them to a kinda shabby hotel near the FBI’s New York field office, which is just a few blocks uptown from Trinity Church. There were agents keeping tabs on them, and for at least the first day they were told not to talk to each other. That’s not too much of a problem, because I imagine once they get to the hotel, each of them goes into their room, maybe stays awake long enough to take a shower, and promptly passes out from sheer exhaustion.

This also opens up a fun window of clothing possibilities! Do they do this entire debriefing sequence in FBI sweatpants? If you want them to! (I certainly do.)

Ben returns that night with Agent Sadusky, and the debriefing interviews start early the next morning. These aren’t interrogations per se, but Sadusky and his team intend to drill into every last detail of how this all went down. How Ben and Ian met. At what point this tipped into an “operation of questionable legality.” How Riley got involved. Exactly how they pulled off the heist so that the National Archives security system can be upgraded accordingly. At what point Abigail leaned into the whole mess. Etc, etc, etc.

This can be a whole mess of fun fic- and headcanon-wise for a couple of reasons. First of all, we’re set up to do the revolving interrogation trope. Not sure what it’s actually called, but you know, it’s that trope where the squad is all being questioned separately and we’re cutting between them as they fill in different pieces of the story and/or give wildly differing accounts of the same events. Always a good time.

And then there’s the possibility of learning more about the heist and the characters. What didn’t we see in the movie? See also, missing time.

In a real-ish world scenario, this would also be a good time to get some lawyers involved. I know Sadusky said they’re off the hook, but both the FBI and Team Treasure are probably going to want that in writing. You know with like, the terms on their deal and the extent of their implied immunity, etc. (I’m watching Suits right now, can you tell?)

Ben has to know a lawyer who specializes in treasure hunting and other found property stuff. I find it wildly implausible that he hasn’t ended up in at least one tight legal spot before due to his treasure hunting activities. Ben’s also pretty broke, so he’s definitely not running to this guy frequently, but in a real pinch I bet Ben has a number to call.

Abigail would likely have a friend or acquaintance who’s a lawyer. Between the kind of work she does, the city she lives in, and the kind of person she is, she would probably cross paths with plenty of lawyers. Maybe she’s friendly with one from the gym, or her building, or had a friend from college who went to law school. Even if this person doesn’t specialize in criminal/contract law or whatever is needed here, I bet they’d have a recommendation of who to turn to.

And Riley? He seems the least likely to want to get lawyers involved (doesn’t trust them) but he did commit a bunch of minor crimes during the course of this adventure. Yes, Ben did the actual stealing of the Declaration, but Riley broke into the subway, hacked into the archives, triggered the heat sensor, drove the getaway car, and, along with Abigail, colluded with Ian to break Ben out of custody. Once news of the treasure breaks, it would be hard to go after the guy who actually found the thing. Ben’s the face of the treasure, and comes with a story of thirty years of perseverance and absolute faith in a family dream. It would be second hardest to go after the archivist who got accidentally caught up in the whole thing and risked her safety to keep the Declaration safe. It would be easiest to go after the tech guy. He committed lots of smaller crimes and doesn’t have the public persona that Ben does or the ‘innocence’ factor that Abigail has.

So yeah, Riley might want some help. I imagine he has a whole network on online friends and allies, and one of them is bound to be or know a lawyer. He only has to put out the call on his go-to chat forum (it’s 2004) and someone will be or know a lawyer in NYC who he can talk to. That said, I still think he’d be reluctant to trust this person, but depending on how much pressure the FBI is putting on him, he might force himself to reach out. Ben and Abigail likely pressure him to do this as well.

And finally there’s the matter of the treasure and where that stands. As we discussed here, even thought the dialogue of the final scene implies that someone else owns the treasure and Ben was awarded a percentage by like, a board or a court or something, he appears to actually own the treasure outright. That actually sounds like a huge headache imo. Now instead of turning the treasure over to the FBI and letting them coordinate everything, Ben is seemingly on the hook for a lot of the logistics himself.

Which brings us to…

...the crushing realization that I am not going to finish this tonight. Let's call it a two-parter! See you next week!

[imaginarianisms]

like. just a reminder that misa was forced like this for. 3 days. then misa was strapped onto a board in a straitjacket with full body restraints restricting her movements & blindfolded, while forced to stand throughout her incarceration; under 24/7 surveillance (without even the uncertain dignity afforded by a female guard doing the watching), subject to verbal intimidation, forced to use the bathroom publicly, without any legal counsel nor formal charges levied against her for 50 consecutive days which is a whole month & likely more days & we see l tell watari to "do whatever he needs to just to make her talk". misa was tortured.

she wasn't given water in those three days of her torture. like. i'm& not an expert but from what i've& read, an average human can go without water for 4 days at most & the limit is closer to 3 days without dying from dehydration. i've& also read that it’s something between 2-6 days, depending on the person & depending on the person's body needs in question, but literally no one can live more than 5-6 days without water. l canonically tortures misa & literally could've killed misa here.

(which, btw, even if l's the world's greatest detective in-universe he literally has no legal basis of doing this, he's a foreigner torturing a japanese civilian on japanese soil)

i have. no idea what's in those bottles from watari but the implications are. Not Good

she was quite literally bound and blindfolded for three days & she was begging rem the shinigami to kill her or she'll commit suicide.

the universal declaration of human rights & its counterparts found in the japanese constitution & other laws - exist to protect people, including people like misa & light (which, in this case, Does happen in real life japanese interrogation cells which i genuinely wouldnt be surprised if the writers were trying to subtly point this out) from the likes of l. there were no police officers around courageous enough to enforce international law. that's how most remain complicit in on-going human rights abuses in reality around the world - by their silence, looking the other way, keeping themselves ignorant & generally acting in denial of their own ability to intervene. those are likely to be the kind of excuses within the minds of the task force officers watching misa, then light, tortured in dn. while they do scream, shout, stamp around & shake their heads going, "no, this is wrong" (then finally half of them walk out), they don't actually DO anything about it. any one of these men present, including soichiro yagami, who btw is light's own father & he allowed this to happen to light, could have physically overpowered l in order to get him to stop with no problem. instead, they attempted to reason with him, then backed down. like he had the right to do what he did, even as a foreigner torturing japanese citizens on japanese ground & he didn't have that right, not by japanese law, he's not a police officer nor has he taken an oath of legal service under any japanese code of practice, nor under international law, no matter what light & misa did, they were born with certain rights, immutable & without exception, including the right not to be tortured. the reason why i'm& bringing this up is specifically Because of what happened to her, misa no longer trusts the government nor the justice system even more than she already hadn't with her own case of her parents' murderers & their murderer likely going to get away & not get a trial & it's Because of this treatment that misa works even harder as the second kira.

[ansburg]

— from Norman G. Finkelstein's Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (14-16) (text below)

Yet if, as I’ve suggested, broad agreement has been reached on the factual record, an obvious anomaly arises: what accounts for the impassioned controversy that still swirls around the Israel-Palestine conflict? To my mind, explaining this apparent paradox requires, first of all, that a fundamental distinction be made between those controver- sies that are real and those that are contrived. To illustrate real differences of opinion, let us consider again the Palestinian refugee question. It is possible for interested parties to agree on the facts yet come to diametrically opposed moral, legal, and political conclusions. Thus, as already mentioned, the scholarly consensus is that Palestinians were ethnically cleansed in 1948. Israel’s leading historian on the topic, Benny Morris, although having done more than anyone else to clarify exactly what happened, nonetheless concludes that, morally, it was a good thing—just as, in his view, the “annihilation” of Native Americans was a good thing—that, legally, Palestinians have no right to return to their homes, and that, politically, Israel’s big error in 1948 was that it hadn’t “carried out a large expulsion and cleansed the whole country—the whole Land of Israel, as far as the Jordan” of Palestinians.9 However repellent morally, these clearly can’t be called false conclusions. Returning to the universe inhabited by normal human beings, it’s possible for people to concur on the facts as well as on their moral and legal implications yet still reach divergent political conclusions.

[...] Benny Morris, although approving the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and nearly pathological in his hatred of Palestinians,28 nonetheless anchors Palestinian opposition to Jewish settlement in a perfectly rational, uncomplicated motive: “The fear of territorial displacement and dispossession was to be the chief motor of Arab antagonism to Zionism.”29 What’s remarkable about this formulation isn’t so much what’s said but, rather, what’s not said: there’s no invoking of “Arab anti-Semitism,” no invoking of “Arab fears of modernity,” no invoking of cosmic “clashes.” There’s no mention of them because, for understanding what happened, there’s no need of them—the obvious explanation also happens to be a sufficient one. Indeed, in any comparable instance, the sorts of mystifying clichés commonplace in the Israel-Palestine conflict would be treated, rightly, with derision. In the course of resisting European encroachment, Native Americans committed many horrendous crimes. But to understand why doesn’t require probing the defects of their character or civilization. Criticizing the practice, in government documents, of reciting Native American “atrocities,” Helen Hunt Jackson, a principled defender of Native Americans writing in the late nineteenth century, observed: “[T]he Indians who committed these ‘atrocities’ were simply ejecting by force, and, in the contests arising from this forcible ejectment, killing men who had usurped and stolen their lands. …What would a community of white men, situated precisely as these Cherokees were, have done?”30

To apprehend the motive behind Palestinian “atrocities,” this ordinary human capacity for empathy would also seem to suffice. Imagine the bemused reaction were a historian to hypothesize that the impetus behind Native American resistance was “anti-Christianism” or “anti-Europeanism.” What’s the point of such exotic explanations—unless the obvious one is politically incorrect? Of course, back then, profound explanations of this sort weren’t necessary. The natives impeded the wheel of progress, so they had to be extirpated; nothing more had to be said. For the sake of “mankind” and “civilization,” Theodore Roosevelt wrote, it was “all-important” that North America be won by a “masterful people.” Although for the indigenous population this meant “the infliction and suffering of hideous woe and misery,” it couldn’t have been otherwise: “The world would probably not have gone forward at all, had it not been for the displacement or submersion of savage and barbaric peoples.” And again: “The settler and pioneer have at bottom justice on their side: this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.”

It was only much later, after the humanity of these “squalid savages” was ratified—in any event, formally—that more sophisticated rationales became necessary. In the case of the United States, the “hideous woe and misery” inflicted could be openly acknowledged because the fate of the indigenous population was, figuratively as well as literally, in large part a dead issue. In the case of Palestine it’s not, so all manner of elaborate explanation has to be contrived in order to evade the obvious. The reason Benny Morris’s latest pronouncements elicited such a shocked reaction is that they were a throwback to the nineteenth century. Dispensing with the ideological cloud making of contemporary apologists for Israel, he justified dispossession on grounds of the conflict between “barbarians” and “civilization.” Just as, in his view, it was better for humanity that the “great American democracy” displaced the Native Americans, so it is better that the Jewish state has displaced the Palestinians. “There are cases,” he baldly states, “in which the overall, final good justifies harsh and cruel acts that are committed in the course of history.” Isn’t this Roosevelt speaking? But one’s not supposed to utter such crass things anymore.32 To avoid outraging current moral sensibilities, the obvious must be papered over with sundry mystifications. The elementary truth that, just as in the past, the “chief motor of Arab antagonism” is “[t]he fear of territorial displacement and dispossession”—a fear the rational basis for which is scarcely open to question, indeed, is daily validated by Israeli actions—must, at all costs, be concealed. To evade the obvious, another stratagem of the Israel lobby is playing The Holocaust and “new anti-Semitism” cards. In a previous study, I examined how the Nazi holocaust has been fashioned into an ideological weapon to immunize Israel from legitimate criticism.33 In this book I look at a variant of this Holocaust card, namely, the “new anti-Semitism.” In fact, the allegation of a new anti-Semitism is neither new nor about anti-Semitism. Whenever Israel comes under renewed international pressure to withdraw from occupied territories, its apologists mount yet another meticulously orchestrated media extravaganza alleging that the world is awash in anti-Semitism. This shameless exploitation of anti-Semitism delegitimizes criticism of Israel, makes Jews rather than Palestinians the victims, and puts the onus on the Arab world to rid itself of anti-Semitism rather than on Israel to rid itself of the Occupied Territories.

9. Ari Shavit, “Survival of the Fittest,” interview with Benny Morris, Haaretz (9 January 2004). For perceptive commentary, see Baruch Kimmerling, “Is Ethnic Cleansing of Arabs Getting Legitimacy from a New Israeli Historian?” Tikkun (27 January 2004); for Morris’s recent pronouncements, see also Finkelstein, Image and Reality, pp. xxix–xxx. 28. He’s called the Palestinian people “sick, psychotic,” “serial killers” whom Israel must “imprison” or “execute,” and “barbarians” around whom “[s]omething like a cage has to be built.” See the Haaretz interview and the pages on Morris’s recent pronouncements in Image and Reality cited above. 29. Benny Morris, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881–1999 (New York, 1999), p. 37. 30. Helen Hunt Jackson, A Century of Dishonor (New York, 1981), p. 265. 31. For these and similar formulations, see Theodore Roosevelt, The Winning of the West (New York, 1889), 1:118–19, 121; 4:7, 54–56, 65, 200, 201. 32. In fact, one isn’t even allowed to remember that Roosevelt said them: one searches recent Roosevelt biographies in vain for any mention of the pronouncements of his just cited, or scores of others like them pervading his published writings and correspondence. 33. Finkelstein, Holocaust Industry.

[jvstheworld]

The Buffy Re-watch: S2E11 (part 2)

Ted

Trigger/Content Warning still in effect for this episode just in case.

Buffy, Joyce and Ted have dinner, Buffy is sent to her room, then Buffy goes out to patrol. She was probably out for about an hour at the minimum, maybe up to 2. So how long as Ted in her room for to be able to read her diary before she got back? Also, 'Vampire Slayer' kind of explainable there Ted.

The threat of being in a mental institution is something we kind of see happen in the comics. During the transition between LA and having just moved to Sunnydale. We see in 'Normal Again' in season 6 what it would have been like if she did end up there.

Buffy in shock after killing a 'human'. It's a massive difference between her reaction and Faith's next season.

I don't like the questions the police ask Buffy during the interrogation scene. If her hit her first, which he did, couldn't that be grounds for self-defence. My knowledge of criminal law is lacking since I haven't done it in a while (I was originally a law student at university before switching to journalism. Still had to learn law for journalism but it was less intense and more focused on legal matters like defamation and copyright).

Yeah, Giles would understand the guilt that comes with murder. I'm surprised Buffy even went to school, I would have just avoided everyone.

The gang wants to help while Giles takes over patrol. Luckily Willow notices Xander's change in behaviour after eating the cookie and knows that something is sus with it.

Ted drugged it. How much of the food he cooked did he drug? PSA: don't drug people or their food. It's illegal. I talked about this before in 'Reptile Boy' this is just a different circumstance, but it still stands. Just don't do it.

Cordelia coming through with the research on Ted. We appreciate her help.

Jenny may have been harsh to Giles earlier in the episode, but she needed to do what was best for her at the time. Her apology just comes at a bad time when vampires are around.

Where did Ted come from? Seriously. He comes from the side of the room where Buffy's bed is. It would have made more sense if he came from the side where her closet, because he could have been hiding in there, but the implication is that he was hiding under her bed waiting for her.

Jenny, use the stake, not the crossbow. Because you could hit Giles.

Ted is a robot/android reveal!

Cordelia's sense of style coming in to hep find hidden doors to secret basements of horror.

Ted has literal skeletons in his closet, from his first four wives. That he kept locked in there. And probably could never leave. Holy fuck.

After seeing Ted glitch, Joyce gets wise to Ted's weirdness.

Cast iron skillets- they make good weapons, just watch Tangled.

Joyce forgives Buffy for what happened after finding out about the other wives and the attempted kidnapping. Does she not know that he was a robot yet? Because Joyce knows by season 4, but it seems like she doesn't know here and Buffy is trying to cover that up.

jenny and Giles are back together again. We like to see this, but it won't last long unfortunately. It makes Cordy and Xander happy too, at the very least.

Robo Ted is a nightmare of a character. His victims deserved better than the life they were subjected to because of him. The terror they must have suffered knowing that one wrong move and he could hurt them or kill them. The worst part is knowing that things like this happen in real life. The only fantastical element to this episode is the fact that he is a robot. How many horror stories have you heard of women being in abusive relationships and not being able to leave because the man they are with won't let them, because they control so much of their lives. Not being believed about the things you have suffered due to them because they put up such a good front of being the nicest guy around to everyone but when you're alone with him, there is nothing stopping him from showing you his true side. Joyce was lucky that she had Buffy to see through Ted's bullshit and to stop him before she ended up another one of his victims. Not everyone is so lucky to have that support behind them. I know in my own circumstance, while nowhere near as extreme as this, or many other stories you might find out there, I didn't have the support needed to be able to get out of it quick enough before plenty of damage was done. And years later I am still dealing with what happened. I hope any of you reading this never have to suffer this, and if you have, I am sorry that happened to you and I hope you are able to get to a better place in your life.

I'm going to leave it here. This turned into a heavier episode that I thought. Tomorrows episode will be a bit lighter.

[tobiasdrake]

Makoto's being cryptic, Yomi's being fascist, we're neck-deep in enemy territory with no plan beyond "DO THE IMPOSSIBLE SOMEHOW", someone's PROBABLY dead by now, and I have to deal with these two chuckleheads?

Gonna go hang out with my bestie instead. For moral support.

This is why the family cut her off.

OH MY GOD ME TOO. They're an entire family of internationally-recognized chronomancers, carrying enough clout that the Unified Government grants them complete authority over maintaining time standards around the globe. They not only cut Fubuki off from the family for some reason but specifically banished her to the World Detective Organization.

I would play a spinoff game all about these people. The central gimmick could be solving mysteries through time travel in order to unwrite tragedies before they happen.

Let's start with how maintaining time standards works.

It does, yeah. Basically, Fubuki's saying that maintaining global standards of time sounds more complicated than it actually is. Time ticks itself away; All we have to do is observe it. The Clockfords' job is simply about keeping everyone's observation on the same level.

They just make sure everyone's abiding by the Time Zones and nobody's clocks have slipped.

In the real world, this is all decentralized efforts undertaken by individual countries. Everyone decides for themselves what calendar to use and what time it is right now. That's why the Time Zone map is this jagged piece of shit.

Look at that. Look at how ugly that is. Decentralized time zones are an utter disaster. By cleaning all of this up and providing neat, crisp lines and universal standards, the Clockfords are providing a public service to the world.

...is one interpretation. Of course, going along with the uncomfortable implications of the Unified Government, all of that "clean-up" means tearing the autonomy of sovereign peoples to decide what time it is right now from their hands.

A universal calendar standard accepted across the globe sounds cool, but it also means erasing cultural standards of individual civilizations. Chinese New Year? What Chinese New Year. China has to celebrate the same New Year as everybody else. The Chinese calendar is banned.

In the name of smooth, crisp global efficiency, the Clockford Family is engaged in temporal imperialism.

The Clockfords can dictate that it's 2013 right now, and then everyone around the world has to adjust because the Time Emperors have deemed it so? That's fucking terrifying.

Rain Code spinoff where the Clockfords decide to turn back the dial five years. The game features a guy who was about to go celebrate turning 21 by having his first (legal) bar trip, but the Time Emperors decided he's 16 now. No beer and he has to start high school all over again.

So, naturally, he's out for revenge and to liberate the time standards of the world from their iron grasp.

We have granted the Time Emperors an unbelievable level of control over the stability of civilization so we could charge them with one scared duty: To prevent the Time Emperors from abusing their unbelievable control and wreaking havoc across civilization. Only the Clockford Family can defend the world against potential abuses from the Clockford Family.

Wait, they banished you to go die as a Master Detective because they want you to lead the family?

Logic would then suggest that maybe you haven't been told officially because they don't want you as heir.

They realized they fucked up, so now they're using the WDO as a remedial education instructor. Which. Is. Not what the WDO's job is. *sigh* Shit, now I feel bad about that "This is why they cut her off" crack I made at the start of this hangout. That is, in fact, why they cut her off.

Wow, I hate your parents, Fubuki. With a violent passion. You should run away and follow your dreams of being an adventurer and coffee barista. What adventuring party couldn't use a coffee barista with time powers?

Sure, your absence would fuck up their plans for the future of their time empire but. That's a good thing. So it's win/win.

I hate that you think that, bestie. You are a diamond and you deserve the world.

[ludcake]

you’re the only sane person in this fandom, would you call rhaenyra's and dany's deaths "femicide"?

Okay, first off. There's plenty of other great people in the fandom - I've got several beloved and prized mutuals whose opinions I prize a lot, and I don't particularly value the implication there.

Anyway, regarding whether their deaths are femicide... I assume you're talking about the show in regards to Dany, which is not really my area of expertise, and the book for Rhaenyra. I'd say that's an ahistorical word to be using and very much out of context, but ultimately... There's definitely an angle for it. I'm not sure I'd agree, but I see the reasoning and I see where it comes from - Dany's death obviously is coming from her partner in the show, which is... Pretty common in femicide cases, and Rhaenyra's is almost by definition a violent murder by a family member because she, as a woman, stepped up.

Ultimately, though, I think that it's missing context. It's difficult to talk about femicide in ASOIAF because, well, it's a hate crime in a society where that precise type of hate is absolutely normalised. It's a hate crime in a society where that crime is normalised. There's no characteristic of an outlier, and even if you were to put Jon Snow and Aegon the Elder on trial, in universe everyone would talk about kingslaying and kinslaying rather than femicide.

It shares a lot of traits with it, but ultimately, it's a term that here is doing more work to obfuscate the circumstances than anything else.

Femicide is a hate crime. Femicide is a legal term, and it's a term used to track a specific social phenomenon. It's really a rather pointless exercise to try and twist it into a product of discourse - femicide isn't an outlier of a hate crime in Westeros, and it certainly doesn't have any useful content for analysis.

They were both women who were ultimately killed for being women, yes. I don't think that's much of anything, however; it's more interesting to examine the writing behind it, and see what George - and, if you *must* talk about the show, Dave and Dan - were going for. And with Rhaenyra, I think that Rhaenyra's death is really less of femicide and more of fridging - her use to the plot was done, and she was brutally and gruesomely killed so Aegon III would kill all the dragons. Dany was killed because D&D wanted to shock people.

That's really the feminist reading you can take out of these scenes. Not whether it's femicide or not, but how the real men who wrote these stories handled their female characters.

[thelegendofstella]

Gravesfield + Gravesfield County probable locations in TOH

So, out of all the Gravesfield speculation I’ve seen so far, I don’t think I’ve seen anyone try to actually parse out its specific location within Connecticut, which is a shame because that window is SURPRISINGLY narrow now that we have certain bits of information about it on our hands. Not only that, but we also know that Gravesfield is part of its own county (”Gravesfield County Zoo,” anyone?), which has a lot of interesting implications as well. At least location-wise it does—I don’t know if it has any lore connections or not, though it’d be interesting to see if it did, at least. Not the point of this post though, so whoever wants to figure that out can have at it. Anyway...

TL;DR: I’m almost 95% sure that Gravesfield is located somewhere in southwestern irl Litchfield County along Route 109, and that its county should surround it and some other cities in mostly the same area. All the evidence I have to support this is below the cut:

The main source I'm drawing from here is this image:

Source: Tweet from John Bailey Owen, posted Oct 14 2022

For those who don’t know, this was a promo image of a fake Gravesfield website homepage screenshot that was posted October 14, 2022, just before Thanks to Them aired. For the most part, it looks like a regular, albeit slightly clunky 2000s-era-looking, website, except for the bits of weirdness/dark humor littered about the text (”Escape Routes,” “The Truth About This Place,” “Sightings,” “if you visit once, you may even wind up staying”) and the hidden text in the bottom corners of the page (which spell out “HELP THEM”). People of course freaked out about this stuff, as is evident in the replies of the original tweet, analyzed all of it to death, blah blah blah, that’s pretty much old news at this point.

There’s also a small calendar on the right side of the page that indicates that the events of the show are possibly happening on some year that the first day of October lands on a Saturday, and when accounting for Luz’s age (14/15) and her modern lingo and stuff, those years could be 2005, 2011, 2016, and 2022. Smartphones like what Luz has in her possession were definitely not around in 2005, and probably not around in 2011, so either 2016 or 2022 are reasonable in-universe years to guess, with it probably leaning more towards 2022 because of the irl show’s creation date.

I could probably make a whole separate post on my thoughts on the date stuff and speculate the hell out of it, honestly, but that isn’t the subject I want to cover in this particular post. No, I’m more interested in what seemingly no one else has picked up on here: the location hints.

The fake screenshot doesn’t explicitly say where Gravesfield is located, obviously, but it does have two pieces of information that narrow down the possibilities significantly when put together.

The first piece of information is this:

Route 109 is an actual route in Connecticut, which spans from New Milford to Thomaston as seen here:

Source: Connecticut Route 109 Wikipedia page, retrieved Feb 1 2023

In order for this route to be relevant to Gravesfield news, the town has to be along this route somewhere, or at least nearby it in some measure (aka it has to legally be within city bounds, which I’ll get into later). Route 109 is located in southern irl Litchfield County, which means that Gravesfield is also located in southern irl Litchfield County somewhere.

That’s pretty good and all, definitely a lot better than just throwing a dart at the map and hoping it lands somewhere decent, but it can be narrowed down even further. The second piece of information we have is this:

This is a real thing too. Regional School District 12 (or the RSD 12) is one of many school districts in Connecticut, and it happens to serve the towns of Washington, Bridgewater and Roxbury, all of which are, coincidentally, located in southern irl Litchfield County.

Washington is pretty much right on Route 109, as seen in the map above, so that means that in order for Gravesfield to be both within RSD 12 bounds and nearby Route 109 at the same time, it has to be within irl Washington’s city bounds. I’ve drawn up a diagram of sorts below with this information in mind:

Source: me :D (and google maps)

The speculatory boundary I marked between the Washington and Gravesfield city bounds here is really just one rather simple possibility of how it might be cut up while still accounting for a part of Route 109 being within Gravesfield’s jurisdiction. Again, if the route weren’t part of it, it wouldn’t show up on the city website as a relevant announcement (and if it were part of a county-wide thing, it probably would have stated it as a county announcement or something).

So there you have it: most likely locations for where Gravesfield might be in Connecticut, give or take. I could speculate even further on where exactly within these areas Gravesfield could be placed, with analyzing the smaller roads and all that, but that would honestly just be pure speculation based on personal bias/preference/etc. and not, y’know, anything concrete enough to be a plausible theory, so I’ll just leave it as it is and let individual headcanons do the rest of the work on that front.

But there’s also Gravesfield County to worry about, as shown here:

Source: The Owl House Season 3 Episode 1: “Thanks to Them”

(The fact that this is even a canon background thing in the show is bonkers, because holy shit I can’t imagine what kind of butterfly effect nonsense this must’ve made in-universe compared to irl history, but I digress.)

What this means is that the southern part of irl Litchfield County at minimum is actually Gravesfield County in the TOH universe by default, since it has to include Gravesfield in it, being the town its ultimately named after. And since we’ve already established Gravesfield’s approximate location here, its county could possibly look something like this:

Source: me (and google maps) again

It’s a lot less concrete than the location of Gravesfield itself, obviously, but that’s because I don’t have much else to work with here other than that one screenshot from Thanks to Them and what I’ve theorized about Gravesfield so far. For all I know, the entirety of irl Litchfield County is Gravesfield County, not just a part of it, or maybe Gravesfield County goes even further south than what I’ve depicted and contains parts of the Fairfield and New Haven counties for whatever reason—who knows, really? Whatever it might be, it’s definitely somewhere in western Connecticut, surrounding New Milford, Washington, Route 109, etc., and that’s good enough for me in the interest of sticking to the concrete stuff.

Fun fact: apparently Connecticut doesn’t have county governments nor county seats, so despite the fact that Gravesfield County is named after Gravesfield, the town itself isn’t, like, a grand authority on other places nearby or anything. Each city within the county deals with their own police, fire department, schools, hospitals, etc. (and zoos. Gravesfield is apparently big enough to have a whole-ass zoo in it. Wild.)

The only thing that might break this in some respects is, well, potential butterfly effect shenanigans. It can be argued that because Gravesfield and Gravesfield County exist in the TOH universe, the exact positions of the other counties, towns, etc. could be drastically different from where they are irl, and things like the regional school districts could have totally different boundaries and thus the triangulation I just did using them is pretty much useless, but there’s nothing confirming any of this in Word of God or in the show canon as of today, so I’m fairly confident that we’re working with a world that’s very similar to the irl world Except For Gravesfield. Unless the last special pulls some sort of epilogue nonsense in Gravesfield that completely obliterates my base-line irl world assumptions for this universe, anyway. You never know lmao

So basically, in short: Gravesfield and its eponymous county are most likely located in southern/southwestern irl Litchfield County around Route 109 or thereabouts, and probably replace that particular area as their own governmental entities instead of being part of a different county or something. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk