#this is wilhelminafujita's fault

[batgirl-87]

Jacob Fujita: *after causing some chaos and destruction* @wilhelminafujita

Jacob Black: *watches Fujita cause destruction, shrugs, attempts to pose sexily with the fire in background of Fujita's picture, promptly sets arse on fire*

Jacob Dwyn: *returns with food* The hell?! I was gone like 5 minutes! How?! @bluerosesburnblue

[missnight0wl]

Penny probably had the potential to be a mole. If R showed up in year 5 promising to help free her sister in exchange for information, I could see that happening. Doesn’t make her a bad person. Or maybe R is threatening another character’s family.

Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, to be fair, I hope it’s not Penny, but that’s only because the Haywood sisters got enough attention already, in my opinion. Now, if the mole subplot would be a part of Y5, I wouldn’t complain - it does make sense. And as you pointed out, it doesn’t mean that Penny would be in any way malicious or anything.

Actually, I had a somewhat similar idea back in Y5 when Merula started showing signs of rebelling against Rakepick and Penny was becoming more and more worried about Beatrice. And then, she had that line:

I was seriously hoping for a scenario where Merula convinces Penny to go after the Portrait Vault on their own, and they got into troubles because of that or something. Admittedly, it’s not exactly the same situation as with the mole, but still, there was potential to use Penny’s desperation then. But I digress. As I said, I feel like that opportunity kind of passed either way.

Back to the mole though, you’re absolutely right that it could be pretty much anyone if we consider that condition. They all have someone they care about which could be used against them. A long time ago, I even discussed with @wilhelminafujita a possibility of R using Barnaby to this end. You see, if you ask me, he’s the only character whose deeper feelings for MC has the potential to be called canon. He covered MC with his own body in Y3, again in Y5, in Y6 he admitted that MC was the only reason why he decided to attend Divination classes. Also, he always confesses his feelings to you in the “Crushed” SQ, no matter what decision you made. And personally, I think that regular side quests should definitely be considered canon since they’re not time-limited (so everyone is able to finish them), and they’re referenced in the main story even in the case of quests which were temporarily removed (so the player didn’t complete them). They’re clearly important in the big picture. As for R using Barnaby’s feeling, I can see a situation where they tell him: “If you don’t want us to kill MC, you have to keep telling us what they’re doing”, for example. All of that being said, I don’t really think it could be the case at this point, simply because Barnaby is not particularly prominent in the story anymore, so I’m afraid it might be another missed opportunity.

I just don’t really get why so many people say that the mole is someone who “betrayed” MC. I mean, if it’s really the case of being manipulated, I simply can’t call it betrayal, even if it’d have serious negative consequences. That’s also why I think that being a dateable character is totally irrelevant here. Like... look at the Celestial Ball. No matter if you played it in Y4 (where it was placed) or in Y5 (when it was first released), you were before or after the Red Cloak incident and Ben’s “betrayal”. Still, it didn’t stop the devs from making Ben one of the options for a date. And while I know that he wasn’t the most popular choice, I’m sure that people who attended the Ball with him weren’t bothered by what happens before the Forest Vault - simply because it’s not Ben’s fault. I doubt the situation with the mole would be much different.