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protect-namine · 5 days ago

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YE6's butterfly effect. AKA: how did vein "die"?

I'm trying to puzzle out the butterfly effect in YE6, and here is my interpretation so far. if this theory is correct, it would also answer the question of who has the faking death ability and what exactly was liu xiao doing during the whole arc.

of course, feel free to correct me if I got this wrong. I could be missing some key information. I'm just writing this in an attempt to figure it out myself. also, this is gonna be a long post, sorry.

a lot of people are speculating that lu guang directly killed vein somehow through an ability, but I don't think that's what actually happened (although I wish that was the case). I also don't think the situation is as simple as "lu guang wanted vein dead" because I also think that liu xiao is interfering with the same events. there are two puppeteers in YE6, imho.

let's start with lu guang. for one thing, we know he can't directly kill vein with any of the abilities he has, since both scanning 12 hours of photo history and diving into the past require, well, a photo, which lu guang did not have. yingdu even stressed the rules of how both abilities work. if lu guang directly killed vein through ability use, this would imply he has another ability up his sleeve, and I really don't think we've been given enough evidence that points to that. if he always had this ability, why hasn't he used it before on vein in other timelines?

remember that yingdu has a lot of visual metaphors in its storytelling compared to other seasons. I believe lu guang caused the chain of events to happen in such a way that vein would die, but he was not the one to kill him, and that's why there's the animation of him orchestrating vein's death through wang qing, like a ventriloquist would control a puppet. in fact, I would go even further: lu guang and wang qing never got the chance to kill vein, although lu guang certainly thinks he did. we will circle back to this under the cut later, once we've built up the evidence to reach this conclusion.

another thing is the info we learned from an interview with director li. it is unfortunate, imo, that we had to learn this through an interview and not from the show itself (I feel this is yingdu's biggest writing flaw), but whatever. here are the key points to know though:

vein doesn't have an ability during yingdu arc

liu xiao has more than one ability (we know one of them already, which is interestingly enough, heartbeat related)

(not from the interview, but hinted in the show) someone has a "faking death" ability

before we go into the butterfly effect and how vein died, let's go over the details of his death:

from the autopsy report: vein's cause of death is myocardial infarction. aka a heart attack

xia fei later says there were no external injuries and no signs of poison

also, tiny detail, but vein was holding something like a tranquilizer gun in the clinic. the "bullets" he fired on both wang qing and cheng xiaoshi were meant to put them to sleep, not to kill them.

finally, let's lay out some character motivations. this will be important later.

liu xiao wants to get the notebook that belonged to cheng weimin. vein is working with him on this.

lu guang wants to avoid cheng xiaoshi's death node, and he plans to do it by killing vein

now, for the analysis. how did vein "die"?

let's establish something first. since xia fei doesn't know what happened to vein and is looking for the true culprit, we can rule out his involvement. he probably doesn't have the faking death ability, since it was used on vein. and vein doesn't have an ability. so the most likely person to have this ability would be liu xiao. he is also most likely the one to open the body bag with vein in it.

so we can now assume that liu xiao has two abilities:

he can sense someone's emotions and intentions through hearing their heartbeats

he can "fake death" (it is unclear how this works)

well. what an interesting combination! let's put a pin on that for now. remember this for later.

okay. now. let's switch over to lu guang. the big important question here is this: how did lu guang know that delaying vein from entering the clinic would lead to his death through a butterfly effect?

for full context, let's look at what lu guang says in his conversation with vein (I'm using ani-mi's translation, but I watched the bilibili one first and there aren't any drastic changes imo):

do you know the butterfly effect? in a dynamic system, event the smallest changes in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes. I've been wondering, how do you alter a destined ending? what would happen if, before the conclusion, we added another fixed point? another unchangeable node? instead of avoiding deviations, why not let it deviate completely? I know I can't stop you. but I can make you stay a bit longer. now, you can go in.

two things here. first, the mention of an unchangeable node. aka a death node. lu guang for sure wanted vein to die. because if vein dies first, he can't kill cheng xiaoshi. simple logic; great plan.

next, from this speech, we can infer that lu guang planned to create a small change (a butterfly effect) that will lead to a big consequence (vein's death).

it's the second part that should clue us in. he said, "I can make you stay a bit longer. now, you can go in." he knows he can't stop vein from entering the clinic. but he can stall him. he can add a small bit of delay, long enough that it actually matters that vein went into the clinic later than usual.

lu guang knows the effect he wants (vein's death) so how does he know what event (stalling him) would cause the domino effect that leads to it? why does that small delay matter?

let's look at what that extra bit of time actually changed. by delaying vein, another important event happens: cheng xiaoshi has extra time with wang qing, long enough for him to meet his mom, shao yuanyuan. cheng xiaoshi then learns that shao yuanyuan is trying to save cheng weimin. he promises to wait for them and to stop investigating. it is after he makes this promise that vein enters.

we can now infer one more thing here: cheng xiaoshi did not meet his mom through wang qing in the original order of events. this event only happens because lu guang stalled vein.

most likely, in the original order of events, vein incapacitated wang qing too early for her to do anything to him. we don't know what her ability is, but it doesn't matter for this post. all we need to know is that lu guang believes wang qing could kill vein if she was never put to sleep. that is the point of stalling vein from entering the clinic early.

so here's part one of my theory. from lu guang's perspective, this is the plan to kill vein:

stall vein from entering the clinic

because vein entered late, wang qing was possessed by someone with better fighting abilities, allowing her to hold out during the fight

she is then freed from possession, and is still awake when vein tries to leave with the notebook

I don't think we have enough information to really explain what happens next, but what's supposed to happen, imo, is that wang qing kills vein, either through her own ability or someone else uses her to do it. it doesn't really matter how, but this is what is supposed to happen. this is what lu guang wanted to happen. for the sake of this post, we will assume wang qing has an ability to kill vein

vein dies, therefore he can't go to the time photo studio in the future to kill cheng xiaoshi

that's lu guang's butterfly effect. stall vein -> vein dies -> cheng xiaoshi lives.

simple? not quite. I did mention there's another person interfering with these events.

everything I mentioned above is from lu guang's perspective, and that this is what's supposed to happen. but let's look at the actual order of events.

wang qing wakes up (is freed from possession), notices the notebook on vein, and calls his name (interesting point: she knows his full chinese name). at this point, her eyes have NOT changed color yet.

vein gets a heart attack

only after that does wang qing's eyes change color

we know that changing eye colors is not diegetic, meaning this is more for the audience's benefit. their eyes don't really change color in-universe. sometimes they don't even show us eye colors changing. but when they do show us, we have to pay attention.

therefore, I believe that the timing of the shift in eye color matters.

so here's part two of my theory. liu xiao knew lu guang is going to interfere, so he already arranged a "fake death" for vein in advance (which he doesn't tell vein about lmao, but he seems to have figured it out when he gets the heart attack)

this is how, I believe, yingdu happened from liu xiao's perspective:

he wants cheng weimin's notebook. wang qing has it, but would never give it to him. but she might for cheng weimin's son

he baits cheng xiaoshi into going to bridon

he heard lu guang's heartbeat in the airport, which tipped him off that he's someone he should watch out for

he confirmed that cheng xiaoshi and lu guang are investigating cheng weimin

he assigns xia fei to keep an eye on their progress

he planned to use cheng xiaoshi to bait wang qing into giving up information about the notebook. this is why when xia fei told him that cheng xiaoshi was about to meet her, liu xiao reacts like this is the expected outcome

he assigns vein to get the notebook because wang qing is about to reveal the location. but he also knows that lu guang is kinda shady, so when lu guang stalls vein (and tells him! bro don't tell your plans to your victims! don't tell him you're trying to make a butterfly effect!), liu xiao either just knew this would happen or vein tipped him off before going in

now, notice that vein gets a heart attack before wang qing uses an ability (or is used, whatever) to kill vein. and what have we established before at the beginning of this post? liu xiao has a heartbeat related ability and can fake a death. we don't know the mechanics of the second ability, but we know that compatible abilities can combo with each other. it's not far-fetched to think that liu xiao can fake death with a heart attack

later, we see vein wake up after someone (most likely liu xiao) opens his body bag

so now who's fooled? the police arrives and even does an autopsy. they declare vein dead. lu guang is relieved, and for years he believes this. vein doesn't even visit the studio in 2021 (though li tianchen does, through liu min, but that's neither here nor there). he avoided a death node by creating another one. we can let him believe this lie for a little while...

TL;DR lu guang created a butterfly effect by stalling vein, and that creates a domino effect that should have led to vein's death. except he's not the only one interfering with the timeline. while this is happening, liu xiao orchestrates a fake death for vein before his supposed death actually happens, allowing him to act dead during the autopsy and "revive" later

#mine musings #link click #link click spoilers #liveblogging link click #i have so many other things to do and THIS is what i spend my time on. link click's chokehold on me man........#i still have two other meta posts to write but this one comes first because RAAAAHHH i live for lg and lx puppeteering foils #anyway. again i could be wrong so feel free to correct me etc etc #i am open for other interpretations #link click meta

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ambrosiagourmet · 10 months ago

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Rin Masterpost

Rin! Rinsha Fana! Beloved side character I think about far too much (or maybe not enough?)

I decided that it might be nice to put together an informational post about Rin, since she has some of my favorite background details of any character in Dungeon Meshi. This is partly as reference for myself, and partly for anyone else who might be interested in her but not know where to chase down the tidbits we we get of her, both in canon & extra materials. There’s also a little bit of theorizing and analysis sprinkled in for fun.

If anyone spots something I missed, please let me know and I will add it in!

Alright. Time for ultimate #rinposting

History and Timeline:

We don't have an official timeline for Rin (even in the expanded Adventurer's Bible, sadly), but we can put a lot of pieces together based on Kabru's timeline & their respective ages.

Rin is 2 years older than Kabru, and they met when he was 9. Assuming that he met her soon after she was taken to the elven capital, that means that the elves took her when she was 11.

Before that, she lived on the Northern Continent. Interestingly, when Mickbell asks about Shuro, Rin says she was born "here."

Since "here" doesn't mean the actual Island itself, it must mean simply "not the east." She is described in the Adventurer's Bible as having "no real knowledge of or attachment to the East," so maybe that's why she draws a "there" verses "here" line.

I'd also like to add a note here that the elves don't seem uh... they don't seem great about respecting the value of other cultures, especially those of short-life species. Milsiril seems to have discouraged Kabru from eating or remembering food from his hometown, at least, and that's even as an adoptive parent who cares (at least in some way) for her child. As I will touch on later, the "care" that Rin was under probably had even less respect for her history or ties to either Eastern or Northern culture.

That is all to say, considering that Rin spent many years with the elves, I'd take her having "[no] attachment to the East" as more of a comment on how she feels now, and less as a definite choice she made. She may genuinely have chosen that approach and opinion for herself, she may have been pushed towards it by the elves, and she may have had little choice at all in the matter - all are valid interpretations, though I personally lean towards the thought that it's unlikely the elves didn't have at least some hand in it.

Anyway, Rin does seem to know at least a bit about her heritage - she can presumably name and identify the specific island her parents are from, and she recognizes that "Shuro" isn't a name used there. She also knows that different places from the Eastern archipelago speak different languages, so she knows at least a little about the other islands as well.

Some additional extrapolations I'll make based on these facts: she never mentions, and probably isn't in contact with, any family from her island. This may be because her extended family died, because her parents didn't (or weren't able to) maintain contact, or because she lost contact when she was taken by the elves. Somewhat relatedly, she also prooobably doesn't speak the language, at least not fluently, though her being able to comment on the state of language in the archipelago makes me think that she at least learned a little as a kid.

Anyway, Rin's parents were refugees from the archipelago, though we don't know what specifically caused them to leave. There is this little tidbit of info we get (from the cover of chapter 48, of all places), though:

So yeah, that seems like it would be the backdrop of Rin's parents fleeing. As I said earlier, it's unclear if Rin might have any living family left back on her island. The listing she has for “family” in the Adventurer's Bible is just a dash, but so is Izutsumi's, for instance, and we know that she was taken from her family with no knowledge of who might still be out there. It's possible everyone else was killed, it's possible they were separated... it's possible that Rin's parents didn't even know.

As an additional note, and this is speculation on my part, but I think there is an argument to be made, with this tidbit from the cover as well as the Nakamoto clan's specialty in espionage and use of ninjas, that the politics of the archipelago are partially based on Sengoku era Japan. Not necessarily super relevant here, but I think it's interesting context for all... of the archipelago characters, honestly.

(Especially considering it seems like the Nakamoto clan is in a relatively comfortable position, and yet clearly are involved, or at least prepared to be involved in larger conflict. How stable is their position, really? How is Shuro's father viewed by the wider region and archipelago as a whole? What about his lord? NOT THE POINT THIS IS A POST ABOUT RIN. BUT IT'S VERY INTERESTING TO THINK ABOUT.)

Okay, back to Rin's parents.

Whatever caused them to leave, they made their way to the north, where they made their living with their magic for a time. There are no specifics about what kind of magic they used, but we know at least some examples of jobs that magic can get you, based on the flashback to Laios and Falin's childhood in chapter 26. Laios proposes that Fain could use her magic to be a priest, gravekeeper, or wandering exorcist. Though these are specific to Falin's affinity with spirits, they give some idea of the shape of the work that might be available. It's important, but it is also on the outskirts of society - not necessarily admired or appreciated by the average person.

And Rin’s parents were killed by vigilantes for that magic. It's not entirely news that superstitious villages in the area would sometimes kill magic users - we see a small drawing of people being burned at the stake in a panel towards the end of the manga:

Nonetheless, Rin is the only person in the main cast who has experienced this brutality firsthand. And she did experience it firsthand, having been found by the elves as the sole survivor within the burnt ruins of her home.

It is unknown exactly how she survived, or what happened to her parents before and during the fire. Rin lived, and they did not.

The elves came some time after the fire, intending to investigate reports of ancient magic. They (and we) don't know if Rin's parents actually did use ancient magic, or if the reports and murders were simply spurred by general fear and superstition. Rin was the only piece of "evidence" that remained, and so she was taken back to the west with the elves when they left.

We don't know much about her time on the Northern Central Continent (where the elves/Canaries are based), but it doesn't seem like she was adopted or taken in by anyone the way that Kabru was. According to the Adventurer's Bible, after being taken into custody, "under their care she was treated as a captive animal would be." I would guess that means very basic food and shelter, little to no education. Probably the most social contact she got was from Kabru, as well as maybe, occasionally, from elves treating her as a curiosity, such as in this bit in the Adventurer’s Bible:

Assuming she left with Kabru (which seems like it is the case, there's no info about them having separated during that time), she spent 9 years with the elves, and has been with Kabru on the Island in the 4 years since then.

She also stays in the Golden Country after the end of the story, apparently working as an apothecary.

Additional Details (& Speculation):

What does she remember of her family and home?

I'd like to take a moment here to explore a little of what Rin might remember of her parents and home.

For reference, we can look at Kabru. The canaries came to Utaya when Kabru was 6, and he arrived in the capital when he was 7. He remembers the events of the tragedy in his home, and has some memories of his mother and life in Utaya, including memories of local dishes.

Rin lost her parents and home at 11, so she presumably has much clearer memories of the events that lead to her being taken by the elves... or she might, assuming that they haven't been completely blocked by her trauma from the event.

Yeah, I am fairly damn sure that she's got some memory issues from trauma and PTSD. For one, this is the state she was found in:

As already mentioned, she was also treated like something of an animal by the elves. She probably didn't have a lot of contact with other people, which would further perpetuate that sense of isolation and dehumanization. What I'm getting at here is that Rin probably didn't have much to help pull her out of this place, or heal these wounds. She had Kabru, who was also a kid and even younger than her, and she had herself.

Obviously trauma leaves different scars on everyone, and everyone responds and copes in different ways. But I do think it is interesting that we never hear anything about Rin's parents or life before the elves, and there are no real details about it given in the Adventurer's Bible the way we have for Kabru. What's presented is more surface level facts: they were refugees, they made a living with magic, they were killed.

I'm inclined to believe that things are laid out this way because that's how Rin holds on to these things. She knows things about them, but possibly remembers them more as things she was told/knows to be true, rather than actual memories she can picture herself experiencing.

Rin's Magic

In an interesting counterpoint to her potentially spotty memory, I do actually think Rin may have learned magic from her parents (or started learning, and was self-taught from there). She never attended a magic academy, and actually has a bit of grudge against people who did - owing to the social protection afforded to "upper-class mages," which her parents did not have. She also almost certainly wouldn't have been taught by the elves, who not only treated her as an animal but also knew her parents may have been involved with ancient magic.

Falin began to show signs of magical talent at 8, and was sent to the Magic Academy at 10, and that was as someone who had absolutely no guidance about or exposure to magic in her home town. Raised by two mage parents, I think Rin absolutely could have been learning some things by the time she was 11.

In terms of continued learning, I'll add that Rin is able to identify Marcille's magic as being A) from an Academy student, and B) cast by an elf:

This makes me think that she continued to study magic on her own while held by the elves, and probably even more so after leaving with Kabru. They didn't form the party until two years after they left the elves, which would give Rin plenty of time to try and learn from other adventurers on the Island, or to study up on her own. She'd probably be able to pick up some dungeon-crawling basics (like the water walk spell), as well as become familiar with the skill level and expression of skill common in different people with different backgrounds (hence why she is able to comment on the "textbook" academy wards).

Much like Marcille, Rin also seems to rely on a 'one size fits all' Big Boom method of dealing with monsters: lightning. We see the best example of its power in the fight with Chimera Falin:

But we also see her cast it pretty recklessly in a few other places, including the end credits of the new anime ED, which I think provides a good example of the downsides to such an approach...

Yeah, it is very much a 'get out of the way or get zapped' spell.

Especially since Marcille's offensive magic is self-taught and works very similarly, this definitely reinforces the idea that Rin figured most of this stuff out herself.

Outfit and Character Design

Dear sweet Rin of the Red And Black... how I love her design.

First of all, her clothes are damaged. Despite the fact that Rin looks relatively well put together overall, her outfit is worn out. I have some theories on why this is that I'll get to in a bit, but for now I'll just touch on what this design communicates in general about it.

I think, just like with Kabru's horribly messy room, it creates a sense that there is something more complicated underneath the surface. Something that isn't being addressed or seen to, just as the dress hasn't been mended or replaced.

It also reflects her not caring a ton about her appearance. She's neat, but she's not concerned about being pretty, so she doesn't bother with fixing up her outfit after her dungeon crawls. This also fits with her perpetual scowl (which I will talk more about in a bit), and slightly disheveled hair.

Next: the gloves. At first I thought they might be a sort of uncomfortable-with-touch thing, but after skimming through the manga and some bonus content, I have another theory. Rin takes the gloves off to eat, as well as a few other instances, such as when working on a spell with Holm and Marcille in chapter 36

This one is especially interesting because she has them on in the next chapter, during the fight with Falin. Since she also isn't wearing gloves during some of the Daydream Hour art of her outside of the dungeon, that leads me to believe that they are specifically for combat.

What does she need them for, though? Most other casters we see don't wear gloves. Well... just look at the other half of the page where she attacks Falin with lightning:

She is enveloped by this spell. I said it before was pretty reckless magic, but maybe its not just a problem for her teammates, but for her as well.

So here's my theory: maybe the gloves are rubber, or some other electricity-resistant material? They might help protect her from her own magic. I don't know why a caster would need gloves for combat otherwise.

I also think this might be why her dress is tattered at the bottom, by the way. Especially since the Daydream Hour genderswap design doesn't have a similar problem with his outfit, since the tunic isn't as long.

I will admit this is a bit of stretch/guess, but I think it's a fun one, and I wanted to share. I do think I'm right about the gloves being for dungeons/fighting specifically, at least. That seems pretty consistent throughout all of her appearances.

I also mentioned her scowl, so I'll touch on that briefly as well. The (fairly confirmed) explanation for Rin's expression is that she intentionally wears a frown to prevent her other expressions from showing through. I think it's important to emphasize that it's not just smiling that she is trying to suppress here - it's any strong emotion:

Anyway, because I can, here is the art of Rin smiling.

Rin and Kabru

I have talked a bit about Rin and Kabru's history, but I think it deserves its own section.

I think it's very interesting that Rin is pretty much the ONLY character in all of Dungeon Meshi that has explicit canonical romantic interesting in someone. It's literally part of the main summary sentence in her character profile.

This could be sort of reductive as a way to describe a female character (and in some ways it still is), but I think in part the simplicity and directness of it actually is part of what makes it so interesting. Especially when on the very next page we see the comic about her backstory. "This mage is in love with Kabru" -> one page of a horribly traumatic event and a child frozen in shock with no one to comfort her. What does that do?

Well, in my opinion, it shows how much Rin focuses on Kabru as something to keep her in the present. In contrast with the immense loss she has experienced, her love for Kabru is current and alive. He has presumably been her anchor for years, and I think that her love is part of that anchor.

Adding to this, in contrast with how explicit her feelings are, she never seems to actively pursue Kabru. She complains about his potential interest in other women, but she doesn't really flirt. She doesn't let herself smile around him any more than anyone else, and she doesn't hide her bitterness or anger from him to present a more appealing persona.

As much as she craves Kabru's attention, and has stayed by his side for years, I don't know that she really wants to possess him. He seems to know about her feelings, more or less, and she seems to know that he knows. Maybe she believes he doesn't reciprocate and is respecting that, maybe she's afraid of what she could lose if she tried to change things, or maybe the change itself frightens her. In any case, though she's not exactly happy with the way things are between them, she doesn't seem to be trying to change that status quo.

A specific thing I'd also like to talk about with their relationship, beyond Rin's love for him, is her fear for him. As the Adventurer's Bible puts it, "she worries that his knack for dealing with whatever life throws at him might lead him to get too full of himself and end up in serious trouble."

Rin is an interesting mix of restrained and explosive, herself. Her magic is destructive, her temper seems to run hot (she gets annoyed easily, at least), and her feelings for Kabru are apparent. At the same time, she doesn't let her emotions show on her face, she is the one who bluntly states that the group has hit the limit of their abilities, and she doesn't act on those obvious feelings for Kabru. It's interesting, then, that what she fears for Kabru is that he won't restrain himself.

And a small personal idea about that as well: I wonder if she somewhat blames her parents for getting killed. Again, this is very speculative, but I think it's interesting that her fear for Kabru is that he will get too full of himself. Take up too much space. It's never really stated what Rin thinks of her parents, but it can be easy in grief to search for control, and control often means blame. If they hadn't been so confident, so flashy, would they still be alive...?

I don't know if she's ever thought like that, and it could well be that her fears for Kabru come from a totally different place. But it's an interesting connective thread between her past and present - the idea of "getting in trouble" for taking up too much space and being too confident in one's own abilities.

Miscellaneous Tidbits:

On that note, I'd like to wrap up the main part of this post, and move on to a few extra things that I couldn't find another place for.

Rin plays with her hair when she's stressed

Using stressed as a pretty big umbrella here, because I think it's hard to perfectly pin down all the emotions at play, but it is a habit of hers. Best displayed in chapter 32, but it shows up in other places, too.

Her design contrasts with Marcille

This is a small thing, but I just love how much they are visual opposites.

Rin wears red and black and has dark hair, Marcille wears blue and white and has light hair. Marcille cares a great deal for her hair and puts it up in elaborate hairstyles, and Rin's is mostly loose and a bit messy. Marcille was even educated at the Magic Academy, which Rin dislikes. They both have little capelets. Also they both look very cute in each other's clothes.

Rin knows Flamela (and they meet again in canon)

Nothing much is done with this in canon, but I think it’s super interesting that Flamela's squad are the ones that find Rin as a child and take her away to the west, and then they end up stuck in the dungeon together for a bit.

Two days??? I'm so very curious what things were like between these three.

Aaaand I think that's all I have to say about Rin! For the time being at least. There's a lot more analysis that could be done about her and Kabru especially, but for this post I wanted to keep things at least somewhat anchored to canon facts, with only a layer or two of speculation on top.

If it isn't already obvious, I think Rin is a super interesting character with a ton of potential depth to explore. She mostly interacts with Kabru in canon, but has ties to a bunch of other characters: she and Marcille fill similar roles in their parties but have differing personalities and histories, she and Falin (and Laios) have been tremendously shaped by xenophobia and fear of magic common in the Northern Continent, her parents fled from conflict in the same region Shuro and his retainers are from, and she has history with Flamela and some of the second canary squad.

Her temper, her fear, her love... her repression and passion - they all inform her character, even in small ways, even with as little time as she spends on the page.

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #rinsha fana #rin dungeon meshi #dungeon meshi spoilers #dunmeshi analysis #thank u to anyone who takes the time to read this ♥️♥️♥️ I love rin and lot

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lordzannis · 1 month ago

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#Cursed Bloodlines

#Triforce of Power

Have you ever heard of the 'Groose is Ganondorf' theory?

No, but I love that idea! Even though he’d be like the dorkiest Ganondorf incarnation possible, but that’s kind of inherently awesome…

We’ve had an LoZ game where Zelda is Link’s traveling companion… (and I’m up for more of those!) But how fun would it be to have a game where Ganondorf fills that role?

Especially if he was a ginormous dork; it’d be perfect if that game’s Link had a more “cool” personality (like in BotW).

(BTW, if anyone asks, I will draw this comic’s Gan with Groose’s hairdo.)

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st-just · 2 years ago

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Reading Weavers, Scribes and Kings at the same time as a long-form analysis of ASOIF really reemphasizing and cementing my contempt for fantasy world building that goes 'and then this specific dynasty ruled this specific kingdom in essential socio-economic stasis for [longer than the entire span of human history]'.

Like, cmon. Shave some zeros off the timeline. Please.

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amyoffline · 4 months ago

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It's done! The outline for—

—is below the cut. The goal of this project is to explore the following phenomena with as much context and nuance as I can manage, tracing our history over the past 15 years:

What about us, and what about Dan and Phil, drew in and continues to draw in a very specific audience. If they are a ranch metaphor, we are a pizza metaphor 🥗🍕🫶🏻

Why we were Like That™, by which I mean so parasocially invested in them that we became, at times, the most annoying people on the internet. Much of that reputation is undeserved, and the videos on the phandom to date have been strongly negative. So, uh, I guess I'm going to put my face on camera and (mostly) defend us.

Reblog, share in your Discord servers, reply, or send me messages/anon asks with feedback or resources if you have any! Especially if your experience being in this fandom community has been dramatically different from mine. There are TIT spoilers near the end of the outline, but I'm not tagging because certain individuals seem to be lurking over there. Thank you!

Chapters:

Full outline:

introduction

cold open

felt personally attacked by jonathan haidt's last press tour

showed up to the phrenaissance 11 months late

had an unexpectedly strong response to their new content, needed to find out why

what the hell are we doing here?

- phenomenology (academics are professionally insufferable) - research question 1: what drew the audience in? - research question 2: why were we Like That™?

what we're NOT doing here

- a strict content analysis or "wow we sucked" video - providing sources for things best left uncirculated, thank you

reflexivity (personal biases)

- american zillennial in public health - in the youtube audience by spring 2010 - lurking in the phandom on tumblr 2013-2015, back* since 2019 - fan behavior i did and did not engage in

(----): truly necessary background information, i swear

(pop) cultural trends, tech, and their intersection

- nerd/geek identity and the first online weirdos - broadcast tv & the music industry vs the internet - defining "emo" - blogging & vlogging - early internet comedy

broader social/economic trends

- so the U.S. economy collapsed in 2007 - a decade that sucked except for rom-coms and square enix games - the flip/slide phone + digital camera + mp3 player loadout

(05-8): early youtube and early phil

youtube: a great video uploader without a clear purpose

the content on the website

- crossposts, corporations, and creative/social outlets - omg guys it's amazing phil - contemporary youtube-to-legacy success: justin bieber

the audience of "early adopters"

contemporary social media sites and forums

(2009): origin story

a wild dan appears… in the comments

the global constant that is teenagers being messy online

daring my old school district to sue me

- "one town's war on gay teens" (literal rolling stone headline!) - epidemiology 101: rates of… ugh… "unaliving" oneself - ways kids cope when it seems no adults will help them

the earliest days of dan & phil

- hello internet + pinof - a chronically overexamined timeline - file deleted ---* so how big WAS the audience at the time? ---* acceptable funny/edgy language was just different

contemporary youtube-to-legacy success: lucas cruikshank

omg it's meeeeeee

- how amy & friends were using youtube - ways i was just destined to end up here - being in social environments with peers 3-6 years older

(2010): is it "twenty-ten" or "two thousand ten?"

youtube is a platform about to explode in popularity

- the algorithm before it was The Algorithm™, lost site features - let's take a trip through the wayback machine :3c - actual dan & phil content in 2010 - the green brothers found vidcon - contemporary youtube-to-legacy success: darren criss

social media: also about to explode in popularity

- facebook was cool at the time, believe it or not - law of equivalent exchange: 2010 amy cringe compilation - the birth of instagram and pinterest - youtube slash livejournal (the first phanfics… sort of) - shockfic and its place in the overton window

the beginning of "the great rewiring" as haidt calls it

- ways social media is about to dramatically change - third spaces become online spaces - confounding variable: changing expectations of teens

(2011): the end of an era, the start of an age

a very long tangent on fandom and pop culture

cultural exchange

counterculture and teenagers as concepts

the first british invasion: the 1960s

- beatlemania and its descendents - moral panic about the virtue of tween/teen girls - tv/film/fashion trends being imported from the uk - in parallel, star trek births the modern fandom

the second british invasion: the 1980s

- synth/new pop that came out of the punk movement (hi, emo?) - confined mainly to music and fashion - cool britannia

it's harry freakin' potter

- absolute titan of pop culture influence - the rise of online fandom: examining the horrors ---* what is "wank" ---* flaming, sockpuppeting, and general cyberbullying ---* censorship: ffnet purges, boldthrough, & strikethrough ---* other fandom shenanigans of the time (yaoi paddles, anyone?)

harry potter's over. now what?

- for those who needed coming-of-age hero's journeys ---* twilight and YA dystopia waiting in the wings ---* some pretty iconic tv shows start or hit their stride ---* the mcu's phase one ---* takeaway: the rise of "geek culture" generally - for those who just wanted to go to hogwarts ---* doctor who & the wider world of bbc programming ---* british vloggers, you say? where? on youtube? brb--

end tangent, back to your regularly scheduled programming

dan & phil in the first half of 2011

- a continuation of 2010… for now - the videos - british pancakes as a case study of bad fan behavior

streaming and social media

- the birth of snapchat, twitch, and younow - netflix starts developing original programming - multi-channel networks (mcns) - digitour

dan & phil in the second half of 2011

- and they were roommates (omg they were roommates) - fantastic foursome - youtube glitches out - the super amazing project - the first proper baking video + wait, is that the bbc?

~ baking interlude 1: christmas cookies ~

the family sugar cookie (sorry, delia)

amy's 2011

(2012): why is anyone nostalgic for this

the transition from desktop to mobile

- massive growth in smartphone ownership 2011-2015 - things one might do on mobile one might not do on desktop - non-online ways smartphones changed being a youth™

what is tumblr and why is my child using it

- how the site is meant to work - fandom, memes, aesthetics, and SOME public figures - want to be anxious and depressed in peace? come to tumblr - this site seems a little……… gay ---* tumblr's very queer, very neurodiverse userbase ---* legacy media representation in 2012: bad! ---* actual academic research on tumblr users (yes, it exists) - the tumblr experience for non-native english speakers

amy becomes a vibrating mass of panic and paranoia

- in context of the above - additional rant about the american public school system

the growing dan & phil audience

- investigating the origin of the term "phannie" - more collaborations = more viewers - more video uploads = more /invested/ viewers - younow and interacting with fans - watch time replaces clicks in the algorithm

online etiquette, or lack thereof

- mid-transition from the 2000s to the 2010s - "professional internet celebrity" is still basically brand-new - lack of boundaries - various ways to be an asshole online - unsupervised kids simply do not engage in best practices

the end of 2012

- dan and phil move to london - wikipedia vandalism - tiptoeing around a top contender for the phandom's greatest sin - super amazing project DONE, now it's BBC RADIO TIME

(2013): arguably the most important year

- wait. what's that six-second video platform over there--

[amy's curated vine compilation]

- a new wave of internet comedians (read: future youtubers) - the zillennial lexicon - other platforms start emphasizing short-form video content - magcon

emo is BACK - well, sort of

- fob hiatus ends, mcr breaks up. my god. you had to be there - more open ties to nerd/geek culture than in the 2000s - these things once again intersect at dan and phil

dan and phil in the first half of 2013

- siri, what's a "sex symbol?" why are you booing me i'm right-- - d&p are everywhere - radio shows, interviewing, hosting - youtube uploads on their individual channels

rapidly changing cultural attitudes towards queerness

- gay marriage will be legal in places other than canada soon - a lot of assimilationist rhetoric though tbh - parallels to the pop feminism of the decade

hey kids, let's talk about compulsory heterosexuality!!

- what is it and why do people do it - academic, tumblr-level, and anecdotal research - the dannies, the phillies, and the phannies

amy

- the closet™ - mental health stigma - 2013 dnp posts from my main blog

dan and phil in the second half of 2013

- subscriber milestones, vidcon - joint content before the gaming channel - phandom starts having a major presence outside tumblr

(2014): achievement unlocked!

it's time to talk about rpf

- definitions (a chance to be annoyingly pedantic) - academic perspectives and fan discourse on the ethics - when the subjects clearly aren't fine with it - so… we can acknowledge "shipping phan" was different, right? ---* sometimes the subjects are fine* with it, actually ---* how dan and phil started to handle the shipping ---* obvious differences between phan and other rpf ships ---* sharing my favorite passages as a first-time phanfic reader

dan and phil in 2014

- wikipedia vandalism 2: electric boogaloo - bbc request show → internet takeover - the 7 second challenge - youtube content, subscriber milestones, rewind - cons and award shows

tumblr reaches the peak of its influence

- yahoo's attempts to monetize the userbase - buzzfeed and aggregators steal our jokes and bait our clicks - legacy media dangles carrots and uses us for free marketing - the legend of korra breaks TV precedent, almost out of nowhere - the tumblr user experience ---* on mobile, without xkit ---* on desktop, with xkit ---* 2014 dnp posts from my main blog

gamergate and its long shadow

- trolling, renewed and revamped - algorithms push increasingly extreme content - the broad conservative backlash conglomerate - increased normalization of conspiracism in general

my greatest sin [not clickbait] [very funny]

- so, circling back to comphet… - the actual story

anyway, let's talk about danandphilgames

- a star is born: dil howlter - different types of gaming content on youtube at the time - why did 17yo amy not subscribe? well…

~ baking interlude 2: chocolate cupcakes ~

make your own frosting. it freezes well

roasting myself further

(2015): it's not queerbaiting when it's real people

facebook "pivots to video"

- mark zuckerberg lied. water is wet - causes other platforms to REALLY double down on video - the birth of musical.ly - corporate-branded creators (read: future youtubers)

queerbaiting enters mainstream public consciousness

- academic origins - early fannish and acafan writing - johnlock, destiel, and sterek - statistics 101: type i error, type ii error, and queerbait

dan, phil, and the phandom

- bbc, cons, & the brits - danandphilcrafts - phan conspiracies ---* japhan ---* body language experts ---* timeline truthers ---* floor plan investigators ---* no but seriously imagine it - regular youtube uploads ---* solo content ---* joint content ---* subscriber milestones, rewind - tatinof uk and tabinof ---* on "selling out" ---* revisiting the statistics 101 lesson: now with real people! ---* never meet your heroes (unless they're dan and phil)

amy's (temporary) exit from the phandom

- it's legal adulthood with a steel chair!! - growing discomfort with some fans' behavior - 2015 dnp posts from my main blog - the closer: final fantasy vii

(2016): season finale

vine's imminent demise

- content platforms behaving badly - content creators behaving badly

youtube after "the great rewiring" (as haidt calls it)

- version 1.0 of the modern youtube algorithm ---* deep neural networks for dummies ---* what's holding creators accountable, or not - advertising and sponsorships ---* basically every child and youth™ is watching now ---* the battle for our attention ---* regulators start to crack down on undisclosed ads - the rise of drama/tea content (and later, channels) ---* youtubers are now seen as regular celebrities ---* dan and phil as the butt of other youtubers' jokes ---* baiting the phandom for engagement

tatinof us and aus

- a proven new model for live show tours - show & documentary released to youtube red (now premium) - [sigh] the tour bus

sea change in online fandom

- the newer, sometimes queerer media in korra's wake ---* better and more representation in live-action tv shows ---* voltron (i'm sorry!!!) ---* the mystic messenger craze ---* alice oseman & heartstopper - the new dynamics of #discourse ---* proship is to anti as phannie is to phanti ---* the bad behaviors of the 00s get a new coat of paint ---* new, though: fans harassing creators ---* a personal note on ace discourse

dan and phil presence off-tour

- the internet takeover ends - regular content, subscriber milestones

so. uh. current events.

- brexit - sorry the united states is a font of chaos - ripple effects

closing out the year

- amy finally gets an anxiety diagnosis and treatment! hurray! - dapgo, rewind - bbc radio awards & the boncas - gamingmas

(2017): time for a rebrand

tangent - sit down!!! buckle up!!! today's lecture is on PSIs & PSRs!!!

"parasocial" as defined by the current zeitgeist

- summing up youtubers' and laypeople's opinions (not dan's) - an unfairly negative stance overall, imo

older academic literature

- the 1956 paper (yes, 1956) - with traditional celebrities - with fictional characters

current academic literature

- with youtubers and other content creators - positive effects on the audience - negative effects on the audience - broader societal implications

fandom spaces as a parasocial experience

- parasocial and truly social interactions with each other - phandom as a supportive, welcoming space for oddballs - what research i can find about neurospicy folks, + anecdotes - me and everyone else on planet earth move to discord

inherent transactionality

- the nature of celebrity - positive effects on creators - negative effects on creators

reexamining early phandom through a parasocial lens

- the good, the bad, and the ugly - the role audience demographics played in all of this - entering, exiting, and remaining in the phandom

end tangent, back to your regularly scheduled programming

vine is well and truly dead

- some had prepared to become primarily youtubers (smart) - some move to musical.ly, insta, facebook, or snap (less so)

the sun sets on danisnotonfire

- i am very normal about dan's hobbit hair, i swear. - the last dnp content before the rebrand - new apartment, new floor plan investigations

adpocalypse now

- youtube has become the village elder of platforms ---* increased scrutiny, increased responsibility ---* some youtubers had been getting away with !#$!#@% - the scandals ---* pewdiepie + logan paul ---* elsagate and being "family- friendly" (read: ad-friendly) - censorship and monetization ---* adsense revenue goes down as advertisers pull out ---* the glory days of posting whatever and making bank are over

amazingphil and ~daniel howell~

- youtube & younow content - that week in march - vacations and conventions - conjoined baking and the concept of a "soft launch" - daniel & depression → dan as a mental health advocate - truth bombs, ii announcement, rewind

(2018): the phandom vs the hiatus they told us not to worry about

interactive introverts

- "giving the people what they want" - in hindsight… - let's talk about dnp fans from the global south

youtuber burnout

- it wasn't just dan: (more examples than header fits) - the old model was simply not sustainable - newer contributing factors - research on burnout, plus personal anecdotal experience

other dan and phil videos

- phil's solo videos - gay and not proud - hometown showdown - other joint videos - phil's #shorts (sounds normal in american english)

panini updates

- vaccines soon, uwu??? + entrenched misinformation - pros and cons of remote work - pros and cons of remote school - pros and cons of remote socializing

you will get through this night

- younger me really could have used this book too, dan - thoughts as a professional in a related field - reflecting on some of my more unique circumstances

daring my old school district to sue me (again!!)

- updates: racism and transphobia - updates: right-wing freaks take over the school board again - residents vote against improving mental health resources

(2022): dan returns (still not on fire)

hey so politics are um getting worse

- americans lose the right to reproductive freedom ---* the quickest of histories on where these freaks came from ---* this shit kills people. - trans kids become the punching bag of culture war discourse ---* fuck off! (gently) ---* fuck off! (i have a knife) ---* checking in on terf island

we're all doooooooooooooooomed

- dystopia daily my beloved - the style, the substance, the metatextual analysis-- - not everyone loved it, though. why? - the promo - dan on tour + sister daniel

amy's 2022

- i got covid - then i got long covid: brain fog, pots-like symptoms

some more news (i will work on my warmbo impression)

- dan joins tiktok + danisnotinteresting uploads - phil: uploading less, busy doing remote crisis management - twitter is acquired by an idiot jackass - heartstopper on netflix! ---* the show and what it means to people ---* drama (revisiting "real people can't queerbait") ---* why this has anything to do with the phandom

~ baking interlude 4: cinnamon rolls ~

- lovingly, recipe changes and corrections :) - if i have an opinion about anything, it's sweet yeasted breads

(2023): the phrenaissance

phil

- joins tiktok! - youtube uploads through september - what even is phannie tiktok. i've never used this app. help.

dystopia daily b-sides

- dan memes of 2022 - the 2023 dystopia daily episodes

amy: the doctoral candidacy process

- purgatory, privilege, poverty, and free pizza - checking in on what this is like outside the united states

pretending the panini is over

- complaining about post-adpocalypse censorship standards - honest take about "giving up" on covid - who gets the short end of the stick

the youtube algorithm is BAD and UNINTELLIGENT, actually,

- unhinged rant about not hearing about the gaming rephrival - because i was offline from other platforms. like, @amyoffline.

pov: you are a phannie (not me) on october 15th

- what i was doing on october 15th - saying goodbye forever, spooky week, and november - gamingmas - phil uploads through december

(2024): fifteen years of terrible, terrible influence

hey what the fuck is going on

- dan and phil ---* joint and phil videos ---* jokes they never would've made ten years ago ---* a collection of emotional posts about how far they've come ---* people want fun and silly content again. we'll get to why ---* nostalgia, hope, and other warm and fuzzy feelings - the phandom ---* ancient parasocial attachments, reactivated instantly ---* people are way more normal now. let's discuss why ---* tumblr vs twitter vs tiktok phandom

we're all doomed, youtube version

- my thoughts - thoughts on "dan should/shouldn't" do video essays - i can't objectively evaluate anything he makes bc [gunshots]

terrible influence tour

- legally phlonde - the concept: healing one's inner child / taking it back - we gotta talk about phannies in the global south again - no but seriously imagine it? ---*ogres are like onions, they have LAYERS ---* [placeholder for whatever does(n't) happen]

anglosphere current events once again

- the likely us tiktok ban - the tories get fired - [placeholder for whichever hell americans manifest] - witnessing genocide and feeling powerless

ffx full-circle moment to the intro of this video essay

- the night i found out they came back - why i am doing this, now with context - reflections on a nearly 15-year (parasocial) relationship

whatever youtube uploads we get during fall/december

AMY SEES TIT (nov 14)

- the vibes at the phamily reunion - buying merch to apologize for eternal ublock origin use - how much should i document?? (not during the show) - phanspiracies confirmed - atlanta confessions - favorite bits - the alternate universe where i went to tatinof and/or ii

(2025): the horrors persist, but so do we

whatever 2025 content is out while i'm still working on this

our parasocial social club

- let me be philosophytube for a second ---* every interaction has a parasocial element ---* what are we obligated to do as a phandom, actually? ---* as people who parasocially care about these two dorks? ---* what else should we be doing socially to be at our happiest? - "they're my gay uncles" vs "i'm a little in love, even now" ---* riffing about the boundary/overlap between these camps ---* sibling reads me for filth in a single text (sister daniel...) ---* at least we're all in this together

what's going to continue to draw people in

- grown adults drawing our cat whiskers back on - updates on queer/nd kids - updates on anxiety/depression rates - updates on tech and the broader environment of content - world still feels doomed

tangent - the "hard launch" and why people want it

what are people referring to, exactly

- general definition and other examples - when it comes to dan and phil - maybe they hard launched already and we just missed the memo

the ludonarrative of phandom

- if you got here early on - if you got here in the mid-2010s - if you got here after they came out - if you got here post-hiatus - final fantasy comparison: ffvii's chokehold over first-timers

a rom-com for the ages

- the tropes in play - brief tangent on the evolution of the genre - queer romantic comedies - final fantasy comparison: ffviii's plot and squall/rinoa

phriends… or…

- wholesome influence, slice-of-life - projection - final fantasy comparison: ffxv's gameplay loop, the chocobros

humans don't like ambiguity

- from a media perspective (narrative tension) - research from the hard sciences - final fantasy comparison: fanille ---* the first gay final fantasy characters, actually ---* ffxiii's character development process ---* fang and vanille in the text. brb, clawing at the walls ---* so, if anyone is looking for a phyuri au prompt…

tl;dr: reality is not fiction. make peace with not "knowing"

end tangent, back to your regularly scheduled programming

the phuture

- phil's big solo project when??? - dapg is just the joint channel now - youtube has changed since when dan last "regularly" uploaded - nothing lasts forever, and that's okay

~ baking interlude 5: ranch + pizza ~

- ranch propaganda and ranch metaphors - showing off my dough and sauce skills

conclusions

- a lot has happened in 15 years - [placeholders: don't write your conclusions before you do your research]

Proof this project can only be done in consultation with Tumblr: no other platform we're on could accommodate a post of this length and formatting detail lol

#dan and phil #phan #dnp #daniel howell #amazingphil #this took so long to format oh my god please read it and talk to me #except it's 1am in my time zone so i'm going honk mimimimi soon enough #amy writes

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kradogsrats · 1 month ago

Text

Timeline Revisions, Archdragons, and the Cosmic Order

This was supposed to be a post about Shiruakh and Laurelion, but I got derailed momentarily by discovering that there's actually no evidence that Sol Regem was the first Dragon King, meaning the Dragon Monarchy did not start only 1200 years ago, which is something I based like 80% of my history speculation and analysis on. As stupid as I feel about this and as interesting as it was in terms of elf/dragon/human political climate... well, it has made less and less sense as we learn about the other Great Ones and the Cosmic Order. So probably for the best.

Revised/Updated Timeline

Let's do a reset on what we actually know:

Pictured: The official timeline slide as presented at SDCC 2019.

5,000 years ago: Primal elves emerged, elves and dragons were not allied (i.e. presumably the dragon monarchy did not yet exist), and it sucked to be human.

3,000 years ago: the archdragon Shiruakh and the Startouch elf Laurelion battle to the death.

2,000 years ago: Humans acquire (primal) magic, and Elarion is founded. Humanity ascends toward a golden age.

1,200 years ago: The Dragon Prince Anak Araw ascends to the dragon monarchy throne as Dragon King Sol Regem.

1,000 years ago: Sol Regem confronts Ziard, the first dark mage, and threatens Elarion before being blinded with corruption. Luna Tenebris ascends the dragon monarchy throne and expels humanity from the eastern half of Xadia. The archdragons form the Border to keep the two halves of the continent separate.

300 years ago: Luna Tenebris dies without a suitable heir. The Sunfire elf Queen Aditi vanishes before she can resolve the ensuing succession crisis. Aaravos, the "Fallen Star," is defeated and imprisoned by the Archdragons and the Orphan Queen. Avizandum ascends to the dragon monarchy throne.

2 years ago: Avizandum is killed by the human King Harrow. His mate Zubeia ascends the dragon monarchy throne, with their son Azymondias as Dragon Prince.

"Now": Aaravos escapes captivity, but is returned to his heavenly form until his stars realign in 7 years. The archdragons Zubeia, Rex Igneous, and Domina Profundus perish in the battle. Azymondias is the last known living archdragon, and the status of the dragon monarchy is unknown.

and here's things we know happened, but not exactly when:

Between 5,000 and 2,000 years ago: the Startouch elf child Leola teaches humans the secrets of primal magic. Her violation of the Cosmic Order is reported by Dragon Prince Anak Araw, and she is executed for it. Her death forms the Sea of the Castout in Eastern Xadia.

Between 3,000 years ago and 300 years ago: the fang of Shiruakh is forged by humans into the Novablade. At some point, it winds up in the hands of the Celestial elves at the Starscraper.

Between 1,000 years ago and Now: the city of Elarion is either destroyed or naturally falls into ruin. (Anyone who can actually cite a reliable source for Elarion being destroyed is more than welcome to do so, otherwise I will die on the "we have no evidence that Elarion was ever destroyed, actually" hill.)

Sometime before 300 years ago, and probably before 1,000 years ago: the (arch?)dragon Aithne Solaire, mate of Anak Araw/Sol Regem, is killed, by him unwittingly burying her alive in an episode of rage. (I say "probably before 1,000 years ago" because she presumably would have succeeded him as Dragon Queen, if she was alive.)

Between 1,000 years ago and 300 years ago: the modern human kingdoms are founded. The mage wars end as the western half of Xadia is depleted of magical resources. (Unclear whether those two events are directly related.)

Some Speculation: The Archdragons, the Cosmic Order, and Shiruakh/Laurelion

This was originally supposed to be a post about Shiruakh and Laurelion, but let's rewind a bit. We know the Great Ones (a.k.a. the "First Elves") built or instituted something to either create an ideal Cosmic Order or preserve one they had foreseen, because that's what Aaravos wants to destroy as his revenge.

This Cosmic Order seems to be tied to an idealized state of stability—humans acquiring magic is known to be the first step in a descent to "chaos"—but also hierarchy. Archdragons are at the top. Elves venerate them. Humans are lesser beings than both. I think there's a very strong chance that the dragon monarchy was instituted either by the Great Ones, or by some agreement between them and the archdragons. The dragon monarchy oversees and preserves the Cosmic Order while the Great Ones... do whatever it is they do, because they don't actually seem very interested.

Destroying the archdragons (instead of just Sol Regem in particular) could be on Aaravos's agenda simply because they betrayed him 300 years ago, but I suspect they are considered a foundational pillar of the Cosmic Order in some way, and taking out three of the last remaining four was a pretty big win for him. We don't know where archdragons come from—like if a primal has no archdragon, whether one will just... coalesce. If that's the case, it clearly either takes more than 300 years or there's some kind of problem with Luna Tenebris's death and the Moon primal (possible).

Now, as for Shiruakh and Laurelion:

I'm assuming we'll get a translation for Shiruakh's name at some point, the best I could get was Hebrew shir ("song") and ruach/ruakh ("spirit", "breath"). Personally, given Shiruakh's coloration and the fact that her scale empowers Claudia with fire, I would lay money on her being an archdragon of the Sun. Since sometime after her death, Anak Araw is Dragon Prince, a Sun archdragon dynasty on the throne also makes sense. I would also have zero surprise if she was Anak Araw's mother, the mate of the at-the-time Dragon King, just because that would set off some animosity, there. Especially if she was hunted down because of some Cosmic Order bullshit, which would also be delicious—him and Aaravos angry for the same reason.

So why did she and Laurelion fight? Well, we just don't know.

Hmmmm. But no, we don't know.

Now, I would bet that either the Death of the Immortal poem was written long after the actual events, or else large chunks of it are missing, since Kazi skimming over "Laurelion fought an archdragon and its bite killed him" and/or "and then he exploded" would be... kind of weird. The archdragons seem to be aware of what will happen when Aaravos's mortal form dies, so presumably they wouldn't be too keen on delivering a suicidal bite if there are other options available... but the other option is the Novablade, which has the same problem. The Orphan Queen, having the same problem as the main cast, may have "spared" Aaravos less out of some mysterious compassion and more out of also sparing herself and everything in what looks like probably a multi-kilometer radius.

I (and I think a lot of others) had just kind of assumed that Laurelion was targeted for death because of some transgression, but now it seems at least equally likely that he was enforcing the Cosmic Order against Shiruakh going rogue. Given the close relationship that's implied between the archdragons and the Great Ones, with no clear point for it to have soured (except with Aaravos, specifically), it seems unlikely that the archdragons or the elves would feel the need for such a weapon. Which is consistent with the fact that, as we now see in the illustration of Aaravos's tale, the Novablade was actually forged by humans.

Given the trajectory of human civilization over the timeline, I wouldn't expect them to have the technology or knowledge to work draconic ivory that way a thousand years before they acquire primal magic. On the other hand, if Shiruakh's tooth was kicked around for a couple thousand years, why did they suddenly feel the need for a Startouch elf-killing weapon? Is this just a case of dick-swinging, like driving a car that can do 250 MPH when you're never going to go above maybe 90, and that's if you're a huge asshole (which you probably are)? "My sword is made from an archdragon's tooth and can kill a god"?

Was Aaravos behind this, somehow? I would not be at all surprised if Aaravos was behind this, somehow. It's unclear whether one Great One could kill another in single combat, or otherwise force them back to the heavenly plane—if not, the advantages of such a weapon might outweigh the risks for the person with the most motivation to dispatch other Startouch elves. A contingency.

(But I personally also think that Aaravos's manipulation was behind things like... the formation of the Border, so.)

Anyway, since either arc 3 or the leadup to it will presumably involve a lot of frantic researching, maybe we'll finally get some of the Orphan Queen story and learn some of what she figured out.

#the dragon prince #tdp spoilers #s7 spoilers #the dragon prince spoilers #aaravos #laurelion #shiruakh #cosmic order #kradogsmeta

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sflow-er · 2 months ago

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Henry and Simon’s dynamic over the three seasons

For YR Faves Fest 2024 organised by @youngroyals-events Prompts: 2. Favourite teen side character (+ 7. Favourite not-quite friendship)

In one of my replies to the recent side character ask game, I briefly mentioned being partial to the dynamic between these two. So for this Faves Fest, I decided to elaborate with an analysis post (featuring screenshots of variable quality)!

I want to preface this with a brief acknowledgment of Henry’s privilege and classism. It is not my intention to diminish them. I do, however, feel that it’s a bit apples-to-oranges to compare them to Simon’s views (citrus pun intended). 🍊 is politically active and has put in the effort to form his own beliefs, while 🍏 shows us time and again that he is ignorant of the world outside the elite bubble and not inclined towards deep reflection. He is largely a product of his upbringing and the (liberal conservative) values imparted by his parents.

While Henry doesn’t grow enough to change his core views and values in the canon timeline, he does change his views on Simon. This isn’t enough progress for them to become actual friends before we leave off (I doubt Simon could be friends with someone who only exempts him), but I would still argue that they end the show on amicable terms.

And yes, I mean that in a mutual sense, even if Simon doesn’t soften towards Henry quite as much as Henry softens towards him!

So, let’s dive in!

Dialogue taken from the English CC and [abbreviated or corrected].

1.01: the tax debate

Henry: “Take my dad’s estate, for example. They’re struggling to make ends meet because of the high taxes.” [Simon chuckles and explains his views] Simon: “Like your dad. [Do you know how much he gets in EU subsidies every year]”? Henry: “And what the fuck does your dad do?”

Like most viewers, I find it a lot easier to relate to Simon’s views than Henry’s here – but I do think Henry often gets judged quite harshly for insulting Simon at the end. His comment does not come out of nowhere (cf. Stella’s unprompted dirty look at Simon and Sara when she talks about welfare scamming).

Henry only knows that his father has said their estate is struggling, so of course he won’t take kindly to Simon suggesting that they are actually getting undeserved subsidies instead. It’s also important to note that this estate isn’t just any old farm. It was granted to one of his ancestors as a reward for their services to the Crown, which makes it a core part of his family history. As we learn in 1.04, Henry is a Society boy and very proud of his noble ancestry, and Simon’s comment likely feels like an insult to his entire family. So although his retort is unquestionably rude, it is understandable that he lashes out.

Also, Henry has no way of knowing that Micke is a deadbeat. He is just applying a common stereotype (and potentially making assumptions based on the views Simon just expressed on welfare).

1.02: parallel but separate experiences

Early in this episode, we see Simon side-eye Henry and Walter for the paid tutoring. He decides to follow their example, but as we know he can’t actually afford it, we can already guess it won’t go as well for him as it did for them.

Next, we see Henry in the group as the rowing team ignores Simon at morning training. The camera also pans to him and Walter when August gives that bizarre speech about Simon’s class journey.

These moments highlight how different life at Hillerska (and beyond) looks for Henry and Simon. They are technically coexisting and even doing the same things, but their experiences are nothing alike.

However, there is also some potential for development here. August’s words about rowing bringing people together (and also about the class journey) should absolutely be taken with a heap of salt, but as we no longer see any open animosity between Henry and Simon, we can still wonder if rowing played a part.

Being on the same sports team is an entirely new frame of reference for these guys. They are no longer just the sosse and aristocrat who have been going to school together since pre-canon and clashing over their views; they are crewmates. They may be able to ignore each other for most of the time, but they may also have to do some team activities or even cooperate on occasion. At the very least, they will be around each other several extra times a week from late September/early October to Christmas break. This could definitely help to put them on more neutral ground.

1.05: Henry pays attention to Wilmon

In this episode, Henry learns more about Wilmon than the average Hillerska student knows. He is present when August tells the Society that Wille and Simon “hang out”, and also when Wille changes the plan from Simon to Alexander.

What’s more, he actually looks fairly thoughtful leaving that last meeting. We don’t know if it’s just shock over Wille’s ruthlessness, if he’s thinking about the plan to set up Alexander, or if there’s something else on his mind.

Now, this may veer into overinterpretation, but for the sake of thoroughness, let’s also include the blink and you’ll miss it moment before the Lucia procession where Henry notices Wilmon texting each other. In this cropped screenshot, you can see him looking at Simon, who has just put his phone down and is looking over at Wille.

1.06: Henry shows restraint

As we know, Henry is the only classmate who tries to treat Wille normally after the video, asking if he “saw the match yesterday” (he absolutely knows Wille didn’t). What is perhaps less noticeable is that he also shows more restraint than most of his schoolmates when the rumour mill gets going.

In this scene, Henry is pretty dispassionate reminding Walter that Wilmon sat next to each other at movie night and the two of them talked about it. There is a stark contrast to Walter, who absolutely pounces on that bit of gossip.

This one quick scene could just be a coincidence, but the same thing happens again when Wilmon return to school. Instead of engaging with the others who are all eagerly talking and whispering, Henry is already sitting at his desk minding his own business when Wille arrives. His only reaction to Simon showing up is this quick look, which is immediately followed by his show of kindness to Wille:

So the restraint does look very intentional.

As an aristocrat, monarchist and Society boy, Henry is loyal to Wille, who he now knows has been carrying on with Simon for a while already. He also knows how far Wille went to protect Simon, despite the fact that Simon had actually supplied the drugs, so he is going to side with Wille.

What’s more, Henry’s behaviour in these scenes also confirms that he isn’t hostile to Simon. We can surmise he probably doesn’t think Simon is the most appropriate choice of partner for the crown prince, but he is willing to take his cues from Wille. We never see him sneer, joke, or say anything nasty about Wilmon as a couple (cf. Stella and Fredrika joking about surrogacy).

We are also shown his reaction to Wille hugging Simon before we move on to season two.

2.02: the floorball hug and walk-by

The first interaction between Henry and Simon in S2 is them celebrating a floorball goal with a spontaneous hug, as seen at the top of this post. What a difference a term makes!

Now, I don’t think this moment is meant to signify that they are friends all of a sudden, and I do feel it comes slightly out of the blue. I suspect it was included as a nod to those who already liked Henry after S1, but I for one would’ve preferred to actually see their reconciliation.

But then again, if their initial antagonism was always class conflict rather than personal beef, maybe there was no need for apologies…? Maybe each of them just accepted that the other was going to be around and decided to try and get along (potentially aided by their shared rowing team history)? Henry is following Wille’s lead as we already saw – and as for Simon, I doubt he would be hugging Henry even in the heat of a game if he held a grudge. Whether we saw it or not, they have moved on.

In the same episode, we also have the locker room scene.

Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t believe Henry actually overhears the entire conversation, but he may have still heard something about them having to wait two years (as Simon did raise his voice for that). It’s also possible he comes out of this scene assuming that Wilmon still “hang out” in secret. In any case, he probably assumes that Wille wants to keep the whole thing quiet, as per the usual “policy” on queer relationships among the upper classes. In addition to his monarchist ways, he also seems to be casually friendly with Wille in S2 (keeps inviting him to do stuff, from coffee to pranking Sprucewood). So it makes a lot of sense for him to keep whatever he overhears or suspects to himself.

2.03, 2.05 and 2.06: book report scenes

While Henry must be a nightmare to have in the group, he and Simon are nice to each other in all the book report scenes. This is further proof that they are in a place where they can talk civilly and even work together.

They start the project before the rowing race and only present it the day before the gun range scene, which means they had these group sessions for at least a few weeks (the timeline is a bit wonky here).

2.04: Henry snitches on Wille and Felice

The lunch scene at the start of the episode starts with this bit of vicarious interaction, as Henry and Simon (and Wille too) are amused by the nonsense Walter is spouting about girls:

Also, Walter's monologue feels more comphet every time rewatch it, but I digress.

As this post is focused on Henry and Simon, I’m not going to dig too deep into Henry’s role in spreading the story about Wille and Felice. Suffice it to say that he did tell his canonically gossipy bestie Walter, and it was recently pointed out to me that he seems to have let something slip to someone else as well. In the common room, Walter goes “det var du som sa till…” [you were the one who said to…] just as the focus shifts to Wille and Nils, which suggests that Henry either purposely told someone or misspoke without realising it. The latter would explain why he seems genuinely appalled when Wille confronts him, but it’s not a hill I’d be willing to die on!

If Henry did spread the story on purpose, I assume it was because getting with Felice was considered a credit to Wille and also “fair game” to tell, unlike the relationship with Simon that Wille wanted to keep hidden.

Still, Henry and Simon are definitely on better terms in S2. Even though Henry inadvertently causes pain to Simon with his part in the Wille and Felice thing, they still keep working together on the book report without any animosity.

Insofar as Henry’s lacklustre effort can be called working. Simon is a bigger person than I am for not blowing up at him when he announces minutes before the presentation that he won’t be taking any questions.

3.01: background Henry

We start S3 off with this one-sided interaction where Henry reacts to Wilmon kissing with a mild smirk. No more waiting or secrets to keep.

3.02: double standards on the camping trip

It’s not entirely clear what Henry is thinking when he says the infamous line about gay couples being allowed to share but not straight ones. I think some people read it as him deliberately putting Wilmon on the spot, but personally, I doubt he even realises it’s going to make them uncomfortable. He’s just noticing the double standard and pointing it out to mess with the teacher.

While Simon is very clearly not pleased with Henry for the comment (glares at him while saying to Wille that people are going to think they plan to have sex), he does not seem to hold that against him. Because what we do see them doing soon?

Sitting next to each other by the fire, even though Henry could’ve easily sat with Walter and Simon with Wille:

Also, it seems Henry isn't new to camping, as he tells Wille that part of the fire is too hot to grill a sausage in.

The part where things get interesting is when Henry acts classist towards the Marieberg students.

Henry seems to be down with meeting Rosh and Ayub, who are there as Wille and Simon’s friends. But after Fredrika brings up New York, he agrees that the situation turned “stiff as fuck.” That stiffness was entirely Fredrika’s fault (I think she is at least semi-consciously trying to mark herself as the most compatible partner for Stella there), but Henry seems to feel it was more about Rosh and Ayub not fitting in.

He also sneers and makes nasty comments when the other Marieberg students get into an altercation with Malin, which elicits a frown from Simon.

And yet, Simon does not condemn Henry as strongly as he might have done in the past.

Importantly, Simon tells Wille “it wasn’t the right time for everyone to meet.” This indicates that he could’ve imagined them all getting along at a better time, and it’s pretty clear that also includes Henry. Furthermore, “you [meaning Wille and the others] don’t realise how privileged you are sometimes” is actually a pretty neutral way of putting it. Simon would have been entirely justified if he had said the others were classist pricks, but he blames their privilege and lack of understanding instead of their character.

All of this forms a backdrop for my interpretation of the scenes in the next episodes.

3.03: First of May

Simon: “You do know that you’re not off so you can party the day before, right?” Henry: “Uhh…what?” Simon: “It’s the First of May.” […] “The day of the labour movement?” Henry: “Okay, so what’s their style? How do they celebrate?” Simon, scoffing: “You don’t celebrate. You demonstrate.” [Henry and Walter share a chuckle]

This may be a controversial take, but I don’t think Henry is being particularly nasty to Simon here.

He actually looks and sounds quite sincere asking how the labour movement celebrates. When he and Walter laugh, it reads more as “there he goes again, our very own sosse, saying wacky things!” than the kind of disdain he expressed towards the Marieberg students in the last episode.

Simon also doesn’t take the laughter as an insult; he’s just stupefied by their ignorance. Also, note that he already scoffed at Henry’s question, marking the question as silly.

This exchange is immediately followed by Vincent attacking Simon for his beliefs, which feels like an intentional trick to create contrast between his and Walty’s treatment of Simon.

3.04: the lollipop

In this scene, Henry starts out asking quite nicely and seriously if Simon has another lollipop, as if they had that kind of rapport. Simon makes a face, but then he just shakes his head and nicely says no. It’s only then that Henry switches to offering money for the already half-eaten lollipop, to which Simon reacts with disbelief.

He does not, however, get snarky with Henry. He settles for exchanging a look with Wille as Walty go on to complain about the hunger strike. Only when Henry isn’t present anymore does he point out to Wille how ridiculous Henry was being.

In a sort of parallel to the lunch scene, Simon and Wille now share a chuckle at the wacky thing Henry said:

Feel free to disagree, but I actually wonder if this could be a common pattern between Simon and Henry. They have accepted that they aren’t going to see eye to eye on many things, but instead of getting into conflict, they just roll their eyes/laugh at how the other can seriously believe/say such things. Then they let the conversation move on to something else.

Which is a perfectly valid dynamic. They can acknowledge that their outlooks on life are wildly different without hating each other for it.

3:06: Henry includes Simon

Look, I dislike the library scene as much as the next person. The talk that Henry interrupts between Wilmon was so much more important than anything he could possibly say. It was just a moment of comic relief that didn’t add anything to the story.

Except… Now that we are tracing Henry and Simon’s “not-quite friendship” arc, this scene does give us a conclusion.

Henry: “Hi! Uh, what are you wearing tonight?” [He rambles on about clothes] Wille: “I don’t know if… If I’m coming.” Henry: “Okay…?” Simon: “I don’t know if I can come either.” Henry: “Oh come on, you two have to come!” [He rambles on about how much fun it will be] Simon: “Yeah, we’ll see. I have to go now.” Henry: “The point is that we have to be together! This is the only night we have together, maybe ever. [I mean, we are brothers!]”

In Swedish, Henry goes “vi är ju bröder” just as the music starts. This has been translated to “we are like brothers” in the English CC, which is already quite something, but the little word ju makes the original even stronger. It means that something is true, so instead of just saying they are like brothers, Henry is saying that is what they are.

(In the dub, there is an audible pause after like, so Henry is actually using it as a filler word. They should have put a comma in the CC to denote that.)

Given that Henry prefaces this ramble with “you two have to come” and barely stops to acknowledge Simon’s exit, there’s every reason to assume he is still talking about all of them. He is saying he considers himself, Wille, and also Simon part of the brotherhood that will be disbanded indefinitely come morning and wants them all to have one last night of fun together.

Simon never hears the brothers part and is of course frustrated with Henry for interrupting, but he still takes his leave on a casually friendly note. He gets that Henry wants him to come and have fun (Henry is unaware that Simon doesn’t drink when he tries to persuade them both by talking about the alcohol). Thus, Simon politely says “we will see” even though he has zero intention of going.

We do not see them interact at the party when Simon goes after all, but we do hear Henry being ushered away when Simon comes to talk to Wille. We don’t see it’s Henry, but someone insists that he wants to stay just as we see Walter and Alexander leave, and all three of them were there moments before:

I’m tempted to end this with a parallel to Wille’s initiation party.

Way back in 1.01, Henry and Simon were explicitly shown discussing the first party with their friends. They never talked about it with each other or interacted there – Henry attended as part of the in-crowd, and Simon only got to go because he supplied the alcohol. But for this last party, Henry was the one to get the alcohol, and he specifically invites Simon to come. They still don’t hang out as they are both there with their respective friends, i.e. in their own bubbles, but those bubbles do bump into/brush past one another without clashing.

Kind of like Henry and Simon’s lives.

Thank you for reading this marathon post! I hope my take on these two brings something to your next rewatch, whether you agree with me or not!

#young royals #henry young royals #simon eriksson #young royals analysis #henry and simon #yr faves fest #yr events #YRFavesFest2024 #long post #with pictures!#wish i had the energy to write something new about these two #scheduled post #young royals meta

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lookingforhappy · 7 months ago

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TUA Inconsistencies, Plotholes and Goofs

before u read, pls know that i adore this show and wouldn't be critiquing it this harshly if i wasn't utterly obsessed with it.

I don't think that all of these need fixes or explanations since they function as fun little plot devices etc but I think it's important to note that they do break the story a little. although there are some that really do need fixes.

this comes from a place of interest, analysis, and frustration but not hate.

(also apologies to all the gifmakers who i have indirectly @'d in this post)

here's a list of all the problems i could remember in tua:

The Commission is too OP

(this one I saw posited by another blog but I can't remember who first brought it up? so credit to whoever said this first i think)

The Commission is shown to be capable of:

time travel

time freezing

body cloning & consciousness transplanting (essentially, their workers can live forever because they can build new bodies and transfer their minds as soon as they start to get old/ill)

paradox-proofing

timeline monitoring/spying (the Infinite Switchboard)

if the Commission has had the ISB all along + infinite time + unaging employees, then they have been able to watch every second of history, and every second of every alternate history ever (Lila watches the timeline Five rewound/erased).

If they can see every second of every possible history, then even if they're the most inefficiant organisation ever, they're able to know everything before it/they even exist.

which makes more or less every plot point impossible:

Five would not have been able to return to 2019 without being spotted and hunted down by people who know exactly what he looks like (13yro not 58 yro), exactly where he is (also making the tracker in his arm, and in the sweet wrapper, redundant), and exactly when he's vulnerable eg. when he sleeps, is injured or drunk.

The Handler would not have been able to hide in 1963 and plot against the Commission without being spotted by the Commission and killed/fired. Same thing goes for stealing and hiding multiple Briefcases.

The 1963 Apocalypse would not have been allowed to happen as the Commsission would have had Viktor killed long before it happened.

The Kugelblitz wouldn't have happened because the Commission would have seen it decades or centuries in advance and prevented it (this should be top priority because this is what kills them!).

Herb and Dot's Goals for the Commission

In s1 the Commission wants a very specific timeline to take place (aka the apocalypse) with no deviations, and are willing to do anything and everything to make it so.

Herb and Dot seem more than happy to go along with this, and even believe that the Commission is correct for doing this.

Dot in particular is the Case Manager for the apocalypse, meaning she is the one who spotted Five when he arrived as a 13yro and left him there to die/live a life of pain and isolation. She also was chiefly responsible for ensuring the deaths of 7 billion people including all the Hargreeves' for "the greater good".

Dot is actually seen snitching on Five to The Handler, was implied to be working with The Handler to prevent Five from stopping the apocalypse, and is the one to alert security/sound the alarm when Five starts fighting The Handler.

So it's pretty weird that in s2 and 3 Herb and Dot are suddenly fine with the apocalypse not happening. It's one thing to change management, and another to completely uproot the entire mission statement/ethos of the Commission. The Commission, from the moment Herb and Dot gain control, has no goal or purpose. because they gave up that purpose when they agreed to let the Hargreeves go to an apocalypse free 2019.

This is also weird as Five is completely fine and trusting of them at the end of s2, when all they've done so far to him is prove that they cannot be trusted and will do anything to cause the apocalypse, as well as having left him to suffer alone in an apocalypse for 45 years as well as force him to join the Commission and become a murderer (or else die alone).

The Two Fives + The Briefcase

old!Five doesn't take his Briefcase to 2019 in the original timeline.

So why don't Five and Luther wait until old!Five has left for 2019 to pick his Briefcase up off the ground, where it's entirely unguarded and completely abandoned, and avoid the Paradox Psychosis altogether.

old!Five wasn't in the timeline or remotely near enough to Five to cause Paradox Psychosis when Five originally came up with this plan.

The Grandfather Paradox + Similar Goofs

TUA Time Travel operates on branching/alternate timelines, like Loki, not on a loop/predestined, like HP, and not on one single malleable timeline, like Back to the Future. ergo The Grandfather Paradox cannot exist within the show.

As soon as Five averts the 2019 apocalypse, his existence would trigger a paradox as without the apocalypse he never got trapped and has no reason/knowledge to return to 2019 to prevent it.

Same thing for S2, the only reason the nukes aren't dropped in S2 is bc Five saw it happen and time travelled back to prevent it, but as soon as that apocalypse is prevented, the nukes are never dropped, and so he never sees the apocalypse happen and therefore cannot know to prevent it.

In fact, the very first episode of S2 as a whole should cause the Grandfather Paradox, by the shows own laws: as by causing a nuclear apocalypse, their mothers were never born/did not survive long enough to birth them -> so they cannot be alive -> they cannot time travel -> cannot cause an apocalypse in 1960s -> the mothers were born -> and around and around and around.

A similar goof happens in S2, as Five helps his older self return to 2019 without de-aging himself. Five is concerned that he will cease to exist if his other self doesn't travel to 2019, but his older self does travel back. But as a 58 year old man. However, Five himself doesn't turn into a 58 year old man as he should have if this was a singular malleable timeline. Hence, he needn't have worried as they created a separate branching timeline rather than edit their own timeline.

so essentially, they're creating entirely new alternate timelines and nothing they do changes their own experiences, lives, memories or bodies.

It doesn't matter that their mothers were killed before they were born in the sparrow timeline, because they're not from this branch and therefore still have mothers in their original timeline. which is proven to not affect their current selves.

Which... breaks the entire plot of S3.

(S3 may have also caused another paradox as the reset causes Five to regain his arm, and lose the tattoo, possibly meaning he doesn't found the Commission, meaning essentially none of the series can even start as Five cannot leave the apocalypse without the Commission).

Polk Salad Annie

Five travels to 1982, Wisconsin, to kill the Commission Board. yet he has no Briefcase, cannot time travel on his own, and is shown to meet The Handler separately rather than be picked up by her for transport.

(If Lila took him, then surely he would have attempted to steal the Briefcase from her rather than go through with the plan.)

furthermore, 1982 should be inaccessable. or at least, it should be a nuclear wasteland.

At this point, the events culminating in the prevention of the apocalypse haven't started: The Handler is not in control of the Commission, so Lila can't kidnap Diego to work for them, so he can't find the ISB and discover Viktor is the cause of the apocalypse, so Klaus doesn't know to take Ben to the FBI building, so the apocalypse can't be prevented. Five's action in 1982 is what sets that in motion (The Handler seizes control of the Commission), but 1982 doesn't exist in this timeline, so how does that work?

Five and the Commission don't seem to know how to Timeline hop, only how to create new timelines, and how to move backwards and forwards on their current timeline.

The only way to make 1982 accessable is to remove Viktor from the timeline or prevent the FBI from capturing him. Which they didn't. So how can Five get there.

The 7 Bells

Reginald's reasoning for adopting the superkids is to send them to Oblivion to use it to reset the Universe. He needs himself and a minimum of 7 superkids to do this, any less and Oblivion won't activate, and without him there to program it, nothing changes.

In the Original Timeline, his plan is foiled in 2002 when he looses Five, and he doesn't try to rectify it. Then again in 2006 when he looses Ben, and yet again doesn't rectify it.

He screws himself over even worse by killing himself in 2019, as now he cannot even go to Oblivion to program it. Klaus could theoretically summon or be possessed by Reginald, but once again, Reginald only has 5 out of 7, and with Klaus indisposed by summoning Reginald, he only has 4 available to power Oblivion.

Even stranger, he could have adopted spares for if situations like Five and Ben happen, in the form of the Sparrows, but he chose not to.

its also a strange choice to build the academy(s) as public superheroes, as he chose to send his only 7 children into life threatening situations repeatedly, which nearly killed Luther, probably nearly killed sparrow Ben, and did kill umbrella Ben.

He also admits that he purposefully stunted the Umbrella's powers, which contradicts his Oblivion plan, where they need to fight 3 near-immortal Guardians. it also contradicts his words to Klaus in s1 - that he's disappointed because Klaus never reached his true potential. Which, if he killed himself with the plan to have Klaus summon him to reprogram Oblivion, he would need Klaus at full power to be able to do that at all.

The Sparrows also don't seem to have this issue, they have great control of their powers, Ben especially. so why bother stunting one lot of kids, but not the other.

Smaller Goofs

-Luther being normal not monkey in 2015 (1x03) when he had his accident in 2012 (1x04) is a big goof up

-klaus not reanimating in the original apocalypse with five remains unexplained

-in s1 the commission is set in 1955 (1x06), in s3 it's set in 1953 (3x07) and this remains unexplained

-klaus was kidnapped in just a towel but Hazel and Cha-Cha have his jacket for some reason

-all of the Founder Five plotline bc there is no given reasoning for why Five would willingly go against all of his morals and create the organisation that caused him pain (both emotional and physical) and got his family killed.

-if Luther was on the moon for a purpose, why not have him running useful tests to make sure Abigail's pod remains functioning? or acting as a sentry to make sure no one sends an exploration mission to the moon/behind the moon? why just have him send samples, that reginald never even opens, every day for 4 years? and how could sparrow reginald know what umbrella reginald planned for Luther? they're different people.

-edit: 12/07/24 the newspaper Five finds in the apocalypse is dated as 1st April, but when he finds the same newspaper at the end of season 1, it's still March 31st and Diego says that newspaper was sold that morning.

#tua #the umbrella academy #luther hargreeves #diego hargreeves #allison hargreeves #klaus hargreeves #five hargreeves #ben hargreeves #viktor hargreeves #reginald hargreeves

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shaunashpmn · 30 days ago

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follow up analysis post to this: @lauraleetaylor !!

i don’t think you can fully understand this concept without touching on 4 things: nat’s upbringing, lottie’s upbringing, and each of their relationships with the group before and after the crash. so i tried to section them, but they also do lead into each other a lot so it’s hard to do exactly :)

nat’s upbringing

compared to most of (if not all) the other characters, we actually hear a lot about nat’s childhood and her upbringing as a whole. we know she grew up in a trailer, presumably somewhere on the outskirts of town considering jackie is suggested to live more in the central, upper/middle-class area and usually these two homes don’t end up situated near each other. we know she had an abusive alcoholic father, and a mostly neglectful mother, although seemingly her mother’s neglect was rooted in fear instead of abusive tendencies like her fathers.

alcoholism and child abuse are two of the core stereotypes projected onto working class people, and by fitting these stereotypes, natalie faces a lot of societal backlash. she herself gets into drinking and drugs, especially following her father’s death, and even takes other measures such as dying her hair to try and distance herself from the pretty shit reality she has to live in.

due to the history of sex work and it’s stigma amongst working class communities, nat is also often stereotyped as a “slut”. even at such a young age, and having not slept with an outlandish number of people. even those who don’t know really anything about her perceive her this way, which is yet another example of the way negative stereotyping is so prevalent amongst lower classes. this is also linked heavily to sexism, of course, but being a teenager who has seen this kind of thing play out time and time again, i find it incredibly hard to believe that this is directed at nat just because they “don’t like her”.

we see how growing up in poverty has affected her life since the very beginning and even well into the adult timeline. she still reminisces on her teen years, visiting her mother and living in a motel instead of somewhere more permanent. we aren’t exactly sure whether this is down to choice or not (it’s implied not), but either way, it’s an example of the same thing.

if this isn’t by choice (which again i do believe), it’s also a clear example of the fact that the cycle of poverty is near impossible to break, even after such unusual circumstances that have presumably changed everything in her life. there is no escape.

nat’s relationship with her personal life is, in my opinion, a strong depiction of this struggle.

lottie’s upbringing

as is made abundantly clear from pretty much the beginning, lottie grew up super wealthy. as in, uber-wealthy. although some of the yellowjackets share similar childhoods in terms of financial status (nat and van, shauna and taissa, jackie and lottie in many ways), lottie’s is considered almost “unbeatable”.

we see this in lots of ways, too - she has maids, a massive house, expensive clothes, private jets. when she needs psychiatric help, it is offered to her immediately and in the most extreme ways. she even spends 15 years in a facility in switzerland because keeping her somewhere ‘average’ is seemingly not enough for her parents.

lottie is also neglected heavily by her father and somewhat by her mother too. she is supposedly raised mostly by nannies and when she is interacting with her parents they aren’t focussed on her wellbeing, only their safety. but there isn’t the same kind of social stigma surrounding this, and it’s made relatively clear.

amongst the upper upper class, being able to neglect your child is essentially admirable. the fact her parents are able to afford full-time childcare is a stereotypical bragging point for the rich, as these services aren’t cheap and the way in which they care for lottie (the quality of the service) isn’t either. she recieves top healthcare and is on full-time schizophrenia medication, which isn’t cheap either. these things sound positive from the outside, but it means she is left lonely.

lottie also doesn’t have the same relationship with her childhood as nat does. she isn’t positive about it, but she doesn’t seem to think about it much at all, instead focussing more on their time on the wilderness. although this is obviously painful in it’s own ways, it does highlight a privilege that the upper class, and lottie, are able to benefit from a lot. although her childhood was lonely, it wasn’t nearly as traumatic.

this is in part due to the fact that she was still technically being cared for, and in part due to the fact that people were celebrating her regardless. lottie’s relation to classism is obviously harder to pinpoint, because she’s not so much on the receiving end, but it does very much link in. (and link to my next point!)

relationships with the group (pre-crash)

lottie isn’t the ‘popular girl’ that people make her out to be. she’s no jackie, not even a shauna. but she’s not a nat, either.

lottie, despite being equally shy, and an equal balance of kind, argumentative and funny, is respected amongst the girls even before the crash. but nat isn’t. where lottie is wearing fluffy jumpers, pink plaid skirts and bunches, nat is wearing leather jackets, red plaid skirts and a bleached ‘mullet’. the two exist in a very similar way, both keeping to themselves socially but still interacting sometimes - it’s just that those interactions are totally different.

people laugh at lottie’s jokes, they trust her, they thank her for what she does for them. at the same time, nat is outcasted. people make up rumours about nat - supposedly because they don’t know much about her, but they know equally little about lottie and don’t do the same to her.

if nat was the one with a psychiatric disorder like schizophrenia, she would almost definitely be being consistently harassed and hatecrimed, but lottie’s family are able to bury it and even if that information did come out, the jealousy of her wealth would still override the ableism - not completely, obviously, but a considerable amount.

general speaking, people like lottie and don’t like nat, because the preconceived notions they have about each of them are so different, and weigh so heavily in lottie’s favour, regardless of who they each actually are.

this isn’t pre-crash, but even in the adult timeline they are still forced into these roles. lottie has enough inheritence and social power to start camp green pine, where she serves as the ‘leader’, and nat is forced to live either in a motel or on lottie’s property- literally until she dies there. it’s a subtle metaphor, and it can also be explained in many different ways, but if you look for it it’s almost always there.

relationships with the group (post-crash)

lottie and nat both go into the wilderness with just as much ambition behind their respective beliefs. if we exclude 2:08 and 2:09 (for the sake of making a fair argument for the bulk of the show so far, i’ll come back to them), nat is as strongly committed to her rationalism and survivalist instinct as lottie is to her supernatural beliefs.

the wilderness cult and lottie’s role in it have very little to no backing, and the few bits they do have can be explained by trauma, chance or other circumstances. nat’s beliefs are rooted in their life at home and her determination to allow them to survive. she has brought them the bulk of their food, water and safety. she has survived without the cult, which is something the others do not believe possible.

the others don’t listen to nat because they have never listened to nat. because it’s easier for them to ignore her ideas and not have to face a. their inner prejudice and b. reality. nat commits to reality because that’s what she’s always had to do to survive. growing up in an abusive household and in an impoverished area, she knows how to use firearms. how to ration and take matters into her own hands when there isn’t food on the table. how to defend herself and others from danger and arguments when there simply isn’t the time or capacity for it.

nat has infinitely more survival knowledge than lottie, but they don’t listen to her, because they don’t want to accept that that’s true. there are so many examples of this kind of discrimination happening against minorities and struggling communities for literally forever, and it’s such an integral part of the yellowjackets narrative and billions of real-life stories, too.

silencing the working class subconsciously because of the beliefs you hold internally is ‘textbook’ classism !!!

regardless of whether or not the girls are aware of lottie’s psychological condition (which i have to imagine at least some of them are aware of, at least by the time they are rescued and she’s immediately sent to hospital), there is little reason for them to believe in her aside from desperation.

now, obviously there’s other ways to explain every single one of these points. that’s the entire purpose of the show. if i wanted, i could write something like this for some kind of prejudice between most of the characters. that’s the whole point, is that it’s up to interpretation! but i personally think that in a world so heavily affected by classism, amongst a group of teenagers from across the classes, and focussing on the way this system of life ages with you despite other circumstances, it feels so important to me at least that it’s highlighted, and especially because it’s done so well whether it’s intentional or not.

i also think it adds so many interesting layers to each of them! i could also talk about each of the characters’ childhoods and societal upbringing individually for literally days so let me know if you’re curious! sorry this is so long! but yes basically, i believe the reason the group believes in lottie and resents nat for her opposing beliefs is classism. xx

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets analysis #natalie scatorccio #lottie matthews #classism #themes in yellowjackets #sophie thatcher #courtney eaton #classism in tv #yj #lottienat #this is so long jfc #im sorry😭 im passionate if you cant tell x #🕊️

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velvet4510 · 15 days ago

Text

A Very-Long Untangling Analysis of the Fox X-Men Continuity

Here’s my attempt at making sense of it all. All of my thoughts and ideas about continuity discrepancies and time travel piled up in one big info dump.

Please bear in mind that this interpretation is heavily biased in favor of the Days of Future Past Rogue Cut and against Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, which hopefully won’t cause too much upset.

It also mentions Cherik as if it’s official canon because duh.

It also will cite links to various other posts I’ve made in the past which support my claims.

It also is gonna get long. Very long. Very very very very long. So proceed at your own risk.

So here’s my thesis:

The series depicts 8 separate timelines within 3 different universes.

UNIVERSE 1

Timeline 1: First Class (Charles & Erik are lovers in 1962; Moira recalls some events) ➡️ Origins: Wolverine ➡️ X-Men ➡️ X2 ➡️ The Last Stand ➡️ The Wolverine ➡️ Days of Future Past Rogue Cut dark future

Timeline 2 (divergence of Timeline 1): First Class (Charles & Erik are lovers in 1962; Moira recalls some events) ➡️ Days of Future Past Rogue Cut 1973 events ➡️ Erik remains true to himself in the aftermath ➡️ Days of Future Past new 2023 with history-teacher Logan

UNIVERSE 2

Timeline 3: Events similar to the OG trilogy ➡️ Deadpool ➡️ Deadpool 2 Original Events (Russell becomes a killer) ➡️ Logan ➡️ The New Mutants ➡️ Cable’s family dies ➡️ Laura gets pruned

Timeline 4 (divergence of Timeline 3): Deadpool ➡️ Deadpool 2 main events (Cable time-travels, Vanessa dies, Wade stops Russell and dies)

Timeline 5 (divergence of Timeline 4): Deadpool ➡️ Deadpool 2 climactic time-travel (Cable saves Wade)

Timeline 6 (divergence of Timeline 3): Deadpool ➡️ Deadpool 2 post-credits scene (Wade saves Vanessa) ➡️ Deadpool & Wolverine

UNIVERSE 3

Timeline 7: First Class (Charles & Erik remain just friends; Moira recalls nothing) ➡️ Events similar to OG trilogy ➡️ DOFP Theatrical Cut dark future

Timeline 8 (divergence of Timeline 7): First Class (Charles & Erik remain just friends; Moira recalls nothing) ➡️ DOFP Theatrical Cut 1973 events ➡️ Erik betrays his values and settles down with Magda ➡️ Apocalypse (part or all dream) ➡️ Dark Phoenix (dream)

Now I will elaborate.

TIMELINES VS UNIVERSES

First off, “timelines” and “universes” are confusing terms in Marvel. Some say they’re the same thing, others say they’re separate things. But I believe the ultimate answer to this question can be found in What If…? Season 1 Episode 4, in which the Ancient One creates a split that forms two timelines (and thus two variants of Dr. Strange) in one universe. Since this is canonically possible, I think it explains many of the X-Men series’ discrepancies.

THEY CANNOT ALL BE IN 1 UNIVERSE

Secondly, I’m sorry to Deadpool & Wolverine, but there is absolutely no way that every film in the Fox series takes place in the same universe. There are way too many inconsistencies for that to be possible. I know such a notion takes away a bit from the impact of Wade and Logan’s efforts to save that universe, and Logan replacing the anchor being, but still. It just doesn’t add up. The film’s events are direct follow-ups to DP 1 and 2, and to Logan. Wade’s universe is dying because of Logan’s death in Logan. OK, so those 4 films happen in the same universe for sure. But none of the other films do.

DIFFERENT TIME TRAVEL RULES

One major reason there are multiple universes at play here is that the series depicts two different kinds of time travel that have two different repercussions:

Kitty Pryde’s consciousness projection, which rewrites history

Cable’s device, which causes timeline branching and universe-hopping (just like MCU quantum time travel)

So Logan’s time travel in DOFP overwrote/erased his original timeline (the events of Origins, the OG trilogy, and The Wolverine) … whereas Cable’s time travel in DP 2 split his universe into multiple timelines. (This is proven by the fact that even though Wade lives in a timeline where Vanessa is alive in DP&W, the universe is still dying because of the events of Logan. So none of Cable’s time traveling in DP 2 overwrote/erased Logan.)

These are two different rules of time travel, which makes it all the more likely that they happen in different universes.

Therefore, any universe in which Logan time-traveled to stop the Sentinels is NOT the same universe as the DP/Logan universe.

OTHER CONTINUITY ISSUES

Wade is in his 30s in Origins, which is set in 1979 … and Wade is in his 30s in the DP films, which is set in the 2010s.

Warren Worthington III is 12 years old in 1996 at the beginning of The Last Stand and a young adult during the main events in the 2000s … and he is a young adult in 1983 in Apocalypse.

Colossus has an American accent in the OG trilogy and a Russian accent in the DP films.

Mutant children are seen thriving in 2023 at the end of DOFP, whereas in the world of Logan, mutants stopped being born in 2004.

Which brings me to one of my most major arguments here:

THE CONSEQUENCES OF LOGAN’S TIME TRAVEL

Logan’s time-travel in DOFP only changed history starting in 1973; everything that came before 1973 stayed exactly the same in that universe. So we cannot possibly say that DOFP caused Wade to be born decades later or Warren to be born decades earlier in its new timeline. That is impossible.

Also, the children at the end of DOFP are irrefutable proof that Logan did not wake up in a world where mutants have been dying out since 2004 and where he and Charles are destined to be killed by X-24. That is impossible.

Therefore, neither Apocalypse nor the DP films nor Logan can possibly take place in Universe 1 (the same universe as the OG trilogy or Origins).

WHAT ABOUT THE DISCREPANCIES IN FIRST CLASS?

DOFP firmly establishes that despite the continuity errors, First Class is absolutely a prequel to the OG trilogy and occurs in the same universe. In this post, I lay out in detail how the few plot holes between these films may be logically explained.

THE X-MEN’S CAMEO IN DEADPOOL 2

All I can say is this is obviously a meta joke created in Wade’s head for the audience. In no possible version of events do the ages of the X-Men in their brief cameo in this movie make any sense.

UNIVERSE 1 vs. UNIVERSE 2

Ok, so now we’ve firmly established that:

Universe 1 consists only of FC, Origins, the OG trilogy, Wolverine, and DOFP. Its history is fully rewritten starting in 1973, so in both versions of history, Wade Wilson is always born in the 1940s and thus in his 30s in 1979 … and Warren Worthington III is always born in the 1980s and thus a child in the 90s and adult in the 2000s. Colossus emigrates from Russia to the U.S. at an early age and grows up with an American accent.

Universe 2 consists only of DP 1, DP 2, Logan, and DP&W. There was no time-travel in this world, and yet no Sentinels were created. Instead, Transigen put mutation-killing poisoning in food, which drove mutants to near-extinction by 2029. This makes 14-year-old Russell in DP 2 one of the last mutants to be born before the poisoning took effect. Cable’s and Wade’s time-traveling created multiple branches, but they all coexist in this universe. Wade Wilson was born in the 1970s, and thus he’s a thirty-something in the 2010s. Colossus grew up in Russia and thus maintained a Russian accent. After escaping the Void, Laura relocated from her original timeline (Timeline 3) to Timeline 6, while staying in the same universe.

THE DIFFERENT CUTS OF DAYS OF FUTURE PAST

But wait, you may say. DOFP and Apocalypse also must exist in the same universe since Apocalypse is a direct sequel to the 1973 events of DOFP. So doesn’t Apocalypse have to happen in Universe 1, as well?

Well, here’s the explanation for that:

Consider the existence of two different cuts of DOFP: the theatrical cut and the Rogue Cut.

Also consider the alternate ending filmed for DOFP, in which Logan is pulled from the river in 1973 by the real Stryker, a perfect lead-in to him being Weapon X in Apocalypse … whereas the actual DOFP ending shows Raven rescuing him that day, which changed his fate and kept him out of Stryker’s hands.

If you go beyond the meta and think about the multiverse, it becomes extremely plausible to assume that there was more than one universe in which Logan time-traveled via Kitty to stop the Sentinels.

In one of these universes (which I’ve labeled Universe 1 out of my preference for the Rogue Cut), within the dark future, Kitty’s wounds forced Erik, Charles, and Bobby to rescue Rogue to replace her, Bobby was killed, the mansion was blown up, Rogue took over Kitty’s job, and Kitty pulled Erik through the wall back into the temple when the Sentinels attacked him. Meanwhile in the past, Raven chose to stop by the mansion, steal a moment with Hank, and break Cerebro on her way to DC. After DC, she went undercover as Stryker, rescued Logan from the river, and most likely sent him to safety at the mansion with Charles and Hank.

In the other universe (which I’ve labeled Universe 3), Kitty kept Logan in the past through to the end, Bobby stayed and died in the temple, and Blink sent Erik back into the temple with a portal. Meanwhile in the past, Raven flew directly from Paris to DC and Charles used Cerebro to deduce her destination. After DC, Raven went her own way, and Stryker himself pulled Logan from the river and turned him into Weapon X.

APOCALYPSE AND DARK PHOENIX AS MERE BAD DREAMS

Now you’ll also notice I wrote the word “dream” next to Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix in my outline of Universe 3. And here’s where the bias comes in. Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix make so little sense that, as I also mentioned in this post, I declare they are no more than bad dreams in Erik’s and Charles’ heads at some point after 1973 in Universe 3.

Dark Phoenix in particular, just unfolds like a dream. None of the characters’ actions make any logical sense based on what we know about them. It all just feels like Charles’ worst nightmare of being suddenly abandoned and betrayed by everyone he loves, via either death or rejection … because IT IS.

Apocalypse is more complicated. It’s not as bad as Dark Phoenix but it’s also pretty darn stupid in many ways.

I laid out in great detail in this post why Erik’s family plotline makes zero sense for his character, Cherik or no Cherik. This is why I wrote that in Universe 1, Erik “remains true to himself in the aftermath of DOFP.” This fic and this fic and this fic (none of which are mine) are examples of in-character behavior for Erik which I imagine resemble his post-DOFP actions in that reality.

I also feel it doesn’t make any sense that Peter isn’t already a student at the school in 1983. There’s literally no reason why Charles wouldn’t have sought him out as his first student when he reopened the school in 1973, after the events of DOFP. It’s totally implausible that it would take 10 years for Peter to get involved with the X-Men again.

The abomination that is the fridging of Magda and Nina speaks for itself.

The abomination that is Peter not telling Erik they’re related at the most opportune moment also speaks for itself.

So this movie might be entirely a dream as well; I’d be fine with that.

APOCALYPSE AS PARTIALLY A DREAM

However, I included Apocalypse in Universe 3 as possibly “part dream” for a few reasons.

Despite the film’s stupidity, I expressed in this post the missed opportunity that is Nina Gurzsky. And in this post and this post, I expressed my fondness for a version of events where Nina survived and grew up thriving at the school with her siblings. Nina’s very existence stems from Erik behaving totally OOC after DOFP … and yet I can’t help but love her as her own character. If the writers were gonna make Erik behave in an OOC way for her to exist, then they should’ve gone all the way in letting her actually be a damn character.

I also expressed in this post how Erik settling down with someone who isn’t Charles makes very little sense if they got together during First Class. It could be somewhat more plausible if this is a version of events where they did NOT get together then.

I also mentioned in this post the inconsistency of Moira’s memories at the end of First Class and in Apocalypse. This could only be fixed by there being two different versions of events: one where Charles only erased some of her memories, and one where he erased all of them.

Which is why I labeled Universe 3 as containing “First Class (Charles & Erik remain just friends; Moira recalls nothing)” and “Erik betrays his values and settles down with Magda.”

It also could be that in Universe 3, the deleted scenes between Charles and Moira in First Class canonically happened, thus explaining his fixation on her in Apocalypse. In 1962, Charles & Erik remained on a river in Egypt, and Charles was with Moira. Thus in the 1970s, Erik finds himself capable of settling down with a random woman (even though my other reasons for this making no sense still stand, but for the sake of allowing for a world where Nina lives, I’ll let it go just for that).

NINA’S “DEATH”

Therefore, it’s somewhat possible that in Universe 3, the first third of Apocalypse is real, leading up to the moment Erik agrees to surrender himself to the Polish police.

From Nina’s death onward, the rest of the film is a nightmare of Erik’s, in which his mind envisions that he lost his beloved daughter that day and then was coerced by En Sabah Nur into becoming a mass murderer and hurting Charles and he never learned the truth about Peter.

If you think about it, Nina’s death scene in the film actually plays out like a nightmare would. Notice how even though she’s crying and screaming for her dad, she doesn’t move. She doesn’t struggle to pull away from her mom and run toward her dad. When her mom kneels in front of her, she doesn’t resist. No 8-year-old kid would be standing totally still in this situation, without flinching. Also Erik doesn’t make any more efforts to comfort her as she’s crying. He just silently stares at her, watching her scream, then silently stares at the attacking birds. Nor does Magda do anything effective; her words translate to “stop, Nina, stop!” No “we’ll be ok,” “he’s not gonna get hurt,” nothing that would actually calm Nina down. Then of course, the arrow hitting TWO people when the dude ISN’T EVEN LOOKING defies all logic and all reality. The whole thing only makes sense as Erik’s nightmare. We’ve all had those bad dreams where we want to move but we can’t, we’re frozen and unable to do what we want to do as something scary is coming at us. That’s exactly how Erik, Magda, and Nina all behave in this scene.

In reality, when Erik gave himself up in Universe 3, basically, the events of this fic unfolded. This isn’t my own fic, all credit belongs to its author WaxRhapsodic, but it is so unbelievably great that I declare it’s what really happened in this world.

To summarize, Nina was injured but not killed by the arrow that killed Magda, then Erik & Nina moved to the mansion, where Nina bonded closely with Charles, Peter, Wanda, and Lorna, and Erik & Charles finally got together.

THE OG TRILOGY AND LOGAN

Lastly, you may notice I also put “events similar to the OG trilogy” in my outline of Universe 2. Why did I do this?

There are many hints in Logan that something similar to the OG trilogy happened in that world.

Charles references the Statue of Liberty incident from X-Men 1, which never happened in a world where Logan time-traveled.

In a deleted scene, Charles claims Logan was married to Jean before he killed her. This could be true or it could be Charles’ confusion in his dementia.

Jean’s absence from the story is glaring: considering her power level, it is quite unlikely that Charles could’ve killed her in the Westchester Incident.

Thus, in this world, the events of the OG trilogy including The Last Stand must have happened. But instead of Sentinels, humans weaponized the anti-mutant food poisoning to wipe out mutants once the cure proved to be a failure. So by the time of the Westchester Incident, Jean was already dead.

This explains Charles’ condition in Logan. His disease is not the result of mere old age. It is a result of 3 things:

The impact of the food poisoning on his mutation as well as his overall health.

His mind struggling to remain in harmony with his twin brother’s body which he inhabited in the post-credits scene of The Last Stand after the Phoenix destroyed his original body. (In Universe 1, the Sentinel apocalypse unfolded before the negative longterm side effects of his consciousness transference could take hold.)

Erik’s absence, which can only be explained by his death prior to the film’s events. In this post and this post, I theorize in more depth that his sudden death was the final straw for Charles’ mental health that triggered the Westchester Incident.

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