#very loose theory

[jonathanbyersphd]

My crazy, out of left field, BARELY based in canon theory is that Holly has powers/is genetically Henry's daughter

[lucabyte]

monologue

[westbifire]

Theories!

Ok so my theories are based on the trailer were it calls the TS world a "decaying world". The game talks about human society dying, But hear me out! what if its referring to the world actually dying.

What if whatever Kuras did to mess up our world, never ended, and is slowly making the planet die (omg kinda like our world!).

Also maybe the Senobium closed their doors to research a solution for the world and/or keep it a secret if the world ending is not common knowledge. Which still makes them jerks.

I can't remember who made a post about this but i do think a big disaster will happen in Eridia. (Its literally called "The Last Bastion Of Humanity" the city's doomed).

Last thought but I have a suspicion Kuras had some play in the "reality split" from the beginning of the demo.

[ovenproofowl]

we talk about scully's sceptisism surrounding evidence of the paranormal a lot, but my man john doggett was full-on shot dead, eaten by the monster-of-the-week, regurgitated, and then reconstitued from said regurgitated slime -- and even after all that an alien conspiracy was still too far of a stretch for him to wrap his head around.

[seramilla]

WAIT!!! Imagine if Carmilla wants to TEST Velvette so she lets the overlord get drunk in public and surprisingly Velvette doesn't flirt with anyone?!?!

In fact...

Random sinner: Flirts with drunk Velvette.

Velvette alarmed: stop I'm married!!

Everyone: Huh?!?

Velvette: Well not yet but I will be when I gather the nerve to ask them!!!

Carmilla would be testing Velvette, to see how dedicated she really is to her daughter. But fortunately for Carmilla, Velvette finds most people other than her girlfriends and extended family absolutely disgusting. If a stranger, or someone she isn't comfortable with, tries to flirt with her when she's thrown back a few, she'll get these sudden moments of clarity where she's like, "YOU'RE NOT ONE OF MY WIVES! I DON'T KNOW YOU!" and hits them with her purse.

[tokiro07]

Undead Unluck ch.231 thoughts

[Do You Remember~ The 17th Night of November~]

(Topics: criticism - pacing/narrative focus, character analysis - Gina/Feng/Julia/Billy, speculation - Soul/Ruin)

Juggling Glass and Rubber

Damn, Tozuka, you weren't lyin', that Unjustice can sweep the Master Rules!

I'll admit I am a little disappointed by this turn of events because, like I was saying the last several weeks, I expected there to be an extra wrinkle that kept Unjustice from trivializing all of the MR fights, especially the ones that hadn't actually happened yet!

Yusai I was always pretty shaky on, and since she never got much characterization going in, I'm not exactly surprised, but the rest were definitely bummers

I've said before that I'm fine with skipping the Sick fight since Rip and Latla's climax already happened, but it's not like there was nothing to be done with it, like focusing on Sick's desire for revenge or having Rip look back on the mistakes he made in L100

Same thing with Billy and Tatiana's reunion - technically the climax of their joint arc was at the end of L100 when they promised to stay by each other's side until death, but I always thought of that as the setup to an upcoming payoff, not the payoff itself. It's definitely still salvageable here, but I think having Tatiana come in to save Billy when he's having trouble would have felt a lot more cathartic if it was focused on and analyzed rather than just...happening. Some insight as to why Billy was having trouble using Unjustice, like perhaps being overloaded with too many new Rules or reconciling with the choices he'd made, would have given Tatiana something internal to save him from as well as something external

I guess my issue here is that we're not really getting to see the effects that Remember is having on the cast as a whole, which I think would have better served as the focus here. I don't know if it's that Tozuka has been given a set number of chapters to work with by Jump or what, but it seems likely that Tozuka had ideas for how he wanted to execute everyone's arcs and fights but had to prioritize who to give the lion's share of the focus to for the sake of maximizing narrative impact

Case in point, the characters who he did manage to analyze here each had a pretty unique interaction with Remember

Remember Who You Are

Despite how brief their scenes are here, I do think that Gina and Feng's moments illustrate Remember's value remarkably well

Gina starts referring to everyone by the old nicknames she used for them in L100, only to amend "L'il Lucky" back to just "Fuuko," directly demonstrating the mental gap between the present and past. Gina naturally picks up her old habit, but isn't restricted by it. The respect and love she has for Fuuko goes beyond what can be expressed by a cute nickname, and those feelings were forged through L101 Gina's relationship with Fuuko. It's subtle, but it's a nice little cherry on top of Gina's arc

Feng, meanwhile, is noted to be getting stronger as Time ages him. This could be taken two ways: either he's stronger because of Remember and Time misread the situation, OR because Feng knows that he would have spent his time training and improving, his body, mind and soul are developing proportionally rather than being aged in a vacuum. The latter is thematically appropriate to countering Time's philosophy that age's function is to weed out those who have outlived their usefulness, while the former is a direct result of all of Feng's accumulated years across loops compounding simultaneously. Could be a little of both, honestly

What's even better about Feng's moment, though, is what he says in response to Julia's help: "I'm not deserving of your charity." In the past, Feng definitely would have been mad about getting help, resenting the idea that anyone thought he couldn't hack it on his own, but that's not what he said here. He believes he's done nothing to earn Julia's aid, that whatever Time was going to do to him, he had coming, and this is certainly because he remembers what he did. All of the people that he's ever killed, the lives that he ruined, especially his own son's, he now knows and can look back on from the perspective of having just abandoned the mentality he had back then

If Feng still believed in individual strength before receiving Remember, he probably would have looked back on the failures of his past as the results of his own physical weakness, not because of a flawed philosophy. Instead, Feng has already proven that he's stronger now after learning the true value of his age and legacy, so while he can still improve thanks to the lessons he can learn from his past self, the current Feng is able to retain his new outlook because he has an objective point of comparison that this was the farthest he ever made it

These are the sorts of subtle advancements I wanted to see from the whole cast, and again, while we still can see them, I think having a chapter dedicated to showing each little vignette would have been more effective than either breaking them up like this or showing such a notable imbalance between them

At the very least, though, even without being the primary focus of the chapter, Julia's interaction with Remember is far and away the most interesting one

Welcome Back, Juiz

Julia's behavior just before and after Fuuko actives Remember easily provides the most contrast of everyone and best demonstrates the tremendous growth rate that Remember allows

Prior to Remember, Julia was only able to use Unjustice involuntarily. To great effect, mind you, but still by accident: first when she stopped Soul's attack, and (seemingly) second, when she used it to reduce the damage of Soul's attack and ride it back to the surface. It's not explicitly stated that that's what happened here, but if Soul's intention was to kill Julia with that, he really dropped the ball, so I choose to believe that his bloodlust was negated by Unjustice

Afterwards, Julia was using Unjustice like a pro. She dropped War down a phase, got Time to bring Feng back to his prime, and even got Death to take out Luck, a feat that Fuuko objectively wouldn't have been able to accomplish with Unluck alone since Luck would have been able to avert Death's inadvertent attack with his good fortune. The most impressive part to me, though, is that she was able to channel Unjustice into her soul!

By putting Unjustice in her saber, Julia effectively injected Unjustice directly into Change's body, ensuring that she couldn't live by her own philosophy of constant change, even if Julia wasn't physically there to make visual contact. Juiz never learned soul manipulation, and Julia only just now mastered Unjustice thanks to her memories, so the fact that Julia was able to integrate those two abilities into such a high level technique is proof that her current self has in no way been overtaken by Juiz's memories, the most major worry that everyone had for Remember's use

That's not to say that none of Juiz's experiences made it to Julia, she still did remember Juiz's entire life after all. Beyond just Juiz's techniques and physical abilities, Julia went from panicking over Soul's attacks and Victor's injuries to calmly and confidently taking out the MRs one by one. She knows now what she's capable of and the weight that she carries, and she remembers what kind of relationships she had with everyone else. This is likely why she went to Billy first - both to give him access to Unjustice to make him stronger and to remind him that, despite their pasts, they aren't enemies anymore

The look of shock on Billy's face suggests that he was paralyzed by the realization of his past actions, and it's Julia's words that snap him back into the present and bring a smile back to his face. That's really what I was talking about earlier; giving Billy an internal conflict with his memories would have provided an angle that no one else really had while also allowing him a stronger character moment with both Julia and Tatiana

Still, even if it's a weaker moment than it could have been, I do appreciate Julia's direct acknowledgment of Billy as an ally, as it at least subtly harkens back to their previous encounter. Where previously Billy stole Unjustice and lost the ability to use it after Juiz had some time to think about his motivations as an enemy, this time Julia is willingly entrusting Unjustice to Billy as an ally

Actually, I wonder if perhaps that's why Tozuka had Billy fail to use Unjustice on Sick, because he is still fighting that internal conflict...for now, I'll choose to believe that Tozuka has that in his back pocket, but I won't be redacting any of my criticisms until he makes good on that, as this review is based on my immediate interpretations and I don't want to erase all of this and redo it...

Along the same lines, not only does Tozuka still have a backdoor for analyzing Billy, he also still has one for giving us some more cool moments for the rest of the Master Rules as well

Put Me Back in, Coach!

Despite one-shotting seven MRs all at once, Julia didn't actually manage to clear the field. The Union's gearing up to face Sun, but they seem to be forgetting: they didn't actually beat Soul. He's still in the Roundtable Room, and he's undoubtedly more pissed than ever

I'm not sure if I would have caught this on my own before seeing their post on this, but Webmantis on twitter pointed out that the MRs' souls must all have been sent to Subspace, the cosmic waiting room that all souls go too between loops. They note that, since Soul hasn't entered Phase 3 yet, he'll most likely be able to bring everyone back

However, they also note that doing so would be an odd narrative choice, as it would make Julia's steamrolling seem kinda pointless. Why bother killing off a bunch of characters just to revive them in the next chapter?

Fortunately, I think I've come up with the perfect answer to that very question!

Firstly, it's to show off Julia's post-Remember Unjustice; we were promised a sweep, and Tozuka made good on it in spectacular fashion. Second, and more importantly, their deaths are necessary for Soul to reach Phase 3

Fuel for the Fire

You may recall from a few weeks ago that I described the mechanism that the MRs use to reach Phase 3 is absorbing their Rule directly: Change absorbed the change in her shape when she was cut in half, Time absorbed Shen's lifespan, War absorbed Billy and Tella's violence, Justice absorbed Yusai's resolve, etc. This is why Death only just now reached Phase 3, because no one was dying the entire battle until she was forced to personally kill Luck, and Luck was likely being prevented from absorbing any fortune by Unluck

So now that all of the MRs other than Soul are dead, their souls are free of their vessels. I don't know if their vessels were actually preventing Soul from accessing their souls, but since he seems to consider the others his friends, he probably didn't want to resort to absorbing them either way, but now? It doesn't matter if he could or couldn't before, now he has to, otherwise it's all for nothing

Now, the question may be how he'll be able to reach them. Webmantis' proposition was that reaching Phase 3 would give Soul access to Subspace, but I'm saying that he won't be able to reach Phase 3 without the souls that are there - that's a pretty clear logical paradox

Well, not to speculate too much, but I think we already have our answer to that one too: Soul's finally going to change

Another topic I've been going on and on about lately is the stagnation and inflexibility of the Rules, the most notable being Soul's rejection that souls are connected. However, Soul saw that new facet of his Rule be added in real time, by Negators that aren't even his vessel. The only one who should have control over his Rule is himself, and yet he's seen others interact with their souls through reinterpretation time and again (Andy vs. Ghost, Gina vs. Change, etc.). In other words, he should know full well by now that his Rule isn't as set in stone as he once thought, and if everyone else can control their souls through their perspective, then why couldn't Soul himself?

With the lesson that Julia just taught him about souls, Soul can connect himself to his fallen comrades and drag them back from Subspace (or prevent them from reaching it in the first place), and achieve Phase 3 by adding their souls to his own. Whether this would mean gaining power over their Rules or reviving them is another question, but at the very least it would show tremendous growth in his character

I'll go into more detail on this if it comes to pass, but Soul learning to change his perspective on his Rule would make him more like the Negators, more like a human. This would also make him the most well-rounded and developed UMA to date, which I think would more than make up for any loss of characterization among the rest of them

Now, I would definitely prefer that he brings back the MRs, if only so we can see Luck's Phase 3 (c'mon, he's Fuuko's foil for cryin' out loud!!!), but even if he just integrates them into himself, I think that would create the perfect parallel to give the final member of the Union a chance to demonstrate his growth

The Man Who Would be King

While fighting Soul, Sun and Luna are all clearly the most important boxes to check off right now, there's still one more that Tozuka alluded to in this chapter: Ruin's return

How Remember will affect him exactly, I won't speculate on, but I think it will give him the final push he needs to join the Union and help fight God. If my previous speculation about Soul comes to pass, then that would make Soul the ideal matchup for Ruin

Not only would they have the parallels of being "multiple souls in one body," it would also be the ultimate payoff to Ruin's designation as The King of Negators. If Soul is Master Rule #1, then it's Ruin's destiny as the Negator King to negate all of the Master Rules in his reformation and rebellion against the God he so thanklessly devoted his life to

This would also present the opportunity for Ruin to reform the MRs too and unify both Negator and UMA as I've speculated on before, but again, I don't want to go too far into it here. As it stands, this is just me making things up, and I don't want to either raise my hopes too high OR preemptively run out of things to say, but the parallel is so interesting that I can't help but get excited by the possibility

Conclusion

As always, it's entirely possible that I'm wrong about all of this. Maybe Soul's gonna try to go Phase 3 and self-destruct because of Unjustice; maybe Soul is gonna fuse with Sun in Phase 3 and they'll become "SOL;" maybe Kururu's going to use Unchaste to aggro Sun into shooting Soul dead. I don't know. There's always a chance that what we get isn't as interesting as what we envision; the best we can do is be open to what we do get rather than insisting it has to be the way we want

If there's one thing I hope I've gotten across with this review, it's that I don't want to get hung up on the negatives, but I also don't want to just ignore them either. I am disappointed that certain plot points are being glossed over, and that's a valid response for any of us to have, but I'm not going to go so far as to say this was a bad chapter because of it. Good things definitely still happened within this chapter, and there's plenty of chance that good things will come out of what this chapter set up

As I said, all there is to do now is be patient and open-minded. If this ends up just being a lull in an otherwise fantastic finale, so be it. If it ends up being the start of a rushed mess, so be it. The only way to know is to be there to see it

Until then, let's enjoy life!

[screeechingbat]

Personally, I ship Ben and Brooklynn.

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

I'm frightened of you knowing who I am but, could you possibly give me your frank frankly theories pretty please idc if you only have like 2.1 I want them regardless of how many you have.

mayhaps?

ah man i wish i had some to give! i think all of my Frank theories (at present) are tied into other theory posts! he simply doesn't have a lot to chew on yet

[thatgirlonstage]

Holds Natsuki Subaru in my hands

[musicalfan1001]

haze chords & lyrics

from dave malloy’s three houses

I still play

B

I still play a lot

My heart broke

B+

And then the world broke

G#m E/G#

And then my brain broke too

E B

And I don’t know which one to blame

E B

I just know I’m not the same

C#dim F#

I’ve been drifting

G#m B+ B

Drifting through the haze

G#m B+ B

Drifting through the haze

D#

Sometimes I feel like this is not my life

G#m

But someone else’s life

D# E

A phantom pantomime of my true life

Em/G B/F#

And I don’t know how to get back

Sometimes I try to speak

B+/G

But all my thoughts fold on themselves

G#m

And all my words come out like paper wings

B+/G B/F#

That flutter and disintegrate like ash

E Edim

I never recovered from the crash

B

My heart broke

B+

And then the world broke

G#m E/G#

And then my brain broke too

E B

And I don’t know which one to blame

E B

I just know I’m not the same

C#dim F#

I’ve been drifting

G#m B+ B

Drifting through the haze

G#m B+ B

Drifting through the haze

E D#

Some days I can’t quite remember

E D#

What I did the night before

E Em

My memories mock me in the darkness

E Em

I can’t tell what’s real or not anymore

DOODLE: (2ND OCTAVE)

E F# G A G F# E

B

My heart broke

B+

And then the world broke

G#m E

And then my brain broke too

B

And I don’t know which one to blame

E B

I just know I’m not the same

C#dim F#

I’ve been drifting

G#m B+ B

Drifting through the haze

G#m B+ E

Drifting through the haze

F#7

And I don’t know how to move forward

D# E

How could I leave so much of me behind?

[seithr]

something about fem characters getting masc titles does something insane to me. emperor and sir and my lord and master. ough flavour

[jackstheprinceofhearts]

Hi! I'm so exited to see how the dynamic between Chaos and Jacks will be in acftl. I need to know if Jacks is mad at him. Because although they've been friends for centuries, Chaos did kill Eva and then ran away.

Jacks didn't seem mad the second time they opened the Valory arch but I'm not sure if it was because he was concerned about Eva's safety or if he really isn't angry with Chaos. Whether he or not, I'm not sure he'll tell him what he did. But Lala totally knows. Everytime something happens to Eva, Jacks asks her for help.

Do you think he's angry?

OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS ASK BECAUSE I WAS CURIOUS ABOUT THE SAME THING!!!

he seemed to have this underlying tone of anger in the scenes after he went back in time, he was mostly worried about eva though. i definitely think we'll see a built up tension and resentment towards chaos, especially if what people think is true and chaos attacked jacks instead of eva while her memories were being erased.

i think the arch definitely made chaos show his true colors and jacks will most likely not forgive him easily (even though it was a different timeline) because we all know that jacks holds grudges like no other 😭🙏

i am so excited for acftl because (hopefully) all of our questions will be answered!!!

[rotdot-com]

I know everyone is talking about “jon” n such. But I’m very very curious as to what was happening during the case, it sounded like a ritual with elements of various entities, I’m hoping that this ties further into fears being classified differently in tmagp

[lowpawly]

so like this is absolutely a result of it not being something worth the time of the developers to change But in nier automata if you're connected to the internet you can find the bodies of other players that died while playing (you can either take their items or resurrect their body to fight with you) and the thing about that is no matter whether you're playing as 2B or 9S the body you leave behind has visible breast forms. so like if you so desire you can interpret that as 9S just binding all the time

exhibit a

[perenlop]

ik last post said the chara spirit comment as a joke but have i ever gone into my theory/headcanon that chara isn't actually present in the photoshop flowey fight because they're connected to the player's save file and that's gone when flowey takes over

[ahli-stuff]

Crying thinking about fyodor at 5 am vibes

i don’t know what it is about him that initially made me love his character so much but if i were to put a finger on it it would be his sickly god-savior complex rooted in isolation and narcissistic self hatred

Why did he turn out that way?

Headcannon time:

Haven’t you heard? The Dostoyevsky family was cursed by a demon. Vanished without a trace. First it was the mother, the father, then the son.

- fyodor’s mother tried to kill him as a child—ability users were even less understood back then and she saw him as a devil spawn

- the first time fyodor uses his ability is when his mother kills him. He is reborn as her. (Still a child, though)

- since he inherits his previous incarnation’s memories and desires, he inherits the strongest emotion his mother felt when she tried to kill him: hatred for ability users.

- fyodor, traumatized from that experience forgets what his mother had done when he was a child, forgets his mother’s memories, believing she had left him with her ring and swaddled in her clothes before disappearing into the night.

- even though he has forgotten, he still has an unexplainable intense hatred towards ability users.

- his father was a kind and meek man; believing that she had simply disappeared and left the two of them he raised fyodor the best he can as a normal boy.

- though fyodor does dearly love his father, and his father loves him, his father notices that fyodor acts uncannily similar to his mother.

- contrary to his wife, fyodor’s father is not extremely religious, which is why he finds it strange that fyodor is.

- it comes to a head when fyodor is 17, and his father is deathly ill from tuberculosis. They do not have any money to spare, and fyodor does his best to work but there is not enough money.

- !fyodor remembers there is a nasty, old, pawnbroker whom he had to sell his mother’s silver ring to to afford his fathers medicine. (You know where this is going…)

- carrying a hatchet in his hands, he corners the pawnbroker when she arrives back to her flat, drunk.

- he tries his goddamned best to kill her, but he is malnourished, small, and weak. He trips, and the axe falls out of his hands.

- in an panicked attempt to defend herself, the pawnbroker picks up the axe and kills fyodor(for the second time.)

- he is reborn again—except memories from when his mother killed him in his youth begin flooding back. The pawnbroker’s, his mother’s, and his own memories melt and form a horrifying amalgamation in his mind.

- he takes what he can from the pawnbrokers house, and runs. He takes his mother’s ring back. He sells everything but the ring the next day.

- when he presents the medicine to his father—his father, enraged and feverish, sits up in bed and asks him where he got the money to buy it from. He must’ve stolen. But from where? Reading the newspaper earlier that day shows that the pawnbroker has gone missing, with all of her belongings and money.

- when he looks a fyodor and looks into his eyes glossy white eyes and dead-empty expression… he knows. Feverish, he wonders, if fyodor had been the reason his wife had vanished too.

- fyodor—having been killed and having “killed” two people watches his father’s rage in a dissociative manic calm.

in him, resentment for his nature builds. This is what ability users can do, huh? This is the pain they can cause. He knows his father will die if he spends another day without medicine. He knows that he father will not accept the medicine from him.

And so—he lets his father wrap his hands around his throat. This is fyodor’s mercy.

He leaves his home after that, his father and mother’s burning desires still fresh in his mind: kill all ability users.

Footnotes:

*this also fits asagiri’s style of writing: he often switches the personalities and/or circumstances of his characters in bsd. Akutagawa being dazai’s apprentice in bsd vs dazai vying for the akutagawa award in real life. Dazai mocking chuuya in bsd vs chuuya mocking dazai in real life.

*In this hc, fyodor’s mother is the one who is heavily religious, whereas in real life it is his father. In this hc, his father is ill instead of his mother who was in real life.

*And my favorite switch of all: the pawnbroker from crime and punishment killing raskolnikov (fyodor) instead of the other way around in the the actual Crime and Punishment.

*QUESTION. What intense desire did the fyodor get from the pawn broker? This one’s fun. The desire not to die—it makes the next time he kills an ability user using his ability that much more excruciating.