#welcome to my crackpot theories

[illiaccrest]

Welcome to my crackpot Star Rail theory!!

[misstalwyn]

my actual big crackpot theory is that when Mel rescues the family, they will just chill in these conspicuously open spots in her tent.

most suspiciously, the BIG CHAIR with a simple yet ominous skull on the back?

i think persephone could wind up on the chair by the candle or next to the lavender stalks

zag is the only one there might not be space for (but he definitely wouldn't be sitting around)

I just want Mel to eventually get the “welcome home, kiddo!” treatment that Zag got 🥹

[contraryclock]

Limbus rambling Don Quixote edition number #2 the second

SO!!! that new canto huh Part 1 is out, im avoiding leaks to the best of my ability, and i am CAUGHT UP! still havent read La Mancha or Don Quixote though but i dont think that matters right now OBVIOUS disclaimer about my lack of knowledge with the source material once again point is i have a crackpot theory that just might not be that uncommon or unlikely? idk we'll see

Also sorry for no ALT text, this uses a lot of images and my fingers are very cold

spoilers under the cut obviously, catch up before you click and otherwise beware

oh yeah baby welcome to the cool people zone im going to be using a mixture of my own screenshots and the Limbus Main Story Library for this, so buckle up

I propose that there are in fact, two Don Quixote's! Our Don, the sinner of limbus company! and a much older, original Don Quixote, the possible Founder / Lord of La Manchaland!

To start, almost all of this theory is based on those flashback bits we get with the colored text, and is running under the assumption that the Yellow text is, reasonably, supposed to be our Don.

... which brings up the question of why they are acting so uncharacteristically in what is supposedly their own story.

Now, onto those flashbacks!

First up we have the instance at 7-9.

This one doesnt tell us much but it gives us some initial context.

The grey text is clearly Vergillius, you can just tell that from the delivery. The blue text is an unknown femenine voice, The yellow text feels somewhat familiar to that deeper voice that Don quixote will have on occasion. Ironically its more clear in her scream there at the end. ... and then we have the masculine voice in the red text.

But we'll get to that later! our next instance is in 7-13, on the inside of the Shooting Rage attraction. (( although i personally think it says Shooting Bagel. ))

okok but actually heres the text

Only the red voice this time, clearly the same person given the delivery too and with the added context of this node and the last one, it can be assumed that this is either the person who dreampt up La Manchaland, or straight up founded it.

And thanks to the Barber's Narration, we can also come to assume that this voice is also a Fixer, if these things are to be true.

Next, in 7-16, is NOT a flashback, but rather the reaction of The Barber.

The Barber recognizes the name to some degree, "THAT name" feels incredibly deliberate. But she is otherwise completely indifferent to Don.

and now we get to talk about this blue fuck

Sanson, Knight of the white Moon, Knight of Mirrors, ect ect, the BASTARD quick unrelated tangent but i think its cool that they made the arguable* main antagonist of Don Quixote possibly also be apart of Demian's Cool Blue Crew™ (( DCBC )) (( i say this because he shares his dialogue background with the other members of the blue crew we've met )) anyways basically the ENTIRE SEQUENCE he causes is the main reasoning behind my theory here *arguable ok again i havent read the book so i have no idea if this is an accurate assessment of his character i saw an article say that he was "arguably" the antagonist once and i haven't talked to anyone who has actually read the book to yap at about before i make these posts. addendum over

The fact of the matter is, Don Quixote does a right shit job of recounting her own story. She gets lines wrong, minor details, and this becomes readily apparent as soon as she implies that her own fucking shoes are who she was talking to, and that they are given proper reply. (( My thoughts are that instead of Rocinante, the role is in fact Sancho, but we have no evidence of that being the case ))

We also get the most telling flashback lines in this segment!

...The voice we've come to associate with Don Quixote is shown to NOT say her own line, but rather that of the line in red. And in both of these incidents, ellipsis are used to blank out a word, my bets are all on that word being "Knight" baybee

THATS A WRAP FOLKS we've established all the evidence for my epic theory that uhhh the Red voice in don's flashbacks are an Older, Original Don Quixote and that its possible that our Don is a 2'st Don instead of a real Don

As for why this is happening??? I have no fuckin idea its the first part of the canto i just wanted to get my thoughts out

i hope this wasnt too incomprehensible! as is usual dont follow me ect ect and reply or something if you have anything to add, as said im not very knowledgeable on the source material. or do that thing where you reblog with an additional comment because i will reblog that. free reblog ok goodbye now i will be stabbed to death momentarily

[havemyheartaziraphale]

I just want to say thank you to the Good Omens fandom for making me feel welcome, and not like I'm pestering you or annoying you.

10-12 years ago I originally joined Tumblr and was a part of the BBC Sherlock and Doctor Who fandoms. I followed a load of blogs that were dedicated to the shows, but i never felt fully welcome except by a handful of people (two of whom I think of fondly, and one I'm still in contact with to this day).

However, there were some people who, no matter the reason, always seemed to be disgusted with people contacting them if they didn't have a large following, or interpreted things differently to them. On more than one occasion I felt like the hostility they showed me was too much (which, actually, wasn't even warranted) and I eventually slipped away. I didn't enjoy it anymore, and eventually deactivated my account.

And now I'm back, because I had to talk about theories, and what was going on. And I'm so glad so many of you have been welcoming and engaging and as excited as me about this show.

So thank you, especially to @somehow-a-human @gallup24 @lookingatacupoftea @ladybracknellssherry @lickthecowhappy @melbatron5000 @dunkthebiscuit

And thanks to @weirdly-specific-but-ok for allowing me into the discord and the maggot fandom too because you guys are nuts but you're all decent humans and let me pop in and out as I please

And to anyone who I interact with regularly and haven't mentioned, I appreciate you all too. You have no idea how great it is to have people like my #absolute crackpot theory posts

[pigeonflavouredcake]

My Grimoire Research Library

this is a list of my major resource I've referenced/am currently referencing in my big grimoire project. For books I'll be linking the Goodreads page, for pdfs, websites and videos i'll link them directly.

There are plenty of generalised practitioner resources that can work for everyone but as I have Irish ancestry and worship Hellenic deities quite a few of my resources are centred around Celtic Ireland, ancient Greece and the Olympic mythos. If you follow other sects of paganism you are more than welcome to reblog with your own list of resources.

Parts of my grimoire discuss topics of new age spiritualism, dangerous conspiracy theories, and bigotry in witchcraft so some resources in this list focus on that.

Books

Apollodorus - The Library of Greek Mythology

Astrea Taylor - Intuitive Witchcraft

Dee Dee Chainey & Willow Winsham - Treasury of Folklore: Woodlands and Forests

John Ferguson - Among The Gods: An Archaeological Exploration of Ancient Greek Religion

Katharine Briggs - The Fairies in Tradition and Literature

Kevin Danaher - The Year in Ireland: Irish Calendar Customs

Laura O'Brien - Fairy Faith in Ireland

Lindsey C. Watson - Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome

Nicholas Culpeper - Culpeper's Complete Herbal

Plutarch - The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives

R.B. Parkinson - A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Around the World

Rachel Patterson - Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness

Raleigh Briggs - Make Your Place: Affordable & Sustainable Nesting Skills

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass

Ronald Hutton - The Witch: A History of Fear in Ancient Times

Rosemary Ellen Guiley - The Encyclopaedia of Witches and Witchcraft

Thomas N. Mitchell - Athens: A History of the World's First Democracy

Walter Stephens - Demon Lovers: Witchcraft S3x and the Crisis of Belief

Yvonne P. Chireau - Black Magic: Religion and The African American Conjuring Tradition

PDFs

Anti Defamation League - Hate on Display: Hate Symbols Database

Brandy Williams - White Light, Black Magic: Racism in Esoteric Thought

Cambridge SU Women’s Campaign - How to Spot TERF Ideology 2.0.

Blogs and Websites

Anti Defamation League

B. Ricardo Brown - Until Darwin: Science and the Origins of Race

Dr. S. Deacon Ritterbush - Dr Beachcomb

Folklore Thursday

Freedom of Mind Resource Centre - Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control

Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Royal Horticultural Society

The Duchas Project -National Folklore Collection

Vivienne Mackie - Vivscelticconnections

YouTube Videos

ContraPoints - Gender Critical

Emma Thorne Videos - Christian Fundie Says Halloween is SATANIC!

Owen Morgan (Telltale) - The Source Of All Conspiracies: A 1902 Document Called "The Protocols"

The Belief it or Not Podcast - Ep. 40 Satanic Panic, Ep 92. Wicca

Wendigoon - The Conspiracy Theory Iceberg

Other videos I haven't referenced but you may still want to check out

Atun-Shei Films - Ancient Aryans: The History of Crackpot N@zi Archaeology

Belief It Or Not - Ep. 90 - Logical Fallacies

Dragon Talisman - Tarot Documentary (A re-upload of the 1997 documentary Strictly Supernatural: Tarot and Astrology)

Lindsay Ellis - Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia

Overly Sarcastic Productions - Miscellaneous Myths Playlist

Owen Morgan (Telltale) - SATANIC PANIC! 90s Video Slanders Satanists | Pagan Invasion Saga | Part 1

ReignBot - How Ouija Boards Became "Evil" | Obscura Archive Ep. 2

Ryan Beard - Demi Lovato Promoted a R4cist Lizard Cult

Super Eyepatch Wolf - The Bizarre World of Fake Psychics, Faith Healers and Mediums

Weird Reads with Emily Louise -The Infamous Hoaxes Iceberg Playlist

Wendigoon - The True Stories of the Warren Hauntings: The Conjuring, Annabelle, Amityville, and Other Encounters

[inkblackorchid]

What the hell happened with Crow: an autopsy (Part 4)

*Deep breath* Okay, everybody. Let's do this one more time.

First off, hello, or welcome back. Let's get the introductions and disclaimers out of the way, shall we?

This is the fourth and final instalment in my very, very long-winded attempt to analyse the character writing of Crow over the course of the entirety of yugioh 5Ds. For everyone who hasn't read the previous parts of the analysis, you can find part one here, part two here, and part three here.

This post, and my analysis as a whole, is neither meant as a Crow hate post, nor as a manifesto to convince people who don't like him that they're wrong. It's as genuine an attempt to simply look at and dissect what the show gives us about him as I can make, though I admit to personal bias because I do like Crow. That said, I'm trying to stay as neutral as possible, because the aim of this entire post tetralogy is to look at the writing decisions made for this character and how they impact him—and how they possibly influenced the audience's perception of him.

My previous three posts all reference this as well, but since I still see these things parroted all across the internet to this day: Please don't read this post under the assumption that any of the 5Ds production rumours are true, especially not the ones surrounding Crow. Because, to make this as short as possible, every popular theory as to why certain characters were mishandled during the later parts of the show fails to line up with the production timeline of said show. Chiefly among those theories, the idea that Crow was meant to be a dark signer and that his popularity correlated to his cards, and the idea that Aki, specifically, had to give up her screentime for him because her VA got pregnant, which both lack any basis in reality, as you can read in the posts I linked. (One final shoutout to @mbg159 here, who compiled these incredibly comprehensive posts and can also be found here on tumblr. Huge thanks.) So if you can do me one favour, please just let the 5Ds rumours die already and read this analysis without the hope of seeing any of them confirmed. I'm so sick of these crackpot theories at this point that I can hardly find the words for it. And while we're on the topic, I also don't want to see this post used as a means to pit Aki and Crow against each other in any way—both have good reasons to be well-liked and both deserve their spot in the narrative, all right? All right.

And now, at last, let's get down to business. The last time I got on a virtual soapbox and yelled about Crow, I covered the entire WRGP, murder-duel-robot induced break included. That means that for this, final stretch, we'll be looking at everything from episode 137 onwards—the Ark Cradle arc. (A side not for dub aficionados here: Episode 136 was the last episode that got an English dub. In other words, everything I talk about here never even made it into the English version. Because 4Kids, I guess.) As we've done before, we'll take a look at what exactly Crow gets up to during the final stretch of the show (and, notably, the epilogue), then see whether any of it needed improving, and if so, how it could have been improved.

You'll find all further yelling below the readmore, and I'll leave you with the other, usual warning here, as well: This will be long. Even if the Ark Cradle arc, relative to the rest of the show, isn't, this post most certainly will be. So get some snacks and perhaps don't start reading this late at night unless you're good at knowing when to stop and reading stuff in bursts. (I'm not.)

As I concluded at the end of my last post, the WRGP ended up being a bit of a mixed bag for Crow. He's there, he duels, but at the same time, despite being positioned as an equal third of a protagonist trio, he's notably less important and arguably also weaker than Yusei and Jack. Moreover, where the plot is concerned, he sure didn't get too much to do—not to speak of the fact that the writers didn't grace him with any meaningful interactions with a certain character who'll become very relevant here.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, the preamble.

With the end of the Team New World duel, the final arc of the show drops the by this point unexpected arrival of the Ark Cradle right on our heads. So, what does Crow do here, at the start, other than be shocked? Well, not much. A lot of the first episode that introduces the Ark Cradle focusses more on the imminent threat said structure poses to New Domino City, and we flash back to our protagonists mostly to ascertain that things are, in fact, going to shit. Even once that focus on the city evacuating shifts again, the episode concerns itself more with Yusei than with Crow. However, meagre as it is, we do get the first interaction between Crow and Sherry during the Ark Cradle arc in this episode.

(Uh.... at least they're technically talking to each other?)

And frankly... It's not much. Unfortunately, up until the duel where he faces her, the Ark Cradle arc continues a trend regarding interactions between Crow and Sherry that we already saw in the WRGP: They barely get to interact, and even when they do, they never have anything so much as resembling a meaningful conversation, mostly because Sherry basically never addresses Crow directly, nor seems very interested in him, while Crow is usually there only to react to what she's saying, rather than actually talk to her. While digging through my mountain of screenshots, I found that latter part to be especially interesting, because as it turns out, this is a trend not just in Crow's interactions with Sherry, specifically. Many moments that probably contribute to the nefarious "screentime" (I've explained my gripes with this term in part two) some people like to accuse Crow of hogging have him only be part of a scene so he can react to what happens in it, to the point of him sometimes feeling like a stand-in for the audience reaction the writers might be hoping for. The above is a perfect example, because as far as character writing is concerned, Crow's "interaction" with Sherry here is utterly devoid of meaning. He's just there to communicate his disbelief over the ominous prediction that Yusei is guaranteed to die if he goes to the Ark Cradle, which feels like exactly the kind of reaction the writers probably wanted from the audience. After all, it's a bold, shocking statement to make. The protagonist, dying? In a card game anime geared towards twelve year-olds? It's downright preposterous. And Crow seems to agree with that, if his dialogue is anything to go by.

This one and other scenes (mostly the kind that contain plot elements that Crow doesn't actually interact with) got me thinking, though, and after having gone through so much of the show with a fine-tooth comb now, I think I've come to a conclusion, so permit me a tangent here: I believe the choice to let Crow, specifically, be a character who often only reacts to events or interactions after the DS arc, rather than contributing much himself, is deliberate. Don't get me wrong, I don't think he's the only character who is frequently put in this position—Aki, the twins, and even Bruno, especially when they're on the sidelines in the WRGP, also often only seem to be there to react or comment on things, perhaps partially to remind us viewers that they still exist, despite not being in a position where they contribute anything to the plot. With how much the twins and Aki got pushed to the side after the pre-WRGP and the Unicorn duel, respectively, and with how toned-down Bruno's entire character is until the very end, as not to spoil his tragic antagonist status too much, Crow in particular ending up as an often reactive, rather than active character stands out a bit more, though. And I think this has everything to do with his personality, because it contrasts that of Jack and Yusei. Think of it. Sure, Crow is shown several times to be just as cool and competent as the other two, but what he has that the other two crucially lack is the ability to freak out like a normal person. I'm being hyperbolic here, of course, but I do genuinely believe this, because when I think back to the show, Jack and Yusei, due to their character writing, only ever seem to be allowed to lose their cool during pretty specific circumstances, and only in very specific ways. Jack, for example, only ever gets to freak out either when a scene paints him as the butt of the joke (like during his infamous, dramatic outburst over cup ramen), or when the freakout is caused by—and expressed as—righteous (or not so righteous) fury (like when he storms off angrily after catching everyone watching his old duel with Dragan). Meanwhile, Yusei is played so straight that we barely ever see him lose his composure at all, outside of intensely dramatic, high-stakes situations (think his dark signer duels with Kiryu, his confrontation with Roman, his initial failure to accel synchro). Hell, the closest we get to ever seeing him be mildly upset about something like a normal person, as far as I can recall, is when he gets embarrased by Martha calling him out on his perceived crush on Aki. That's it.

Crow, though. Crow's allowed to do something the other two aren't: He's allowed to react to the world around him like your average guy. Jack blows through their household money for expensive coffee. Crow gets upset. Understandable. Crow gets injured right before his big debut in a turbo duelling tournament and is upset to the point of snapping at his friends over it. Understandable. Seeing Yaeger's kid cheering his dad on and knowing that this kid will cry if his dad loses makes Crow relent and throw the match. Understandable. Sherry predicts Yusei's imminent death due to hocus pocus and Crow calls bullshit. Understandable.

Do you see what I'm driving at? With how the show treats the other two Satellite boys, I'd argue none of the moments above would have worked anywhere near as well if the writers had tried to make Jack or Yusei take Crow's place in any of them. Because while Yusei and Jack, I feel, were certainly written to be the coolest characters (at least to the target audience), Crow seems like he was written to be the most relatable. He's the guy who takes on a delivery job when they need money. He's the guy who complains about his cranky landlady. And he's the guy who reacts to insane nonsense happening around him a little more realistically than his defeated-an-ancient-devil-to-absorb-its-power brother, his shouldering-the-guilt-of-a-cataclysmic-event-decades-ago other brother, their mutual previously-violent-psychic-who-was-part-of-a-cult friend, and the one-of-us-can-see-spirits-and-we-share-a-weird-kind-of-magical-bond twins. As such, it doesn't feel too out there to me to claim that in many situations, they made Crow the stand-in for the audience, because he has a less iron composure than Jack and Yusei, is readily available in many scenes by virtue of living with the other two, and happens to be the guy who has the arguably most normal backstory out of the signers. (Save, perhaps, for Rua, but I've already addressed before why the writers barely ever pulled Rua centre stage for anything. And they certainly wouldn't have pulled him centre stage for this, either.)

Now, as far as character writing is concerned, assuming I'm at least halfway correct with my hunch above, I feel that whether or not this decision is good or a shot in the foot on the writers' part depends largely on every audience member's individual perception of Crow after the DS arc. If you liked seeing this scrappy guy introduced during the DS arc, of course you would have been happy to see more of him! Even if he's only present in scenes to comment on what's going on and doesn't actually get to do anything meaningful. If you didn't like Crow that much, though, I can see how him popping up so often only to yap a bit and contribute essentially nothing could have grated on you. And as I said, I think this is where the "screentime" discussion comes in again, because yeah, Crow is very much on screen in all these little-bit-of-nothing scenes. He doesn't get to do much and his character isn't fleshed out or reinforced in any way, but he sure is there. For better or for worse.

And this—this is where I can finally get back to him and Sherry. Because in his interactions specifically with her, it is for worse, due to the fact that all the scenes that contain both of them before the Ark Cradle duel are pretty much exclusively these kinds of little-bit-of-nothing, reactive scenes. Crow doesn't get to interact with Sherry meaningfully, and he never—and I need to empathise this—, not once gets to interact with her one on one, not until the end-of-series duel both of them take part in happens. What makes Crow's lack of meaningful interactions with Sherry even worse is that his later duelling partner against her is Aki, of all people, who by contrast gets to interact with Sherry a whole bunch, most notably during her duel against Yusei. Not only that, but Sherry is also shown to actually be interested in Aki, which cannot be said for Crow. Yet, still in the same episode I was describing above, while the Ark Cradle begins its descent, it's not Aki, but Crow who is entrusted with this card by Mizoguchi/Elsworth:

(I'd like to point out that the dialogue following this moment doesn't make it clear whether Crow even knows what Sherry's connection to this card is. For all we know, this could be the first time Crow sees it, without being aware of any of the context surrounding it.)

You know, the card that's essentially a symbol of Sherry's attachment to her parents and her commitment to revenge. The card that basically her entire character revolves around. For a single piece of cardboard, this thing comes with a lot of narrative baggage attached, yet canon doesn't even take the time to assure us that Crow knows what Z-ONE means, other than it being a memento of Sherry's parents, as Mizoguchi explains. And frankly, this all feels like a rather ham-fisted attempt to get some last-minute setup for the later confrontation between Crow and Sherry in. It's like the writers desperately wanted to feel the emotional moment in the duel later to feel earned; they wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. There's only one problem: They didn't even bake the damned thing, the ingredients are just sitting around, untouched, as if staring at them long enough will magically make a cake manifest.

But, well, since I'm already talking about this, I may as well get into the actual meat of the matter, because frankly, it's not like Crow gets much else to do at the start of the arc. Yusei takes off because he at first wants to go to the Ark Cradle alone (like an idiot), leading to the signers coming after him (and telling him he's an idiot). Joining this effort and assuring Yusei that they won't let him die alongside the others is as much as Crow gets to do before the inevitable three-way duel starts.

(That said, while it doesn't accomplish anything, I've always appreciated this little moment while Yusei still tries to pull his stupid kamikaze plan—Crow would know more shortcuts in the BAD area than he does. After all, he lived there for a good while!)

After that, everyone gets up to the Ark Cradle and, as we all know, the signer group is forcibly split up by Z-ONE before deciding to go to a Yusei gear each in order to shut down Ark Cradle's negative Moment. (Top ten sentences that wouldn't make a lick of sense to anyone who isn't up to their neck in 5Ds lore.) And the very first duel on the menu in this final stretch of episodes is also Crow's final duel in the entire show.

(Drumroll please.)

Here's the thing. I love this duel, actually. I get extremely hyped every time I rewatch it. BUT. But. I do not love it so blindly that I couldn't see that it has not one, but several issues. Not only that, but those issues don't just rest on Crow's shoulders, they sadly rest on the shoulders of all three participants in this duel, because frankly? Alongside the four-way Jack/Rua/Ruka/Aporia duel, this duel is one of the Ark Cradle arc's desperate attempts to tie up loose ends. Because as much as I enjoy this arc, that's exactly what it is: A race to the finish line, an attempt to tie as many loose ends as possible up in as little time as the show could get away with. To make clear why I think this, let me just list off all the things this arc resolves or at the very least tries to tie up with a neat bow:

It reintroduces Aki's psychic powers, which we were previously led to believe she'd lost. Notably, we didn't get a reason for why they disappeared and don't get a reason for why they reappear, either. It also turns them into healing powers in an attempt to establish a reason for why she later studies medicine.

It explains what happened to Sherry and what actually drives her revenge. Furthermore, it releases her from her narrative fridge-prison in order to actually let her duel Aki (yes, Aki, specifically), which is a confrontation that was subtextually implied several times previously.

It resolves the question of Bruno's identity by revealing him as an antagonist.

It finally reveals Life Stream Dragon, who was at this point teased over seventy episodes ago.

It also finally rewards Rua, who was teased to possibly become a signer during the DS arc, with an actual signer mark. (As short-lived as it may be.)

It actually explains Iliaster's real plan, which is Z-ONE's hope that the 5Ds gang can actually save the future.

Speaking of which, it actually explains who Z-ONE is and why he's a big deal. (Remember, this guy was first teased a good while ago at this point in time.)

Alongside Sherry, it dusts off several protagonists who didn't get an opportunity to duel on-screen and lets them duel one, final time. (Notably, Aki, Rua, and Ruka, who at this point haven't been seen duelling since the early WRGP or even pre-WRGP.)

You may notice that none of these bullet points contain Crow. They do, however, contain Aki and Sherry, both of whom went into this finale with several unanswered questions as to their characters. Crow, not so much. But let's just put a pin in that for now while we actually jump into the duel.

*Cracks knuckles* Aki & Crow VS Sherry. Here we go at last. Fair warning, the character writing of all three participants of this duel overlaps a fair bit here, so expect to hear a bit of a mishmash about our revenge trio.

So, how does this duel start? Firstly, with Sherry waxing poetic about why she's even opposing Team 5Ds now.

(A dramatic switch of sides that sadly doesn't hold a candle to Bruno turning out to be Antinomy. Which, funnily enough, might be why this duel is front-loaded and Bruno's comes later.)

I won't dig into this too much, but I just want to point out the one thing this moment gives us: It establishes character motivation. Sherry claims she can no longer get revenge and has thus lost her purpose. (The reason why she can no longer get revenge, if you're interested, is because Moment Express, her final lead, vanished in its entirety, as far as canon is concerned.) Thus, she took the bait when Z-ONE offered her a new purpose, and, more importantly, a reward. Now, Aki and Crow at this point in the episode don't get to hear what that reward is, but for our analysis, it's important to keep in mind: Z-ONE promised Sherry he'd alter the timeline so she would get her parents back if she helps him. And I think this is immensely important because this is not only Sherry's goal in the present, I think it's actually the core of her character from the very first moment we meet her. In classic, tragic-avenging-type character fashion, she claims to want revenge when what she's really doing is trying to numb the pain of the awareness that she'll never get her parents back. (Though I'll admit this may also be my generous read of her as a person who likes revenge-obsessed characters.) And then, Z-ONE dangles the actual thing she wanted all along before her. Of course she took the bait.

This brings us to the start of the duel itself. As we know, Sherry employs some tactics that feel quite different from what she previously did in this duel. First and foremost, she messes with the mechanics of the duel itself by using the field spell Ecole de Zone, creating an illusion that confuses Aki and Crow into duelling not her, but each other at first. Sherry, meanwhile, takes a very passive role, clearly intent on letting the two destroy each other while she sporadically activates card effects to accelerate this. What makes all this stand out as even more unusual for her is that she sets this up by lying. At the beginning of the duel, she tells Aki and Crow that there's two of her, and that each duellist will fight one copy of her on a seperate field each, but this is a misdirection to make the two signers duel each other instead of her. And, look. I don't need to tell you this is out of character for Sherry. Canon literally does that for me.

(Case in point.)

It's only after Crow and Aki catch onto the fact that something's wrong and after Aki destroys the field spell that Sherry uses her "real strategy", switching to Soul Binding Gate, which inflicts real damage every time a monster with less attack points than her life points is summoned, in order to whittle away at both other duellists' life points. This is also the point where she reveals to her opponents that she's doing all this to get her parents back. While she does that, we get a bit more back and forth in terms of cardplay, until Aki sets the field up just right so Crow can land a very high-damage hit with Black-Winged Dragon to end the duel. And that is pretty much the gist of it on the duelling side of things.

So what's going on on the narrative side of things, then? Well. Let me front-load something I've noticed on the narrative end: This duel heavily interacts with Crow's and Sherry's characterisation, but barely at all with Aki's. I'll make clear what I mean by that below. For now, let's just get an overview by going through the character moments as they occur in the duel. Why go through all of them? Because most either interact with Crow in some way, or set up a later interaction in the same duel that he's a part of, that's why. I'll get into the nitty-gritty of what this duel did well and what it didn't after that. (Mostly. You may have noticed I like tangents and rambling excessively.)

So.

The first moment belongs to Aki and Crow in equal measure, and happens just as Ecole de Zone is destroyed—which Aki accomplishes by using Crow's monster to synchro summon Black Rose Dragon, as well as prevent that synchro summon from being negated through the same monster's effect, so she can use her dragon's field wipe to get rid of Sherry's field spell. When Sherry is surprised by this, Aki and Crow explain that they memorised each other's cards as part of a strategic effort as a WRGP team.

(Friendship is, in fact, magic.)

Not only does this explanation make perfect sense, it's also an excellent little tidbit to tie Aki and Crow together as a tag-team here, as it strengthens the connection between them. The only gripe I could possibly see with this is that it feels like this didn't necessarily need to be a surprise, end-of-the-show reveal. Frankly, it could have been pretty cool to see this much earlier, to have members of Team 5Ds realise what their teammates were getting up to during the WRGP duels, for example. (Instead of so often having the other signers react just as shocked as the announcer to their teammates' plays���I'm side-eyeing the infamous "a trap from the graveyard"-moment in particular. Like, Aki, sweetie, if you memorised Crow's deck, why are you surprised that he has a trap he can activate from the graveyard? I digress.) Moreover, this could have built anticipation for this particular duel, as viewers would have been excited to see what Aki and Crow would come up with to defeat Sherry as a team. So this moment is not bad, really. Just a bit underutilised, at least to me. (The word "underutilised" might become a trend in this post.)

Every other character-driven moment from here on out is shoved into the second duel episode, 140. Speaking of which, this episode starts with Aki and Crow getting the reveal of why Sherry is helping Z-ONE, where she admits that she joined the bad guys because she wants her parents back. She even goes as far as stating that because Z-ONE showed her the future, she has no hope that it can be saved and thus at least wants her lovely past back so she can have some solace before everything goes to hell for humanity. But we already went over that above.

Next up, albeit this moment should probably be considered more of a running theme than just one self-contained thing, we have Crow's struggle with Soul Binding Gate. Remember, the effect of this field spell causes all players to take damage every time a monster with less ATK than Sherry's LP is summoned. And at this point in the duel, Aki is barely above 1000 life points, so Crow worries about triggering the field spell's effect and hurting her, which leads to him playing suboptimally because he's more concerned about his friend than about winning the duel. Notably, Aki calls him out on this.

(She has a point.)

Outside of providing an internal conflict for Crow to grapple with, this isn't much to write home about. (Side note: I do find it interesting that they introduce the fear of physically hurting someone in a duel specifically in connection to Aki here, though, given that through her psychic powers, she had to grapple with this exact issue many times in the past. I have no idea if this was intentional, though.)

Between this and the next moment, there's a nice bit of interplay between Crow and Aki again, where he activates a card to refill her life points just in time so she doesn't drop to zero through Soul Binding Gate, while Aki uses a defensive trap to protect Crow in return.

(This is just here because it's a money shot to me. The juxtaposition of their faces and their life points, showing that while Aki may have the lowest life points, she still has the coolest head in this duel, and while Sherry technically has the upper hand, she's beginning to falter because she didn't anticipate the other two to work so well together. It's chef's kiss. Mwah.)

What follows after this, is, of course, the Big Moment. Where Sherry tries to convince Crow to forfeit so she can win and have Z-ONE change the past. And this is the one I really need to dig into.

With Sherry's earlier admission that she's on Iliaster's side because she wants her parents back acting as setup, she begins her attempt to sway Crow by telling him that if he had the opportunity to change the past, he would do it, too. And while Crow initially protests, Sherry challenges this, then proceeds to show him what Z-ONE's power could accomplish, and we get a lengthy sequence where Sherry, through weird cyborg-techno-magic-shenanigans that are never explained, takes Aki and Crow to a dreamlike space where Crow sees the orphans he used to take care of being happily reunited with their parents. Sherry also ominously tells him that this is "what he desires deep in his psyche" before promising him that if he surrenders the duel, Z-ONE can give him a world where Zero Reverse never occurred and all the kids can have happy lives with their real families. (I wanted to post most of this sequence in screenshots, but while I have them, I've realised I'm only a few images short of tumblr's limit already, so forgive me because I will need those remaining image spots.) This moment proceeds to introduce some serious doubt on Crow's end. Aki, meanwhile, remains steadfast, telling him not to fall for Sherry's manipulation, which leads to her giving an almost Yusei-style speech. In a moment where Crow wavers, both because he's genuinely considering whether taking Sherry's offer might be the wiser choice, and because he doesn't want to hurt Aki by triggering Sherry's field spell effect, Aki calls out to him and tells him to snap out of it by reminding him of how Yusei reached out to her during their second duel. This speech is a bit, um. Clunky, I feel. (At least if the translation is correct. If it isn't, then that may be the issue.) See, she tells him that Yusei "saved her from the darkness of her psychic powers", that "he wasn't concerned about his own safety and risked his life to persuade her", that, because her psychic powers are now gone, she's "renewed" and that this somehow brought her to the epiphany that as long as she believes in her own potential, she can change the future. This is lifted almost verbatim from the scene, by the way. Leaving aside the fact that half of this feels like a mild to severe misrepresentation of Aki's character arc during the DS arc (don't talk about it, don't talk about it, I need to make this another post of its own, damn it), I, personally, can't exactly follow how she ended up with that final epiphany from the circumstances she listed. But lucky for us, Crow apparently gets what she's driving at, because he quickly echoes her statement and they both conclude that Crow's kids also believe in the future and fight to live, that they're not sad about their lives the way they are right now, even though they don't have parents. Thus, Crow catches himself, echoing Aki's sentiment and telling Sherry that he, too, believes in the future. And through the power of Friendship and Believing in the Future, he manages to use Aki's cards to land the final hit, nicely mirroring how she used his to destroy Ecole de Zone.

...Phew. Okay, look. First off, that above, large section is basically several character beats stacked on top of one another. On Sherry's end, we have the intriguing fact that she's specifically trying to manipulate Crow, not Aki. In fact, she doesn't so much as try to sway Aki, as though she knows it's no use. Then, on Aki's end, we've got her pulling a real Yusei, staying level-headed almost the entire duel and reaching out to make sure Crow stays on track. This moment also ties back to her own conflict with her powers again. (Which, unfortunately, I will talk about, and yes, I'll be chewing drywall the entire time I do it.) Finally, on Crow's end, we've got a nice, proper moment where he doubts himself and, by his own admission, nearly makes a terrible mistake because he wants nothing more than for the kids he used to take care of to have good lives.

Now, before I go over what worked about this moment and what didn't, let me just chew through the rest of the actual duel itself, too, then circle back too highlight some things. In other words, time for me to chew some drywall.

*Sigh*

At the very end of the duel, there are two more character moments that are noteworthy.

First, right before the final hit, we get Sherry desperately defending herself against Aki and Crow's newly strengthened belief that the future can, in fact, still be saved, which she does by (rather heartbreakingly) asking what's so wrong about wanting her parents back, about wanting their love and warmth back. It's at this point that Crow's allowed to get back at Sherry by challenging her beliefs, telling her that people "work hard to live because they only get one chance at life", and that there's no point in trying to go back to do things differently, that the only way to keep going is to believe in the future, regardless of whatever painful and sad events one has had to live through. I'd say this sentiment certainly fits Crow, character-wise, especially given his rough Satellite background. It does partially fall flat because it feels a bit weird for him, specifically, to now be acting like he knows Sherry inside and out, much like she did with him earlier, but again, this is simply a matter of setup and I'll try not to belabour that point again. The horse is already dead, no sense in beating it. It's after this speech and the final attack that Sherry finally realises her error.

Buuut this leads us right into the next character moment. Because as the duel ends, Sould Binding Gate physically falls apart, pelting all three of our duel participants in debris and threatening to crush them under it. While everyone does briefly fall over (and Sherry gets a moment to realise that her father wanted her to live strong, not accept seemingly inevitable doom and die weak), they soon realise they were not, in fact, buried under rubble, though. Because guess what! Black Rose Dragon to the rescue. Black Rose Dragon, who can suddenly physically affect her surroundings again. You know, that thing we were led to believe Aki could no longer make her monsters do because she lost her powers completely out of nowhere. And there's more! Because not only does Black Rose Dragon take care of the debris for the trio, as she disappears, she also heals all three of them, and in response, Crow gets a line that I unfortunately cannot for the life of me discuss without bias because it kills me every time.

(Crow. Crow, please. You're killing me. I beg you.)

This line out of Crow's mouth feels extremely weird to me, and in the process of typing up this post, I've been trying to find the reason why. Here's the conclusion I've come to: Firstly, it feels a bit out of place from him, somehow. A line hypothesising about what psychic powers can or can't do—this is something I would have expected out of Aki's mouth, but not out of Crow's. I believe what makes it feel so out of place, though, isn't necessarily that it seems a bit odd for him, specifically, to theorise about this, but that when I hear it, I don't feel like the character is saying it. Instead, in this moment, moreso than in some others that suffer from the same issue, I hear not Crow, but the writers speaking. I hear them telling me "look, we know we made it seem like Aki's powers are super gone and like they were super, irredeemably bad, and like she and you should be happy that they're gone, but here, see, this is what they're really like. Don't you think we came up with something clever here, to set her becoming a doctor later up nicely? No, this isn't because we needed to backpedal on our decision to make her lose them and be happy about it at the last second, why do you ask?". And yes, I concede this might just be me. (So feel free to disregard this in terms of analysis, I just have some weird kind of vendetta against this line.) But still, even without my personal issues hampering me, this line of dialogue out of Crow's mouth is just plain odd. After all, how would he know what "real" psychic powers are? Since when is he the expert, especially considering we've never so much as seen him comment on Aki's powers before? (And for the record, this line would have seemed just as weird had any other character other than Aki said it imo. It just has that unmistakable "writers trying to justify something at the last second"-tang to me.)

And do not. Do Not get me started on the fact that the writers, despite going to such great pains to paint Aki's psychic powers as an exclusively negative thing especially during the WRGP arc, decide to reintroduce them here, suddenly as a good thing that can also heal people, which directly contradicts every choice they've made when it came to Aki's relationship to her powers ever since the Team Catastrophe duel. While crucially also lacking the one thing this entire duel is practically begging for: Fucking. Setup. But at this point, the handling of Aki's powers, specifically, really needs its own post, so I'll hold off on any further comments here and come back to that another time. I feel like I'm beginning to talk in circles, anyhow. Setup. Setup, setup, setup. This duel wishes it had it, because then the ideas presented here—which, in a vacuum, are compelling—might have worked smoothly.

But, with that. We have finally made it through the duel itself. Sherry, at the very end, gets her change of heart and at last cements herself as a good guy, and that concludes the first duel in the finale, and also both Aki and Crow's last duel in the entire show.

And good lord, was this duel all over the place. Though I think my meandering scene-by-scene breakdown of it showed as much. Now, onto the proper evaluation of what worked and what didn't here. First, let's get the good these two episodes do out of the way, shall we. (Because there is a lot of Bad I need to yell about, unfortunately.)

By virtue of being one of the final duels, this is Aki and Crow's last chance to shine, and shine, they do. Both in the duelling department and in the character department. Aki makes two major plays that upend Sherry's strategy and Crow's perfectly in sync with her, showing that the two truly are teammates, and paying off all the character moments they had specifically in the Team Unicorn to Team Catastrophe section of the WRGP. Their friendship and cooperation is believable and entertaining to watch. Then on the character side, Aki's growth is (somewhat) paid off—where she used to be a character that doubted herself and was afraid of hurting people, she is now the one who can keep a level head and help others fight their self-doubt. Meanwhile, Crow gets to show off his unfailing dedication to community and family again, both by watching out for Aki and by selflessly desiring not for himself to have a better life, but for the kids he used to take care of. And Sherry, who was previously removed from the narrative in such an unsatisfactory way, finally gets to duel again, gets to explain why she actually does what she does, and gets to join the heroes at the end, permanently joining the ranks of the good guys instead of the villains. Happy endings all around.

Ehem. And this is where I'm gonna be less nice about this duel. Because the problem is, due to the specific constellation of characters involved in this duel and how they previously interacted in the show, there's a lot of stuff here that doesn't work nearly as well on a second watch as a first watch would like to make you believe.

First, a broader issue on the card game end of things: The way this duel feels, it's very much more Aki's duel than Crow's, which is also kind of confirmed in the card plays being made. Though it's Crow who's first shown to catch onto the fact that a third party is activating additional card effects out of nowhere, it's Aki who fully solves the mystery, uses Crow's monster to synchro summon Black Rose Dragon, then activates her dragon's effect to get rid of the illusion for good. And while Crow gets to land the final hit, it's Aki's setup and her trap, Synchro Stream, that make it possible for him to win for both of them. And yet. On the dialogue- and character-interaction side of things, this duel is made out to be much more Crow's than Aki's. Because, perhaps surprisingly to some, Aki doesn't waver one bit in this duel. She's got her head in the game the entire time. She's here to do business—that business being defeating Sherry—and by god, does she do it. Moreover, unlike Crow, she has much, much better setup to be duelling Sherry than he does. And this comes right back around to the main thing this duel suffers from, which I've already harped on about: Crow and Sherry, up until this point, have not interacted in a way that would make the connection between them seem in any way significant. Unfortunately for this duel, though, Aki and Sherry have.

From the first episode where we're introduced to Sherry, she's shown to be interested in who Aki is and what she can do. During the duel between her and Yusei, she comments on Aki's powers. Later, when Aki is getting her turbo duelling license, Sherry watches on with interest. At some point while Aki's training, Sherry drops by to speak with her and Yusei again. My point here being, of course, that Aki, unlike Crow, got several scenes where she interacted with Sherry or had Sherry meaningfully take note of her existence before this point. Yet, whatever dynamic the writers may or may not have been aiming for between these two is, at best, underutilised in the final duel, if not completely ignored, at worst. Instead, the writers shift their focus to Crow and try to make us believe that Sherry, a character who has barely acknowledged his existence thus far, would know him well enough to consider him the better target for her attempt at manipulation. (And don't get me started on how the hell Z-ONE's weird robot magic is supposed to expose what Crow "desires deep in his psyche". That is simply a chasm the show expects us to suspend our disbelief over.) And look. The thing is, I don't think the Big Moment where Sherry tries to convince Crow to forfeit is terrible in isolation. Like, they could have made this work, had they given these two setup, had they given us, the audience, reason to believe Crow could be swayed like this (which they, notably, also didn't), and had they given us the impression that Sherry knows Crow well enough to pull something like this. What hurts the scene immensely, however, is that it's preceded by everything before, starting from the WRGP, where there is no setup between these two, no reason to believe Crow could be convinced to forfeit a duel against a major antagonist, and no meaningful interactions to support the belief that Sherry knows who Crow really is at all.

What also stands out to me is that Crow really doesn't feel like the best character to parallel Sherry, here, either. Parallel in the sense that she tries to get to him by expressing a desire she believes they both feel—getting a certain, nicer version of the past they never had back. Because the thing is, Sherry and Crow hardly feel like they have very much in common, and there's certainly no previous hints to make anyone believe they would have this in common. (So for all we know, Sherry could have just been taking a shot in the dark by trying to convince Crow.) You know who could have made for an excellent character to mirror Sherry, though? Yeah. The third person in the room during this scene. Aki.

See, here's the thing about these three as characters, in relation to what this scene tries to accomplish (getting a protagonist to waver by having the antagonist appeal to certain emotional similarities between them): While Crow may perhaps be more relatable to the audience, he isn't all that relatable to Sherry. He comes from dirt poor origins, she from rich ones. He doesn't even remember his parents, she defines herself by the memory of hers. She's a lone wolf, he's incredibly community-focussed. The only parallel you could have drawn between these two, up until this duel, is knowing what it feels like to want revenge. (Sherry with her parents, Crow with his kids back in the DS arc.) But guess what, unfortunately, Aki knows that too, what with her past as the Black Rose Witch and wanting to make people pay for ostracising her. And to make matters worse, she has a lot of other things going for her that parallel Sherry much, much better, too. They both come from well-off families, both have had major, traumatising events in their lives revolve around their parents, both left their initial family structure by way of drastic changes in their life, both are intimately familiar with the desire for vengeance, and, most damningly, Aki knows what it's like to stand on the side of the bad guys—like Sherry is doing in that very scene—because you feel like it's the only place that gives you hope/meaning. Not to speak of the fact that Aki, given her turbulent past with her psychic powers, would probably know exactly what it feels like to want a past you never had back. There would have been so much to work with there, and it makes whatever they were gunning for with Crow look... lacklustre, to put it mildly, by comparison.

The worst part is, I think, that the blame lies neither with the characters nor with the scene concept here. Solely with the execution. Because I truly think they could have made this work. They could have made the entire duel work, big character moments and all. But the keyword is and always has been setup. Setup, which the writers, at least in part, strangely gave to Aki, but not to Crow, which is what hurts particularly his portion of this duel, and, arguably, his character writing in general. Because—and this may be a small thing in the grand scheme of things, but permit me this—while Crow wanting a better future for the kids he used to take care of over a better future for himself feels perfectly on brand, the idea of him forfeiting a duel against a major antagonist, while the threat of the entire city being destroyed is hanging above his head... doesn't. Like, yes, I've talked about the fact that Crow is the only character in 5Ds who ever actually loses duels on purpose. What you may remember, though, is that both occasions we've seen him do this—against Lyndon and Yaeger, respectively—were much lower-stakes duels than this. Not to speak of the fact that it also feels a little odd that Crow, of all people, would buy into the idea that Z-ONE's genuinely powerful enough to just give those kids their parents back, given how liberally he called bullshit on pretty much any and all supernatural mumbo-jumbo claiming that fate is inevitable, or that the gods have this-and-that power, or what have you the entire show. (Also, doesn't he strike you as the guy who'd wonder why Z-ONE's not using his fancy powers for better things, if the extent of them is so great? Or is that just me?) It's a moment of character doubt that tries to sell itself as believable, even though we've never been given any hints that this kind of temptation, specifically, could work on Crow.

Ultimately, Crow & Aki VS Sherry feels like a very hot-and-cold duel. On the cardplay side, the teamwork between Aki and Crow is well done, yet the duel does feel like it skews more towards Aki than towards Crow. Sherry, meanwhile, plays tricky and mean like a proper antagonist, but does so at the expense of sacrificing all her previous tactics and monsters (and, arguably, some of her character, though this is probably on purpose, given her transformation into an antagonist). Then, on the character side, we've got Aki in an interestingly Yusei-ish role, which, while it feels like a good way to show how she's matured and learned, wastes her character dynamic with Sherry. On the other side, Crow and Sherry interact in several personal ways throughout the duel that leave you wondering when exactly these two got to know each other so well, because the show certainly didn't give us a visible progression of their dynamic. The only dynamic that leaves nothing to be desired is that between Aki and Crow (stilted speeches aside), because it excellently showcases their friendship and teamwork. Very weird decisions made in the writing here all around.

We'll get into the nitty-gritty of what changes I would have suggested to improve this duel below, but first: What happens after this duel? Well, two more Yusei gear duels, Aporia briefly standing up to Z-ONE, and then, the final, big clash between Yusei and Z-ONE.

Given that Crow isn't even present for two of these duels and then barely gets more to do than stand on the side and react during the final two, I will dare to skip all that, though. Because really, Crow's occasional comments and the play-by-play he sometimes joins the others in giving when spectating a duel don't exactly contribute anything to his character. They're just there so he gets something to do and doesn't fade into the background entirely when a duel that doesn't involve him is going on. This includes the moment where he, much like the other signers, gets to give Yusei Black-Winged Dragon for the final duel, as well as the later moment when Yusei uses it, chanting in tandem with Crow as BWD arrives. And other than that and the tear-jerking moment when he later reacts to Yusei returning despite all odds, he really doesn't get any noteworthy scenes.

In other words, we are skipping straight to the end. So, where do we find Crow there?

(Oh, y i k e s.)

There's a popular post circulating around this site that goes something like "the worst thing you can do to a character is make them a cop during a timeskip". And, look. I don't think I need to tell anyone that becoming a sector security officer is an extremely jarring character choice for Crow. Crow, of all people! The guy with the face full of markers, who used to be part of a duel gang, who was introduced in the show gleefully stealing from security Robin Hood-style, and who has every reason to despise law enforcement! (Leaving aside the obvious logistical issue that Crow in no country in the world could have completed his police training in the few months between the Ark Cradle debacle and this scene. But given that 5Ds generously brushes realistic concerns like this one aside on multiple occasions, this is, funnily enough, the thing I'm also more willing to overlook here. The character dissonance, however, less so.)

I'll try to be generous and guess that the writers were aiming to convey a message somewhere along the lines of "even someone who's done bad things in the past can become an example for others" or something like it. The problem is just that Crow didn't need any such message because he was already the good guy while he was still actively stealing from security. He was the lovable rogue to a T, damn it! But this, in particular, is a surface scratch hinting at a bigger issue, I think—namely, the issue of the show's complete pivot when it came to the depiction of law enforcement after the DS arc. Because when we think back to that part of 5Ds, good security officers were the exception, rather than the rule. And this is exactly what makes Crow of all characters becoming one even weirder. He would know, would remember how security used to treat him, his kids, his friends, his brothers. And if the idea here was that, well, he's trying to improve sector security by joining it and changing it from the inside, so to speak, then guess what was missing again: Our good, old friend setup. I'm starting to feel like a broken record. So yeah, I don't think a ton of people, whether they like or hate Crow, would disagree that this is a supremely weird position to put his character in.

As we find out through 5Ds' epilogue, however, his sector security job isn't quite what Crow actually wants, though. (And thank god, because that would have been such a bizarre position to leave him in.) Instead, we're shown fairly quickly that several duelling leagues are apparently trying to scout Crow out, and that he's tempted to accept one of the offers and go into pro duelling. This is at first shown in a short scene where something like a league scout follows Crow, then later, when the whole group—sans Jack, at first—is getting together and everyone starts discussing their futures. Aside from complaining a bit about his job and upsetting Aki without meaning to, Crow doesn't get much to do here, either. For what it's worth, at least him feeling tempted to ditch the security job feels more in line with the original Crow we got than with whatever strange twist the writers were going for after this shorter timeskip.

What follows is the very last duel of the show, the long-awaited Yusei VS Jack rematch, of course. And while he doesn't get to participate in this one, Crow, much like Aki and the twins, spectates the duel and ends up having an epiphany about what he wants to do. This epiphany ends up being that he does want to turn to pro duelling, and as a reasoning, canon provides us with this:

(As is known, intense card games are the only way to make children smile.)

Personally, I wouldn't say this is a terrible or out of character reason for Crow to decide to go pro. But there's more to that I'd like to discuss. First, though, let's take a quick look at where we find Crow after the second, bigger timeskip, which is inserted right in the middle of Yusei and Jack's final duel.

(Okay, yeah, I'm a sucker for the bullet earrings.)

The quick scene Crow gets here makes it unmistakably clear that he did go into pro duelling, just like he decided during the duel in the past, and not only that, he went into tag-team duelling and apparently managed to reach world champion status with his teammates. The above scene, however, is the exact same moment he decides to leave said team, so he can instead go solo and (presumably) try to beat Jack.

Now, we can discuss this in a bit more detail. Personally, I'm extremely in two minds about Crow being one of three characters, total, who ends up becoming a pro duellist after canon. Jack seems obvious, especially given the pivot back to his more Fortune Cup-esque persona the writers did around the Red Nova episodes. Rua also makes sense, given that Jack was his idol from the start. Crow, though, feels a little more complicated. The thing is, like so many things surrounding Crow in the Ark Cradle arc, the writers gave us no indication pro duelling is something he's really passionate about before this point. Worse, they didn't even really tell us what reason he saw to participate in the WRGP with his brothers beyond "could be fun". So there isn't really a connection here. The same thing goes for the fact that he specifically talks about teaching his teammates above, which is also something he wasn't associated with all that much previously. Though this one is admittedly less egregious, because at least Crow was seen briefly coaching Aki as she prepared to take his spot during the Unicorn duel. Still, while I wouldn't go as far as saying it's an out of character choice for Crow to go pro, it still feels a little odd that he went down the same route as Jack. Personally speaking, it feels like the writers didn't quite know what to do with him. Because as I said, Jack is obvious and Rua also makes sense, and I'd say the same goes for Yusei. Then there's Ruka, who is treated about as in-depth in the epilogue as she was throughout canon, and Aki, whose "setup" for her timeskip self was done extremely hasty and last-minute, but at least it was there. Between all of them, Crow occupies a weird spot where it doesn't so much feel like he ended up on the wrong trajectory for his life, as it simply feels like there were choices the writers could have made that would have fit him much better. What with his theme of legacy and community, trying to make Pearson's dream of a place where disenfranchised children can learn good life skills a reality would have been a good fit, for example. Especially considering his close ties to the Satellite orphans he used to take care of, which, funnily enough, are reinforced one more time as canon flips back to present day and Crow is seen bidding his kids goodbye.

("Come back"? When, precisely? And what part about "literally saved the world twice" doesn't qualify you as a hero to a bunch of kids ten times over already?)

Considering canon seems hellbent on making sure we know the signers went their separate ways and that they aren't anywhere near each other by the very end of the show, though, my guess is that Crow had to end up doing something like pro duelling, in order to get him out of New Domino City and away from the friend group whose shenanigans we were so accustomed to following by that point. Of course, there's also the argument to be made that Crow staying in NDC and getting a more community-focussed ending would have also been significantly less cool than making him a kickass pro duellist with bullet earrings, which circles back to how the writing interacts with its target audience.

The only thing that follows after this, then, is the big goodbye, and with that, ladies, gentlemen, and other lovely 5ds nerds, we have successfully followed bird boy's path throughout the entire show. And what a ride it was. (I did not think this analysis would end up stretching over a whole four posts.) Time for some closing thoughts before I do my thing and suggest some rewrites that could have made all this feel more coherent one more time.

Crow's character arc, if it can even be called that, feels about as hot and cold as his and Aki's final duel with Sherry over the course of the show. His introduction is fast-paced, he's made to be likable quickly, and his integration into the main protagonist group is as quick as everything else about his narrative. Between the way he shows up out of nowhere, briefly disappears without fanfare, and is then reintroduced with even more importance before slipping into the signer group like he's always been there, it truly feels like his entire inclusion in the narrative was a last-minute decision by the writers to include that one, additional character concept Kazuki Takahashi had originally created after all. If there was one way to describe his whole arc, it would be that it's a rush. At the start, the writers are in a hurry to make him likable, then they're in a hurry to make him a signer, then they're in a hurry to give us a whole backstory for him, then they're in a hurry to give him a believable character dynamic with Aki, and at the end, they're in a hurry to pay off a character dynamic with Sherry they didn't properly set up with him. You may notice that leaves significant gaps, and the lack of balance between those gaps and the rushes surrounding them, I believe, are part of why he's such a polarising character.

Crow is integrated so thoroughly into the signer group at the end of the DS arc that, much like Aki and the twins, he gets stuck in the position of being a character that cannot simply be removed from the narrative for a longer amount of time. And this, I think, ends up biting him in the ass, because in the gaps where the writers don't rush to do something big with him, it often feels like they don't quite know what to do with him at all. So, he instead gets relegated to small side tasks, like inane duels that don't affect the plot, or becomes the person who reacts to unfolding situations in whatever manner wouldn't fit Yusei or Jack. He feels like he's the third portion of the protagonist trifecta only in theory—the status of an equal third player seems to be what the writers had in mind, yet, looking at the show, it feels like an honorary title, at best, because the writing choices made for him don't convey anywhere near the same amount of thought and effort as those of Yusei and Jack. Crow's backstory doesn't intersect significantly with that of his brothers, his dragon is introduced way too late and never given an upgrade, he never gets to clash with Iliaster until the Team New World duel, and throughout the entire WRGP and Ark Cradle arc, there isn't a single duelling victory that's solely his. People who prefer other characters over Crow like to harp on about how much screentime he gets; I argue that this is exactly what showcases how poorly the writers took care of him in many instances. For as much as Crow is plastered onto the screen and given the aesthetics of an equal player in a protagonist trio, his many appearances are as much of a curse as they are a gift, because too many of them aren't spent setting up anything meaningful or developing his character in any way. Speaking of character development: There is none. Crow exits the show pretty much exactly the same as he entered it, brief security stint aside. And, look, this need not necesarily be a bad thing. Static characters exist and they have their place in stories. It's just that in Crow's case, his utter lack of development feels like another damning indicator of the writers' cluelessness when it came to utilising him, given his weird, sort-of-elevated-protagonist. Aki, who is so often weighed against him, gets significantly more development than he does. And though Jack also ends up in almost the same place at the end of the show as he was at the start, at least he had a dip in the middle where his character was somewhat malleable and not set in stone. Crow didn't.

What we end up with, then, is a character whose concept is perfectly fine on paper, but whose execution proceeded to turn him into the one and only favourite for some, and the embodiment of piss poor writing for others. Having now looked at pretty much his entire run in the show with a bloody microscope, I end up somewhere in the middle, myself. He's a good character and much of his writing is confusing at best, utter dogshit at worst. As for what decisions in the writing room led to him turning out like this, I'd still pay good money to know them. For what it's worth, I've tried my very best to make an educated guess as to all of them.

And now, for the final time, allow me to do my very best to suggest how the issues of the Ark Cradle arc could have been addressed in order to make Crow's part in it less messy.

In previous posts, I've split up my rewrite suggestions depending on one circumstance: Whether or not Crow stays a signer. However, this time, I will deliberately forgo this, for one, very simple reason—Crow's status as a signer doesn't matter one bit for the Ark Cradle arc. Regardless of whether he has a mark or not, his duel with Sherry remains unaffected, and so does his later timeskip-self. Thus, pick your favourite, both versions work for the Ark Cradle.

Now. Onto the elephant vengeful Frenchwoman in the room. Let me repeat my favourite word in this post one more time. What the dynamic between Crow and Sherry needed, more than anything else, in order to satisfyingly be paid off during their Ark Cradle duel, was setup. There was so much time Crow spent on screen doing fuck all, and some of that time could have so easily been allocated to him interacting with Sherry in a meaningful manner. (I'm side-eyeing especially his pre-WRGP duels. Those did nothing to add to his character and could have easily been replaced with episodes where he actually gets to talk to Sherry one on one.) And if not that, then the writers could at least have done themselves the favour of letting Aki talk to Crow about Sherry, which would have arguably set up their three-way clash even better. Moreover, show us how the hell these two characters parallel each other and how they differ, damn it! The main issue with the big moment Sherry and Crow had in the duel was that Crow's faltering and his sudden, deep understanding of Sherry came completely out of nowhere. So what if they had shown some of that earlier, then? What if they had shown where the lmits of Crow's resolve lie, what could get him to doubt himself? What if they had drawn the parallel of Sherry and Crow both supposedly being characters that sometimes wistfully think about a past they never had earlier? It would have done so much to make that duel hit exactly the way it was probably meant to. As a bonus, if we had gotten Aki and Crow talking about Sherry, too, the scene of talking Sherry out of helping Z-ONE could have been a team effort, just like their card playing was. Both of them would have reasons to know different aspects of Sherry each, and both could have brought up good arguments. And this is really all this duel woild have needed to be better on the story end, I think: A solid, narrative foundation to make it obvious to us why it has to be these three characters duelling, why it could have only been this setup, why it made the most sense to let these three bounce off each other. Crow only needs that extra step to slot in better with the girls here.

As for the epilogue, I don't think anyone will be surprised to read that I would have never made Crow a cop, not even temporarily. The depiction of law enforcement 5Ds gives us during the DS arc is too damning for that. However, given the way the ending is structured, he does need some sort of occupation that feels like it's not quite the right thing so he can later change his mind about it, of course. Here, though, is where I, purely in service of Crow's character, would suggest a change that probably doesn't work with the ending's final aim of separating the 5Ds gang by hundreds of kilometres each. I would let Crow go into pro duelling first, then let him figure out that's not what he actually wanted. Crow, to me, is a character who is so intrinsically tied to community and family that turning him into a solitary pro duellist—even if he claims to do it to make the kids back home smile—feels off to me. Thus, from a character standpoint, I would let him pivot back to wanting to take care of those kids. Either through what I suggested above, letting him carry on Pearson's dream, or, which also feels fitting to me, by letting him help out Martha again and setting him up as the guy who'll take over when she can no longer run the orphanage. It's not the cool, glamorous end the show gave him, but it's what feels more like the family-focussed guy we first met in the show. It doesn't gel with the idea of permanently separating him from the other signers, though, unfortunately. To do something like that while keeping his community theme, one would probably have to send him away to shack up with Brave or something, to help orphans in other countries. But this, I think, nicely showcases the dissonance between what Crow's character writing would suggest he might do at the end, and what the show demanded he needed to do so he'd no longer be close to the others. Because my focus, as always, is only on character here. And Crow, with his personality and his writing, feels like the character who chafes the most against the idea of striking out solo, abandoning his ties to the community he was so invested in previously. To that extent, the above suggestion is the best I can provide with what we were canonically given. If we wanted to keep the canon ending he gets and actually make it make sense why he suddenly wants to be a lone wolf pro, the only thing I could suggest would be more setup for that. (Ah, there it is again. One final time.) Show Crow having some actual competitive drive, show him enjoying the whole tournament thing more than he thought he would during the WRGP. Just give us something that shows why he would want to go down this path, and why some other things that were previously important to him might not be a priority anymore. It all comes back to setup.

*Deep breath*

So, here we are, then, and this is it. This is all I could make of Crow's character writing in the entire show. To everyone who read this post in its entirety, a heartfelt thank you. To everyone who read the whole series of posts in its entirety, I'm so glad you're as insane about this show as I am, it makes me feel incredibly appreciated. Hope you enjoyed the ride, more meta posts will come eventually, just about different topics. In the meantime, see ya.

[ziploc849]

Ok making this post cause I’ve gotten a handful of new followers since posting about tma lol. Hi!!!!

You all seem very excited to see my reactions to things and I’m so excited to share all of my thoughts!! With that I wanna hear from you guys. If there’s a specific episode you wanna know my thoughts on when I get to it (or if it’s already passed, I’ll still relisten and tell you my thoughts) if there’s a specific character you wanna know my feelings on or certain things you wanna hear my probably crackpot theories about, please send asks, replies, DM’s, anything!!! I wanna at least have some moots in this community to chat with and you guys all seem really nice so far, so don’t be afraid to ask or interact!!!! I can be kinda awkward sometimes but I love all of it nonetheless!!!

Also, because I have a friend irl who is also listening to TMA but much slower than me (or maybe I just get hyperfixated and listen to too much at once) I have to wait for them to catch back up with me before listening to much more. This has quickly become a running theme, so posts may be a bit sporadic, and will probably be in bursts, but I promise I am thinking about this fucking podcast like much more than is normal I just. Don’t wanna leave my friend in the dust lol.

But yeah that’s it!! Welcome to the show, I don’t know what’s happening or how to put any of it into words very well but I hope you enjoy my madness ^_^

[aks-of-the-weak]

I made this cheat sheet to every Direct Mention of a class's active/passive alignment today.

In above, i've excluded everything like interpretation of characters' behaviors or of subtext, mentions of a character being active/passive and mentions of classes in ways that don't directly indicate activeness or passiveness. I do also want to keep a more general track of those subtexts and generic mentions of classes, so i'll make a list of them below and might update as i find more. I'll quote relevant parts where it's shorter and leave entire pages at the page reference. {And leave my personal comments in brackets like so}

Homestuck Proper: Calliope on Rogues, Calliope on Princes, Aradia on Knights and Seers: p.4514, 4564, 4354 - {Mentioned above, but there's more i haven't quoted.} Scratch on Seers: p.3832-3835 - {Too long to be quoted. It's unclear exactly to what extent Doc is talking about "A Seer", "A Seer of Mind" and "Terezi", respectively. } Brain Ghost Dirk on Pages: p.4875 - "Pages have a lot of untapped potential. That's practically all there is to the class, actually. But when they eventually find it, look out." Aranea on Sylphs: p.6553 - "I am a very powerful Sylph of Light. I have had millions of sweeps to hone my abilities. As one gifted with the aspect of light, certain outcomes will be prone to breaking in my favor. And as an ancient, highly experienced sylph, I wield an unprecedented ability to heal. A doomed timeline is really just an anatomical feature of a much larger organism. Like a capillary which comes to an end, because it has withered and died. I believe I will be able to heal this offshoot. And with enough time and patience, I am confident I can restore its vitality to such a great extent, it will effectively take over as the alpha timeline, thus reducing English to a lost footnote of paradox space." - {Obviously that last thing didn't happen, but she did end up making the Game-Over timeline take over as the alpha timeline. She just didn't understand the implications of that within Paradox-Space's framework.} AH on... Clowns?: p.5484 - "It means crazy clowns just won't die for some reason. In adventures such as yours, they tend to linger long past their welcome. They linger and linger and linger, and just when you think you're totally fed up with their bullshit and you can't take another second of it, they just linger some more. And you never know what they're up to, and they're always scheming in the shadows, and it's quite possible that whatever master plan they're hatching just doesn't make the slightest bit of sense at all. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how stupid the clown's schemes are, or how sick of him everybody is. He just. Won't. Die." - {This is sort of my crackpot theory, but i believe this passage is a subtextual explanation of the Bard as a character archetype. Essentially a Jester staying in the shadow of its king. }

Beyond Canon: Got nothing beyond what's in the sheet

Q&A: On how Lunar Sway relates to Active/Passive Classes: p. - http://wheals.github.io/tumblr/tumblr.html#post25156009290q1 - {In the cheat sheet, but as before, there's more}

Book Commentary: On Aradia and Vriska: Book 4, p.143 - "Aradia's extremely passive nature as a ghost makes her an easy target for this kind of overbearing attention." - {Hussie is commenting on aradia, not Maids, but the language is pretty strong}

[ingravinoveritas]

hi again! you might already know about this, but i really felt like bringing it up to you!

turns out michael's mom is pretty active on twitter and these past few days she's been engaging nonstop with tweets talking about aziracrow being in love. she's definitelymichael's #1 fan, but i couldn't help noticing the amount of not-about-characters stuff she seems to engage with too. Among tweets talking about Aziraphale's loving stare, queer fans making our usual queer jokes and remarks about them, michael reading fanfiction, miles maitland gifs, there's a good amount of... this. She surely has liked random stuff among the 14.6k rts/likes she has, so i'm attatching some examples of what she's been liking and rting because-- what the hell (i even spotted one of your tweets in the mix!) she even liked a tweet calling AL and GT innefable wives ??

my first thought was how embarrased i'd personally be if my mom was seeing comments online about me and my best buddy being madly in love, let alone engaging with them, but after it settled i'm just... in awe that this probably +70 y/o woman is being this supportive over social media 😭 so heart warming (btw i'm sorry for randomly popping up into your questions twice today- i have literally made this account after finding yours, feeling a bit less alone in the world)

(Grouping these two Asks together since they are related.) Ask #1: Hi there! No need at all to apologize for being in my inbox twice in same day. I'm so glad that my blog has been helpful and meaningful to you, and that you felt compelled to write in as a result. Welcome aboard!

So, Mama Sheen. She's been doing this for years--at least since 2019, when I first started following Michael on Twitter--but I will tell you my slightly crackpot theory, which is that for a while back in the day, I thought that maybe her account was actually Michael's secret alt account. (What better place to hide than in plain sight, after all...). I'm not so sure about that now, of course, but it's been really interesting to see her retweeting so much shippy stuff involving Michael and David, and as both you and @tamose pointed out, she especially seems to have ramped it up since GO 2 came out.

I also wanted to touch on you describing Mama Sheen as Michael's #1 fan, because although I wholeheartedly agree, it's a curious thing to me that we can more easily see her as Michael's number one fan than his own girlfriend. It's Mama Sheen--not AL--who has been retweeting all of this, who's been cheering him on, engaging with fan content, and retweeting all things Ineffable Husbands/GO 2. I've written on my blog previously about how I've never really seen AL be supportive of him (and how she spent much of 2020 and 2021 making fun of his appearance/fat-shaming him), as well as how she is not at all part of that polyamorous/throuple dynamic with Michael, David, and Georgia. And while I know the lack of engagement and carefully calculated interactions/posts could be chalked up to her not being able to promote the show due to the SAG strike, that doesn't really excuse her tepid support of Michael himself.

(Also, don't even get me started on the cringeyness of Georgia and AL as Ineffable Wives, not to mention how insulting it is to David and Michael personally and to their work as professionals to suggest that they are replaceable/that Georgia and AL (or anyone else) could play Aziraphale and Crowley and give us the same dynamic and chemistry we saw on screen...)

But yes, going back to Mama Sheen, I have long thought that she seems to ship Michael and David, and how sweet and heartwarming it would be if Michael brought David over for tea or dinner--especially because his own mother passed away several years ago--and no doubt Mama Sheen would dote on him and make sure he's fed and happy. It's especially interesting to contemplate when we see this picture from the Bright Young Things UK premiere in 2003, which almost looks like Mama (and Papa) Sheen posing with Michael and his kilt-wearing Scottish boyfriend:

Beautiful. Well, it's certainly something delightful to think about, at any rate. Whatever the case may be, I fully agree that it is lovely to see Michael's mom being so supportive and accepting of her son, particularly in the midst of such a hostile, anti-LGBTQ climate in the UK. We love you, Mama Sheen! ❤️

[14dayswithyou]

Quick important question! Are you okay with people theorizing? Like I have a theory I wanna share but first I wanna get permission lol. Thank you! Raven

✦゜ANSWERED: Oh!! Yeah, I'm perfectly fine with people coming up with their own theories and sharing it! ^^ If you have the willpower for it, you're welcome to check out the 'crackpot theory' tag and scroll through it!! There are a few player theories buried deep in there ;v;

Otherwise, everyone is welcome to drop their theories in my inbox or tag me in a post!! ^^

[the-nosy-neighbor]

Who is alive?

This all feels very much like the rumors that swirled around the Abbey Road album by the Beatles.  There was a whole lot of speculation that Paul McCartney was dead because he wasn’t wearing shoes in the picture, among other details.  

So, let’s look at the crackpot details:

Barnaby is dead. (theory)  details taken from r/welcomehomeneighbor or r/welcomehomearg (I will post the user details when/if I find them.)

In the first image, Wally is sitting on a rock.  The rock is blue, and appears to have a hand and arm.  The colors on the hand are similar to the drawing of Barnaby’s paw that we see.  The paw is open with the palm up, based on the art of the paw and the color of the pads.  It looks like Barnaby has a red slash across his wrist.  There is a tic tac toe board on what would either be his back or belly.  I haven’t gotten to the tic-tac-toe parts yet, but my assumption is that the colors of the tic-tac-toe marks tell us something as well.  Using that theory, this game would be between Frank and Julie.  The colors kind of blend, so it is hard to be certain here.  

Then, we have a drawing of Wally on the News page, which seems on the up and up.  It’s a news page, everyone loves Wally.  So we have a drawing of him sitting in an armchair, reading a paper.  The armchair has a detail that is very suspicious.  The patch on the chair has a polka dot pattern that is closely associated with Barnaby.  Could this be Barnaby’s skin?  When you look closer, you can see that Barnaby’s face is on the newspaper.  I have seen speculation that this is a missing persons type article or death announcement, but Barnaby could very well be included in some Welcome Home paper for about anything.

The clothespins in a secret video:  the Barnaby/Frank video.

There are a row of clothespins that look like people.  I’ve always thought those type of clothespins look like people.  It looks very much like they are made up of a head, trunk, and legs.  There is a row of pins, almost like a semicircle, around one pin (upside down), and a destroyed tomato.  (Barnaby gets tomatoes thrown at him.)  

In the video between Frank and Julie we have dialogue about bugs eating the vegetables and what should be done about it, but in this video, Frank and Wally are having some garden time together (with Wally’s view very low, as if he is laying on his belly while looking at the tomatoes) as Frank teaches Wally about how these blue flowers require a basic soil, and how pine straw shouldn’t be used for these flowers.  I think these are hydrangeas, as they appear pink, purple, or blue depending on the acidity of the soil.  (according to google, hydrangeas are unique in this way.  Blue equals higher acidity, pink equals lower.)  According to The Spruce, the idea that pine needs lower ph or acidify soil is a myth (I don’t know if that is relevant.)  

Frank and Barnaby have an unfriendly conversation here.  Granted, these characters are foils, with Frank being meticulous and fussy and Barnaby being super casual and joking all the time.  It appears that Barnaby’s only activity that gets discussed throughout the website so far is that he goes around telling people jokes, hanging out with Wally, and chasing Eddie around the neighborhood.  The chasing thing, at least, could be a reason for Frank to be put off by Barnaby, but it could just be the fact that they are so different.

Frank is so done with Barnaby from the beginning, (which I totally get because pun runs are pretty much the worst) and it quickly devolves into Frank being catty about the color of Barnaby’s fur, and he actually seems to kind of take offense.  Barnaby continues to punish us all with puns until Frank makes him leave, and says “I don’t understand why you like him, W…”

During the video clips so far, we have seen Barnaby interacting with different people.  He and Howdy get along because of the jokes, but I don’t trust either of them, especially given the way Howdy sells fake food to Sally (I will discuss at some point.)  Barnaby is pretty awful to Julie, telling her that her joke is terrible and she can’t tell jokes.  Barnaby chases down Eddie to get his packages, even though Eddie has apparently told him time and time again that he has to put it in the mailbox (I don’t know whose policy, maybe just Eddie’s?”  And in the final clip of the day, Barnaby is talking to home about everyone, being snarky and unkind, to the point that home seems to be disapproving.  

Back to some non-canon art.    

As an early representation, we only see five colors on the phone:  Wally, Barnaby, Julie, Frank and Poppy.  The covered entities could potentially be dead/gone/erased.  Home is not included as a neighbor, which continues.  Two options on the phone dial are blanked out, as well.  

It could be that color nuance is removed in the grainy footage, but it might mean something specific that those colors are there.  If the video goes back up, I will get the full order of colors.

The tomato in our video image have been demolished.  They are completely open and spread out on the ground.  The tomatoes behind the row of figures are whole and look healthy enough.  This could be pointing to the death/destruction of our upside down clothespin friend and the neighbors being the line of defense between certain destruction and safety. 

[the-multiversal-wanderer]

Crackpot Theories: The Magnus Protocol edition Part 1: The incineration of the magnus institute

Welcome to the first part of the magnus protocol Crackpot theories. Now I will say there will be Heavy Spoilers for the Magnus archives and any episodes of the Magnus protocol that are out at time of me posting this.

As a reminder I would like to say the title of this series is Crackpot theories so before anyone say "you are grasping at strings with this theory" that is the point. In the crackpot theories series I pride myself on trying to find connection and implore you to reply or re-blog with your own thoughts. The more info we get over time the better these theories will become. But for now all we have are strings and we must weave those strings in to plausible theories.

So before we start please I implore you, if you haven't listened to both series, to listen one if not both series as the creators created a master work of a show with The Magnus Archives and now The Magnus Protocol is out and I don't think it will disappoint so read on if you either don't fear spoilers or have already listen to everything.

Everyone caught up with the series and prepared to theory craft then onwards we go.

As the title of this theory will be talking about the fact that in The Magnus Protocol, or as I will refer to it from now on as Protocol for simplicity sake, that the Magnus Archives burned down in about 2002 if the forums are to believed in the second statement of Ep. 1 which I will be referring to as RedCanary after the user on said message board in the statement.

Now as some of you may know Jonny as in the creator mention that Protocol doesn't take place in the same universe that the Magnus Archives, or Archives for simplicity sake, took place in (this was I think said in a stream but I don't have the time to rewatch every stream and scrub through all the content, but I did find a post with help of some friends that does confirm this so I will be re-blogging that post after I make this post). But due to the events of MAG 114 Cracked Foundation and MAG 197 Connected that there is at the very least a connect multiverse.

To explain in MAG 114 the statement giver Anya Villette falls into the the gap in reality that sits in the foundation of the house on Hill Top Road seemingly transporting her to the past. and in MAG 197 Annabelle states this, "This is not ‘the’ world, it is ‘a’ world. And though it has taken so very long to prise it open, the gate to a thousand new realities now stands wide. However, despite this effort, the worlds beyond them remain so far unspoiled by the Fears’ touch." Then later on in that statement this is said:

Jon: I see. Destroy the Panopticon, and you release its power. Kill Jonah, and you cut the connection between the Fears and the world. Do both at the same time, and… for just a moment, all that power rushes through their only remaining connection with reality: the tapes.

Annabelle: And they would be swept along them by it, dragged out of our realities, and into new ones…

This implies that after MAG 200 the fears were essentially ejected into the multiverse leading to the events of Protocol. This forced ejection of the fears was done through the burning of the archives as state in the plan made in MAG 199 Seeing it through.

Now here is where start grasping at threads.

I believe that when the fears were ejected from the archives timeline it somehow brought with it the burning of the institute and through temporal shenanigans the fire had occurred in 2000.

and that is where this theory ends and this Crackpot theory is one of the only theories that has the least amount of ties to the other theories that will be made.

Next will be my Crackpot Theory on will be on FR3-D1 which due to the expanse of the theory will have to be split into multiple parts as that theory contains at least two sub theories and an extra investigation on characters from Archives.

[dizzy-izzy-in-a-tizzy]

[Note: I drafted this up before Thursday. Didn't edit my thoughts but they have CHANGED since 2x7. Left the opinions untouched.]

Day before episodes 2x6 and 2x7! My thoughts on the main trio ships.

These are all my personal (and rather unhinged) opinions. Feel free to tell me why I'm wrong! 😁

Crackpot ship theory after the cut:

Ed x Stede: They're very cute but they kinda make each other worse in an unfun way. Ed's kinda getting enabled by Stede; I'm thinking of that early 2x5 scene involving Ed's awful speech. Stede is kinda ignoring the crew's safety needs for Ed's sake, although simply exiling Ed isn't really the answer either. They both need to grow up if their endgame is going to be satisfying.

Ed x Izzy: Oh god, they make each other so much worse, but in a way that you can't tear your eyes from. Something about this ship makes some dark, angry thing in my psyche absolutely feral. However, it would be a hugely unsatisfying regression for Izzy, not to mention—what the hell would have had to happen to break up Ed and Stede? Thankfully, this will never become canon—although I adore it in fic.

Stede x Izzy: Are you a person of culture? Do you want to see your enemies to lovers slow burn come to life? Are you unsatisfied with Edward's growth? The cult of stizzy welcomes you with open arms. After 2x2, I already wanted Izzy and Stede to get as far away from Edward as possible. After 2x5, I want Izzy to have someone who looks at him the way Stede looks at him—and not just the happy moments! I want Izzy to get as good as he gives.

this has approximately 0% chance of becoming canon.

Stede x Izzy x Edward: Now, I know what you're saying. "Steddyhands??? After all your Edward trash talk???" Yes. Did logic get you to Buttons becoming a bird?? Now hush.

For better or for worse, OFMD is a show about change—painful, difficult, necessary change. It's also a show about love, and how every person is worthy of love. It would send a cruel message for Edward to be truly irredeemable. They have to square the circle of him doing some truly heinous shit, and coming back from it.

Izzy is at the core of that. Edward cannot succeed on his journey without making amends to Izzy. Likewise, Izzy has to find a way to accept what happened to him. Not to forgive Edward, but to accept his new life after what was done to him.

I also think Edward and Izzy's love for each other was possessive and unhealthy, but it probably wasn't always that way—and it doesn't have to stay that way. But they were missing a piece of the puzzle, because they were both trapped in survival mode for so long.

Stede has shown them that there's a different way, and both of them are changing for it. In some ways, each of them has something the other two need. Edward is their spontaneity, Izzy is their pragmatism and Stede is their kindness.

Notes: I considered these ships as an endgame to the exclusion of the rest of the ships. Color and shape coded green-bold, orange-italics and red-subscript for how much I wanna see them, green-bold being high and red-subscript being low.

These are all personal opinions and I respect everyone's right to choose the ships they want to see canon.

[havemyheartaziraphale]

Strongs Concordances that may be more obscure

Because I like looking at the weird things that may make no sense at all to even look at, and because I love CRACKPOT theories too, so yeah.

3000602

"let there me matter, let there be gravity, there there be everything from pages 11 to 3000602 inclusive."

3000602 can be split to 3000 and 602. Strongs Concordances for 3000: to serve Strongs Concordances for 602: uncovering, revelation

So we've got Crowley serving God by making the Nebula, where he's uncovering the beauty, where Earth is going to be.

On another level, Aziraphale helps (serves) Crowley, and to US, the audience, it's a revelation/an uncovering of the first time Aziraphale was attracted or drawn to Crowley (all of heart eyes!!!)

I'm going to be a bit more Crackpot now, as an fyi @gallup24 but I hope you like this...

3000602 divided by 11 is 272782

Break that down to 272 and 782

SC272: to be careless(greek), a possession(hebrew). SC782: to welcome, greet(greek), a desire or request (hebrew)

well well well... my good ness what do we have here? Not only do we have Crowley's engine starter that he keeps for the Bentley later on, BUT he's seen as careless by Aziraphale for openly criticizing what God has planned. AND THEN of course Crowley requests the help of Aziraphale in cranking that nebula starter, and its the first time they greet each other, or at least Aziraphale does.

Nina's phone shows the time 21:02 when her texts from Lindsay come through.

SC2102: to boil up, seeth... definitely reflects how Lindsay is, especially in that moment.

[viothecrapbot]

You want my hot takes? Here's a hot take. The mimic IS literally Gregory. It is the body that William built to house his dead kid, it is the stolen tech from Henry he is using to put the pieces back together MXES was HIS design to keep him there. That's why its a rabbit.

He is still not ready, he doesn't understand he's a boy. THAT is what B-7 is about, it's telling us this. He's to be kept in a game except he's the kid who learned the lullaby in Candy Cadet's story. THE LULLABY IS GAMES. HE LEARNED GAMES.

ARE YOU HAVING FUN YET? Games. Vanessa was Vanny, she came into his game to check on him and to try and stop him when he (and Freddy) went rogue.

I think there is so much more to this story than what we are given and I'm not about to give up on it yet.

And I think he will come back. He always does.

I always welcome hot takes!!

I love the insanity of this and you've damn well nearly convinced me of this crackpot theory. This litterally explains a whole bunch of random little details that no one's really addressed, like what the hell is the deal with Vanny being so playful. In a series where every detail matters at some point, this theory does provide an explanation for a bunch of them.

Now, do I believe it likely or true? Not really. But a good theory does get my gears churning in the best way and now I will obsessively think about this as I finish up my workday.

Anyway thank you for the ask anon! I look forward to hearing from you more!

[witchofthemidlands]

‼️‼️‼️SPOILERS FOR THE LEGEND OF RUBY SUNDAY‼️‼️‼️

it is, in fact, sutekh's greatest comeback…

BUT MY MIND DOES NOT YET KNOW PEACE BECAUSE THE SPOOKY LEGEND WAS MENTIONED.

of course, it is getting more & more unlikely that it is the trickster but am i surrendering yet? shall i continue to grasp at straws? absolutely because for the first time since i failed my gcse maths, i did a bit of math when we were given a distance at the church on ruby road of 66 meters & 66 meters is:

73 YARDS!!!! 73 BLOODY YARDS!!! we also could not see ruby's “mother's” face no one could & no one could ever see eldritchhorror!ruby's face from a distance in “73 yards” (& she did some pointing) so here's my new chapter of insanity that could very much lead to the trickster's greatest comeback.

“the mother/the woman” IS ruby sunday. “empire of death” or if it's not answered then can answer how why when what? as to how her eldritchhorror!ruby self can be there & hold herself as a baby (but it is not that impossible because eldritchhorror!ruby was able to tell ruby to grab the doctor before the circle was broken because that circle must not be broken without there being a massive paradox that welcomed back the reapers so the doctor would not have to be worrying & having war flashbacks back to being reaper chow)

where am i going with this dear reader? how does it relate to the ultimate spooky legend: the trickster? WELL if ruby has dropped her baby self off (& is probably crying because the whole situation is messed up to probably literal hell & back (because on a separate crackpot theory: is sutekh the devil? “the beast” from “the impossible planet / the satan's pit” i mean carla called them “the beast” & it's the same voice actor also they could have latched onto the tardis back then & has been dormant, waiting for fourtenth to do their idiocy with the salt to shimmy their ungodlyness way back into the universe, so the tardis is toby zed 2.0???) then that could mean that ruby doesn't have parents that she's a creation, one of the trickster's brigade perhaps, a changeling or even a pantheon member (see my above notes on my “73 yards” speculation) & if ruby's a creation then perhaps she still is a creation of the trickster & this is all still leading up to his return.

honestly at this point i am just praying (actually praying on my hands & knees despite being primarily atheist since 2010) to rtd that ruby is not related to the doctor or in some horrendous twist susan's mother (on that note, i am standing by my theory that mrs. “always hiding myself away” flood is susan) i was scared for a minute when “the woman” was pointing at the doctor but now i am thinking that they weren't pointing at the doctor at all but pointing at the tardis which is directly behind the doctor & is still there even after the doctor is gone because again, the tardis in my unhinged mind is now toby zed 2.0. honestly anything but ruby being related to the doctor at this point will be a win for me, if that theory brings you comfort, there is nothing wrong with that, it just does not do anything to give me peace of mind.

alas, it probably is not the trickster but i have not received peace of mind from “the legend of ruby sunday” & now that the trickster has actually been mentioned i don't think that i will get peace of mind even when my theory is proved to be wrong & not the trickster so even if it's not i think to set myself free i will have to write a fanfiction where it is, in fact, the trickster.

i know, i know realistically that because tales of the tardis is making it's return that “the one who waits” or whatever “the big bad” is that shall be giving the doctor & UNIT grief in the finale will probably be that villain from the pyramid serial that was, in fact, the first proper classic who serial i ever saw because it was on the sarah jane adventures dvd but up until the new tales of the tardis instalment was announced, i was so deep in the theory that this is all leading up to the trickster's greatest comeback of all time: ruby is an element of the pantheon & seeing as i've clowned too close to the sun i'm unleashing the insanity that's been occurring in my brain since “the devil's chord”

so basically the doctor said 8 words about maestro & i haven't been sane since.

“that thing must be part of the pantheon”

that was it for me then, i was CONVINCED that this might be leading up to have something to do with the trickster because in “the wedding of sarah jane smith” the doctor & the trickster/the pantheon talk about how they heard about one another through legend:

& from the spreading of the salt this era of doctor who has been all about myths & legends breaking their way through into the universe & the first half of the finale is titled “the legend of ruby sunday”

THEN maestro attacked ruby & the music played from within ruby is VERY similar to the score played in “whatever happened to sarah jane smith” when sarah jane was giving maria the puzzle box which protected her (& then later alan) from the trickster's power & this was the first time the trickster ever came into the whonivese & whilst i thought i was reaching here, i was CLEARLY not the only one who thought that the score progression sounded similar.

https://youtu.be/ARVTQ91P5RE?si=_TD41qhQ_PbQ-8kp

after “the devil's chord” i didn't want to say anything because i thought i was going to sound absolutely crackers but it was simmering, the thoughts that whatever ruby is COULD be connected to the trickster or the pantheon. honestly even if it turns out to be nothing to do with the trickster themself but just another element of the pantheon that's at play & what everything is leading up to, i'd consider that a win.

the full downward spiral into madness began after i witnessed the horror that was “73 yards” which both scared me for life & after like no doctor who episode has done in a VERY long time because not only was i actually scared of ruby sunday & was thinking WHAT IS THIS BEING but it also unleashed this:

deep down, my rational brain KNOWS it's not what my unhinged brain thought it were but in fact what it literally was which was a story filled with elements of welsh folklore BUT my brain said:

to my brain, “73 yards” reminded me of the doctor in “turn left” saying:

and whilst i was in my post 73 yards state of horror/being genuinely afraid of what ruby was there's was two options my brain was throwing out:

1) ruby could be one of the pantheon/the trickster’s brigade she's one of the changelings like the time beetle because life WAS changed in tiny little ways & this was literally probably one of ruby's worst case scenario: that everyone would leave & she'd be alone all her life & her fears manifested in her potential trickster/changeling power & made a whole new reality for her that she enabled herself to stop. it was all just her & the extent of her powers which could be used for very bad.

2) and this is the one that i latched onto like a person deranged:

ruby is a creation of the trickster, the trickster is “the one who waits” because the trickster has been “waiting” for a way to break into the universe & then i just went wild with this theory of mine because of the sarah jane adventures.

in the (devastating) final season of the sarah jane adventures, sky smith was left on the doorstep of sarah jane's house when she was a baby, similarly to how ruby is left on the threshold of the church on ruby road. now that's a reach, yes but HAD the sarah jane adventures series 5 finished the way it was intended to be finished, sky smith would have turned out to be the trickster's child in an finale called “the battle of bannerman road” & her trickster powers would have been awakened by the trickster. sarah jane would apparently have been considering this to be true because she'd gotten jo jones to research “trickster myths” sky would have returned to herself but would have evolved into an entity that would banish the trickster from reality & guard him in a prison forever:

The Battle of Bannerman Road (unproduced TV story) | Tardis | Fandom

honestly i started to imagine that a similar situation could happen with ruby because this story was ultimately never made & whilst i am probably clowning to the highest degree here, i thought about jo & clyde's segment of “tales of the tardis” & how clyde's story is left open ended as if it could possibly be continued & what better way to continue clyde & rani's story then to bring them back during a potential battle with the trickster? there is also the fact that the other unnamed episodes of the sarah jane adventures WERE actually made into stories for a fantastic show called “wizards vs aliens” specifically, “the thirteenth floor”

so perhaps rtd could be using the bare bones of “the battle of bannerman road” for the conclusion to the mystery of ruby sunday.

as i said, i went rather deranged with this one & it's probably going to be the greatest comeback for sutekh, who will probably turn out to be “the one who waits” possibly the head of the pantheon & the creator of ruby but my brain has decided to throw one more twist:

✨sutekh x the trickster✨

i'm kinda glad that this will all be over soon so i can be proved wrong & can enjoy a peaceful state of mind again, finally set free from my trickster theory 😅