#wild theorycrafting I guess

[pen-and-umbra]

About FS characters, you said you thought they wound up hunted by shinra maybe. But the ever crisis trailer gave me an impression that Glen was sort of hunting for Seph?? Like a revenge or a grudge, that kinda thing? So maybe Seph wronged them, somehow.

Anything’s possible, although personally I don’t see Sephiroth doing something intentionally malicious at this point. Maybe it has to do with that Rhadoran boy. Then again, how do we know the hooded figure, presumably Glenn, has a grudge against Sephiroth? Glenn’s agenda may revolve around ShinRA rather than Sephiroth himself, in which case he represents the company vicariously as a member of the SOLDIER force.

Naturally, this is all speculative, but I believe the context of the fight is a little broader. The timeframe appears to be centered on the Wutai campaign, either before or during the early Crisis Core events, with Sephiroth’s attempts to contact Genesis and the familiar environment serving as clues. The crux of the matter is that the clash between Wutai and ShinRA represents former’s struggle for independence in face of corporate greed and expansionist policy. What’s peculiar is that by that time — by the start of Crisis Core — there’s no mention of passive-type SOLDIER members. Neither the remake nor Crisis Core acknowledge their existence. Aside from formal reasons, such as the FS concept being developed after the release of Remake, the in-game reasons for their absence are unknown; in other words the current lore so far holds no explanation as to why passive types don’t appear to be even acknowledged by main installment. My tentative guess is that ShinRA sacks the first batch of SOLDIER members after Sephiroth’s field deployment proves successful, with his combat figures likely outperforming those of non-modified members. Here’s an even scarier possibility: the company could have attempted to physically eliminate its ex-employees in order to protect corporate secrets, or it could have forced them to participate in further human modification experiments. The point is that ShinRA abandons them in some way as a result of Sephiroth’s success, which could coincide with the FS trio discovering some dirt on their former employer. So yes, Sephiroth indeed “wrongs” them in a way.

Glenn’s reappearance in Wutai, of all places, leads me to believe that they’ve joined forces with whoever has the potential to turn the tide against ShinRA. To be specific, the Wutai. Surprisingly, the OG declared that the war had been won by ShinRA. In the remake, however, the fighting appears to have ended in a stalemate/ceasefire. So, besides Avalanche meddling, what other factors could have influenced the outcome? Could some ex-SOLDIER members have joined their ranks, tipping the scales in Wutai's favor? It's not an outlandish scenario. Glenn's conflict with Sephiroth may take on political significance in this case; Glenn, and possibly the rest of the trio, fight ShinRA as a whole. A development like that also allows Glenn's initial animosity towards the modified "golden child" who stole his place to be justified, as evidenced by his "Because I'm a hero" remark. When he fights for Wutai against ShinRA, he is fighting for the "right cause"; he is a true hero who triumphs through his own strength.

On the other hand, the trio's defection, if it occurred, fits in nicely with Sephiroth's abandonment issues, as every significant figure (Lucrecia, Gast, Genesis, Angeal, and so on) eventually leaves him. Furthermore, if ShinRA pursued the deserters and Sephiroth saw how much effort the company put into apprehending or silencing rogue SOLDIER members, it could have served as a deterrent, making fleeing ShinRA an unappealing idea.

Some more random thoughts. If the hooded figure in Junon in FFVII Rebirth trailer is Glenn, which is unclear at this point, then his survival of the Wutai encounter indicates that either it ended in a stalemate somehow or that Sephiroth did not go for the kill and instead spared him. In turn it lampshades the lesson he gave the boy: be merciful. And the plotline comes a full circle.

[wardensantoineandevka]

just because it's fun to make wild guesses: what if that Founding-era temple on Ruidus that Bells Hells found is dedicated to Vordo.

I have no proof or real argumentation. This is just me throwing stuff out there for fun and absolutely zero profit.

[utilitycaster]

Hi! Hope you don’t mind me asking but, I’ve seen you comment about a “fjord moon” theory every so often in your tags, and I’m quite curious what’s it about? I don’t think I’ve ever heard about it, is it something more prevalent in twitter spaces?

It started in Reddit spaces but it had a moment within the fandom at large during Campaign 2, especially after a YouTube video surfaced shortly after the campaign had come back from hiatus in August 2020. It hasn't come up lately since Campaign 3's plot pretty thoroughly debunked it, which wasn't necessary for reasons I will cover below.

I talked about how stupid it was at the time, and will do so again but I don't feel like looking back through my archives to find that post, so: the idea was that Fjord was from Ruidus. I call it a theory because its creators called it a theory but it was really just a lot of incoherent yelling that unfortunately happened to fall into the hands of a prolific and popular but talentless video maker and was boosted by a prolific and popular but deeply stupid figure on CR Twitter.

You can read it here but in short he basis was that Fjord was actually a Spelljammer Space Orc (Scro; yes this is just Orcs backwards; Spelljammer is not exactly the most brilliant of concepts) because he was intelligent and walked upright, ignoring that Spelljammer was, at the time, from D&D 2e only which can generously be described as "wicked racist in the depiction of orcs". Not that 5e is not without its foibles, but it had largely 86-ed the worst of the racism that pervaded earlier orc depictions. Also Garthok pre-dated Fjord and was a half-orc with the same intelligence, but what are facts to an idiot. So anyway this guy working off a deeply racist older concept for orcs spun this into a wild conspiracy theory involving the fact that Travis likes Dragonball Z; something about the film Spaceballs (as far as I know Travis has said absolutely nothing about this, this is just that the Mel Brooks Star Wars parody and my personal childhood favorite Spaceballs exists I think?) and various other random pulls from science fiction media. This guy asked a question at a panel and mistook the cast looking at him like he had lost the plot as a sign he was onto something. Somehow, people listened to him.

Here's the thing about theorycraft. It is more important, in writing a theory, that you base it on evidence than that you get it correct. Any dipshit can guess and any lucky dipshit can guess correctly, but if you show that you can't structure an argument for beans, anyone who can structure an argument for beans will rightfully look at you and say "well, they predicted something once, but that's a fucking fluke because they're a fucking joke." Theories should explain something that needs explanation (Fjord having an INT of 14 and the name Fjord and being an orphan does not). They should not solely rest on things the cast likes or things that merely exist in-world and certainly not from Spaceballs and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the connection of which to Critical Role in that Reddit post is not explained, ever.

To give some examples of good, mediocre, and bad but at least not nearly that bad theorycraft: the theory that Ashton was a meteor that was around early in C3 is in my mind not very good, but at least it fits within Exandria canon and explained something about Ashton needing explanation at the time. The theory that The Emissary is the source of the stasis bubbles is in my mind a very good one explaining several key mysteries (source of stasis bubbles; why Erathis sent him rather than coming himself). The theory that Bor'Dor was a dog was fucking stupid and made no sense nor did it explain anything that needed explanation (and also wildly misjudged how border collies behave) but did at least not say "also, the TV show Lassie...exists in our reality, and this is evidence" The Fjord Moon Theory is maybe the stupidest and worst CR theory I've seen in my entire life, and it's up there for fandom theories over all. I get that it was August 2020 and I don't begrudge people who were very bored and scared from joking about it while not taking it seriously, but I do begrudge those who did take it seriously because like, come on.

Anyway, I bring it up in tags sometimes because many of the worst C3 takes on Twitter that make it to me via "can you fucking believe this" screenshots in the groupchat are either started or propagated by Former Moon Theory People.

[whatyoutaughtwasfear]

Girl im an idiot. From is literally the biblical plagues story.

(Contains spoilers)

Boyd is Moses w/ "lead my people to freedom"

We've had plagues 5 (death of livestock), 6 (boils) and 7 (thunderstorm), and can make arguments for 4 (wild beasts/flies - monsters) and 8(locusts devour plants)

We know something going on with the water and Elgin which may cover 1 (river of blood) and 2 (frogs).

But most importantly. The last plague. Death of the first born. Fatima is pregnant. When she was told it was physically impossible. OUR LADY OF FATIMA IS LITERALLY ANOTHER NAME FOR MARY. GOOD GOD ITS BIBLICAL

question is. whether the kid dies or lives. bc

a) they'll be a first born, dying in passover, or

b) they live bc Fatima is Mary and therefore kid is jesus.

(im actually so angry i didn't recognise the fatima name earlier. I didn't know Mary was Our lady of Fatima. I only knew that Fatima is where those 3 sisters had visions of hell)

Also there's a few other religious tie-ins i want to point out:

Silly theorycrafting:

Tabitha in the bible: "A diciple who gets brought back to life after prayer by the apostle Peter". Guess what happened to our Tabitha!!

Elgin -> Elijah.

from the elijah wiki page-

- Prophet

- Invoked during passover in judaism

- "John the Baptist is "the Elijah" who was promised to come" -> baptist -> water -> river of blood.

Mari -> Mary

Her drug addiction COULD be a reference to Mary Magdelene, but if it is it's super weak.

 Tian Chen Liu

Tian literally means heaven.

Jade

If jade is judas i riot

[vorthosjay]

Hi jay! Been following your blog for a while and I was wondering, do you ever miss being able to wildly speculate on future storylines here?

No, mostly because I still get to do that kind of thing it's just not speculation anymore, lol.

What I do miss, however, are fans who detailed theorycrafting. I think a lot of 'theories' I've seen over the course of the Phyrexian arc have been wild guesses unsupported by anything. I appreciate folks who take a look at what's been happening and use evidence (both in-universe and real-world) to theorycraft. (This is not a que for people to send me all of their theories)

[autumnbrambleagain]

good god the mephistopheles fight in wotr

there's so much shit going on you can't see shit

It isn't even Difficult. This isn't a challenge. i'm not being CHALLENGED to find some inventive way of winning.

In a game that gives you THIS many choices of building characters, picking feats and spells--the game also says, there are right and wrong answers to these options. This is a test: have you picked the right answers?

It's being given a fill-in-the-blank test without having taken a class on the subject, and you learn the right answer by learning how you got it wrong. Until you come to the Correct Answer.

Sure, there are several Correct Answers to this bullshit. But that, again, isn't difficult. It isn't challenging me to come up with an inventive strat. It's challenging me to pick one of the synergy exploits that Let Me Win. And You Gotta Pick One.

Because executing those victories isn't HARD. This is about System Knowledge. This is about Knowing that out of the 500 choices you have per-character, if you pick options 37 and 48, you win. If you pick options 13 and 64, you win. If you pick any other options, you did not do this right and you lose.

This doesn't feel like Blackwater, where I learned to give everyone Greater Invisibility and lock enemies down with Mind Fog + Constricting Coils so I can bypass high AC and hit that sweet flatfoot AC. That? That was honestly good game design.

This is asking me: Do you have the Obligatory (literally) 40 buffs before this fight starts? Did you realize that the right feat synergies make everyone immortal? Did you take the few options that increase caster level for dispells?

More and more I wish I was playing DOS2, where the difficulty was in coming up with ways to USE the powers you picked in synergy, not in picking the right ones to start with. Where difficulty was in how you maneuvered your pieces, where you set up your guys and what you did with them. I can remember so many exciting, wild fights from DOS2 that demanded I pull off some crazy last-second maneuver or desperate action. I remember reloading on a bunch of fights and going, wait, no, I can do this better. I have a better plan this time.

I can't remember a single fight outside of Blackwater where I felt like I was really engaged with the game. Whenever I died in WotR, I'd go, ah, right, there's a fight coming up. Reload. Cast buffs. Cast more buffs. Walk into the fight. Kill everything unopposed. Neat. This has always been an utterly boring binary pass/fail system.

This game demands: did you spend the entirety of the 00s on the GitP forum, theorycrafting level 20 min-max builds despite no tabletop game lasting that long? Is your one love in life looking up a dozen different splatbooks to assemble the ultimate god-character whose stats are The Biggerest and has Even Biggerer stats than the gods' statlines because you have Such Big Stats Oh My God Look At Your Spell DC Wow.

This isn't a challenge. This isn't difficult. This is an interactive fiction adventure game, and like all classic Sierra bullshit, you lose because you did not intuit 100 hours ago the right items you needed to have at the end of the game.

When my buffs are up, and I pick the spell that does Mostest Damage each turn… I win, i just, I win that's it there's nothing to be done about it i won. I didn't do anything clever--i put the mostest manylots buffs on and hit Big Damage Dice Roll Please.

In this case, I lose because I hadn't encountered anything that NEEDED to be dispelled before and was higher level than 20+CL (which is fucking 38 right now and i need 41 which means they literally intend you to have the dispell increasing feats so guess it's time to go and spend an hour respeccing my characters for one single boss lol)

If a game gives you 500 choices, and only 50 of those let you win, it's a bad game. If you let me pick between 10 spells each level and I can only take one, and I NEED to have 4 of them to win and you don't tell me which ones are Fake Choices, it's a bad game. If your difficulty is based entirely around telling the player "ah, you see, 40 hours ago you were given a choice, and it was the wrong one", it's a bad game.

hey, i think this is actually a bad game.

[darkx-the-dragon-kn1ght]

Chapter 30- Part 4

Well, there's that done, and now here's Shieldon’s Dex entry:

Now, the second to last encounter is…well, this I'm a bit miffed by. Remember two chapters ago, all those book excerpts? Well, there was one (1) last excerpt that I skipped because I didn't want to add more screenshots, I just didn't feel like it. 

But it turns out!! You need to hear all four readings to get this next Pokémon!! SO HERE I GO-

Alright, last book, let's see what this is about finally.

Y…Yes, yes book, I know how energy transfer works, I took chemistry classes, I have a degree in the field-

Well, based on the laws of physics, the energy produced by the act of punching still gets transferred out of your fist. Some of it goes into the surrounding environment as heat or sound, but most of it gets absorbed back into your body, which can actually be kinda detrimental to your joints and muscles if not done in a safe-

We also call that Newton's Third Law-

Again, literally just chemistry, you can spin it in a spiritual way all you want, but I know what you really are!!

Anyways, now that Xera's gotten enlightenment from all four books, it's time to go back to…her.

Yeah, so I was right to guess she was important for some side quest, I was just wrong about what the side quest was.

But regardless! Meditite, that's cool! I named mine Asano (derived from Meditite’s Japanese name, which likely comes from the word asana), even though I forgot to screenshot it. Luckily, I remembered to grab the PokéDex entry:

Now, the final encounter is…not a static encounter, actually. It's a normal Pokémon found in the wild, but it's one that I just straight-up think would be a good fit for my Kiki team. And that Pokémon is…

A Sandygast! I noticed you could encounter them on Apophyll Beach, and- well, there's more to it than that, but I'll get to it in a bit. For now, let's just catch this-

Forgot to screenshot it again, but I named her Suna, which is the Japanese word for “sand” (砂).

Now, before I start theorycrafting, I noticed Asano knows Hidden Power, so just out of curiosity for what type his is-

Fascinating! Okay, onto proper teambuilding now…

So, I said I really wanted a Sandygast (soon to be Palossand), right? Well, there are three reasons for that. For one, she's part Ghost-type, so she's immune to Fighting-type moves outright. Second, her Ability:

On Ashen Beach, Sand Veil is activated immediately, so that should help her dodge other types of attacks. 

Also, can I just- can I just talk about something that’s REALLY bothering me? 

So, while I was looking for a Sandygast with Sand Veil (see, if I ran into a Sandygast, I would use Lake to hit it with a Water attack, and if its Defense and Sp. Defense got raised, I’d know it had Water Compaction, so I would run from that encounter and try again), I actually encountered a Shiny Sandygast. I didn’t catch it, didn’t have the Ability I wanted, but it did allow me to see that Pokémon Reborn also changed Sandygast’s Shiny, to this:

Which, in my opinion, is objectively worse than Sandygast’s actual Shiny. Sandygast’s canon Shiny is based on the phenomena of black sand, which is common on beaches near volcanoes, due to having basalt mixed in with the sand. So that’s a cool thing to base a Shiny on, and a logical decision for a Pokémon literally made of sand, not to mention the black coloring could arguably be seen as befitting Sandygast’s Ghost typing.

So what the heck is this? Slightly pale blue sand?? What?? Heck, if anything, I’d say black sand Sandygast is more fitting for the environment of the Rebon region and Apophyll Beach, because that beach is literally next to a volcano!! Where black sand beaches can happen in real life??

I don’t know why this is making me so mad, it’s just one (1) Shiny change, I’m certain no one else who’s played this game cares about this, definitely not to the extent that I do, but I just- gosh!!

Previous

Next

[vt-scribbles]

✨️🎶💖🎯 for the writing ask game!♡

✨ Give you and your writing a compliment. Go on now. You know you deserve it. 😉

Okay SO. I'm really good at painting animated pictures inside a reader's head. I've got fun and likeable characters. I'm REALLY good at painting establishing shots and scenery. I think I have fun transitions sometimes, and I'd like to think I can be pretty funny when I want to be! Not like 'bust a gut' funny, but 'delighted snickering' funny.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

>> Answered here! &lt;<

💖 What made you start writing?

Ohhh man... that's a pretty long answer. I guess the short version is simply: I liked painting pictures in my head. And on top of that, just like how I started drawing, I wanted to Tell Stories. I saw all the animated shows around me, the manga I read as a teen, and the mysteries I read... and I wanted to make what they had. I wanted to make stories that made me feel like I did as a kid when reading something for the first time. Unfun fact though: When I first started writing in sophomore year of highschool, I asked my english teacher for feedback, and she silently read my story's first chapter [which was admittedly, not good] and then basically told me to give up writing, and that 'you'll never get anywhere with it.' And of course after being crushed for a bit I went 'fuck you' and decided to prove her wrong. I continued writing and roleplaying and developing my story-telling skills out of spite. Nowadays I consider myself a perfectly serviceable author when I have someone to work off of.

Fullmetal Alchemist was the true starting point of my art and writing career, when I was 16. I started off my true artist/author's path with one goal. "I want to create a story that people want to binge all in one go like I just did with this anime."

And... fourteen years later, I've done that. And past-me would be so proud and in disbelief.

🎯 Have any of your readers accurately guessed major plot points? Care to share which?

OH MAN...... WHERE DO I START LMAO. There's a few beta-readers in particular who are ABSOLUTELY CRACKED at theorycrafting and catching onto me and Corrie's writing for The Harvester. It started with simple things like 'X character is gonna blow up at X character' and stuff like that. But nowadays? TH has gotten SO complex compared to its starting arcs that the theorycrafting has gotten WILD.

As far as sharing which ones have been predicted... oh man. I gotta be vague since some people haven't read TH yet. Sooo... A major plot point abt Topaz. A major plot point abt Hemmi. The Big Thing that happened to Tita. Something in the future that happens with Blue Diamond. Hell... a couple friends of mine are so cracked that they have predicted the entire plot [with at least 80% accuracy] and they have no idea.~ And if you're reading this and you know who you are...... have fun with that info.

The Harvester is STILL ongoing [and will be for years to come], so I can't share too much... but JUST last night a friend of mine was staring at the Hematites' designs and finally put something together that I've been waiting 7 YEARS for someone to notice. And now I'm going to leave this here and let anyone who knows/reads TH wonder wtf it was ;3 [Hint: it hasn't become relevant YET, but it will by the end of arc 7.]

[danwhobrowses]

One Piece Chapter 1053 - Initial Thoughts

So we are here, last chapter of the month.

Lot to unpack left in Wano (which is sending theorycrafters in a spin and the Wano haters out in droves) but we will have to steel ourselves

New bounties incoming, and the fallout shall continue

Spoilers for the Chapter, Support the Official Release also

Also want to reiterate that people of tumblr can easily be using this Keep Reading to FECKING HIDE YOUR GODDAMN SPOILERS!

Like it ain't hard, and I've been dodging spoilers like the Matrix since Tuesday.

Anyways, Cover Page was to promote the new game Odyssey, it's colourful but yeah, the Germa story keeps getting interrupted and we still need Gear Fifth colours

The Gorosei are going wild though with Luffy's new poster, including his new photo. Seems they wanted to remove the D like they did with Roger too, but Monkey Luffy doesn't really have the same ring to it and everyone knows he's Monkey D. Garp's grandson, and Monkey D. Dragon's son

Is it me or did that marine look a bit like White Eye from CP0, was my clone theory close to the truth? But it seems the photo was sent by CP0 anyway, Guernica. Is that mask-face? I guess it would have to be right?

They want to reprint it but Morgans has already sent them off, he's having a Big News-gasm that the Gorosei cannot defeat

Huh, has Morgans been wiretapping CP0?

And if they stopped once they saw BM's ship that implies Big Mom is alive, or they're at least searching for her

Someone else pointed it out but there's a Sabo poster on one of the kingdoms, which means he's not dead either

Luffy, Law AND Kid all got 3 Billion each!

Kinda surprised they all got the same number but good for them, but does that mean they all leapfrogged Blackbeard? He was on 2 and a half last time right?

Kid's on the move but Law is still simmering on the fallout of what this'll cause

Food's fancy but Sanji didn't cook it so sorry bud

Also Jinbe's the only one here, the rest are already partying (JINBE I KNOW YOU'RE POLITE BUT JOIN IN THE FESTIVITIES)

Yamato's wilding with Luffy and Chopper as it's his first festival. I know people are again reaching at this for confirmation, and it does look likely, but I still feel like it's 'jumping the line' still, and I worry that his flaws will show a lot more outside of Wano where he has less emotional stakes, and if Carrot doesn't join she deserved better than to be pipped so easily

Hiyori jamming with Brook for the musical festivities

See? Robin is Poneglyph hunting, y'all were worried for nothing

Theory confirmed: Hitetsu was Sukiyaki!

WHAT DO YOU MEAN PLUTON IS HERE!!??

Babanuki no! Seems the Admiral does have a plant DF, and he can drain people's energy

And he's handling King and Queen without even trying!

I feel like I've seen his face, Aramaki though WHY COULDN'T YOU BE CHILL?

Instead he's a suck up to Akainu, and he's going for Luffy to try and get approval from him...you could've just been chill

Back at the festival Kid is gunning for Luffy, who of course mistakes him for wanting to join in the party

Another Carrot panel, much more visible too (yes I know she's with the minks but I ain't giving up she deserves it just as much if not more than Yamato)

And Kin'emon and Tsuru finally reunited

Kid though still wants blood, and why? because Luffy is officially a Yonko

But Law and Kid aren't...Buggy is!

Fucking knew it, I didn't post it because I felt it wouldn't get much attention but after thinking about it I considered the warlords becoming a Yonko. Wanted it to be Mihawk but I knew Buggy would be the gag choice

Dude, Be. Fucking. Chill!

Oda sir, mate, bro, buddy, my man, my dude, hermano, ese, amigo, aniki, jefe, muchacho, comrade, mon ami, sensei...WHY?

The literal amount of cliffhangers we got here; Pluton, Ryokugyu being pro-Akainu, Buggy is a Yonko, Luffy is a Yonko, Kid wants murder, everyone is seeing Gear Fifth, the world's going to shit (in the navy's opinion at least), Kaido's commanders have been taken down and Ryokugyu is threatening to ruin the party.

And we have a month. A MONTH to sit on that

You beautifully dastardly man!

This chapter was great, and a good showing of how much Oda can easily pack into a chapter, but as expected Wano ain't over just yet. One of course hopes that the Admiral is fended off by the sheer mountainous force of the Flower Capital but with that giant tree he might have some manner of control. I dunno I'm just hoping he backs off, since he's basically doing his own thing right now, I don't think Akainu would approve of Wano seeing the navy in a negative light if he messes up their 20 year liberation festival.

I mean, Robin has to find Pluton and Zoro still needs to visit Ryuma's grave, so I'd rather he not try to chase the pirates out of Wano y'know?

The bounties did surprise me, but only because just Luffy is considered 'Yonko' and not the same bounty Law and Kid. I guess it is because Morgans backs Luffy and he was already 'Fifth emperor', maybe territory too if you count Fishman Island? It's a weird one, because surely the bounty value means Buggy and Blackbeard must be higher than 3 bil to still be classed as Yonko? Wouldn't the dismantling of the Warlords mean that the Yonko system would need to modify too? I dunno I think part of me was still pulling for Mihawk; could've had Shanks, Blackbeard, Mihawk, Buggy and Luffy as the Fifth Emperor but I'm sure Oda will pull it off

But still a month, we gotta lean on each other for it, and granted there's still stuff with the Live Action and Odyssey and more Movie Red promotion but the new chapter will still be a long wait.

Tl;Dr this was a great chapter but a painful cliffhanger leaving to wait. And so it begins.

[hematomes]

Yeah fair worjfjdjdj but I think it’s fun to guess until things are confirmed so.

Like even if I’m wrong I’m not even mad. For example I think seeing everyone’s interpretation of Pulcinella, which all were kinda similar, is so fucking funny compared to how he was revealed to look in canon. I love guessing and being right/wrong/whichever

im more into theorycrafting, so i need arguments that support it, even if it's an extremely wild take (lumine creating khaenri’ah for example <3)

[blakegallo]

13. least favorite storyline?

13. least favorite storyline?

mayhaps this has come up in previous 911 ask meme's i've done... so i'm not sure how fresh this take is going to be if you've been following me. but i think that nothing really compares to the loathing that i've slowly cultivated for most of the storylines they've given one edmundo diaz... which sounds dramatic, and that was intentional, but i phrased it that way because i think that his solo storylines highlight the flaws of the show to never actually dig deep into the storylines that they want to attempt to explore and why in s5 i've found so much of the theorycrafting that happens in the fandom to not be fun to read?

i think that a lot of people agree that s1 + s2 have a different feel, and i guess i would mostly agree after my rewatch of those two seasons, but i think that the decision they made to kill of shannon diaz instead of having eddie learning to coparent with her told me everything that i really needed to know about the writers intentions? i also think that it's been very clear over the years how they have refused to unpack that trauma despite it coming up a couple of times in his talks with bobby. i also think that those talks with bobby expose a lot about eddie as a character that people ignore? like the show makes it clear that bobby is the person that eddie allows himself to be vulnerable around because they have that same grief of losing a spouse and struggling to move on from it, which is why i feel so robbed of a proper scene between the two of them in wrapped in red because it would have been so good. i can just sense it. give me the fix it fic about that.

even beyond that i think it's played into the lackluster storyline they tried to give him with ana and how none of that arc made any sense. i will never get over how eddie was the driving force for that relationship accelerating at the way that it did and then the writers acting like he was pushed into something he didn't ask for and the complete lack of self reflection. what makes it worse is that relationship was so parallled to the eddie that we saw in the flashback eddie begins to the point that the actions made even less sense.

i also just think it was stupid for a show that is never going to kill off a main character to have eddie get shot and talk about his will. the more times i've rewatched those sequences when making gifs the more i have come to see the pattern in the way that eddie and buck have these heartfelt moments. which is why i said earlier that bobby is the person that eddie is vulnerable around bc that scene in the hospital bed is eddie certainly more vulnerable than compared against the post fight club dinner scene but about on par with the post tsunami scene is the exact way that eddie would talk to buck about the trauma... it's also made the "buck is christopher's other dad" trope run FUCKING WILD in this fandom and nothing grates on my nerves more than having to read those takes bc that is not at all what that scene implied. buck is nothing more than a godparent, if you want buck to be christopher's dad eddie has to die, or be in a coma. [ i mean, or a buddie wedding... but i'm talking strictly about what the will actually says ]

which has all culminated in the wrapped in red cliffhanger which i think is the worst cliffhanger, but potentially better than setting up another near cataclysmic natural disaster in the county of los angeles. i say that only because while i agree with the arguments along the lines of you have to put on your own oxygen mask before helping your child, if s5 showed us anything it was eddie slowly unraveling. first off the clock, but eventually how being in the field was increasingly something that wasn't good for his own mental health long before christmas came and christopher broke the gingerbread house. i do think that eddie taking time away from the 118 under the guise of doing it for christopher is actually good for him. i don't know if i trust the writers to actually have eddie getting the help he so desperately needs or how they are going to write him back into the firehouse in a convincing way and that is also part of the problem..

it even bleeds into a lot of the other serious storylines that are really only buoyed by the talent of the actors they've haired to play them out. their love of making these large swings for storylines they cannot support has never been more clear in how they handled jlh's maternity leave. so while i've talked a lot about eddie and how his arcs haven't worked for me, i do think that whent he show isn't fighting a fire or wacky medical call or giving us athena doing whatever she wants it falls flat for me because the writing just isn't there.

this wound up being a lot longer than i anticipated, so i apologize for the ramble that came out of me.

✨ wee woo show asks ✨

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots reads Homestuck Epilogue part... one..??

Alright, let’s do this.  As I’ve said, the page after this one is all I’ve seen, I’m diving in unspoiled.  Also I gather from some of the non-spoilery chatter I’ve heard from my friends -- one of which warned me this sort of thing was coming a couple weeks ago, and I believed them (but didn’t want to) -- that this first epilogue-upd8 may not be the only epilogue-upd8, which isn’t surprising either given how Andrew works.

Alright, let’s go.  Hope my stomach can take it!

So, Page 1, the mock-AO3 page that’s the only thing I’ve seen before posting this.  The content warning is EXCELLENT, and gives me hope that this will be the usual Hussie-caliber and more humorous than heartwrenching.  :)

It also makes some serious sense that there would be multiple epilogues; from the sound of the summary, this one might focus more on John and then leave ample opportunity to discuss the others.

Let’s click page 2 -- oh, or contents: “Prologue”, this being a chapter list for this is another way to do it.  Clicking Prologue.......

Okay wow, this is novel format for the moment.  Good chance it won’t stay that way.

These first two paragraphs are well-written and ominous, sure -- describing stuff we pretty much already knew was happening, in different words -- but even though the writing isn’t really pretentious, there’s still a good chance Andrew *views* it as pretentious enough to find cutting away to art-style instead hilarious.  Onto the third paragraph...

Music and Calliopes the other Calliope is conducting, yeah... Oh, there’s a garbage disposal reference.  In regards to a black hole.  Like the one I kind of pointed to during Dave’s intro sequence in the Third Scratch theory and stuff in all those big theories.  The ones I was, er, wrong about... ahem.  Moving on.

“Your name is John Egbert, and you have just had a terrible, deeply pretentious nightmare.”

Pfffffffff  :D

I love you Andrew Hussie.  Reading on...

YES I see chat colors. Chat colors!!! I need chat colors.  Reading reading reading let me get down to them let me

Absolutely nothing of note has ever happened here in the entire history of the planet, which you would know, because you created it.

Baahahahahah.  :D

Okay yes I’m at the phone-sterlog.

Uh oh.

I am reading elevated levels of angst compared to usual pesterlogs in this log.  Which is to say, virtually any at all, really.  THAT doesn’t bode well for the outcome/overall tone of this epilogue.  :X  --Not to say it isn’t *appropriate*, given they still haven’t fixed/resewn Paradox Space together, but... yeah, *future feels* are popping up on the radar, that’s what I’m worried about.  I loved the tone of the snapchats and the feeling that everything was going to be fine, especially given how the ending “not being what I expected” shook me a fair bit, but to look forward to when that may end... D:

Yeah, Rose having some serious visions about some unfinished business they need to get around to instead of just fucking around and living their lives makes sense.  :X  --or at least some timeline version of them.  I’m imagining they’re living varied, excellent lives in a whole TON of timelines of promise that commit our imaginings of their potential futures to virtual canon, really, with the main thread that ties off Caliborn’s stage play almost irrelevant in comparison... that was kind of the whole point of the Ending of homestuck earlier, of that final anime flash, the fact that the victory and planet and *lives* they won meant a whole lot more than whatever Lord English’s irrelevant machinations were.

So... returning to the tail end of that main thread and seeing how *serious* it might be....... yeah. Kinda mildly panic-inducing. :XXX

You move the phone away from your ear and assume an expression you haven’t practiced in years. It is the look of a man who actually has something to do.

Okay that was good.

Ah, he’s twenty-three now!

Let’s click the next link. ==>

Fuck let’s not recount Rose’s substance abuse.

Oh, cool. Er, “cool”. Rose is getting some of Rosejaspersprite^2′s awareness of all her alternate-timeline doomed selves and their lives.  No wonder she’s worried about the substance abuse she technically mostly *avoided* in this timeline.

Light explicitly relating to knowledge, good.  That’s a nice aspect tidbit to have reiterated.

ROSE: There’s a different scale I’ve come to understand. Another dichotomy that’s less... emotional, I guess? ROSE: Consider, instead of the word “good,” using the word “essential.” ROSE: And what exists at the opposite polarity from essential is... ROSE: Something that is best not to contemplate.

ooh.  oooooh. holy shit.

okay NO, BOOTS/BKEW.  DON’T GET FUCKING EXCITED.

DON’T get excited.

It only SOUNDS like she’s learned to recontextualize the whole adventure in the rich context of the classpect system, that’s just your wild fanfic-y theoryimagination talking.  Shoosh.  (Even though she IS very, very, *very* clearly referencing the Light/Void dichotomy with the above quote.)  Just... tamp down your hopes, Boots.  Leave it at MILD hope.  Like cool porridge.

Reading on.

Alright, yeah, this universe exists beyond the timespan of the Green Sun’s influence.  Unsurprising, since it was heavily implied.  And she doesn’t have access to her expanded Green Sun powerset while *in* such a universe, which was also heavily implied by alt!Calliope or her denizen or I forget the exact conversation where it said she’d have to make the final journey without Green Sun powers or whatever.  That’s cool.  (Though having it spelled out more explicitly than usual does make it more awkward to have her use her powers for humorous purposes on MXRP in the future.)

OOOH DAVE KARKAT AND JADE ARE IN A PERPLEXING SOCIAL ARRANGEMENT YESSSSS  :D

Best news.  Okay reading on.

ROSE: You will need to travel back into canon and defeat Lord English.

Yeah I guess.

Again, the way the ending sort of put it was that..... our heroes did have to defeat Lord English eventually?  Or set right some prior stuff like doing the stage play?  But that part of the point of this whole story -- the Ultimate Reward -- was that it didn’t really matter, because they had earned nigh-infinite branching timelines of promise in a brand new universe where they could go YEARS AND YEARS living their lives in many of the ways they wished, richly enjoying themselves and starting civilizations that would last billions of years, loving and living and experiencing, only “needing” to go finally check off these other responsibilities in a single timeline of promise at the end of an extended period of vacation they chose with no particular urgency.  Branching years-and-years of essentially heaven as long as they EVENTUALLY fulfilled that particular endpoint, and they knew it.  More or less.

Rose phrases it pretty explicitly, though.  John’s powers are the only thing that can warp people through canon like that without restriction, so he was always to be involved, but... *he* needs to defeat him?  Does that mean alone?

JOHN: yeah, i had a feeling that was going to come up again someday. ROSE: I’m sure we all did. That is, even those of us without visions. JOHN: i was doing my best not to think about it. i guess we can’t put it off any longer then? ROSE: Now is the time. We are rapidly approaching a point of no return. If the decision isn’t made soon, it will be too late. The issue will no longer matter. JOHN: when exactly is the point of no return? ROSE: Today. JOHN: wow. JOHN: ok then.

Ouch.

That’s slightly more abrupt than the picture of branching bliss I just painted.

JOHN: fine? ROSE: Of course everything is fine here. ROSE: We’re outside of canon now. JOHN: yeah, i know. what does that actually MEAN though? JOHN: are you saying this isn’t really happening? ROSE: Of course it’s happening. ROSE: Just because certain events take place outside of canon, it doesn’t mean those events are non-canon. JOHN: oh. ROSE: In other words, there is an important distinction between events which can be considered to occur inside canon, outside canon, and those which are not canon at all. ROSE: The day we went through that door and claimed our reward, we passed a threshold between continua marked by differing degrees of relevance, truth, and essentiality.

Well okay then.  I was wondering why she used the word “canon”.  They literally DID escape the narrative literally as *well* as figuratively with that Juju, then, Neverending Story style.

Also, Light being highly tied to canon and Rose having spent so much time outside of it... yeah, I can understand the headaches more, too.

Alright, reading on, it seems Andrew is using Rose to more explicitly explain how he intends all the non-canon stuff he’s presented to us to “matter”, for those who didn’t quite get or fully believe the implied explanation from context towards the end of the story.

Heh, so the idea is that the urgency comes from “it’s been too fucking long since the story ended, and this epilogue needs to come out when an epilogue would still matter to anyone”.  That’s kind of brilliant.

ROSE: As long as we live outside canon, everything that happens will technically be “real,” but only conditionally. ROSE: There are certain crucial events inside canon which must happen in order to continue to prop up the legitimacy of events here on Earth C. ROSE: And you specifically, John, have a responsibility to make sure those events take place.

Closing threads closing threads CLOSING THREADS :D !!!!!!

FUCK is this epilogue going to be mostly devoted to TYING UP LOOSE ENDS and clarifying stuff??? :D  Like the HUNDREDS OF LOOSE ENDS that were left unanswered because the ending tried to paint it all as sidelined/irrelevant regardless of the fact that they hadn’t been answered/fulfilled, which had previously pretty much traumatized me around Homestuck’s end because I was (1) so used to Andrew expertly tying up almost every loose end eventually and (2) was a theorycrafter with explicit investment in the idea that Classes, Aspects, and most of these loose ends actually DID matter???  :D

Sign me the fuck up!!!  :DDDD

...I know it’s doubtfully going to be anything close to all I hoped for, but still.  Answers, contextualization, and John tying up loose threads.  Like that final frog warped in front of Jade as a child.  That’s good, that’s VERY good.  I’m excited instead of nauseous.  :D

--and yeah, reading on, Rose makes more explicit what I said earlier that the justification Andrew’s painting for this is “we have to wrap up all these loose ends before everyone forgets about Homestuck.”  That is hilarious.

Okay, so the juju is a big plothole. Heheh.  We’ve heard it called that earlier.

...Oh.  Oh huh.

Rose is pretty much explicitly talking about the stage play consisting of a bunch of non-canon ALTERNATE VERSIONS of themselves that mean the original versions of them living happily in the new universe won’t actually die.  Holy shit.  I mean we theorized that for a TIME with some of them but THOSE loose ends (like Roxy still having her mask on) were closed up toward the end...  So instead, having it put THIS way (preserving our ideas of them living full lives post-victory), and not only that but having John DO all this stuff RIGHT NOW to fix things retroactively with some really well-written contextual clarification we’re bound to get to help with the closure... god DAMN.  This is really good.  This is going to make a LOT of people feel a whole lot better about Homestuck.  Like me.  :D

...Pff, some other girl is getting punched by John in the face again.  :D  Don’t worry, Rose isn’t saying that this is the Vriska punch at the beginning of the whole Retcon arc and that this epilogue somehow happened in the middle.  (I hope.)

...Yeah Rose implies heavily that John is gonna die his heroic death if he does this?  Or it’s meant to make us THINK she’s implying that.  Yeah.  And she feels pretty fucking horrible about what she’s asking John to go through regardless, so.  (Yeah, everyone looked pretty genuinely dead but a few at the end of the stage play, but it was pretty uncertain.)  Either way, she’s acting like John isn’t going to “come back”, even if he lives through this.

Stupid feels.

Clicking the next link.  ==>

Hiiii roxy and callie!!! :D

Yes how polite of them.

“Ultimate self”?  Yeah, a sort of synthesizing of all the offshoots of her Heart and Mind, pulling it all together and realizing the full person she is and sum of her whole experience across all timelines, pasts and futures.  Yeesh.  Pretty uncomfortable for someone who ain’t a hypersprite.

...Roxy and Rose aren’t as close?  Is it because of the substance abuse, because of the Light/Void dichotomy literally-or-metaphorically distancing them (with how disparaging Rose just was about anything that isn’t relevant), or something else?

Ah, Kanaya hogged her until she got “sick”, that explains some of it too.

A bell tower? (DOOONNNNGGG)

Fffff interpersonal relationship mildangst.  Fuck

You and all your friends have dispositions affected by your classes and aspects. You think you know what that means in your case. But what about her? You can only speculate. Void is a place where things sink and disappear. Where they linger forever, but cease to exist. You aren’t actually sure if your feelings for Roxy ever really faded, or if they just grew numb with time and distance. Is it the same for her?

Holy fucking shit.  What a big middle finger to everyone who told me aspects didn’t matter to their personalities.  :D

...Though, I think he has it kind of backwards, since he still doesn’t totally understand all this business.  It’s easy for those in canon, introduced to this subject, to think that the classes and aspects affect their dispositions, to an extent where the reality (at least I contend) is that it was their natural dispositions in the first place that the classes and aspects were actually describing.  The power that was latent in their very personalities and tendencies to action all along.

Reading... Ah, yeah, a choice.  Was pretty sure this terminology would be important earlier.  It depends on what SORT of choice this is though... see, so far, Rose hasn’t given John a lot of really EXPLICIT motivation to go through with this, other than some mumbo-jumbo that would supposedly be “bad”.  And it doesn’t even address the black hole in his nightmares.  And here, we have Roxy and others explicitly encouraging him with regard to the fact that he can choose NOT to do this if he wants to.

The main question it brings up (to the future of this epilogue, how it’s going to be considered afterward, etc) is if this is the sort of Choice that John would always say yes to -- in which case it’s more canon than anything else -- or if he will end up being on the fence enough for a Terezi-style Mind-split.  Because this would be the PERFECT out to have him “die” in canon.  See, if he’s on the fence ENOUGH about going, then he creates two timelines that even both potentially have promise within the confines of this universe (since universes hold more than one timeline of promise, according to one of the Calliopes I think)--  One where he lives here, happily ever after with everyone, and another where he completes his Heroic death in canon to fix everything.  It would let Andrew kill John in this epilogue while still letting him live out eternity with everyone else outside “canon”.

He’d get to have his John-death and keep him too!  Seems plausible enough.

Anyway. Reading... it looks like they know more about this decision that Rose has told them, including the consequences Rose might have been dreading.  And likely know that IF John might die doing this, that it won’t be in a way that he regrets.

Oh wow, that whole Meat or Candy sequence is GREAT.  Silly to the core, and yet perfectly emphasizing the debate that... well, I mean, think about what Andrew’s been telling us all along.

He keeps TRYING to tell us that non-canon stuff is fine.  Trying to use that huge ending sequence of Homestuck to try and tell us that the fact that everyone is FREE from this story and its confines, free for everyone to imagine COUNTLESS ways things played out afterward for ALL these lovable characters in carefree futures, is almost MORE important than any of these stupid loose ends.  But some of us were really cut by that ending, the insistence that the actual final battle “didn’t matter” and that this escaped-from-canon existence was the true victory.  But if Andrew just upped and drew a bunch of bonus pages to start explaining more story, THAT would cheapen the escape-from-canon ending he wanted even as it satisfied those of us who wanted ends tied up, who wanted questions answered.  He had to find a very careful, very well done way to give us BOTH.  To write out the real “ending” of “canon” for those of us who needed it, without compromising the ESCAPE from the very necessity of it that was the essential point he WANTED to make with Homestuck’s story from the very beginning.  To carefully keep the endless branches of post-victory possibility and play intact while still, separately and with explicit hedging and qualifications, give us the potential results of one last canon thread to tie up the lingering questions that he so dearly wants us to recognize still “don’t matter” as much in the vast scheme of things.

And he’s doing it.  And it’s WORKING.

Holy SHIT.

I am excited for Homestuck.  I am excited for Homestuck for the first time in years, and my nausea is gone.

I’m not going to start theorizing again; that’s over.  But I’m definitely going to keep reading as the new Epilogue chapters come out, and do so with a spring in my step.

To Be Continued.  :D

[queenofnohr]

i love kh3 but tbh after wading through tags like the goddamn fool i am i can firmly say that i dont think kh should ever be subjected to a renaissance in the present day and especially not with current tumblr culture where weird pseudo-intellectualism reigns? and by that i mean people writing essay length text-wall meta that’s firmly rooted and motivated by - and I just fucking know this is going to make me sound like a dispassionate anime villain - feeling and nothing else.

and by that I mean

i didn’t really realize it before, mostly because the meta posts I do usually see are whatever shows up on my dash - aka by trusted friends, who, while motivated usually by unrepentant love in their hearts, do the work with textual evidence to theorycraft/meta-post/etc. But having to go through tags and be subjected to the brunt of the blue hellsite and not my carefully crafted corner, I am subjected to........... strange and unpleasant types of “meta-posting” that don’t seem to be looking to understand or uncover or whatever but to..... work people up? and then in some strange theory-crafting cases, presenting wild theories of observations when - and this might be because with 90% of these posts I do see a really easy answer/”Get IT” - it feels like what they actually want to do is ask a question about..... whatever the left-field theory was originally based on

I guess this really isnt about kh at all but rather the really Fucking Weird ways this site has like.......... trained us to think? and formed our way with interacting with others, at least online? I didn’t want to like...... shame anyone by deconstructing some of the posts I’ve been seeing or going into too much detail that it’d tip anyone who saw it off but....... idk ya’ll. it’s weird and Kind of Disturbing

[carcharadroid]

MHWI delving deeper into the Monster Hunter lore than any past game is bringing about a very...weird sort of discourse, I’ve noticed.

There’s a tremendous amount of backlash from people who are, I guess, annoyed?? by people referencing things like the Ancient Civilization in the lore. Or really anything from the artbooks or other extraneous material. Annoyed to the point of hostility whenever anyone tries to have a theorycrafting discussion about any of it.

I’ll grant that things like the Equal Dragon Weapon aren’t strictly canon, but I’m pretty sure the Dragon War is canon. And I know for damn sure the Ancient Civilization is canon. Its ruins are kind of all over the fucking place in the old games.

Y’all wild.

[sleeplesscitizen]

Again but for real this time | Yajiro | Trial 4 | ATTN: Boufana, anyone

Well THIS was an interesting location… Pretty cool, honestly. Or pretty hot, actually. Yajiro sort of wonders if it’s possible to like. Wreck it. Not that he’s about to. But he’s curious about what would happen.

Either way, all that stuff about being nervous about what’ll happen, tenseness, whatever? Yajiro is feeling none of that per the moment. A little bored from the long ride over here, but he’s been getting used to being bored lately. And by lately he means for the last few months, and entire chapters. Wild. Now though, even with his memories a little jumbled up, Yajiro’s ready to go with the trial. Does he had a concrete answer? Nah. Will he enjoy talking it out anyways? Heck yeah...

“Hey, so! First off, question: Where’s Fukai? And what’s her status?” Yajiro asks with a smile directly at Boufana.

What tf are you doing to her. Because uh, girl, stabbed. Nanomachines? Son. WAIT, SHE HAD CALLED HIM HER SON, TECHNICALLY. Okay he was getting majorly distracted now, that’s enough of that.

“Thennnn next I guess, just an fyi, the sword that stabbed Fukai came from an unused(?) cabin next to the two we were using to stay in. There were some gold leafed ones, but that one wasn’t, I think. Same collection though. That cabin’s not far at all from where Fukai was stabbed, it’s actually really close. If anyone else saw anything when that happened, or like. Someone carrying a katana or whatever it was, feel free to speak up. About anything else too, of course.”

You were the one everyone saw near her when they came, y’know Yajiro. Was there something else about that? Well, there was the weird shit he’d seen, but he had no idea wtf was happening there actually. He’s not convinces reality is working properly at the current moment. Or at least the common definition of was working properly was, to his knowledge. He’s been teetering on the edge of dissociation for awhile, but he could still try to puzzle this (hah) out at least somewhat, from what he remembers.

“Uhhhhh, other than that, Kaoru-kun was actually dead, found in the lake and all, had a slit throat AND a knife in his chest, nice, nice… Uhhh the rope tied on his ankle or whatever was cut off on one side near the knot and not the dangly bit. It was like the one we found before in the shed. So presumably it’s the other side of it. Unless it was the same one, somehow. Or like, a second cut rope. Uh. Hopefully someone else checked on that.”

Since he sure hadn’t. Probably should’ve. Honestly, this was all so spread out that he was already forgetting wtf had even happened previously. HAD he checked that? He… doesn’t actually know.

“Only thing I could tell about it was that whoever tied it knew how to tie a good frickin knot! A+, knotcrafting’s an art, or something. Oh! But it DID seem like the knife in ‘em was probably the one we saw that was missing before? In the holster…. Thing. You know. Shed. Uh…. that’s all I got for the moment. Someone else feel free to fill in the gaps, lmao.”

Thanks. Don’t say lmao out loud, having Boufana do it is bad enough, Yajiro. He might remember something else spontaneously later, but in the meantime he’ll save his less factual theorycrafting for after someone else takes a shot at evidence dump, in case there’s a bunch of stuff he missed. Or forgot. Both are pretty possible.