btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here
btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here
So glad I met one of my best friends through the IOL fandom so we can theorize about THE IMPORTANT SHIT in Time of Iron
@morethanfantasy I just know Alice has a pair of plastic pink prescription lenses in her bag that she’s been BADLY WISHING she could wear without breaking the immersion of the world building.
"Just because I'm right, doesn't mean I'm being helpful" is a vastly underrated thought process that I strongly encourage others to get comfortable with
Okay I’m ready to stop being smug and cryptic and explain with evidence 🥳🥳🥳
So this is the statement: Key is intentionally double crossing his father and has been strategizing to do so for the entirety of AHC.
Evidence: Sorry it’s an entire literary analysis essay! Oops!
Why join his father to double cross him?
I came up with this theory because my wonderful amazing friend @morethanfantasy is rereading and shared with me things she noticed on reread.
The first thing she mentioned that made me get excited about this idea was pointing out, in the myth, after the great god killed the godchild, the goddess tore out his eyes. I’d forgotten this detail, and suddenly it made something obvious click: the God’s Eyes are his literal eyes. DUH
Rae obviously speculates that wearing the gods eye made it easy to summon the great god when she hadn’t intended to, but, obviously, the main thing eyes do is SEE. It’s not that she just called for the goddess and got the god instead because she was wearing an item linked to him, he was watching her!
And my first thought was “well. That raises some questions about Key’s behavior in that final scene.”
So… how exactly does that change things?
Key revealing he’d joined up with his father didn’t sit right with me, not because it’s not believable based on Key’s actions in this book, but because it makes any ending where Key doesn’t die to be redeemed EXTREMELY difficult to pull off. But between killing Fabianus and Glacia AND joining the Great God and holding Alice and Caracalla hostage? Holy difficult redemption arc Batman!
Like Rae takes key not killing his father and throwing away the god’s eye as a sign she corrupted him. BUT in this version of the books, Key went into the ravine DEAD, several years younger, and WITH NO TRAINING. It may not have been an option for Key to fight his father and win even if he wanted to. So, if we assume that Key accepted the gods eye in a moment of weakness from his father (either in spirit or physically after dying, being resurrected, and having to fight Octavian with no practice using his powers before hand…) and then regretted it… with the great god literally able to watch and hear Key at will with that gods eye on the mask, Key would have to strategize pretty cleverly to get out from under his father’s thumb without raising the Great God’s suspicions.
And given all of that context… doesn’t it seem almost theatrical the way Key reacts to Rae before destroying the Gods eye like it’s nothing? He gets angry at her and says “stop telling me who I am” and then just… crushes it. It feels very natural and it very publicly allies him with his father, but it ALSO removes a direct channel for his father to spy on him permanently, which if you were Key and trying to double cross your father, you’d have been trying to find an excuse to do that all along.
Some more evidence
Once I suggested that idea, Mor pointed out two other times that fit reallly well with this idea.
1) Key tries to destroy the Gods eye basically on DAY ONE of resurrection.
In a fit of anger in the throne room, he throws the mask with the gods eye in it so hard that the mask shatters. I found this odd on first read because, it seemed to me from the way Rae associated the mask and gauntlets with the emperor and the fact that very few courtiers ever knew/used Key’s name, that the mask, like the gauntlets, was something Key chose to wear VERY FREQUENTLY if not all the time.
But again, this throw seems like a natural fit of rage, but if he had broken the gods eye ‘accidentally’, he’d be free of it without suspicion on his father’s part. And even though he didn’t succeed, the broken mask allowed him to choose to embed it in a sword something he a) can choose not to carry around with him whenever he wants and b) might not allow the great god as much physical access/influence to key as a mask he’s supposed to wear on his face.
2) Another part Mor pointed out that has a new tone if you keep this theory in mind is when Key destroys the bone room. He tells the story of his death in a mocking tone and orders for the godchild’s bones to be destroyed. To me, before this theory, the scene just gives general-unhinged-trauma-response, but if we know his father is actively watching Key with Key’s knowledge, it now gives: fuck you dad, you can’t tell me what to do + a general tantrum about how his father murdered him in a past life. Like it’s kind of like taking a baseball bat to his dad’s car while his dad watches for lack of a better comparison.
Bitch didn’t you think Lia was a double agent too? How many double agents are you going to theorize about???
I’m still confident in my theory Lia took the gods eye to kill Key and has not joined the great god in earnest, but I actually think that these two double crossing plots are COMPLETELY on brand for how SRB builds tension in this series.
In book 1 the grand reveal Key was emperor was possible to guess, but it was under layers of red herrings. Rae states the king is the emperor, and then even if you doubt that when you meet Key, the love interest, Rae reaffirms that misconception in the next chapter. Every time the audience has doubts about Octavian being the emperor, Rae has the same doubts and justifies her belief it’s Octavian despite them.
In All Hail Chaos Ink/Alice is the grand reveal, and even as a big believer Alice was going to be in this book, I STILL didn’t catch on until right when SRB wanted me to (at the cave) because of layers of misdirection. Ink is afraid of being caught because she’s a girl dressed as a boy, and then Caracalla’s speculation that the reason she’s strange is is because she’s a run away noble girl and not a stable girl from the cauldron like she claims. Even when Alice starts saying things from the books she shouldn’t possibly be able to know (that Eric blackmailed Marius) the book gives us a solid misdirection since Pio had recently mentioned he had a spy who came to him with that intel.
I think that Lia is the misdirect we’re meant to see: see she hasn’t betrayed Rae, she’s a double agent.
It’s just that the double agent is masking the second double agent underneath
blood over bright haven gets "white savior" critique but I read it clearly as a subversion. Maybe this is a hot take. but it felt like yes, sciona would love to be a white savior or a feminist savior or a whatever savior so long as she's shoving it in someone's face. And in the book that is identified as her flaw. It's not really about any particular group. We're really not supposed to look up to Sciona or excuse everything she does but we are meant to understand why saviors think they're right. The book, rather than ask if Sciona makes the right choices, asks why Sciona makes the wrong choices when she still has good intentions.
Trying to "help people" is one hundred percent an excuse to live with herself herself and the book knows this. Pull up the part where she realizes: "In trying to avoid getting stepped on, she had become a boot." Pull up the part where Thomil tells her that her plan won't work because she's not thinking of the Kwen as people, and she doesn't listen, goes through with it anyway, and everything blows up in everyone's face because, you guessed it, she was still only thinking of her own retribution and using "helping the Kwen" as an excuse. But Sciona has no idea she's doing this. And she has nothing else to stand on. That hunger for importance, that glorious and wretched ego of hers, is keeping her alive. That which gives her potential for greatness makes her the worst danger to the people she's trying to help.
Idk I'm also just a great enjoyer of main characters that lie to themselves and aren't the best people and it blows up in their face. But reading Wang's sparse thoughts...and seeing how every time Sciona takes a step forward "her way" she makes everything worse for everyone and herself...so the world of the book resists her mindset. It's hard to see this because Sciona blames the consequences to her actions on everything but herself, even til the end. It's the same with her ultra-feminism that's corrupted by her ego. The book brings up how she hasn't actually put efforts towards helping women past helping herself. But she still can't change. Delicious. Now do I think Thomil should have fallen for his oppressor so easily? ...maybe not, but who am I to speak on romance? But I also think it's realistic and telling how they didn't get together because it wouldn't have been good for either of them. But that's my read, and damn, I enjoy thinking about this book so much.
I’d actually prefer an elaboration so elaborate it makes the Time of Iron musical, which I assume hit Broadway like a wrecking ball, look like small potatoes.
Red flag #1 that Rae wasn’t really talking to the great goddess in that mirror was when she was like
R: …. So… this whole thing is just a matchmaking service for your son?
Fake Great Goddess (FGG if you will): fuck no bitch like he’d ever love you
Like the real Great Goddess would have had to own up to how that’s exactly what she’s been doing. Like she spawned Eric in the Cauldron. Who lived in the Cauldron at the time? Her murderous little son.
Oh and on the guardian angel theory, can we talk about how both she brought both Eric and Rae into the story at the point in time where they would be the same age IRL as Key.
Eric was 14 when Key was. Rae was 20 when Key was. Like we know it’s not a linear progression of time for the Great Goddess, so she can choose when to place them.
she’s like. surely if I put enough kids his age into the story ONE OF THEM will want to have a playdate with my son.
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