#conjecture

[nimthirielrinon]

Why I prefer Maelle’s ending

Spoilers under cut.

Let’s start with what we know from in-game:

Maelle could die while in the canvas, but we know her father survived 69 canvas years trapped under a rock. He’s more experienced, but she has the resilience of youth.

When Verso is dying in Maelle’s arms, he says to her “I don’t want this life”, and she is saying, “All I wanted was this one life for us”, and she asks him if being able to grow old would change how he saw things.

In the epilogue, at least a decade has passed. Maelle looks older, Verso looks older, and he and Lune have a pre-teen son. Maelle has clearly kept her word, both in making Verso able to age, and in that she just wanted the one lifetime with her brother, given that she too is ageing.

We can presume this is Verso’s first concert, given Maelle promised a packed auditorium and this is both packed and significant enough to be where the epilogue takes place.

Verso no longer has the scar on his face, and while there is no evidence of who removed it or when, we do know he had the ability to remove it at the time the game took place but chose not to, as a reminder of his painted family and how that broke up.

He is clearly uncomfortable up on stage, but I suspect that’s partly to do with his first concert being such a big one, and also what it means as far as his journey of recovery from all his trauma. It’s a significant step, and would still remind him of Alicia and all that happened with her.

The discordant note which plays as the view switches to Maelle’s paintress eyes is a reminder that she is still tethered to the world outside the canvas, and that this life, while it is what she wanted, it is still a painful one, for Verso but also for her. She knows that at the end of it, she will either die or return to her real world and all the pain that awaits her there.

But, because of what we already know, she may well return. She was 16 at the time of the game, and if she lives to 70 inside the canvas, that’s not a bad age for the time period that it resembles, and certainly for a post-Fracture Lumièran. If her family tend to her body and keep her hydrated she could well come out of it he canvas very little the worse for wear, having lived her dream life and returned to her real-world family to continue the process of emotional healing, bolstered by the memories and maturity she built while inside the canvas.

By returning to her family, she could well make the case that the canvas shouldn’t be destroyed, given she managed to survive it, and thus could potentially Lumière indefinitely.

All this to say, I think the Maelle ending allows for her to experience both “endings” if we extrapolate to a best-case scenario regarding her body in the real world. While Verso didn’t want to keep living the life he had, Maelle was able to give him a different life; one he had thought impossible. It was painful, but recovery always is, and he had a family of his own to help soften it.

And all this of course is without having gone into the ethics of killing what seem to be not only sentient, but sapient beings that live inside the canvas. Verso, in wanting to destroy it, is making that choice not just for himself but for everyone who lives there, and if one accepts that they are sentient and sapient, it isn’t a choice he can be allowed to make for all of them.

So, yeah. I prefer the Maelle ending.

[dynamoe]

Typed up sort of by request... I don't really know what counts as head canon and what counts as just a premise you're using. So here are some conjecture I've introduced in my Billy & White fiction or meant to but never got around to it. Make of it what you will.

Billy can read and understand about 25 languages, but his attempts to speak them and be understood are undercut by his speech impediment.

Pete is legally blind (common with oculocutaneous albinism). He wears contacts (and prescription sunglasses) that help a little bit but the prescription isn't nearly strong enough so pretty much everything is a blur to him.

Pete White believes in conspiracy theories and is easily persuaded to believe in more, no matter how stupid. His central belief is all great performers (actors, musicians, TV personalities, politicians) were secretly albino and passing using make-up/wigs like he was. In the mid 1990s, top of that list was Kurt Cobain who he believes was killed by the CIA for threatening to "come out" of the melanin closet.

Pete was friends with Mike Sorayama before he was friends with Rusty, who lived the same dorm floor. They met at the Out-of-State Students of State Orientation, a small gathering since not many students from outside the state go to State. (Werner was also there, but he refused to talk to anyone.) Mike and Pete were both Computer Science majors before Mike switched to Robotics because Blade Runner was so COOL. They were the only two of their friend group who graduated, but had a falling out over how to treat women their Junior year (kicked off by White mocking him on the radio) and stopped speaking entirely before graduation. Mike was a proto-incel, fully invested in his virgin-whore view of women (with Leslie being perfect and all other females being disgusting whores) while Pete was a amicable get-along guy who was used by their entire Super Science department as the town bicycle— every girl got a ride (and no one wanted a second one because he was such a lousy lay).

Billy's mom was a part-time dance teacher at the Y when he was a kid and made him attend all of her classes for the first 10 years of his life. He hated it and wasn't able to keep up most of the time, due to his hydrocephalus-related balance issues, but he ended up becoming a really good dancer, but no one can partner with him because of the height difference.

Related to above, Billy has great balance and general peak physical dexterity after all the physical therapy he endured as a kid to deal with his disproportionate head. The world is an obstacle course to him, so he thinks nothing of jumping onto a counter, climbing onto a chair or whatever he needs to make things work. Pete picks up his physical cues and usually gets in position to give him a leg up when he needs it.

Before she retired, Billy's Mom outranked Hunter and everyone else in OSI which was their motivation to not return Billy to his mother after having his memory wiped. OSI is a secret division of the US Government with a military-style hierarchy whereas "Triple Threat" was an independent contractor to reported directly to the president as a part of his personal vigilante squad. Hunter's background check didn't reveal whose kid he was until it was too late.

Rose first became Triple Threat as a teen hero, a PR push from the government in the mid-1960s to combat the rise of the counterculture— super-powered youth who loved America (regardless of what it did) and mainstream family-friendly American culture. They toured the US doing rah-rah stay in school rallies for kids during the day while secretly beating the shit out of suspected communists and alleged pot-smokers by night.

She doesn't know who Billy's father is— doesn't want to know— but suspects it's Jonas Venture. The one time she went to a party at the Venture Compound in 1972 (age 25, the height of her Triple Threat career), she got slipped a Mickey and passed out. A month later she found out she was pregnant. She wasn't so naive to not know what happened to her, but she doesn't want to think about it. She was fired from being Triple Threat for getting pregnant while unmarried (violating the morals clause of her contract). She didn't get back into superheroism until 1980 (after Billy had started school) while campaigning for Ronald Reagan and his people contacted her directly to be a part of his personal squad.

Billy says: "cannon" & "canon" are homonyms, not interchangeable

I probably have other stuff, but I don't remember it at the moment. I'll add to this if I think of it. Bear with me.

[generalluxun]

So re watching Season 2 now and comparing it to the rest of the seasons and I'm starting to wonder where did the writing go so wrong.

The theory that holds the most water for me is that Thomas Astruc never got over having to turn his original dark/teen concept into a lighter more kid-oriented concept in order to get Networks to back it.

The man reads so easily as someone who wants to be recognized as an 'Artiste.' You (don't often) get that from kids media. It was a choice between financial success and sticking to his 'vision'.

Remember ML began as comic concept art labeled 'The Mini Menace' Ladybug, with one cover strongly implying Ladybug's parents had been murdered, ala Peter Parker(ish).

So, the first two seasons were what was promised. Light, kids level episodic stuff. After they gained some traction(and were renewed so more $$$) It feels like TA began to slowly steer the show towards his original desires; darker themes, more drama, and almost 100% Marinette-solo focused.

While in a general sense I understand the desire for artistic integrity, bait and switch it not a proper solution. I think there's a good deal of the feel of bait-and-switch in the grumblings people have about the show.

I mean, at the end of 10yrs and 5 seasons TRUE Believers were bait-and-switched on a healthy Adrinette situation. That's just... ouch.

[rauko]

The Twin-Prime Conjecture | Alphonse de Polignac (theorized 1849)

The assertion that there are an infinite number of prime pairings within a distance of 2 integers, such as [3->5], [5->7], and [11->13] etc.

[dystopiandramaqueen]

Nick Blaine doesn’t smell like Lavendar or Linen.

He smells like smoke and sweat. Musk and coffee and burbon. Aftershave. Maybe a touch of cologne.

[theacridstackrid]

I refuse to believe kinger was not a dorkass motherfucker with -50 to all charisma rolls before the circus. Queenie was dating down because she likes dorkass motherfuckers. Tbh the best human kinger art kept his fucked eye positioning and it was peak because look me in my eyes and tell me kinger did not have a lanky tall build and a scruffy beard and odd hair.

[potrzebuje-kawy]

New controversial take!:

That man was like 18 when his whole political path started and it was after he was rejected at an institution and after that suspiciously went from a more liberal/central ideology to Christian nationalist, but not automatically, he did really like trump and was slow to side with him. An 18 year old which we all had agreed at some point was legally an adult still in a mental developmental state of transitioning from teen to adult, and the biological fact that men usually are still mentally developing till 25, that’s 7 years of conservative Christian trumpology before his brain was biologically fully developed mentally. Also noted he was from a wealthy family, and in my experience with the group in question that celebrate his murder, yall don’t respond kindly to one- white men, two, he was from a wealthy family which yall have been notorious for ostracizing. So let’s recap here, an 18 year old liberalite is rejected from something he wanted and also felt slighted and not too long after was used to strengthen trumps shamble of a political structure consecutively for years and the likelihood he was not very well liked cuz he’s younger than me so I know bullying and cruelty was a huge problem during that period in schools all over the country and with the way people been attacking that man’s appearance I know that ain’t new commentary.

What I’ve learned about social psychology is this is a prime breeding ground for social influence and manipulation, conditioning and indoctrination and if I’m right about this he was bombarded as a shit person by his former political party meanwhile was a hot commodity in the republican trump era as crutch for trumps poor presidential skills and lack of social likeableness and relatability and after being rejected was overwhelming loved and praised by trump and his posse at a still young age, and he wanted success and trump gave it to him.

I do believe some of us are born with evil in our souls on occasion but with all this reasonable doubt I refuse to blindly settle that he was by default a shit person. This does not in any way mean I excuse his behavior and views or actions and not a support of his decision to go that direction and continue the hateful warpath into his 30s

But as a white person who was conditioned into conservative Christian beliefs I almost didn’t switch political stances and learn because how hostile the political environment was from the other side I only did cuz my love for human beings and facts was stronger than my hatred of the cruelty and disrespect coming from them.

This take is not to make or convince people to forgive him or mourn him or forget the damage but I’m simply stating that as I don’t have all the facts I refuse to in good conscience slander him as wholly a POS.

He is responsible for his actions but if the republicans are in full belief that the left is using universities to indoctrinate students who are commonly 18-19 then it’s a perfectly reasonable argument that Charlie Kirk was in fact indoctrinated by trump and the Republican Party which if people stand by their word, should be outraged at that thought but we’d rather just be happy he’s dead cuz that’s the humanitarian thing to do 😒

Im not stating any of this as facts, just conjecture on possibilities

Just holding everyone accountable for their actions and something about an 18 year old child who has a talent and ambition hanging out with some perverted ignorant old billionaire with an agenda just doesn’t sit right with me. I wouldn’t let my child if I had one be near that man even at 18 years old.

And lowkey kinda mad that he will never get the opportunity to change even if he likely never would have.

I had a change of heart and I ain’t even sorry

We seem to all contribute to our enemies creation and then clean our hands of participation and shift the blame and then preach accountability.

[ashmacg]

What if Jinu was actually…

Rumi's father?

Hear me out for a sec—

Yeah, they're a popular ship, but even in the movie their relationship never crosses into the exclusive territory of Romantic; ergo, it remains plausibly platonic or even familial. They feel at ease around one another and can be vulnerable about themselves with each other. In a story with a cosmology that includes souls as a metaphysically real thing, a parent-child relationship can create that feeling of refuge…especially when the other parent has made a mistake in her childrearing and become someone the child can't feel open with.

Jinu is four centuries old and hasn't aged a day over his early 20s. He's the sort of demon who keeps in touch with the Light in his heart because he still grieves his (accidental and coerced, I think) betrayal of his family. Because of this aspect of his personality I would say he's the most likely demon to form a relationship with a Hunter where the line between them blurs into a space needed for honesty and self-acceptance and the core human need for love.

Were this conjecture true:

The relationship likely ended when the Sunlight Sisters brought the Honmoon to its strongest during their career, likely having a bit of gold showing up here and there, suggesting it was time to turn their focus to training the next trio. Jinu had been cut off from the living world without the knowledge he'd fathered a child; maybe he never thought it could be possible and quickly let go of the memories of the relationship. Maybe Rumi's mother never told him she was a Hunter, and their meeting had been by chance, perhaps facilitated by Derpy and Sussie, beings who appear to be not demons but something else, capable of passing through the Honmoon freely. After the relationship ends, and then Rumi's mother dies, Rumi grows up never knowing the identity of her father, only that he was a demon.

Then, after Jinu comes up with a solution to Gwi-Ma's problem on a whim, he finds himself again in the living world, and drawn to Rumi until he finds out that she has Gwi-Ma's brand ("brand" as in the ranching symbol burns, not as in Lay's or Mr. Clean). Perhaps he suspects. Perhaps Gwi-Ma suppressed Jinu's memories of the relationship because it could give Jinu an advantage against him, and that's why Jinu never makes the conscious connection between his tryst with a human woman and a half-demon girl's existence.

Any way it may have happened, it resulted in an uneasy alliance that serendipitously gave Jinu absolution and an end to his suffering, destroyed(?) Gwi-Ma, and created a new Rainbow Honmoon built upon self-acceptance-&-unconditional-love instead of joy-in-spite-of-concealed-suffering. Those things could not have happened without Jinu sowing the seeds of self-acceptance in Rumi. Again, the fact that Celine failed/refused to do that as Rumi's adoptive* mother makes room for the unwitting father-figure role of Jinu to fit rather well.

*Celine's mistake has nothing to do with her being not Rumi's birth mother; I included the term to distinguish the two women in the context.