|
I'm going to make the argument against putting spoiler tags around speculation. If you're basing your theory on the same comic panels we've all read, go ahead and post it in the open, no matter how sure you are that your prediction will come true.
|
#
¿
Jul 19, 2020 07:10
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:02 |
|
|
Wittgen posted:There is a panel where Undine is thinking about team alchemical, and everyone but Tess has the Zimmy eyes. This post sent me rereading a bunch of random pages, and I found the page you're talking about : https://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-8-page-34 I also was reminded of something that's probably fruitful for theorycrafting: the monsters and the barrier often match thematically: https://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-7-page-28
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2020 05:12
|
|
|
Yeah Bud's eyes seem to always be blank when she's transformed. Either that's some crazy twist coming down the road... or we're drawing too sharp a line around this "eyes" theme.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 2, 2020 20:52
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:Which really puts a whole new spin on Tessa's decision to transfer back to a normal school. I mean, I'd still classify her as a protagonist. She's in a real bad place after the death of so many of her friends (which she blames herself for), and she seems to know that she should support Undine. (It was clearly genuine when she urged Undine to be safe, or at least find a new team. Tessa was only hiding her mood and her self-hatred.) But she can't help the dark doubts and jealous thoughts creeping in, given... everything. There clearly isn't enough of a support system for PTSD in this society. So she's poised to be pressured by goops into doing some really lovely things, but the whole time we'll be rooting for her to overcome all this. I can't blame her for anything, at this point. The real tragedy in this is that Undine and Tessa are facing similar problems. They both blame themselves for the deaths of Gwen, Sylvia and Sally, but they can't lean on each other to deal with the trauma. The difference is that Undine is finding support elsewhere, while Tessa is becoming further isolated. MechaCrash posted:I think that getting any kind of PTSD is actually pretty rare. Most of the stuff that crops up seems to be trash mobs that the magical girls can wipe out without too much difficulty, as seen here where Undline is kind of just casually launching the bacteria thingies and splatting them into a wall. So most nights you just kind of curbstomp your way through most of the trash, which are only dangerous because regular civilians can't fight back against them. The comic's gone out of its way to show that the world at large is moving past the deaths of 3 girls remarkably quickly. Just a few days later and it was already at the "team alchemical memorial SALE!" stage. It seems to me like things like this happen more often than it feels like they do, and it's just "a tragedy" on the news for a short moment, then the people directly affected are left to suffer on their own. It's really analagous to school shootings, now that I think of it. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Aug 22, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Aug 22, 2020 23:18
|
|
|
PMush Perfect posted:Okay, yes, she's still a protagonist, but everything right up until the moment of the power-transfer frames all of this as being Tessa's Defining Moment. It looks like holding Undine in her arms as she dies is going to be the capstone on her Tragic BackstoryTM. Instead, she refuses to let it be that kind of story. For the first time, Tessa stops seeing herself as the main character and her team as sidekicks. Hell, at the time, she probably thought that saving Undine's life would mean losing her own, since she put all of her power into it. ohh, I didn't realize you were talking about her looking like the main character the first two chapters. Agreed, that was very well done. I thought you were talking about the building threat of an antagonistic turn in the rest of the comic, like you thought she was already there. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Aug 23, 2020 |
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2020 01:20
|
|
|
Importantly, the poo poo Goops said in that first moment, while Undine was lying there dying before Tessa came to save her: "Poor little girl. You wouldn't be so confused, if you hadn't forgotten. Now you'll have to die never knowing... just how much... I hate you." (link link) I'd forgotten those lines the first time reading through, but on a reread Undine's initial reaction of "this must all be my fault somehow, I need to figure out what the hell is up with Goops before I tell anyone" is a lot easier to understand on an emotional level.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 30, 2020 08:46
|
|
|
Looks like the "it's all my fault" club might have another member!
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2020 06:16
|
|
|
Eh, remember that this is information about something that might directly threaten all of their safety, as demonstrated recently by one Cassidy. Sure, when you think through the way this is tangled up with Undine's personal concerns, you can understand the secrecy. But I can absolutely understand Bud's immediate reaction of frustration here, now that she's put it into words like this. Of course, Bud's need to feel knowledgeable is amplifying this, but it's not entirely unreasonable.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 22, 2020 02:18
|
|
|
The potential twist offered by Anemone's monologue there is that the barrier really is meant to keep people inside the bubble more than to keep monsters out. Going even further, the max-cynicism option is that the monsters are an artificial problem to justify the barrier. That can be tempered with some doses of "this was set up long ago and modern leadership forgot" and/or "the intended result wasn't exactly this but things got out of control". I can't decide if I'm expecting something along those lines, but that's the shape I'm giving to the more sinister ways this could play out.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2020 10:00
|
|
|
Cup Runneth Over posted:I don't see anything about Mark being from outside the city in his comics. He never tells Undine that, though he's pretty cagey. Does Anemone tell us that, or are we assuming based on his tech (which seems foolish given we've only followed magical girls for the most part, who wouldn't need it)? Anemone says she doesn't know anything about him, surprised because she's supposed to know everything about "everyone in the city". Or something along those lines.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 25, 2020 19:42
|
|
|
My take is that we're meant to be thinking "so, yeah, what is up with that outer barrier?" as we watch it be completely unchanged as the night phase ends. Isn't the official story that the monsters can get in at night through the outer barrier?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 14, 2021 08:08
|
|
|
Daktar posted:https://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-12-page-29 Yeah. Part of me's thinking that the outer barrier doesn't technically "look" like that, it's just a visual representation of the characters not mentally registering whatever's there. Double-checking the pages where Harley and Bud walk up to it, they don't actually comment on the barrier itself after 'seeing' it. The "outer barrier" might not even be a physical obstacle, if monsters aren't actually coming from outside the city but being generated within it somehow. It may just be something that stops people from looking outside, and Mark would have walked right through. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 04:45 on Feb 18, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Feb 18, 2021 04:41
|
|
|
Bussamove posted:That's just Undine being surprised by that reaction because who the hell says that to what she just explained? Subverting that sort of trope seems like something this comic would do, of course. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Apr 22, 2021 |
|
#
¿
Apr 22, 2021 09:35
|
|
|
I can see both how Minxing probably didn't intend to criticize Undine (this came up basically as expressing surprise, and reassuring that she wasn't doubting Undine), and how Kokoro would absolutely see it to be criticism.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 29, 2021 21:02
|
|
|
Wittgen posted:New page Cup Runneth Over posted:haha too late Goops got to her first And the very next page is a chapter title but nonetheless says, "yes she means tess, and yes it's too late"
|
|
#
¿
Jun 10, 2021 05:08
|
|
|
Malpais Legate posted:I am getting really antsy to see Anemone's deal, though. Her magical girl power has to be some kind of anonymous observer power and that has to be rough on a kid. Which is to say, I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed if Anemone is one corner of questions that remains partly unanswered, because she might exist partly outside of the rules of the in-fiction world. A fun/compelling/sad backstory behind the story's narrator, her superpowers manifested as tbe power to not exist. I'd be extra impressed if she gets worked into the plot as an active player, though.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 29, 2021 19:07
|
|
|
Twibbit posted:
Tenebrais posted:
I feel like it's more that, whatever Goops wants, making Tessa feel like poo poo is how she's going to get it. She doesn't need to hide her intentions and make Tessa think that there's some sort of hope in working with this mysterious stranger. She knows Tessa is liable to blame herself and withdraw from people further, and is playing into that.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 19, 2021 19:35
|
|
|
This latest page has reminded me about the theory that Team Alchemical was originally only going to be the four classical elements, and Tessa's "Aether" element was shoehorned in at the last minute for some reason.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 25, 2021 04:57
|
|
|
I'm surprised we're actually seeing the Woman in White's eyes this time around. Every time we saw her before from Undine's point of view, her eyes were hidden in whiteness, like a inverse shadow beneath her hair.Otherkinsey Scale posted:https://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-page-6 Good catch. I only noticed Tessa pausing with her hand over her eyes for a moment, I didn't catch the fuzziness in her eyes in the next panel, or the fuzzy effect at the top and bottom of the headache panel itself.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2021 09:06
|
|
|
My impression is that we're just getting our first in-person look at how Goops makes the much-scarier-and-more-focused monsters happen, because Tessa brought the Viewpoint Character status along with her. It's like, she somehow absorbed that monster as more goop, and is probably going to use it (plus some others?) to make something else.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 13, 2021 06:10
|
|
|
Or, monsters weren't dead magical girls... until goops figured out how to make that happen, just recently.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 9, 2022 21:43
|
|
|
I feel like we've seen those specific drooping leaves at the border before, but this is the first time we've seen actual tree trunks underneath and beyond. The leaves seemed more like a sky-wall before in my memory.
|
|
#
¿
Jan 18, 2022 05:38
|
|
|
All the teeth that keep falling out of people during nightmares have to go somewhere.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 2, 2022 09:24
|
|
|
That smallest, plainest note seems plot-weighty -- I'm guessing "outer science" refers to the world outside the bubble.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2022 20:00
|
|
|
Tiny Myers posted:Outer Science seems to refer to monster study, to some degree. We see a brief mention of it back in Chapter 2. Oh huh. I think they're trying to say "those monsters look like they're based on sharks", but they've only seen sharks in an Outer Science textbook and barely remember the word.
|
|
#
¿
Apr 21, 2022 22:40
|
|
|
What I'm getting out of this page is that Goops split from Glowy at some point, and Glowy either met Anemone or established Anemone's role after that split. What I'm spitballing is that Goops means "get rid of me" like Madeline and her depression-personification in Celeste. Goops and Glowy are two halves of what was once one being.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2022 20:12
|
|
|
Oh right, that should have been "before" in italics in my post there, not "after" lol.
|
|
#
¿
May 20, 2022 21:12
|
|
|
It feels like that monster's power would have weird interactions with Anemone's.
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2022 20:33
|
|
|
It tracks for me. I think it's just one of those sentences where you have to lock on to the right way it'd be spoken aloud (word emphasis etc).
|
|
#
¿
May 31, 2022 20:58
|
|
|
I started following the Cagle Cats twitter account after someone mentioned it here, and Froyo was the one who always jumped in and helped parent the baby foster kittens that Mary repeatedly takes in. That cat did more good for catkind than any other I've known.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2022 06:08
|
|
|
Captain Oblivious posted:That's exactly what it did. It basically just gravity smashed them into the ground over and over until they were dead. I read it as one very, very hard smash, basically crushing them into the ground with the force of a fall from a far greater height than they actually were. But same overall effect. It's an elevator-monster! Fear of falling, etc. Someone's fear is being stuck in an elevator plummeting from the ??th floor. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 07:18 on Sep 9, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2022 07:14
|
|
|
That middle panel -- could she feel the memory-wipe coming?
|
|
#
¿
Sep 17, 2022 05:43
|
|
|
She's always wary of accidentally triggering mind-reading, but I think the sharp sudden panic here is partly increased by her most recent encounter with it being especially harrowing, and artificially repressed. I'm expecting a plot point where she has trouble bringing herself to even purposefully mind-read people in the near future, a sort of hot-stove aversion that she can't fully explain without her removed memories.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 5, 2022 17:21
|
|
|
"...let's see." could also be someone about to realize they hadn't thought this far ahead.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 27, 2022 23:33
|
|
|
Happy Noodle Boy posted:I genuinely can’t tell who’s driving the car right now I've been reading it as a true merger, not as two independent passengers wresting control from one another one at a time. Goop-Tessa has a messy union of Goops' and Tessa's personalities, ideas, memories, and wants. The Goops half provided the merger a sense of purpose and confidence that the Tessa half desperately wanted, and that keeps the new whole integrated. The other characters (so far, Kokoro and Anenome) reflexively see this as "just Goops" because then you don't have to think about why someone like Tessa could be on board with these actions. Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 20:42 on Oct 31, 2022 |
|
#
¿
Oct 31, 2022 20:34
|
|
|
This is a really interesting direction to take the newly merged Tessa in daily life with this outside infusion of confidence and feelings of superiority. Feels believable.
|
|
#
¿
Dec 30, 2022 22:25
|
|
|
Yeah, the comedy, romance and action is still fun, in the context of a hosed-up situation. I can understand the instinct that you need to have a protective wall there, but I think the war stories analogy is accurate -- the contrast is believable and doesn't make the nice parts any less nice.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2023 06:56
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:02 |
|
|
Yeah this is going way better than I'd expected. Given this is fiction, you go into this bracing for a big turning point, probably a bad reaction to what they're saying. But then the turning point instead was a flashback, which heist-style establishes that they had a plan to avoid the worst outcomes. I think their awkwardness here is partly performative (in a "good performance based on redirecting a real emotion" way) -- they'd planned on selling this as a weird phenomenon, more concerning than terrifying, and they're doing so successfully. The interviewer doesn't sound totally unwilling to believe them, just a little perturbed, which is reasonable.
Ditocoaf fucked around with this message at 17:06 on Jul 13, 2023 |
|
#
¿
Jul 13, 2023 17:04
|
|