07-18-2025, 05:40 PM
okay, i've had about two hours to kind of think about this and its really starting to sound fantastic in my head. the echoes are starting to harmonize in the empty space between my ears.
i have another question though -- if the small part of Caleb's brain is under ward, and that part you are theorizing is ALL his memories and not just the ones pertaining to his meimei, what is the chip actually controlling? do we even know? his introductory trailer has text that says "23rd neural control experiment" while he's hanging in the void, but if we're tossing out memory control, what else is there about "neurons"? body modification for faster / better / stronger like the Winter Soldier? combat programming for same? adding to memories / implanting false ones?
the implied "full modification" would be an mostly/entirely cybernetic body which i presume would lead to Fallen Cosmos in the far distant future, if the chip and the arm are linked together and functioning as some sort of bodily override.
further speculation -- did he develop this black-hole-in-my-brain defense as a child, due to EVER's experiments? is there any information anywhere in an anecdote or something that gives a timeframe for when evol manifests? girlfriend has always been special because of her heart/partial aether core (which i am admittedly presuming she was born with, and that it was NOT acquired during the Chronorift as originally presented), but why did EVER pick up Caleb?
again, his trailer has "they are the optimal weapon for destroying one another" and "this experiment is never to be restarted", which i am pretty sure we can peg to Josephine's research since Prof Ludmilla is still experimenting on his "obtained" asset anyways. so Caleb has something special about him as well and has since he was a child, which all the way up to this point I just blindly took on faith was his evol, but now i'm rethinking it.
although... hang on.
/goes and watches Fallen Cosmos again
okay, so.. Caleb says "we're from the same source". same soul, split apart? same aether core / fragment, as yet unrevealed? something else in the Decoherence myth that I just don't know about yet because i haven't seen it?
sorry, i do spin wheels on this most of the time.
okay, back to the main part of this which i got distracted from with questions. i still do think that the initial reaction was legit - if you've ever fainted or been under anaesthesia, waking up afterwards is a bizarre landscape of fuzz. you haven't lost memory, but you sure aren't accessing them for a little while. i would like to believe that's what happened to Caleb - the sheer amount of static that went through the chip and for that little bit of time after he woke up, it was all murky. but then the memories began building themselves again rapidly as his evol ate the overlay so that even by later that same day he was probably mostly functioning again. fog of war-ish?
and the girlfriend is being obsessive over him, hiding stuff she doesn't want him to see, telling him things he knows aren't exactly true from his perspective, but this is what he's always hoped for, dreamed of, wished into existence. she's scared for him and also repeating his behaviours back at him and that has to feel some kind of pleasing. soothing even over an area that's scraped sensitive.
and when he gets her to admit that she wants more from him on the train, that he can act under that guise of anonymity in some sense, only to lose it all when he has her chip dissolved?
ow. painful. that hurts even worse, doesn't it?
re/2B E -- that is DELIGHTFUL. i have been pushed at Nier Automata a number of times as a game i *must* play but i just haven't gotten there. FFXIV has a raid series based on it and its one of my top three things to do in the game, even to this day. if you ever get around to FFXIV, i don't care if we're not speaking at that point, you still have to get ahold of me so we can run it together for the first time.
I will link you their version of "Weight of the World / Prelude" in the music thread so you can listen to it - a remix of Nier's version but FFXIV'ified and which plays at the end boss fight in.. the second raid tier? i checked, no, its the end boss of the first raid set. its one of my favorite musical things of all time, I adore it to pieces, its right up there with Inner Universe from Ghost In The Shell.
i have another question though -- if the small part of Caleb's brain is under ward, and that part you are theorizing is ALL his memories and not just the ones pertaining to his meimei, what is the chip actually controlling? do we even know? his introductory trailer has text that says "23rd neural control experiment" while he's hanging in the void, but if we're tossing out memory control, what else is there about "neurons"? body modification for faster / better / stronger like the Winter Soldier? combat programming for same? adding to memories / implanting false ones?
the implied "full modification" would be an mostly/entirely cybernetic body which i presume would lead to Fallen Cosmos in the far distant future, if the chip and the arm are linked together and functioning as some sort of bodily override.
further speculation -- did he develop this black-hole-in-my-brain defense as a child, due to EVER's experiments? is there any information anywhere in an anecdote or something that gives a timeframe for when evol manifests? girlfriend has always been special because of her heart/partial aether core (which i am admittedly presuming she was born with, and that it was NOT acquired during the Chronorift as originally presented), but why did EVER pick up Caleb?
again, his trailer has "they are the optimal weapon for destroying one another" and "this experiment is never to be restarted", which i am pretty sure we can peg to Josephine's research since Prof Ludmilla is still experimenting on his "obtained" asset anyways. so Caleb has something special about him as well and has since he was a child, which all the way up to this point I just blindly took on faith was his evol, but now i'm rethinking it.
although... hang on.
/goes and watches Fallen Cosmos again
okay, so.. Caleb says "we're from the same source". same soul, split apart? same aether core / fragment, as yet unrevealed? something else in the Decoherence myth that I just don't know about yet because i haven't seen it?
sorry, i do spin wheels on this most of the time.
okay, back to the main part of this which i got distracted from with questions. i still do think that the initial reaction was legit - if you've ever fainted or been under anaesthesia, waking up afterwards is a bizarre landscape of fuzz. you haven't lost memory, but you sure aren't accessing them for a little while. i would like to believe that's what happened to Caleb - the sheer amount of static that went through the chip and for that little bit of time after he woke up, it was all murky. but then the memories began building themselves again rapidly as his evol ate the overlay so that even by later that same day he was probably mostly functioning again. fog of war-ish?
and the girlfriend is being obsessive over him, hiding stuff she doesn't want him to see, telling him things he knows aren't exactly true from his perspective, but this is what he's always hoped for, dreamed of, wished into existence. she's scared for him and also repeating his behaviours back at him and that has to feel some kind of pleasing. soothing even over an area that's scraped sensitive.
and when he gets her to admit that she wants more from him on the train, that he can act under that guise of anonymity in some sense, only to lose it all when he has her chip dissolved?
ow. painful. that hurts even worse, doesn't it?
re/2B E -- that is DELIGHTFUL. i have been pushed at Nier Automata a number of times as a game i *must* play but i just haven't gotten there. FFXIV has a raid series based on it and its one of my top three things to do in the game, even to this day. if you ever get around to FFXIV, i don't care if we're not speaking at that point, you still have to get ahold of me so we can run it together for the first time.
I will link you their version of "Weight of the World / Prelude" in the music thread so you can listen to it - a remix of Nier's version but FFXIV'ified and which plays at the end boss fight in.. the second raid tier? i checked, no, its the end boss of the first raid set. its one of my favorite musical things of all time, I adore it to pieces, its right up there with Inner Universe from Ghost In The Shell.
