-- this crack theory was written as a
Review Blitz Prize for
@Negrek,
@IFBench,
@Sinderella,
@love,
@Spiteful Murkrow,
@SparklingEspeon,
@silurica,
@slamdunkrai, and
@Just a Torchic --
WARNING. IMPORTANT WARNING. THIS POST CONTAINS **MASSIVE** SPOILERS FOR WORKS THAT THE FOLLOWING AUTHORS HAVE WRITTEN. I HAVE BLOWN THE ENTIRE ENDGAME FOR EVERY SINGLE FIC THEY HAVE WRITTEN STRAIGHT OUT OF THE WATER AND IF YOU AREN’T WILLING TO ACCEPT THOSE CONSEQUENCES OR DON’T WANT YOUR MIND **ABSOLUTELY BLOWN**, THEN **DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER**
- Negrek
- IFBench
- Sinderella
- Love
- Spiteful Murkrow
- Sparking Espeon
- Silurica
- slamdunkrai
- Just a Torchic
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
—
Dear friends and community members,
I regret that I must drop some important news with regard to Blitz. Review Blitz is not, in fact, remotely for its stated purpose of “encouraging people to review the way they want and catching up on their backlogs” or “helping people get feedback from their friends and fellow community members” or even “enabling bodying and getting bodied on the points ladder”. Indeed, no. The true purpose of Review Blitz has always been far more clandestine, and simultaneously far more noble: to identify the secret cabal responsible for the ongoing …
Thousands Roads Cinematic Universe
“kint, that’s absurd and has no precedent in reality, and is in fact directly contradicted by statements that you yourself—”
EXHIBIT A: RAINFALL KNEW THE TRUTH AND WE WERE ALL TOO BLIND TO SEE IT
This post, coincidentally written after the Review Blitz II, attempts the impossible by calling out Thousand Roads as a singular hivemind entity, with the sole purpose of recruiting and converting more members to the hivemind. Every word in it is of course entirely factual (ignoring the contradiction of a member of a covert hivemind having the ability to publicly call out and subvert the sole purpose of the hivemind), but I believe Rainfall fell error to one of the classic errors of fic commentary: being utterly usurped by context that would only be provided one year later. Rainfall simply was not looking at the full picture—a full picture that could only be provided in future chapters—and as such, did not have the proper tools to connect the glowing constellation of breadcrumbs before us.
But a year has passed, and from the seeds of Rainfall’s findings, I shall cultivate for you a forest.
On close inspection, there’s something quite odd about this screenshot indeed—the message is cut off. What is so special about the openness of the pokemon world? And why, paradoxically, would that openness be hidden to us? Why would an author ever choose to remove irrelevant, redundant, or irrelevant information? No true fanfiction author would ever do such a thing—no, dear reader, at the very heart of writing is the understanding that every word that crosses an author’s mind is fundamentally flawless and sacred; second guessing and editing is for lesser minds. I myself have edited this entire essay exactly never.
The only logical conclusion, then, is that Rainfall did not willingly choose to redact this text, and that the removal was done to hide the greater truth. Through great sleuthing, I was able to find the
original text referenced:
The name "Thousand Roads" comes from one of my favorite Chinese idioms, 千方百计, literally "a thousand ways, a hundred plans." It means "to do whatever it takes," "to go all out," or "by any means necessary." Both literal and figurative meanings seem to perfectly capture what it takes to be good at ASB, or even fanfiction--as anyone who has tried to grind out a fifty-plus chapterfic can attest. It also captures the openness of the pokémon world, which is what I find fascinating about it and has kept me coming back to play in it year after year. I think Satoshi Tajiri was correct when he described what he thought was the enduring appeal of Pokémon: "When you're a kid and get your first bike, you want to go somewhere you've never been before. That's like Pokémon. Everybody shares the same experience, but everybody wants to take it someplace else. And you can do that." Fanfiction and ASB are both aspects of fandom that allow people to [...]
[emphasis mine]
It’s incredibly obvious why the full text was censored from Rainfall’s initial draft: it’s chock-full of clues. Let’s begin with the first one (which is chronologically the third one, for reasons that will become immensely clear in upcoming sections):
Everybody shares the same experience, but everybody wants to take it someplace else.
On paper this is a compelling philosophical sentiment: are we not all free to experience this wide world and take it in different directions? To realize that we are together and yet alone, alone and yet together; that no one can truly understand us and yet to try anyway—is this not one of the alienating but beautiful sentiments of
life writing fanfiction?
No. Anyone who doesn’t agree with us is wrong, dear reader, and that’s always been straight facts. “Everybody shares the same experience” is a clear reference to hiveminds, and the foundational tenet of the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe—everything is connected, all the experiences are building towards a singular story, and there is nothing truly unique or niche because they are all looped in to one greater purpose. In fact, Love, notable hivemind stan, puts it best:
The world is as it once was: simple, vast, inviting. It belongs to the few who can enjoy it.
Love’s reference to this world being “simple” is, of course, a blatant red herring—this finely-tuned interconnected cinematic universe is anything but.
to do whatever it takes
The reference is cheeky, albeit cognizant, and is clearly harkening to an indie-franchise known as the
Marvel Cinematic Universe.
You might be thinking this is demonstrably incorrect, given that
Avengers: Endgame didn’t hit theaters until 2019 and the timestamp on this page is aiming straight for the gut of all longfic writers with a proud “Last Updated: 2015” at the top:
to which I direct you, dear reader, to the
cited source for Satoshi Tajiri’s quote.
This may seem like an innocuous, and even well-designed website, given that it’s from 1999 and is lacking yellow text on dark blue backgrounds. But the clues are there, buried where we weren’t supposed to look: the source.
Time? Time?? And revisiting the “About Thousand Roads” image, one cannot help but see the incredibly subtle hint Negrek has placed by replacing all of the “o’s” in the masthead with time gears.
Lesser minds may mistake this for merely being the magazine name, and a reference to a banger sequel of a very popular game. But the article makes it immensely clear: Satoshi Tajirishi is in conversation with Time itself.
(For more references to conversing with Time itself, see Silurica’s theory of the multiple Paleys)
And if the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe is referencing individuals who can receive messages from Time, then by transitive property it clearly follows that the members of the TRCU are capable of sending messages through Time as well. The initial wording of “whatever it takes” was not only a time-intransitive reference, but self-referential one as well: a small subplot of
Avengers: Endgame involved the titular Avengers traveling through time to gather
stones--the very same stones that Tajiri references as a way to gather insects in his conversation with Time, the very same stones that formed the inspiration for Pokemon itself.
The remaining reference,
anyone who has tried to grind out a fifty-plus chapterfic can attest, is to be reserved for further use. The final piece of introductory evidence is a
mere two posts below Rainfall's theory:
IFBench’s wording here is quite subtle, but a discerning reader can ascertain the hidden clues suggesting the existence of a larger crossover, even if the characters themselves are unaware of it. IFBench notably also created the
Fanfic Mashup thread: clear hints to the rest of us that we should dig deeper and find the truest mashup of them all. It’s risky, of course, to blatantly say the secret out loud hoping that no one will see the deeper meaning—but “risky” and “incredibly successful tactic with 0% fail rate” are historically synonymous, as we can see in:
EXHIBIT B: NEGREK THOUGHT I WOULDN’T NOTICE THE POST THAT SHE EXPLICITLY LINKED ME TO IN ORDER FOR ME TO DO MY JOB
idk what a “misc (crack theory)” is supposed to be, but one thing is clear above all else: after three years, Review Blitz’s intended purpose of drawing the members of the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe into the open has finally worked. The hands have been tipped and the game is afoot. What remains, dear reader, is to piece together the clues that even the authors themselves didn’t know they were scattering.
Chapter 1: Sleeping Under Stones
"My idea was to put a stone under a tree, because they slept during the day and like sleeping under stones. So in the morning I'd go pick up the stone and find them."
—Satoshi Tajiri (1999)
Stones are fascinating, specifically for their rarity in the Pokemon fandom. There are no fewer than 27 theories in this thread currently about individuals named or associated with stones (including, of course, theories about characters who are former rocks such as Spiritomb of Omanyte; members (fake/undercover, resigned, or otherwise) of Team
Rocket; and characters who switched identities by being incredibly stoned)—by fanfic standards, this is an incredibly niche and underutilized topic. Unlike Tajiri, for the average fanfic consumer, it is in fact incredibly difficult to merely “go pick up the stone”.
No, dear reader. But if miracles were easy, they would be done. We begin our deep dive of the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe by, of course, leaving Thousand Roads.
“Negrek” said:
"What held them together was Hope, Caelia, not mortar or stone. They're something to aspire to. Our world is flawed, and the illusion is perfect. If you can't believe in people, maybe you can believe in what people could be."
This is from Negrek’s oneshot
accolade, which is an absolute banger despite its rather unorthodox use of lapslock titles. One can only surmise that it has yet to be ported to Thousand Roads because it hides the very valuable truth behind an Oxford comma:
[Hope =? Caelia] ≠ [Mortar = Stone]
It’s unclear if Hope = Caelia, and scholars may quibble with me on the validity of this equivalency. However, we know for sure that Stone = Mortar. But where does the mortar come into all of this? “Magmortar” is an obvious guess, but yields no results. The true answer is, as expected, slightly more hidden:
A little further up, Hatteras saw a familiar Sceptile with a lavender headband seated on a stool in a wood-floored juice bar. The wooden hut that housed it sat beside a glassblowing shop run by a Magmar that insisted that the strong drinks served just next door were an aid to his craft and not just a fire hazard.
Like the stones and Tajiri’s conversation, the Magmortar is also reversed by Time—we must look for Magmar instead, of course. From Spiteful Murkrow’s Magmar we can glean the following equivalency:
[Strong Drinks = Aid] ≠ [Fire Hazard = Wood Bar]
“Negrek” said:
"It's nothing. Nothing important," Tobias said, a little too quickly. He knew he was no actor and that he was taking a risk with his clumsy attempt at reverse psychology, but the sight of Igneous' pokéball had rekindled hope in his breast, and he fanned that flame eagerly. Iron bars would be no match for the magmar.
And from Negrek’s Magmar we can learn the following:
Iron Bars = No Match
Or, by flawless application of A=Not!A:
Iron Bars ≠ Matches
And lest we think that Magmar is a red herring, especially because the Magmar in
Fledglings isn’t terribly important to the current plot and because
Clouded Sky has been relegated to fanfiction.net release only, we must examine the context further. Both authors mention Magmar in relation to bars: one of iron, and one of wood. And Igneous? Glassblower? There is simply no reason that a magma-related pokemon would have these sorts of names or professions, except to call attention to the original conundrum of “Stone = Mortar”. Negrek in particular is cheeky by framing the conversation with the words “It’s nothing. Nothing important”—a reader
might assume that this is referring instead to Tobias’s attempt to trick the guard, but a true detective would understand that this is instead referring to
Negrek’s attempt to trick
us. And so, like the Negrek’s acolyte before us, we must understand that our brains are simply more enormous, and we shall press the button with no bad consequences or surprise magmar awaiting us.
"Hm. Conkeldurr's my best 'mon. But even I'm no match for a type difference."
From his own, notably evertruthful (and very attractive to Odette) lips:
Dorien = No Match
And from before:
Iron Bars = No Match
It of course then follows that:
Dorien = No Match = Iron Bars
Dorien = Iron Bars
An obvious clue for an eagle-eyed reader. A more casual fool might think that Sinderella’s
White Swan, Black Swan is meant to be more of a gothic horror/romance, modeled after Castelvania or FMAB, both of which are intellectual properties notably devoid of iron bars and sleuthing. Which doesn’t leave terribly much room for galaxy brain theories and ingenious detective work. Odette herself is a notably cautious detective who hesitates to string together conclusions based mostly on her intuition and a tiny smattering of facts; although she frequently does this in the opening chapters, it’s clearly a ruse in order to throw her enemies off of her scent. But it’s true that this line of reasoning from “Magmar” to “Dorien is an iron bar” is possibly too far, even with our large-brained understanding of
White Swan, Black Swan--but to those nasayers saying as such, I advise you to look no further than the summary:
When her best friend Noel uncovers an alarming discrepancy in some public case files regarding the drug epidemic, she begins to do more than just question. When an old flame returns to haunt her, she launches herself into the world of the Shiny Pokemon Trade to uncover some answers.
An old flame? An
old flame? An old
flame??
The evidence is indisputable. It’s slightly possible that Sinderella may have been using the terminology “an old flame” because name-dropping OC’s in summaries isn’t explicitly helpful, and revealing a character’s
role in the story may in fact be more useful than their name—but it’s much more likely that Sinderella is helping scatter breadcrumbs for the rest of the cabal. By taking one of Negrek’s
old works and finding the
flame, we are able to ascertain Dorien Bonhomme’s secret identity … as an iron bar.
But what, you might be asking, about the bar of wood which is secretly a hazard? What about the stones? How does this help prove anything about the purported Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe? And where is any of this going? To answer these questions and more, we must return to sleep, and to stones.
Chapter 2: Stones for Shells
With those big eyes, it reminded her of a dwebble scuttling between new stones for shells. That old thing was an old shell, not fit for purpose — Florence knew this, and she assumed the spirit did, too [...]
—Slamdunkrai,
Hey, Space Cadet! (2021)
As mentioned before, stones are an oddly recurring motif in stories by these authors. Many explanations exist, such as rock-types (stones) representing 7.6% of the Pokedex, or most bipedal or quadrupedal characters predominantly walking on rigid surfaces such as the ground (commonly made of rocks). I believe both of these explanations to be insufficient. Instead, we should examine the writings of Just a Torchic--a daunting proposition, because this author leaves us with very little stone-related material. However, careful reading leads us to this hidden gem in a recent POV chapter of
I’m a Marionette:
“What about Uncle Steve?” Uncle Steve was also cool—he was the Champion, and he was passionate about stones and knew a lot about them. Sometimes, he would find pretty rocks and give them to Lisia.
What about Steve? Truly, what
about Uncle Steve? Just a Torchic has done something quite clever, and inserted a brand new character before our very eyes—who is Uncle Steve? We know surprisingly little about him, and yet his passion for stones is brought to the forefront, before even his identity. But in a story about found family, loss, self-worth, and metamorphosis, I believe “who is Uncle Steve” is the wrong question. Rather, we should be asking ourselves “what is family?” And Just a Torchic’s answer to that is in fact quite clear:
So stones = family. But family to whom?
(And, dear reader, let us also not fail to observe the obvious hint in “neither one wanted to admit they didn’t know how dates were supposed to go”--a clear reference to the aftermath of conversations with Time discussed in the previous section.)
And yet, this can’t be the entire picture—none of the other author’s in Negrek’s list write about characters with families. The trail seems to go cold, but a discerning reader can make the leap that was intended for us:
Xerneas interrupted her. "Leave no stone unturned." A common saying amongst your ilk. Tell me, if you return home without having completed your exploration, what do you think the guild will do?
In the context of Love’s
Those Who Will Inherit the Earth, this line is actually not very stone at all and is in fact a metal observation about what happens when the desire for exploration and expansion is left unchecked. However, in the context of the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe, it is both an encouragement (to keep going, finding clues in every corner, whatever it takes), and our next clue: we must, of course,
turn the stones.
“Turning” of course has many possible outcomes. I myself thought that
I’m a Marionette was a setup for an Ash Betrayal fic, in which Wallace reveals himself to have been Ash Ketchum all along and, after receiving love and support from his closest friends and family, decides to go full ape mode and curbstomp Tyson in order to re-win the Hoenn League—the clues are mostly there. Another option is a more metatextual analysis: to turn the letters S-T-O-N-E themselves. I have previously written on this topic at length in
this post; however, I doubt that any self-respecting member of the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe would repeat such a trick after having already been discovered. “Turning” could also refer to the act of chucking in a lathe and removing material, although our discussion on editing in the prologue of this theory serves as a good reminder for why no self-respecting author would stoop to removing material.
No, we must get more creative than that, and also return to the text itself. I have reason to believe that this so-called “Uncle Steven” is Hoenn’s Champion, Steven Stone—although the steps required to prove that would require an essay in their own right. However, the allusion to “stones” is once again compelling, and the reference to this so-called Uncle Steven’s love of stones is made clear in his debut: his true identity is not even necessary for this conclusion, just the knowledge of his love of stones. So if Uncle Steve were to
turn, what would happen?
He would see none other than Wallace Izumi Papadakis.
※
Chapter 2, Part Two: Kint, did you just drop a dramatic scene break into your crack theory?
※
To understand the full significance of turning a stone to see Wallace, we must of course first examine the writings of slamdunkrai. The overlaps in thematic content—exploring human psyche via stream-of-consciousness and tight use of third-person limited, as well as slice-of-life interspersed with megalomania—are there if you squint. However, the overlaps in Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe content are there for anyone who is bold enough to open their third eye.
I have talked at length about how Connor Murdoch, the protagonist in
Hey, Space Cadet! often speaks about wanting to be a god/having been a god/not being entirely content in his body. I have also talked at length about how the “pair of felines”—one of which is “tiny, feline and pink” and the other having “a colossal three-pronged hand” and “such a mighty head on thin shoulders that it required what resembled… a second neck?”—in
Hey, Space Cadet’s prologue is an obvious allusion to Darkrai and Second Darkrai. Neither of these were said in jest, although if you were to guess which of the two statements were to end up in this crack theory unironically … you are of course correct, dear reader, and we shall continue discussing Connor’s (likely literal) god complex.
Was he the center of this universe now? Did everything orbit around him?
It wasn’t so much a thought as it was an instinct, in all honesty. Something he wasn’t consciously telling himself and could not justify. [...] But he knew where his legs were carrying him. The unseen hand that guided him was taking him to the house of the gods.
It felt as though the motion of his body existed in tandem with the world outside him, and he couldn’t stop either from moving; the only thing that could was the white hole gaping in the sky.
There should’ve been someone there. Was this world devoid of Arceus? Of the rest? Did he somehow supplant the entire pantheon in this realm of nothingness?
“Maybe she is. Maybe Mew’s just taken that form to trick you out of all your treats — I know I’d do that, if I were her.”
Florence raised an eyebrow. “If you were a god?”
In a lore-rich setting as Sinnoh, which introduced not only multiple gods but also progenitors for the entire known universe, there are many implications when this is casually brought up in succession. But what stands out the most are the references to walking through a void, legs moving through nothingness, the universe orbiting around one singular point. This of course brings to mind the earth-centric theory of the universe, and even calls to mind
the round-earth theory I proposed earlier. However, I believe the answer is more obvious than that.
It was here Florence realised she’d never seen the spirit outside some sort of electrical device. With those big eyes, it reminded her of a dwebble scuttling between new stones for shells. That old thing was an old shell, not fit for purpose — Florence knew this, and she assumed the spirit did, too—
Arceus emerged as all matter spewed forth into the ether, and all that remained of the egg was the seventeen shards of its tectonic shell.
Spirits? Scuttling for shells? Holding up the weight of the world on their shoulders while the known universe orbits around them? Legs ceaselessly carrying them to the house of the gods? Tectonic shell??
That’s right, dear reader. Connor Murdoch feels altogether out of place in his human body. That’s because Connor Murdoch is a turtle.
In the vast sea of Sinnoh lore, I direct you, dear reader, to the creature most-suited for living in said sea: the turtle. Slamdunkrai’s decision to set the fic in Sinnoh becomes exponentially clear in hindsight—not for his love of the region or its rich mythos, but for its starter pokemon. Florence has Ponty, the best prinplup. In keeping with the lore of the games that a good rival chooses the starter who is strong against yours, and using Connor as Florence’s rival, it is clear that he will eventually pick (or become) turtwig—who will in turn eventually become torterra, notably based on the World Turtle myth. Lest we believe this is hearsay, we shall return to Negrek’s initial post about the true naming of Thousand Roads:
Both literal and figurative meanings seem to perfectly capture what it takes to be good at ASB, or even fanfiction--as anyone who has tried to grind out a fifty-plus chapterfic can attest
It couldn’t be any less clear: we must use both the literal and figurative meanings here to be good at fanfiction, and both of those meanings suggest that my theory is accurate without fail. Figuratively: Connor is a turtle because no where in the published chapters of
Hey, Space Cadet! is there language to suggest that his outer figure is not that of a turtle. Literally: Connor is a turtle because of the hints we have picked up on from the literature. There is no other option.
“But kint! How could
you possibly attest to this? Negrek specifically calls out authors who have written 50+ chapterfics are the ones who can attest (the act of trying not withstanding), and you haven’t written a longfic that’s 50+ chapters, and in fact you’ve abandoned multiple in the low teens—”
Chapter 51: Turtles All the Way Down
Some ancient Asian cosmological views are close to the idea of an infinite regression of causes, as exemplified in the following apocryphal story: A Western traveler encountering an Oriental philosopher asks him to describe the nature of the world: “It is a great ball resting on the flat back of the world turtle.” “Ah yes, but what does the world turtle stand on?” “On the back of a still larger turtle.” “Yes, but what does he stand on?” “A very perceptive question. But it’s no use, mister; it’s turtles all the way down.”
—Carl Sagan, “Gott and the Turtles” (1974)
It is clear beyond doubt that Connor is a turtle. Not only that, but I can attest to the fact that many other characters in the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe are
also secretly turtles.
The imagery posed by the combined works of slamdunkrai and IFBench is compelling indeed: that of Arceus’s plates scattered out into the wide, wide universe, forming the tectonic shell of a turtle (or a stack of turtles) that in turn comprise of an enormous fanfic multiverse (or a stack of turtles). This is notable as well for when
other authors have made use of Plates in their writing—but we must table this particular element for the time being in order to identify the other turtles whose identities have already been hinted at in this theory. Let us return to the past, dear reader, and revisit the idea of leaving no stone unturned. If, in Just a Torchic’s
I’m a Marionette, stone-loving Uncle Steve were to turn and see Wallace, what would he really see?
The people were staring up at him, and the gods were staring down at him: Wallace Izumi Papadakis, Gym Leader of Sootopolis City, guardian of Sootopolis City, priest of Sootopolis City, Lorekeeper of Sootopolis City. His outer shell had to be perfect. His inner self and desires and well being didn’t matter. He had to be perfect for Sootopolis City's past, present, and future, and that sometimes meant dealing with unpleasant things, such as Megalos.
Torchic’s version of Wallace wrestles with the idea of self-worth, beauty, and value. His pursuance of a perfect self increasingly isolates himself from his friends. But the more pressing theme at the heart of this story of masks and facades is the idea of seeking the
perfect shell: dear reader, the plain truth is that Wallace is also a turtle.
The imagery surrounding Wallace—that of water-types, shells, lying to yourself and your friends by saying you’re okay even when you’re staring into a crippling void of anxiety, self-doubt, and fear of worthlessness—readily brings to mind a character from IFBench’s
Eternal Shadows: smol bean, Gen.
"Oh, right. I should explain what it is. It's a game where you pretend to be something, and everyone else has to guess what that something is! It's really fun!"
In tandem with IFBench’s previous other mentions in this theory—specifically, the ideas of an interconnected fanfic universe and protagonists who have all been transferred to a new universe with no memories and different bodies—the inclusion of charades here seems particularly meaningful. “A game where we have to guess what that something is” seems to be egging us on here. One might argue that this is included largely for dramatic irony, and to cause even more stress and anxiety for Gen. This is the small-brained take. The big-brained take is to understand that this is an obvious hint to ignore presumed turtle Wartortle Lidequir (who is also the protagonist of IFBench’s
Then, Then, and Now, a story rife with imagery of parallel universes with alt-version protagonists and also turtles) as an obvious red herring (or, as the kids would say, red turtle):
I was greeted with Meganium holding a wooden platter of pink muffins with a vine just outside the fort's entrance, along with a Wartortle wearing a red scarf.
(for what other reason would there be to put Lidequir in a red scarf if not to flag a red herring?)
The logical conclusion here of course is that Gen is not an oshawott at all, and is in fact some other creature who has been turned into an oshawott, merely pretending to be an oshawott the entire time. Given that
Eternal Shadows is set in the PMD world, it would be easy to assume that Gen is in fact a human, but Gen himself says multiple times that he is not a human, has never been a human, and will never be a human. The only obvious conclusion is to believe him.
My family and everyone I knew back in Goldenrod. Having hands, no fur, and no tail. Having my food taste the way I expected it to. Watching TV at home with my family. Trying to cook something new. Doing the things that I love.
For the most part, these are all things that turtles do. Turtles notably do have tails, so the reference to “no tail” is odd, but we could attribute this to the perils of falling through an alternate universe. Turtles notably do every other thing referenced in Gen’s memories of home.
I lifted my blanket up, to look at the shell on my belly. It was such a weird thing, it felt like both a clothing accessory and a part of my body at the same time. It wasn't as weird as the fur, or the ears, or the tail, or my arms and legs, but still.
“The shell on my belly”?? Dear reader, it has been proven many times over that I misunderstood the plot of Black and White and don’t really know anything about Unova. I don’t actually know what an oshawott is. But when I googled “oshawott” I ran into a very long theory about something called “wotter” (#only90sKidsRemember), which in turn reminded me of “wooper” my darling son, which in turn reminded me that the organizer of Review Blitz promised me that if I finished this before June I would be allowed to see my family again and the coordinates for the basement in which I am kept are scattered through this post in [the rest of this paragraph has been redacted]
Liar, hero, far-traveler, friend. Gen is many things. One of the many things that he is, is a turtle.
Chapter 52: Bar of Wood, Bar of Iron
Thus, without further credentials, the categorical imperative leaps into the world, in order to command there with its ‘unconditioned ought’— a scepter of wooden iron. For in the concept ‘ought’ there exists absolutely and essentially consideration of ‘threatened punishment’ or ‘promised reward’, as the necessary condition, and this is not to be separated from it without abolishing the concept itself and depriving it of all meaning.
—Arthur Schopenhauer,
The World as Will and Representation (1819)
The symmetry of the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe is gradually being revealed. Protagonists, scattered across different dimensions and all secretly turtles. Bars, scattered across different universes and all secretly protagonists. As George Lucas said, “It’s like poetry. It rhymes.” (“Rhyme”, notably, rhymes with “time”, lest we forget that this theory is literally in conversation with time itself)
Each was marked with an insignia: a wheel centered on nothing, punctuated by four outward-facing spears with jewels encrusted in each.
The hints are clear: scattered across the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe are four outward-facing bars (one might say spears). All that remains is to find them. One must also draw attention to the conscious decision by Negrek and Spiteful Murkrow to hide these bars specifically with the terms “wood” and “iron”. This is an obvious allusion to the philosophical concept “wooden iron”--an attempt to synthesize the organic and inorganic in a way that is simply impossible. One might be tempted to apply such a philosophy here with words such as “but kint, it is literally impossible to try to prove that nine independent pokefic authors are all secretly writing about a large stack of turtles, these concepts do not mix and attempting to write a singular crack theory for all of them would subject you to over a million words of reading and borderline insanity” and might realize that this is the definition of a self-referential paradox. One would, once more, be wrong. Schopenhauer’s concept is simultaneously fanciful and cynical. The imagery of modern civilization (iron) coexisting peacefully and successfully with bucolic nature (wood) of course brings Love’s works to mind:
As I mentioned, the realm in which I reside now is not natural; it was created to contain me. But the ones who did so are long gone now, and the bars of the prison are rusting away, so to speak.
The imagery of a bar of rust is striking, both for its suitable fit with the other bars in this essay and for its relevance to [redacted for spoilers] and [redacted for spoilers]. Suffice to say, the imagery of rust and decay run rife through Love’s work, hand-in-hand with images of lush plants and flourishing paradise—one always at odds with the other, and yet in balance. Once never wins out over the other, nor does Love present any arguments that one should.
Rue wasn't sure who the lycanroc was referring to—until he noticed the corpse beside him. A torso as thick as a tree trunk; fur of brown and cream; antlers wreathed in leaves, rusty red and withered along the edges. Flies buzzed around the sawsbuck's glassy eyes, eager to fill their bellies with carrion.
But what separates a bar of rust from a bar of iron. Why include both in the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe?
There are multiple answers: exposure to oxygen, water, and time—this is an obvious hint to return to
Fledglings and study its references to the great Protector definitely-not-a-child Lugia. Air (oxygen) and water are the more obvious clues, as Lugia notably has domain over both and wind and sea. This is demonstrated handily by Pleo’s mastery over Aeroblast. The reference to Time is a little more subtle:
"Well now it's a simple one-way ticket for you patéticos parásitos out into the Wastes!" a Granbull with a lavender headband growled back.
Patéticos parásitos offers unique insight into the world of Tromba. A casual Spanish speaker might be confused at the adjective/noun order here, as typical Spanish language construction has adjectives following nouns (compared to adjectives preceding nouns as they do in English). A casual Spanish speaker, indeed, might expect the Granbull to say
parásitos patéticos. But Tromba does not contain Spanish speakers because Tromba is not Spain, and we are not casuals because we are hardcore fanfic sleuths. The obvious conclusion is that, once more, Spiteful Murkrow is in conversation with Time; the inhabitants of Tromba have a reversed sense of linguistic structure because they are literally reversed in time.
Thus the next step is obvious: we must go
forward in Spiteful Murkrow’s writing timeline to find the bar of rust.
A man with short and vaguely green-tinted hair followed by an excited Corphish made his way down a metal catwalk from a ship to the ferry terminal it docked up against. [...] East of the urban sprawl, the man could catch glimpses of a beach and sandbars with indistinct figures milling about on the sand and in the surf.
Context Switch on its surface might appear to be a fun mix of raging at programming crunch and a love letter to the development of the Pokemon games. However, it is also notable because it contains the clues leading to the bar of rust: the “sandbar” above, combined with the “excited Corphish”. For what is a corphish?
Bracket gave a small cry at the speaker's last comment, and hastily retreated behind his trainer's legs. Keita chuckled a bit and patted the crustacean to reassure him. "Don't worry, he doesn't mean you. You're a crustacean, not a bug."
The epithet choice is obvious: nestled directly in the middle of the word “crustacean”, like a turtle safely in its shell, is “rust”.
We must return now to the bar of wood from
Fledglings. One might think that it’s merely there to inject lively character into the setting, or to add a little humor to Tromba. One might be false. The obvious answer is that the wooden bar is none other than Tricky from Sparkling Espeon’s
Do Psychic Cats Dream of Electric Sheep, and to explain any further would simply be a waste of space in this already long essay.
"Now, now, Kiran. Ceremony is important!" the Ampharos insisted as he carefully undid the red scarf about his neck. The electric sheep set aside the scarf, and then traded it for a teal one hung on the wall behind with simple, thin, black runes in the local script.
However, heartened as we are by Mayor/Judge/Guildmaster Hatteras's proclamation that ceremony is important (and noting the
very interesting overlap between Lidequir’s red scarf/red herring and the red scarf here), we must press onward. From before:
[Wood Bar = Strong Drinks = Aid] ≠ Fire Hazard
And from the cat’s mouth:
The adults don’t like me in here because I’m a ‘hazard to the books’ or something,” Tricky said as they entered the deserted warehouse filled with packed bookshelves that leaned over them claustrophobically. She rolled her eyes. She then accidentally walked into a pile of books lying around next to one of the right-hand shelves, stumbling in place and barely keeping her balance.
Tricky refers to herself as a “hazard” here. This is demonstrably false, and no portion of Sparkling Espeon’s
Do Psychic Cats Dream of Electric Sheep deals with the risks that might logically come about by living in a small town that regularly allows children to wander into various distortions whenever they feel like it, with said small town taking place in a larger world whose defense mechanism for apocalyptic threats appears to be sending amnesiac children from other dimensions to be contacted by their version of the illuminati led by an electric sheep. Tricky has never hurt anyone and has never been a hazard to anyone, shut
up Deerling. But the evidence is compelling: Tricky, a fennekin, is a fire-type, and a self-proclaimed “hazard”. One might even say a fire hazard … or a wooden bar. This equation is written out for the reader’s convenience:
[Strong Drinks = Aid] ≠ [Fire Hazard = Wood Bar]
-
[Tricky = Fennekin = Fire Fox = Hazard = Fire Hazard]
[Tricky = Wood Bar]
And lest we think that
this is a stretch (given that everything else thus far is logically airtight), let us revisit the other half of the theory and study the plates:
One Plate hung in the air, the same colour as excavated brain matter and thicker than any encyclopedia. As hard as he focused, Connor was confused by the words carved upon it:
“What good is knowing without making the decisions? Will reason keep you safe at night when the killer comes to the door?”
Will reason keep us safe at night? No. So we should stop trying to use it here (unless it is daytime aka not “at night”, but arguably it’s nighttime somewhere and therefore we should ignore Reason all the time just to be safe).
Also, the decision to describe the plate’s thickness in relation to an encyclopedia’s thickness is an obvious clue to notable hazard-to-books, Fennekin Tricky. And lest we forget, Tricky’s father is
literally a carracosta--if this is not an allusion to the fact that she belongs in our stack of turtles, I’m not sure what else is.
All the remains is to find the final bar—and yet it has been before our eyes this entire time.
Only for another Krabby to latch onto his foot as he passed over the water.
"Go away and stay away!" it demanded, as Nida came to the side of the water. She tried to rear up the barbs in her pelt much as her parents and more experienced siblings would. While she managed to fire a singular barb, the little missile accomplished nothing but to sail through the air a couple feet and fall into the water with a weak splash.
At this point it barely bears pointing out the obvious intentional links between Spiteful Murkrow’s decision to include both Krabby and Corphish. Authors aren’t allowed to have favorite pokemon or settings, and it doesn’t make sense that an author might enjoy writing seaside scenes and as such use multiple crab-like pokemon. No, the answer is obviously helping us cement the final clue, held in Nida’s capable paws and flung singularly here: the
barb, or, in other words, the bar of b’s.
Chapter 53: The Bar of Bees
It’s kind of crazy that you’ve reached a word count of over 7,500 and you’re still wasting space on per-chapter epigraphs; hasn’t that joke run its course already?
—kintsugi,
please save me (2022)
The reference to the bar of bees is perhaps the most interesting one, primarily because we come full circle on the concept of a hivemind. This of course prompts us to return once more to Love’s work—and, sure enough, we find the resting place (heh) for the bar of bees:
Before Poppy could come up with a response, the rest of the shaymin—perhaps a dozen, all told—surrounded her like bees that had discovered a new flower. "What kind of pokemon are you?" one asked. "I mean, she has to be grass," another said. "But I don't know the species. How'd you find us? Was it an accident?"
The queen's flank felt cool against his. If she noticed his nervousness, she gave no indication. Gradually, the gentle breeze, and the buzzing bees, and the steady rhythm of her breathing lulled him to sleep.
Need I say more?
Interlude: I Need Say More
At this point you may be questioning your and my sanity for making it this far and not stopping. That does, unfortunately, make two of us. You may be asking what the point of a unified fic theory even is: what, truly, is the purpose of a theory such as “X was in a coma the entire time” or “Y is the same character as Z but older” or even
“the entire Pixar universe is one large timeline connected by a time-traveled version of Boo from Monster’s Inc who is using magical witchdoors to see her best friend a bear-slash-Sully (?) again, Cars is just the futuristic post-human Earth that is quickly reclaimed by the humans from Wall-E once again, and the guy from Up was there too I guess”. Is it not enough to just enjoy a story on its own merits, rather than trying to outsmart the author and find a deeper meaning or flaw that likely wasn’t intended in the first place? Why are we doing this? Why are we doing
any of this? What possible joy can be wrung from trying to sift through a vast canon seemingly written by multiple different authors spanning dramatically different ideologies/themes/settings in order to try to make a tiny, shriveled flower of a story that brings us joy? Can a seemingly disjoint pile of words be worth something to anyone, even ourselves?
The simple truth, dear reader, is that I have no fucking clue.
What I do know is the following:
- slamdunkrai’s Connor, IFBench’s Gen, and Just a Torchic’s Wallace are all secretly turtles brought in from parallel universes
- Sinderella’s Dorien is the bar of iron
- Sparkling Espeon’s Tricky is the bar of wood
- Spiteful Murkrow’s works contain the bar of rust
- Love’s works contain the bar of bees
(written out like this, the symmetry of the four elements that make up the foundation of the universe—iron, wood, rust, and bees—is quite beautiful, and should be noted).
Chapter 54: Crack the Plates
Blunt the knives, bend the forks
Smash the bottles and burn the corks
Chip the glasses and crack the plates
That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!
—J.R.R. Tolkien,
The Hobbit (1937)
Many thousand words ago, dear reader, I promised that we would revisit the scattering of the Plates when the time was right. That time is now.
Silurica writes at length on the topic of recovering Arceus’s Plates in
Luceat Lux Vestra, detailing the misadventures of Arceus “Alfa” Arceus and aspiring artist Luca as they journey across Sinnoh in search of said missing plates. Little by little, they open up to one another and begin to confront their shared pasts—Alfa’s denial of loss and duty intersecting with the grief of an immortal, and the circumstances surrounding Luca’s relocation from Johto to Sinnoh.
Eventually he [Alfa] makes his way back to the entrance. Fossils are displayed here, near the information desk. From the corner of his eye, he spots a visitor handing another fossil over to the employee behind the counter. A trade? A donation? Whatever it is, the employee brings it into the back room. Humans, they are never satisfied by their hoard. The man nods to himself while pretending to admire a dome fossil. A few minutes later, the employee returns carrying a lizard-like Pokémon which went extinct in an age long past.
The man freezes in realization.
An argument could be constructed that Alfa is freezing up here because he is barely coming to grips with the understanding of modern fossil resurrection and how it combines with the hoarding tendencies of humans. An astute reader would understand at this point that I never bring up such arguments except to immediately refute them. It is immensely obvious instead that Alfa is afraid of something else—something about the concept of resurrecting a lizard would set him specifically on edge.
Luca crosses their arms. "You see, in the perspective of modern humans, what this museum is doing isn't wrong." They explain, "Yes, back when the technology was first developed years ago, there were ethical debates about it, and there still are now. However! Reception from the public has been generally positive. The prehistoric Pokémon resurrected by the technology are no different from modern Pokémon – they are living beings with potential to improve the environment and to live together with us. And also…" they trail off, noticing the man keeps looking down on them with an unchanging expression. "You are not changing your stance, are you?"
Alfa, interestingly enough, is not immediately swayed by Luca’s argument that everyone agreed a while ago that it was fine and therefore arguing further is silly. This implies that he has some sort of enlightened knowledge on the situation at hand … but what?
We shall, very briefly, table this line of reasoning in favor of finding the final turtle—who, by process of elimination, must be in Negrek’s works. An obvious answer here would be the child from
Salvage, who has often performed feats of supernatural intelligence, speed, and power that can only be associated with turtles. However, Negrek herself has confirmed that the child is simultaneously both
Sans Undertale and
Ash Ketchum, and the gathered evidence there does indeed seem indisputable, so we must turn our sights on other targets—which would be daunting indeed, if Negrek didn’t literally spill the beans three months prior.
For the unaware, Nate, also from Negrek’s
Salvage is a bald man who likes pizza. He has some other defining characteristics I guess, but these are definitely the most important ones.
As we close in on the overarching solution, we return to Silurica’s
Luceat Lux Vestra:
When Alfa gives no response, Ervilia shrugs, places her bag on the ground and opens it. Inside it are shards of many colors, broken and incomplete. Luca can't make heads or tails of the curios, but they catch Alfa muttering something under his breath. What was it? Butcher?
Ervilia is a mysterious relic-hunter who has taken unique interest in Alfa and his companion, Luca—likely because she suspects their true identities. And Alfa, in turn, serves as a mentor and instructive figure, rarely intervening directly despite having the ability to flatten the map and instead choosing to boost others in combat such as Celia. Alfa, old as he is, is afraid to confront the past or re-enter the conflict. This much is obvious in his insistence on referring to Luca as “Child of Light” rather than “Luca”. But more obvious is Alfa’s reactions to the fossil resurrection and to Ervilia’s treatment of the shards. Butcher? Shredder? Being afraid of a genetically resurrected lizard? Artists?? A bald turtle who really likes pizza?
Four bald turtles who really like pizza, each of whom are paired to an ancient sacred bar-like weapon????
Dear reader, at the heart of the Thousand Roads Cinematic Universe lies a simple truth: these authors were not writing Pokemon fanfiction at all, nor even individual stories. What they were writing instead was one interconnected multiverse about the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. One can only conclude that they will eventually cross over to their original universes, reclaim their weapons and meet their mentor Alfa-Splinter, and eat pizza or kill god or some shit.
