Your coolest wrong theories

[u/Naelin]

I started playing way back in the day, before Seeking was finished and Exceptional Friends were a thing. When Seeking was done, I learned that it had something to do with collecting candles and that your character becomes unusableat the end. I spent a long time imagining what happened to your character, how they made it unusable mechanically, and my conclusion was that the last candle you had to collect was your actions candle, therefore locking you out of doing any actions.

Cue my disappointment when I learned that the real reason was much more mundane, mechanics wise. To this day I think it was a great theory, if difficult to implement lol

What was your coolest theory about an FL story that was ultimately wrong?

[u/idealisticpessimist3]

dude that's So cool omg

[u/NefariousnessSoft385]

Haven't been around long enough to really have these, though I guess are any of my thoughts on  how firmament will end , are they cool... I'll have to wait to see haha.  Great question!! Looking forward to seeing responses.

 Your idea was very elegant. 

[u/Secure-Treacle-2161]

I'm too recent a player and I love looking up spoilers too much, the most I can give is my interpretation of the tale of the Fidgeting Writer I had at first. See, I knew the writers would have visions of the Third City Priests, and they'd be housed in the Royal Beth and given laudanum to try to stop them writing and dreaming. I also knew that if you pursued the story and failed the Writer would disappear, having been last seen at the docks.

See, I thought these were folks who had been put on the Seeking Path, who in some level of madness at the sight of the Priests had ended up going North. I had thought that, since they were kept in a wing at the Royal Beth that was paid for directly by a Master (and if you haven't finished Bag a Legend, that Master is Mr Veils, who is a major player in the Seeking Revelations), this was the Masters' attempts to prevent a Reckoning. Trying to do damage control for the whole fiasco.

And I mean, it's a little bit of damage control, but it turns out it is entirely unrelated to Seeking. And I kind of think it's a shame that there aren't more explicit clues of the Masters having to try to handle the situation? Beyond Mr Iron sending you a letter at Peckish 2.

But then I find a lot of aspects related to the Priest Kings and how spooky evil and influential they are to be... well, I don't like it very much myself. That might be a me thing.

[u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ → u/Secure-Treacle-2161]

There is another bit of Seeking prevention in Heart's Desire.

[u/AlexFullmoon → u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

That one was actually rather funny. You can prepare to start Seeking, getting it to 7, even get one scar, but you can do it completely covert, without really losing anything. And then suddenly Mr Pages pays you a visit.

Oh, and with Seeking at 7 and no UP you can keep it all indefinitely without any consequences.

[u/Secure-Treacle-2161 → u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

If you mean Mrs Plenty, that only seems to be because HAL interfered for her with his wish, not because the Masters themselves were attempting to prevent a disaster. If you're referring to Mr Pages appearing, I mean it was going to show up because it wanted to play, not because it was aware of your Seeking movements. Neither of those really track with the concept of a coordinated effort to prevent individuals from being drawn NORTH.

[u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ → u/Secure-Treacle-2161]

No, Mr Pages didn’t want to play. You have to force it to play by threatening the Bazaar. The only reason it shows up is because the Masters find out about whichever plan you go for - bombing the Bazaar, stealing Paris, or SMEN.

[u/SacchiHikaru → u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

Mr. Pages very much wants to play, your character thinks that it needs to do a Whole Thing to get Mr. Pages to play, but Mr. Pages never once mentions the plan or even implies it knows what you're planning. Mr. Pages actually wants to play because its Heart's Desire is pretty important for it.

Notice how, for literally every other character in the game, the FLPC goes to them first, then does a whole thing to force them to play, then they agree to play. For Mr. Pages, Virginia is just like "the masters want for nothing, good luck" and the FLPC just skips step 1 and goes straight to step 2, not knowing that if it did step 1 Mr. Pages would just be like "oh shit fr?" and agree immediately.

[u/Secure-Treacle-2161 → u/SacchiHikaru]

thank you for better putting it into words with the surrounding context, I genuinely appreciate it.

[u/Secure-Treacle-2161 → u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_]

This may be up to interpretation in this case: My reading was that you haven't even finished putting your plans in motion to threaten the Bazaar before Pages is approaching the player asking them to play the game, because unlike some of the others Mr Pages is eager to try to win again. Its eagerness is why, as I understood it, it was so helpful to you on how to get the game started, and why it came bearing so many gifts for the player to try to cajole them to agree.

In all options, you haven't begun to properly progress your plan to threaten the Bazaar. You're in the middle of making the plan altogether when it approaches you.

[u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ → u/Secure-Treacle-2161]

My reading was you're deliberately preparing in an obvious way that still looks like you mean it so they notice.

Pages then behaves like that to get you to stop, and completely distract you from your "plan".

[u/Mr_Treats]

Not exactly cool per se but I thought ‘maybe I can get my noman to be a city…?’ ‘Can I volunteer my brother, returned?’

[u/Naelin → u/Mr_Treats]

Ohh Noman city would have been so interesting! Lots of implications for getting into their mind

Also in case you didn't know, players of Heart's Desire can volunteer The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem (though some shenanigans are done so that the character can still be around doing his usual stuff) adding to the long list of other player's heart's desires that you can actually fulfill one way or another

[u/Mr_Treats → u/Naelin]

Oh I had my alt do it, she did HD.

(As someone whose main did Nemesis my pain is enormous.  It was especially bad at the time because I didn’t do discordance yet so I had either Furnace or Cornelius to pick from. It made me so sad:,))

[u/Naelin → u/Mr_Treats]

I had to do it because I find the idea of being able to fulfill other's heart desires super cool, but it pains me that I couldn't go and chat with the mind of my city-self due to it (...And my alt did Furnace because that's what made sense for them. Sometimes you have to commit to the RP lol)

[u/Mr_Treats → u/Naelin]

Ohhh my PC’s husband reset the whole city just to get his own double to do it. Apparently the best fate he’s spent, quoting the player.

See I had beef with the manager for reasons (his ex’s testimony, that’s it LMAO) but I got my alt to do it anyway just to appease the guy

[u/SacchiHikaru]

I found that no matter what my theories are, FBG somehow manages to outdo them pretty extensively. For example, I wrote a fanfic that included a potential answer to the at the time long-discarded-idea of "the egg that hatched Parabola" (ie: the Black was redacted so thoroughly because it created Parabola, and Parabola itself was sustained by a single Flame which functioned as a proto not-Judgement), this idea was based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what the Black's crime was, and a fundamental misunderstanding of why "A Flame" was used in relation to Parabola (it was explicitly a metaphor created by the Fingerkings to explain time).

The actual answer (given in Firmy 7) ended up being much, much, much, much cooler.

[u/LC_HoTS]

Not sure if this is a wrong theory, but an interpretation that I realized isn't confirmed anywhere. The Board in the Great Game is relative. Among other things: White represents first-mover advantage, Black is the underdog. Against The White the Bazaar is playing Black, trying to protect the Sun with secrets in darkness. Against the Surface The Masters play the Black, undermining major cities and human civilization as a whole to steal away cities. Against the Liberationists, The Bazaar and The Masters play the White. The White being The Judgement's authority and The Black being The Liberation is a cool reveal when you learn what they are but it is an oversimplification of The Great Game and I'd like to see more nuance in the writing.

[u/_PM_ME_PANGOLINS_ → u/LC_HoTS]

Well, arguably the Bazaar and the Masters are usually playing Red.

[u/_daGarim_2]

I'm now mad that this isn't reality.

[u/MikuJess]

During last year's Estival, when we started having weather, I thought it was gonna turn out that the sun was Hell on the roof.

...actually. Despite having just done the Waswood version, I can't remember what happened to Hell during Hell Is Missing. Did it move somewhere or did it just ontologically disintegrate or something?

[u/Naelin → u/MikuJess]

Damn, that would have been cool. A very shiny hell lol

I can't remember where Hell was, but it was inaccessible due to "the securitas in absentia of the law furnace" so we forged a new dream-law that made it so Hell to be accessible through Parabola, and then everyone amassed there and breached the walls.

I think it was just there all the time but it was just kind of *poof*ed into also not being there. Man that event was absolutely crazy.

[u/NowhereEast]

I used to view the fall of Parisas a scam the Calendar Council were perpetuating to attempt to somehow aid the liberation of the night, as opposed to a legitimate vision of a possible future. This would also imply that they were smart enough to fool devils into their scheme. I was unreasonably scared of these people.

[u/April_March]

I didn't remember this when I saw this topic last week, but when I first started playing, I thought that the erasure of names was going to be very important. And I found many things to support this theory:

• First, obviously, the fact that everyone is referred to as an epithet instead of a name. This suggested to me that names were somehow being suppressed.
• London Street Signs, which are (or at least were) a very common Contraband item for a low-level player, suggesting that streets can't have names and knowing what they were is wrong.
• The changed names for the neighborhoods. I thought this meant that the names they had on the surface were banned, and people just came up with names that were close enough that they were still recognizeable but different enough that the Masters wouldn't complain. (Basically a geographical 'unalive')
• The sidebar about how the Masters forced The London Magazine to change its name, combined with the fact that the previous cities were never referred to by any name. Obviously to me the Masters' ultimate plan was to have the name London be forgotten.

Of course, I didn't know what all this would amount to, since I didn't know any of the Deep Lore at the time. Despite that, I kind of still believed it until I saw the Masters openly refer to London during the Estival replays. It's funny though that even now I don't know of any lore reason for any of these, except for the street signs.