/t/ - Theories

Hi,

Not sure about the entire FC world representing something, but I do see a sort of torn-apart bodily form in the lower left part of it (kinda looks like a rat to me). I do know from holo's earlier posts that the maps often resemble images of objects or figures, so you might be right.

I also partially agree about your Uboa interpretation, but I see it as more of a relfection of Madotsuki's own fear of what happens while she's sleeping as well as what she is underneath (many characters seem to have moster-like dopplegangers in the game that echo their own feelings). If you want, you can read through my earlier posts and see what you think :)

A question though, what evidence do you have that Mado was sleeping the whole time? The game drastically changes upon entering the 'dream world' and the creator makes a big effort to show an extreme distinction between waking and dreaming states.

>>2001
Hello, and welcome to the board. Now I'm seeing the newborn. Considering how Takofuusen has been compared to a TRAP fetus, this make sense.

>>2002
I'm not a happy camper. I wrote up a large thing for you and the power went out for a second and wiped it.
Urg.
Short version:
>Madotsuki's own fear of what happens while she's sleeping and …
Agreed. When asleep, if aware, you will have the worry of 'losing control', which can cause some 'really' weird effects if you 'slip'.
Also something happening in your dream to distress you can cause you to 'slip', such as being forced to recall something (A example would be KyuuKyuu, if you believe it distresses Mado somehow. Next unknown room you walk into is FACE). It's, with me at least, common that if you try to become 'aware' of anything 'new' while you're stressed about something, what's 'new' will usually have something else horrifying with it since you're still afraid. Even if you don't 'slip' when seeing what scares you in the first place.

>A question though, what evidence do you have that Mado was sleeping the whole time?
Well, the whole time is a theory I have temporarily accepted while I'm working on my own head-canon.
However, for the ending at least, the lack of a body and the Jellyfish are huge red flags for me.
So, at least for the ending, I actually believe that she was still asleep, or in some other altered state.
Another idea that I came up with this hour is the fact that perhaps in the beginning of the game, Vivid Dreaming could've been new to Mado somehow. As the game went on and she (usually) pinched herself alot, by the end, she was used to pinching, so it wouldn't truly wake her up. Then she dropped off the building to try and awaken again.
In which case, she might've not thought anything malicious about it.
Then again, if you awaken or shift to another place in a dream, normally you don't stay in the place you were before(As in, she, her body, left but the Jellyfish were still around). So maybe she was still there as the observer (Like one of those dreams where you're simply viewing from a external source somehow).

In any case, yeah, I had something quite abit longer than this written out. I also wanted to say that I stayed up roughly 14ish hours playing YM for the first time all in one playthough. So my current ideas are sprouted from a tired brain and quite unrefined or not as well thought out.
Might be able to come up with better ideas as I'm actually reseted up a bit.
But yes, I do like and agree with your theory about her being suicidal in the first place.
But some things don't quite link up the way I like. Such as if she killed herself in her 'real life', where did the body/jellyfish come from/go.
The common ideas that the Jellyfish are 'death' deities and you see them both in your dream and real life are a little..off.

But yeah, totally need to think about this 'after' some rest.

>>2004
Maybe you should write up your long replies in a word document, like I do :) Anyway.

I honestly think the endscreen was just a way of wrapping up the game, and I the lack of body and presence of two dreamlike creatures, to me, isn’t enough of a support for the theory. I’m not saying I’m dismissing the idea completely, but if it was a dream all along I would think there would be more evidence throughout the game, in the way that there’s a mountain of evidence pointing to the driving motives to Mado’s suicide. Really, the sudden staircase apparition is more of a red flag than anything else. In any case, since Mado does not ‘wake up’ after the drop like she does after deactivating the witch effect (see part 3 of what I wrote) tells me that she has died. I always saw the jellyfish things as a sort of taunting reminder that her dreams and waking life were what drove her to suicide. Maybe the jump itself was a dream, but I think the ultimate point is that Mado is about to suicide when she next wakes up.

Regarding the horrific transformation of the bedrooms when things go dark, I do agree with what you said about lack of control, but since much of the game is in the player’s control, I also think the bedrooms transforming has more to do with the fear of normal people or places being revealed as scary or nightmarish under the surface. Tying this in with the running motif of being trapped in small spaces by things like the Toriningen or Uboa, I think it has more to do with the cycle of abuse that Mado relives in her dreams (the endless areas that loop back on each other and a lot of the mazes tie into this). She lives with the fear of people around her revealing themselves as scary or bad. Also, this may be an interpretational stretch, but if you know anything about lucid dreaming practices, keeping a dream diary is crucial to learning how to control and navigate your own dreams, which may be why Mado keeps one (again, it may just be a coincidence taken from the game mechanic, but I don’t know).

>>2005
>First paragraph
I can see the Jellyfish only being there to me a symbol for the player. Though, I would imagine the creator would've put something more 'available' and known for that job. Regarldess, the missing body still drives me up the wall a bit.
A sudden idea; Perhaps her mind started meshing both reality and her dreams together. Akin to sleep walking, but not. It would explain where the stairs randomly came from.
However, that idea is also out of place. If that was happening, I'd think it would happen abit more slowly (As in, slowly doing it every time you wake up).
Eh..
I do fully agree that she was ultimately going to kill herself, regardless. So in the end, no matter what state she was in, the ending would've been roughly the same.
I feel the lack of a body and the NPC choice still feel like they have some unseen meaning behind them.

>Second paragraph
I do think that she was abused and it shows though her dreams. So I agree.
I also think that any event that changes from good to bad, or any 'sudden' event (FACE) is caused by a mixture of some kind of fear, or trauma, mixed with a 'slip' I keep yabbering on about. To me it seems obvious that she's trying to hide something from herself, she just tends to slip up now and then.
A fear of the 'darker' side of the world could very well work as a fear. Children as young as (I assume) she is, usually don't have that fear as they haven't experienced the world and people enough yet. So it could also tie in to some abuse as well, like you said.
As for the Lucid Dreaming, I'm aware of it. I personally remember 'alot' of my dreams, sometimes I will gain a moment or two of 'awareness', but I don't actively try to control them. I'm aware that keeping a Dream Diary is 'extremely' helpful in learning how to Lucid Dream, yourself.
Yet, I'm on the fence on rather or not Madotsuki actually controls her own dreams or not. I'm wondering if you, as the driving force, control her. I mean like…Perhaps she can retain her memories (Like I can), but she herself can't control the dreams, shes simply a observer and you're the person moving her around.
That idea has the possibility of changing up how we view her and her interactions in the dream world. The idea is just a 'sprout', as I haven't had time to really work on it to see if it fits or not, but I'm just putting that out there.

In any case, I can't wait to get some rest of my own (Or at least take my medication in a couple hours to give me more energy..) so I can actually put some critical thinking into this.
Your theory, or at least what you posted of it, makes quite abit of sense. There are, of course, still quite abit of gaps and questions left with it. But I feel as though, even if I end up not accepting your head-canon, I'm sure I'll end up accepting a good chunk of it in some way.
Like I said, everything you put down made sense. I'm just hoping I can find a way to fill the gaps when I sober up abit off tiredness.

Well, until we find any connection in the game to communicate that the suicide is a deceptive surface narrative, I don’t think it makes sense to linger on it. As it is now, I think the stairs may have been an arbitrary game mechanic to prevent the player from suiciding at the start of the game by accident. At the end the stairs appear to draw the gamer’s attention so that they can successfully finish the game and end the cycle that Mado is trapped in. There is probably some meaning to the endscreen, you’re right. The best thing to do would be to compare the context in which you find those jellyfish things in the game to the end.

Ohh, that’s what you meant by slip? I wasn’t sure what you meant. In that case I agree with you. I wrote a bit about it in my earlier posts, especially about Uboa. Also, Monoe’s scene is a really good support for the ‘evil duality’ theme. Monoe is Mado’s double, considering she only shows up after you murder a seemingly unrelated character and she disappears after you come face-to-face with her (as you would a reflection). And of course the two characters look very similar. Since the game is so full of cycle motifs, and the fact that the scene takes place around a looping patch, I saw this as a suggestion that Mado may fear that she might join the cycle of abuse herself, becoming an aggressor (consider that Monoe is only seen in the ‘dark’ reflection of the area (the tunnel) that she comes across her reflection. The tunnel and the landscape is doubled in this scene again. Not to mention the square building in the sky garden whose surroundings change when you activate the white flowers, though the building remains the same. It also ties in to what I was saying about Uboa before. So yeah, I agree with you on the ‘slip’ thing, in so many words!

About the lucid dreaming, maybe this connects to Mado being able to change herself as she collects effects, thus learning that she is dreaming? I dunno. Also, if you’re really serious about making a cohesive interpretation of the game, have you read holo’s earlier posts on this forum? They talk about the strange South American figures and what they mean in ancient Paracas culture. Considering some of the places they appear in the game, like the scene just before FACE, I think they’ll help you understand the game’s meanings. I've been doing a lot of reading on the culture recently and it makes a lot of sense to me, since it's often related to dreaming or hallucinating.