another way to chase infinity

Did Obi-wan and Yoda never wonder that if Luke succeeded with killing Vader, how he would react if he found out that he was made to unknowingly commit patricide?

Because as it is knowingly committing patricide even if your dad was a horrible person takes a toll on one's psyche, it impacts a person's mental wellbeing and leaves a scar that never really heals for the most part.

It's also well known that Luke yearned for his dad like crazy and we know that both Yoda and Obi-wan were aware of this.

Now imagine unknowingly committing patricide when you've been yearning for Mr. Paternity himself, coming to realisation that you now have the blood of the father you've been yearning for on your hands and there is absolutely nothing you can do to change that and knowing that the mentors you trusted knew you were killing your father but didn't stop you or care for how it would affect you if you found out, they were insisting upon it in fact. I'm pretty sure that's a good way to make a whole new Sith Lord no?

But then we have these other instances, where it misses a few things, but the thing is, it's doing it on purpose. If we look, we find that in several instances - the anagram one, for instance - the initial realization with PSELR that it doesn't remember the right word and can only think of anagram happens way before it casually calls ART's name an anagram. There is a significant passage of time. And in the instance of the forensic sweep - which I didn't include in my post but it was already really long - there's a quote where it comes up a second time (after a significant delay) and Murderbot goes 'ah, so they do work that way!' indicating it, again, didn't bother looking real ones up. As we know, Murderbot has constant feed access that it cheerfully abuses at every waking moment. it oftentimes gathers analyzes, and utilizes, and even repackages vital information in seconds, when it would have taken a human hours (or longer) to do the exact same thing! Because Murderbot really is intelligent, and frankly, has a lot of processing power.

incorrect response: write the rest of the story to be as twisty, shocking and counter to expectations as possible, regardless of whether this is a logical or satisfying way for the plot to go

correct response:

(you’re not stupid. I posted this thinking it would amuse a handful of mutuals who all knew the context and that would be about it, so I didn’t think about providing any other explanation. I had no idea it would spread this far.)

I’ll start from the very beginning just to be thorough. so this is Alex Hirsch, creator and head writer of Gravity Falls, a show which had a big focus on mystery, conspiracies, codes and ciphers, etc. the whole plot is kicked off by one of the main characters finding a mysterious old journal in the woods, which detailed all kinds of weird and supernatural things, but then ended abruptly with the author saying they had to hide the journal because they were being watched. the central driving mystery of the show, therefore, was the question of who wrote the journal and what happened to them.

now, the thing about Gravity Falls is that, while it must be said that the writers weren’t always quite as sure of their plans as we tend to like to think they are, it is very much a fair play mystery, with legitimate clues to what was going on. but the writers were caught off guard by how quickly the show attracted a dedicated audience, including a lot of people outside the primary presumed demographic, who started solving the clues faster than expected. so some of the fans were able to correctly guess who the author was before it was revealed in the show, and the theory started spreading. this put the writers in something of a panic, because this was THE mystery that the whole story revolved around, with ¾ of the show building up to the dramatic reveal in the middle of season 2. they wanted it to be a mystery that could be figured out, sure, but they weren’t prepared for people to solve it so far in advance of when it was planned to be revealed, which would have really taken away from the big moment. they weren’t going to change the main story itself, but having been caught unaware by how much attention the fans were paying, they wanted to up the ante and make the mystery more complex to solve going forward–but first they needed to buy some time and throw the fandom off the scent for a little longer.

hence, Alex’s plan as described above. they whipped up a fake shot that appears to give away the identity of the author as being another character in the show, put it on a screen in the studio as if it was a real animation frame, took a picture of it, and ‘leaked’ it online. it was initially decided to be a hoax (albeit, I think, presumed to be a hoax originating from outside the production team), until Alex posted this tweet:

…before quickly deleting it (though not so quickly that it didn’t get seen, of course).

it worked well enough to distract most people for a while, and wasn’t revealed as a hoax until a year later, when an episode aired that definitively proved that the supposed screenshot could never have happened, at which point Alex owned up to the whole thing as seen in the tweet above. by then the episode with the real reveal wasn’t far off, and while people did still work it out ahead of time, it was more of an “OH MY GOD I KNEW IT!” moment than a “booooooring, we’ve known that for ages” moment, which of course was what the writers wanted all along.

personally I find this a fascinating approach to dealing with the problem of spoilers, because it doesn’t affect the story itself at all; if you watch Gravity Falls today–or if you were watching it when it aired without any significant contact with the fandom–you’d never know about it. ultimately, the problem the writers were facing wasn’t that some people might guess the answer to the mystery–they never wanted to make it completely impossible to predict–so much as it was that they hadn’t designed the story to stand up to so many people working on the puzzle together, which resulted in a sort of total output of puzzle-solving ability that far outstripped the capability of any one solo human being. so their solution is something that’s very much targeted toward delaying that group problem-solving, without actually affecting the experience of any individual person watching the show.

plus, it’s very in keeping with the overall tone of the show.

don’t:

change the ending

do:

Turns out you can roll a 7 on a d6

Odysseus: Regret it why?

Cassandra: You won’t believe me if I tell you. If I prophecy, nobody believes me. That is my curse.

Odysseus: … I’m Nobody. Fill me in. 

*A couple of months later* 

Odysseus: HELLO PENELOPE, I AM HERE PRECISELY ON TIME AND NOT YEARS LATE incidentally I rescued and adopted a Trojan seer while I was away, she’s great, got me home really fast, Cassandra this is your new mother who’s not going to treat you like shit. 

Penelope: … I’m going to need more details, but okay, sure.