at the beginning of july there was a long text post published to the patreon addressing various things about the new asides, how long it was taking & why, talking about the new awkward adventures stuff, & other things, but most importantly at the end of the post thomas says they’ve hired some new people to the team. here’s a snippet of that part.

all well & fine, i was happy thomas was getting more help. we honestly didn’t really see much of a shift about things other than occasionally there would be references to a new woman on some streams; her name is lauren & thomas calls her their manager. she’s pretty cool. we like lauren.

today however, as usual i opened the stream an hour early & the chat was filled with the usual pre-stream discussions, jokes, & memes. most of you aren’t patreons so let me tell you what the chat is like; EXTREMELY buggy. even thomas has complained multiple times that he can’t scroll back up in the chat to see a message he was reading once it disappeared into the ether. so unfortunately, i don’t have any screenshots of the chat right now, you’ll have to take my word on all this. i apologize. if something happens & i can cap it before it disappears, know that i will try my best

so about five minutes before the stream officially started we got a long post from someone named “Moderator” in the chat. i was AFK at the time but was on call with @nonchimerical​ who was watching the chat right then. she said the message seemed fairly reasonable other than the no swearing rule, but since the chat actively moves, it was long gone before i got back. i imagine many, many people missed that message since the pre-stream chat is very small & most people only join 5-10 minutes after it’s started.

this is my first issue with this stream having a mod. we weren’t notified in a fair way, have no clue what the rules are, what the etiquette is, etc. i use the community manager announcement as an example that the team is very capable of bringing attention to a decision like this. we were told when brie was hired, when we got a new producer & the manager. why weren’t we notified in detail about a chat moderator? these streams are small, only 300-500 people attend each, we all basically know each other or recognize each other’s names. in my opinion, the only reason we needed a mod in the first place was to keep people from moderating each other about not spamming & stuff. but anyway. onto the next point.

to say that the chat is buggy is an understatement. the entire stream is buggy. thomas’ camera disconnects sometimes, the audio cuts out, becomes gargled - sometimes the stream just stops altogether & thomas always takes a good 5-15 minutes to catch on to the fact that anything is wrong in the first place. i thought, well having a mod will solve that! certainly thomas will be in direct communication with a mod like that or at least notice mod messages easier than normal mod messages! but no. that was too much to hope for evidently. when thomas started the game, it was very small in the left corner. we couldn’t see anything but him for a solid 10 minutes. the entire prologue of the game was lost to us. the moderate said to thomas, a couple times in the chat, that this was an issue. when thomas finally noticed & switched the camera & screen capture, it wasn’t due to the moderator messages but because people in the chat were spamming about it. as usual.

this is the way it’s always been in the streams; it’s a joke at this point we all laugh about. we send repeat messages shouting “HEY THOMAS, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER /AFFECIONATE,” THOMAS, CAMERA,” “oh no did anyone else’s audio go out?,” “thomas we can’t hear you ):” yes it’s a problem that this happens in the first place but it’s a problem of the website he uses, not his equippment. under the new mod rules, this is considered spamming. thomas is equally not paying attention to what the mod says, which is a very big issue, in & of itself.

so i won’t spoil what the stream actually is right now but i’ll say we’re playing a game that has the concept of “HP” in it. thomas joked that “HP” stood for “honesty potential.” this game is very queer, which will make the fact that someone in the chat joked that “HP” stood for “homo points” very funny, even if the sanders sides community wasn’t overwhelmingly queer. even if thomas himself wasn’t a literal homosexual.

the moderator saw someone say “homo points,” @’d them, & told them to “watch their language” & to “not use slurs in chat.”

i’m sorry. what?

quite a few people in the chat at that point called that out, saying that in the situation, this clearly wasn’t being used as a slur, & my main issue is, if we can’t use homo/homosexual in any way, shape, or form, we are admitting its primary use is a slur rather than an identity. it’s fucking problematic as well. it’s giving our identity to the bigots, we’re handing them that word with that way of thinking.

reclamation of slurs aside, the immediate context clearly wasn’t taken into account with this reprimanding. in a chat this small, in a fandom like this, i think that’s a major issue. context matters, & that is my second issue, now with this mod personally. if you’re going to mod a chat, know the fandom. know the environment you’re in & the kinds of jokes we have here or else you seem like a stranger in our house rather than someone helpful.

moving on, the other big issue i have with this mod is the no swearing rule. it’s so fucking hypocritical. thomas & the people thomas has on his streams swear regularly. thomas has encouraged/permitted the people he streams with to swear. & yet not ten minutes ago did someone in the chat get @’d & reprimanded for using the word “damn” in a fairly innocuous sentence.

a smaller, but annoying problem that has also happened in this stream so far is that the chat started spamming “F” for the “F in the chat meme.” after maybe fifteen of them rapidly in a row, the mod told everyone to stop the spamming. i know for a fact 99% of the people in this fandom understand the F in the chat meme. i know for a fact that most of the people in this fandom are familiar with streamming etiquette, which calls for some tasteful spamming occasionally. this mod had no clue what that meme was & when thomas saw every spamming F, he laughed. thomas got it. why didn’t the mod?

But no, when the community responded to the moderator on the “homopoints” issue, something the mod needed to be checked on, many people responded, some coming in after the others because of lag, typing speed, whatever. And then we of course got a flood of people policing those people, and the mod does nothing.

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Janus’ expression here is something to be talked about. I feel like “regret” is too strong of a word, just as “sad” has always been too harsh of a judgement for his playlist. I prefer “melancholy,” as @beauty-and-passion said in their playlist analysis. Everything about Janus represents the bittersweet in life. There is no good without bad, no bad without good. He’s a neutral force between the “Light” & “Dark” Sides. Just as the Roman god Janus represents beginnings, endings, & transitioning spaces such as doorways & gates, so does our Janus represent that middle ground.

In the face of this episode’s chaos, he says with grief that everything is just … fine. Of course he knows that nothing is fine. As everyone gives their sly digs at each other, the mural in the background is begging the Sides to stay connected. Work together. Don’t allow yourself to be so separated between good & bad because at the end of the day, there is no such thing.

Janus is Denial; Deceit, & Self Preservation. He fights for whatever Thomas wants that is ultimately good for Thomas. Not in the same hands on & direct way that Logan does, but in his own puppet master, string-pulling way that hides him in the shadows. Declaring that everything is just fine is not malicious, is not evil; Janus is neither. 

Janus is comfort. 

Denial is comforting.

So like

Janus in the tree there biting a (green) apple obviously reeks of religious imagery. He is the snake of temptation in the garden of Eden, holding onto the fruit that bestowed knowledge onto Adam & Eve. I’m almost tempted to factor in his gloves with how particular & specific this imagery is. Much like in the court room scene, we can speculate that he wasn’t touching a Bible while he swore to the truth because of his gloves. Is he, then, not touching the sin of the apple in the same way until he takes that definitive bite? A very fun question I think.

But to tie this framing into Remus’ religious imagery - Remus himself represents the fruit of knowledge. His debut song was all about welcoming Thomas into the forbidden knowledge that is himself & his intrusive thoughts, after all.

Janus clutching the apple in his hands & taking of a bite of it then represents very clearly that he is in control of this forbidden knowledge - in control of Remus, at the very least. As Denial, he is the keeper of Thomas’ most scandalous & clandestine secrets. We saw it in the Patreon poster art as well; Remus kept in a box on the top shelf with Janus holding the key. Though that analogy can be naturally extended to say he is keeping all of the Sides locked up in their respective casing, which I think is very close to the truth.

This scene was very clever imagery however. It orchestrated that Janus really does have an undefined but potentially vast amount of control over the Sides. From his position off away from the others, above them in a tree, observing them, & then passing an approving judgement that “everything is fine,” on the situation - he had the last say (ignoring Orange’s brief appearance). Much like God, I’d like to think. He is, after all, based loosely on the Roman god of beginnings & endings - Alpha & Omega - much like the Christian God.