#deda files

I did kind of wonder if maybe Nicholas Fisk actually is literally supposed to be Chris but my evidence is pretty threadbare (chris seems to have also be a contract worker agent for the ministry, it's not that much of a stretch that he might be using a new name considering he's canonically british nobility, Nicholas Fisk and Christopher Quinn have the same number of syllables, if the person using the name Thief online is actually Trilby possessing him that sure is one way to make them "soulmates") and also I don't really like that theory very much. would love it if Nicholas Fisk and Chris knew each other back in the day, maybe they went on missions and stuff together. maybe they had a few drunken hookups. maybe Fisk kidnapping trilby at gunpoint was part of a horrible confusing love triangle situation that trilby was fully unaware of. dream big!!!

one thing I have been thinking about a lot recently is the sequence with old Trilby in 6 Days.... when I played it originally on release a thousand years ago I was sure he was the clone you see got brought there at the end but revisiting that scene in the past year I think it might actually, truly be the real him. and I keep thinking about how both consuming shadow AND DEDA files not only leave the door wide open for that to be the case but also set up the circumstances for it to happen?? like consuming shadow has a whole ending for stopping the entity from entering the world but getting the player character trapped there.... and DEDA files has the last picture of him with just fully grey hair like he appears in the game.... !! but I wonder if maybe this will fully get left up in the air in the books. we shall see I guess...

ANON YOUR MIND... very beautiful... very powerful....

Ali and Chris having to go on a mission together is my ideal payoff for Chris coming in. Chriss blowing Diablerie off with some dismissive statements and plucking Alison away to help reload his ballistics, or perhaps Elizabeth arranging for Alison to finish her training as a field agent with someone who isn't Diablerie. Something really violent and dangerous so Alison has no choice but to get her hands bloody and gets to do something that makes her feel like a bad person for like three weeks afterwards. Having a grizzled old Quinn teach her how to use firearms... god, that's the fucking dream!!!

I feeeeel like Fisk was supposed to be a red herring for Trilby himself (the first book sets up a lot of details that make him feel Trilbyish) but now he's turned out to be his own character, possibly, I wonder how Fisk's backstory is going to be woven into Trilby and Chris and the ministry's histories. Of course, the man actually piloting Fisk's body may not actually be Fisk, but perhaps the third book will have more information. Where we are now is a terrible cliffhanger. However I now believe that any explanation for Fisk kidnapping Trilby that isn't a Chris Quinn love triangle is now the inferior option to a beautiful and glorious world that we could all live in if Yahtzee believed in true love.

Like, in the first book, Adam and Victor fight constantly. Their every conversation is somewhat hostile even when they're not even angry or nervous. Rising tensions about shoggoths and possessed people in the world around them slowly up the stakes of their arguments - the first few conversations we see are pretty low-stakes, almost bantering (if Victor wasn't such a prickly mean-spirited cunt). It's just how they communicate. But as the book goes on, their conversations hit more and more towards the heart of their philosophical disagreements and the contradictions in their outlook on life. To the point where Victor and Adam end up fighting in the woods and captured and tied to a barrel full of gasoline. (Their conversations after this go back to being less explosive, and also Victor doesn't even blink when it comes to saving Adam's life multiple times + Adam trusts him completely during that final fight, so their fundamental differences doesn't make them any less effective as a team.)

But before the petrol barrel, Adam essentially asks Victor, "Aren't you sick of this? Always being together? Always being the mindless destructive fireball? Everyone we work with knows that we are useless apart from each other and no one respects us."

And Victor just says No, this is fine. Because of course he would! The man who is actively being crushed and hampered and put down in the co-dependent relationship is begging to be allowed some sliver of freedom away from Victor's overwhelming power. Victor needs Adam to compare himself to, to see how pathetic he could be, to prop up his ego.

But when you re-read EC before DM, you see how much Victor really truly hates himself and his power and what he has to be. His callous response to Adam's bid for freedom is clearly and obviously a sort of lie he's telling himself. He's already resigned himself to being the living weapon! He doesn't want to be trapped as a DEDA employee with Adam, he doesn't want to be in that partnership, he resents being forced into the box and told what to do. But he's in the box now and he's not gonna leave. But it takes Leslie-Ifrig, of all people, the one who put him in this box, to shake him up and make him realize, very briefly, that he could be something else. Adam could never offer him that hope even when he asked Victor to be someone else. (Of course, Leslie-Ifrig wanted to use him for their own purposes, but that's a different conversation lol.)

We can also see that Adam's bid for freedom is something he is also not truly, completely sincere about. Or at least, he isn't committed to freedom once it happens. Because Victor is the one who wouldn't let Adam feel free, but Victor was the first to drop their relationship and quick to sever it when he felt like it hurt him too much. Adam was the one who ended up chasing Victor down, begging him to return, trying to get back to the status quo when it was ripped away from them. Without Victor there, Adam goes from a stabilizing force to a chaotic force all by himself - disobeying orders, mindlessly chasing leads, getting pointed in a direction by his superiors and running it until far past the point of usefulness. Victor represents a lot of Adam's own bad traits, they have similar faults, but Victor actually expresses his bad behavior and Adam gets satisfaction and a sense of purpose from being the one to reign him in.

(This is what a Community is btw)

(Woops realized I forgot to link this fic here lmaooooo)

Victor Casin is living the plot of the average sickfic, while Adam Hesketh is suffering through all of Casin's emotional constipation. Can he make a breakthrough and get his stupid partner to admit that he's in love already?

Meanwhile Alison and Doctor Diablerie are sent to do an exorcism in the woods - and Diablerie is actually taking the time to teach her things? But things go a little sideways when he forgets to tell her that she could get possessed by a murder-ghost before exposing her to getting possessed by murder-ghosts. So now Alison has to deal with both her crush on Diablerie, and possibly, maybe, getting possessed by a murder-ghost. Fun!