#loris talks lore

A common question about the characters in the Date Everything world is whether or not each object you meet is the same elsewhere beyond the household. For those who haven't done Skylar's route or read any related things online about this, the answer is yes. Even if you haven't done either of these things, think of a few examples in the household (both in how you interact and certain dialogue dropped during routes)-- Dorian, one of our prime examples, is every door in the house. There isn't a different door for the exterior and interior doors, it's mostly just Dorian in a different outfit. Able is much the same, except he doesn't even look different depending on the kind of table you interact with. As it is established by the lore, anytime you interact with an object you interact with a single entity. Every mirror is Amir, every sink is Sinclaire, every chair is Chairemy, each dish will get you Daisuke, any section of kitchen cabinet will be Cabrizzio-- and no matter where in the world you are having these interactions, the results will always be the same.

Going back to our primary example, Dorian, there is an oddity as hinted at above (and is prevalent when interacting with each Dorian in-game). Unlike other objects that-- again, as established by the lore-- only have what is effectively a costume change when in different places, Dorian is the only case in which we see these quasi-personalities that, presumably, are categorized aspects of Dorian's sense of self. [Wow, what a sentence.] Except that... Dorian is technically not the only person who does this. Enter: Connie Soul.

Connie is a single wave-- the game console. And yet, before you truly establish any kind of relationship with her, you have to go through a repeated set of dialogue where Connie plays multiple characters (each with their own personalities), until you eventually help her in combining all of these different personas into her one true self. It may seem like this is just a game she plays with you, or some kind of grandiose act (not unlike Chairemy's route), but at the end it becomes clear that Connie was genuinely mentally fractured to some capacity from some unknown cause. How this differs from Dorian, of course, is the fact that each Dorian still refers to himself as Dorian. There are no alter egos, no other names or identities, just Dorian. However, most Dorians seem to have vastly different personalities. These personalities tend to have a direct correlation with the physical placement, shape, or orientation of the actual door one can physically touch. The laundry closet Dorian is depressed, more dejected, because he feels that his placement in the household is insignificant compared to other places.

Trap Dorian is horizontal-- which without knowing how orientation would impact other objects, it could be theorized that Dorian thinks being in a horizontal placement is inherently less proper, less mature, and therefore when installed that way he puts himself in a mental/emotional box of less propriety. Front (and somewhat back) Dorian seems to have little care for talking, intent on focusing on his job of being presentable and a barrier. Tiny Dorian is an especially fascinating case, because in no other instance does it seem that the physical size of an object has any sway over how they are translated through the dateviators. And while one may think that Skylar may just be doing that to get on Dorian's nerves, the dialogue from interacting with Tiny Dorian proves otherwise. He feels that, similar to laundry closet Dorian, others think of him as inadequate, unimportant. He's much more aggressive than the other Dorians are, more defensive. It could be that Tiny Dorian is tiny because it's a part of Dorian that is subconsciously exhibiting his fears in a more tangible manner. Perhaps there is much more variety in Dorian's visage from (potential) psychological trauma from past relationships [*cough* *cough* Keith *cough* *cough*] manifesting without him fully realizing/confronting internalized struggles.

And so, as the player goes around the house meeting each Dorian, you are meeting all the different facets of who Dorian is, and (I will posit) once you Realize him, he's all put back together-- conscious and subconscious.

But, Dorian's different personalities aside, there are a few objects that actually verge on breaking the established one-wave-per-unique-object rule. The best examples are Rebel and Bobby, and if you have not read this post where I discuss the issue a bit more, I will summarize here. Rebel, the rubber duck, mentions being one of millions of other factory produced ducks. Alright, so there's millions of Rebels. Except there aren't. Rebel doesn't even have the mental awareness of the other rubber ducks, unlike Able who knows where all of his other iterations are, and what happens around them. So, either this is a lapse in the canon or there are millions of unique factory produces rubber ducks. Likewise, Bobby Pinn mentions having a family (that is verified as true from Betty), which initially would imply two things: that Bobby Pinn is a unique wave of a bobby pin that broke off from a preceding pin of some kind (though they mention coming from a family of other bobby pins), and that, like the case may be with Rebel, that a mass produced item can have multiple unique waves per object. I personally think that Bobby's family may be different kinds of bobby pins (or other hair pins), or Bobby's unique status of being "bent" makes them unique. There may be other times/characters in which this notion in the canon is challenged or broken, but these are the two shining examples (note that Dorian still remains within the established canon rules).

Then there are the Hanks. A collective? A hive mind? Or perhaps as I suggest with Rebel and Bobby, each a unique wave for each Hank. Except that it is heavily implied that, canonically, there are more (much, much more) than just the five Hanks we meet. Which could mean, that every single hanger has a unique wave. But let's take a step back for a moment. Is it possible that the Hanks are some kind of single wave like Dorian that expresses distinct personalities but ultimately has just one identity? Honestly, that could very well be the case. The Hanks we meet always appear together, and despite slight variations in wants and needs, they all seem to always generally agree with one another. However, the existence of predecessor Hanks that they don't know what became of them or imply they know what became of them and it was debilitating if not potentially fatal would support that a single, "true" Hank does not exist.

Could the Hanks be some kind of conglomerate wave that acts as a hive mind? Going off the assumption that there is no single Hank wave, then it would be impossible for a hive mind situation to occur because their consciousnesses are not connected in any significant way (meaning they have to effectively communicate with one another as much as they would with any other person/wave). Perhaps it could be argued that different consciousnesses can function as a hive mind without the fictional element of being literally connected through some means, however, given that even in factual social situations dissonance is contrary to a hive mind, Hank #2 having isolated anxiety and fear that he expresses (and the other Hanks ignore to an extent) and each Hank having independent wants/desires would further disprove this theory.

And so I am left to assume that because each Hank is unique from the others, that that means each hanger is unique to some capacity. It's possible that as I suggest with Bobby Pinn's family, that different kinds of hangers could give us unique Hanks-- pants hangers, standard hangers; even the material could produce different waves. Hank #2 could be a wire hanger, less sturdy than the others and therefore more concerned with capability to perform extreme sports. The others could be wood, plastic, have notches to hold straps up or have a felt covering.

Another possibility, is that over the course of human invention and development (though it is implied that there could be extra-terrestrial life forms that would also possibly have invented all the same objects and effects as we have), something in the rise of industry and the sheer scale of production has caused single waves to splinter. That would explain why these mass-produced items like Bobby, Rebel, and the Hanks say that they are one of many but somehow not like the others. We get similar indications from Freddy who mentions siblings who are other models of refrigerators; Betty, who mentions remembering us picking her specifically out of the other mattresses at the store/warehouse (if Betty was every bed, then it wouldn't have mattered which one we picked [although, this could be Betty trying to initiate a more romantic dialogue with the player]). For that matter, Betty is "the bed," but she specifically mentions her being the mattress, not the pillows, comforter, frame, etc. And this is vastly different from Dorian who is just every door. From Able, who is just every table. Even Chairemy is just every chair... but these are objects that have been around for a much longer time. Rubber ducks, bobby pins, hangers, fridges, these are all things that came during or after the (in line with the setting of the game) American Industrial Revolution. The ability to make powers more of a single kind of object was not only easier, but expected in a capitalist society. And much like there are billions of humans in the world, each is unique in their own way... so who is really to say that the same couldn't happen with the waves of objects. In that fashion, it's possible that, like I discussed with Zoey, there could really be just a single wave that embodies a plethora of distinct personas, or waves are far more subject to splitting and changing than is established in the canon.