#sillizone

“But mod Green, CQ confirmed that Seaweed’s hat is the little crown! What are you on about?”

And you’re right about that! She did confirm it, as an answer to an ask. Yet, there are still no in-comic proof.

And you know what else CQ said ? Not to trust her.

So that’s exactly what I’m doing! Word of God means nothing to me. I need solid proof.

Ok, first of all, what is a hat?

A Hat is a rigid closed space with only one opening. CQ confirmed it if that matters to you.   

A crown is usually more “tube like” than hat like, with two openings. I tried to find a shot where we could see the bottom of Seaweed’s crown, and this is the only one I found.

The bottom is black. That’s not very helpful, it could be a shadow, it could be a fabric....

If the crown is open-ended like in the right, then it’s not her hat. If it has a bottom like in the left, then it could be her hat.

We never saw Seaweed take or put back her wand into her hat, but did we see her creating water with her hat? We did! Back in the beginning, during the Time of Training!

“Well then this proves that the crown is her hat, why are you making this post”

Actually, it’s this scene that made me realize that her crown is not her actual hat. Why?

On the left, Seaweed has a very round jellyfish hat. This is before “creating” water.

On the right, the jellyfish hat looks squished. This is after “creating” water.

Her hat visibly deflates when the water comes out of it. Because the water was IN the hat! My theory is that she uses the jellyfish hat as a water tank, to always have access to some water since she can’t “create” any. The crown is just there to hide the valve, and she can pretend that it’s her real hat. 

This next point is more debatable since the circumstances were.... extreme.

After Wallis disappeared, Seaweed was not feeling so great and Rylie was helping her move backstage. She’s not in condition to use magic and fight. Yet she still had her wand out even though putting it away should be only a matter of seconds. 

And when the cake golem took her, she didn’t put it away either. 

Maybe the golem was too quick for her, or maybe...... wait a minute....

Is it just me, or does her crown look way too small to fit her wand? Or even her hand? It seems like it wouldn’t fit.... Maybe a child’s hand could fit inside the crown, but an adult’s? I have doubts. 

So here’s another theory : If the crown truly is her hat, then she can’t store her wand inside it anymore. 

Look how eager she is at the possibility of using her wand like a stratoversian! She doesn’t want to lose it anymore, and since she can’t put it away like others can, she might as well strap it to her arm....

There are other little details that I could remark on, but we just don’t have enough Seaweed content to make any call, so I’ll leave it at that. 

As for what her real hat could be..... well a pool (or really, most body of water) is a rigid closed space with only one opening, and it would fit her being a water magician. 

(All page references: Locks chapter unless otherwise specified.)

Now, now, I hear you say, “but mod Xela!! It’s pretty obvious that CQ just forgot to recolor the lawn for autumn on the first page!” 

And you would be right. 

Now introducing Doylist vs Watsonian perspectives. (For a more in-depth explanation, you can check out our #references tag, or the TV Tropes article called Watsonian vs Doylist.)

To keep it short.

Doylist: The real-life, author’s reason explanation.  Watsonian: The in-story reason. 

They are both valuable and useful for different things! And for our purpose we are going to focus on finding a watsonian explanation, so in-story. Also, it’s going to be a silly one, so don’t take me too seriously. 

Why? Fun, that’s why. Scroll all the way down for the tldr, it’s bolded.

So what do we have here? A pristine, flowering lawn. And then... disaster. It’s all yellowed and dried up. Even the trees have started to brown!

First we will start to look for three things: the timeframe of the murder, the murder weapon, and the murderer. 

So. First off. Did Fall happen in the time between Ylil waking up and Yma sitting on the lawn? How much time are we working with here?

Ylil states that talking to Gloomversians is “orders for the day”, so it’s got to be the same day we started with. 

Ylil takes a little bit of time to wake up. Let’s say a couple minutes. Then she talks with Yma— hard to say for how long exactly, but we can reasonably round it to ten minutes. Then, Yma leaves, and walks around the building until she meets with Indigo— she was still thinking about her sister, so maybe another three minutes. Her conversation with Indigo is pretty short, let’s give another five minutes for Red and Blue to interrupt. 

Of course, this is all arbitrary— all we need is a general scale.

So we get: 2 + 10 + 3 + 5 = 20 minutes... then we have a blank between Red’s murder attempt and the girls calmly sitting under a tree. We know it can’t have been TOO long, since it’s not evening yet.

The time is around noon, since there’s a vertical-looking shadow. (That could also imply Prisma’s relatively close to the planet’s equator..? Hard to say.)

We also know Blue had time to buy a Red Drink before sitting down. There’s a distributor in the building— in the rec room actually! And Cocos did the same for Virga, and they sat under what appears to be the same tree afterwards, too. This must be a popular, close-by spot.

We don’t know how long Red took to calm down or if there were other shenanigans, but introducing each other properly, buying the drink and sitting under the tree would probably take at least 10 minutes. So we have a 30 +  x minutes timeframe. Hm. It gives us a minimum, but the blank makes it not very useful.

Considering the last time the victim was seen alive and well was when the Judge of Inverse woke up— and considering not only Yma, but also Blue and Red, two regular people, probably woke up around or even before then— it was probably mid to late morning. 8 am at the earliest, and about 11 at the latest. When the victim was found dead, it was around 12 pm—let’s say 11 am to 1pm. 

That makes the maximum amount of time to kill the victim (yes, yes, it’s still the lawn), five hours. Averaging the events’ time we get 9:30 to 12— a more likely two and a half hours. So we have the timeframe:

The murder was committed between 8 and 11 (average: 9:30 am), and discovered between 11 and 1pm (average: 12pm).  

Now, the murder weapon. How do you destroy a lawn in a handful of hours? The sun can’t have done that on its own! 

Let’s see... the most obvious answer is that weedkiller was used— they notably cause yellowing of plants, and fast. It would need to be spread over the whole lawn, but we will see such details later. Would it work in a matter of hours?

In our world, the answer is yes, some weed killers (”Roundup 5107300 Extended Control Grass & Weed Killer”, “Spectracide Grass & Weed Killer Concentrate 2″ if you want names) advertise giving results within about 3 hours. That’s within our maximum timeframe! A likely murder weapon. Furthermore, strong sunlight makes weedkiller act faster. 

Also Gloomverse is a magic country where a sole magician can make huge bitey plants in a matter of seconds, so we can reasonably assume that they would have potent magic-made weedkiller available, perhaps even capable of acting in minutes. 

The murder weapon was most likely fast acting weed killer.

So, we have a timeframe, and we have a weapon. Now... we need a murderer and their mobile. Who are our suspects? Who was on the scene??? 

We see nobody but Ylil, Yma, Indigo, Red and Blue in this chapter, so they will be our primary suspects. 

- Ylil is MIA after the first twenty minutes, and if I was her I would just go back to bed, but she could technically go out and kill the lawn while no one’s looking. We lack a mobile, though— in fact we have a negative mobile for her: through precise on-the-spot knowledge, she showed interest in plants in the Date. It’s not proof she likes plants, but considering she shares the flower name theme with Petunia, we can reasonably assume she doesn’t hate them. So let’s assume she is innocent for now.

- Red and Blue are MIA during those first twenty minutes, but considering Red made a beeline for Indigo, it is unlikely they randomly committed an additional murder before attempting that one. So... this could only have been done by them during the missing time shenanigans.

- Indigo is a known chaotic factor, but he was sleeping and accounted for up until Red’s murder attempt, and still with them at noon looking like a sad puppy, so we can assume he did not leave Red, Blue and Yma’s sight to commit this murder. Which means they are either accomplices, or he is innocent.

- Yma couldn’t have done anything for the first twenty minutes either, but she is free during the x timeframe and assumed to have been witness to the other suspects’ shenanigans, which could be as long as a couple hours, depending on what Blue means by the “all that” she is sorry for. 

Wait. All that? So... many things happened that we didn’t see... suspicious.

After examining suspect alibis, it appears the specific timeframe during which the murder could have been committed could only be the blank time after Blue separated Red and Indigo, so after 8:20 at the earliest, and 9:50 on our averaged time. 

We can therefore place Indigo, Red, Blue and Yma on the scene... 

We know very little about this mystery timeframe, beyond that it was likely at least 10 minutes long. However, Blue bought a drink! She would only do so once the crisis was behind them, and we saw a distributor in the same room Red attacked Indigo in! Which means... 

Indigo, Red, Blue and Yma stayed in the rec room up until they came out of the building to sit under the tree.

So then... did they kill the lawn before sitting down? Why would they spray weedkiller before sitting down in the same grass? No... the truth can only be much more insidious...

If Indigo, Yma, Red and Blue have been innocented... we only have one primary suspect left... 

Ylil.

But why? Why would she commit such a heinous crime??? We already went over her lack of motive for it. What factors have we not considered? Who else is here? 

While the building looks empty, and it seems that this is still the weekend (considering the date was Friday evening and Ylil apparently slept in, though since Indigo went to work the previous night this could be Sunday rather than Saturday). Shaman Cocos and the Ecoversians she brought here should be here...

But they wouldn’t spread weedkiller, that could damage their hair! In fact, weedkiller could probably make them sick, if not kill them— 

Wait

Could it be... all along the lawn was not the intended victim? 

Could it be....... attempted human murder? 

GASP... Ylil did mention concerns of assassination during the Date... and we HAVE seen Shaman Cocos hanging out and even sitting in this grass.

So we now have a motive for the culprit... Murdering Shaman Cocos. But we still don’t have a murderer, because Ylil needs Cocos for information right now. She would have no reason to try and kill her now. Yma, Indigo, Blue and Red have no reason to kill her, either... 

So there is someone else, someone unseen, who had to have acted between Ylil waking up and this little color gang leaving the building— otherwise they would have been seen. The timeframe for this is likely about half an hour... Who could have spread fast acting weedkiller over the whole lawn (and perhaps even the trees) in half an hour? Who is confirmed to be around? 

Cirrus and Purple’s book do both show Stratoversians don’t like Ecoversians. That could cover the motive. A Stratoversian could also use weather magic to spread weedkiller— the wind could even explain why event he trees yellowed! 

But... Virga, Nim and Cirrus all left the premises... Who—

(The New Job) 

“Weather Gods”. Gloomversians at large seem aware that Some People has the ability to control weather, though they don’t usually know their nature. We also know there are squads of Stratoversians hanging out in or around Gloomverse, out of sight— because Virga heard about the magic show through her troops. 

(Yes, I am implying Rylie flipped off random Stratoversians here. I’m not the first one saying it.) 

So there we have it.