Hell yeah - glad I could help. The story got REALLY DENSE - and also really surreal, in these last few chapters, and it took me some rereading and some obsessive attention to parse it all. Worth it though!
machiavelli33
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So a lot of this is unclear, or not necessarily explicitly stated. Later chapters usually bring clarity and recapping which lays stuff out more clearly but for now here's what I got:
1. A lot of the episode takes place in Auxo's domain. The city - the place where Hector is from - is real, however: its a one of the many realities and universes that exist in the Out Of Touch verse, and is one of the countless places Auxo destroyed with the thing she was trying to do. The memories that CJ and Teresa continually flashed through were apparently efforts by the eyes in the dark to isolate and create despair.
2. If by ScaryBlackThing you mean the eyes lurking in the dark (aka demons, of which jester girl Motley was one of), then no - Auxo was not corrupted by them. It is somewhat unclear what exactly those things are - they've been referred to as Nightmares or daemons and my current theory is that they're Auxo's faeries that grew up wrong and broken. Remember the metaphor of countless seeds being carelessly strewn - some of them had to land in bad soil - plus faeries absorb ambient energy and take on the traits of the environment they come up in, so imagine faeries that come up in a world turned hot and dead by Auxo. Those things - by their own admission to Hector - can't resist or influence Auxo. Growing up broken caused them a lot of pain and they'd have loved nothing more than to pay that back to Auxo - but the best and most enduring faeries are observers (like Prince Dana), and could never do such a thing, let alone do it against their patron mother figure (remember, all fae come from Auxo).
If by ScaryBlackThing you mean the giant tentacle kaiju that they fight - 'corrupt' is not the right word - more like terrified, and terrified into doing some stupid and careless things, and terrified into doing some of the things she was already doing stupidly and carelessly.
This is why when tentacle kaiju is dealt with, Auxo seemed relatively 'sane' compared to the other two goddesses we've met so far - the literal source of her fears had just up and disintegrated.
3. Yes, but not directly. Any sort of grand or deliberate-looking action was deliberately chosen and undertaken by Auxo. However, tentacle kaiju had her scared and hiding, like a kid hiding under covers - and when you're scared like that you do desperate, scared things - you slap around looking for a way to escape or call out for help. Things like that were influenced by that thing - Cro' noticed it when Auxo tried to pull CJ through via Teresa's bonding moment. It was intense, clumsy, and largely not a part of her grand plans. That's the shit that came from Auxo's fear.
4. I ended up answering my theories on what the scary eyes in the dark are in 2 - but its not explicitly stated. I imagine recapping in future chapters will illuminate this more, but otherwise yeah, it hasn't been explicitly stated.
5. To be clear: people didn't show up to Auxo's domain until that gray beach where CJ and Hector ended up. The city that CJ ended up in - the place where Grandpa plucked Hector out of - was a living world that had been destroyed by Auxo. Following Teresa's soul through her connection to Auxo somehow ended up detouring CJ and Cro to that destroyed city-world, while Teresa kept on going straight to Auxo's domain. That's why they got separated. Why this happened - I'm not exactly sure. If i had to speculate, i'd guess it was because of the strength of Teresa's connection to Hector as her father, but either I missed something or this isn't something yet explicitly stated either.
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6. CJ's mom's mind broke because her connection to Auxo got cut - by Teresa. Time works in weird ways on the Other Side, and this is apparently ESPECIALLY so when it comes to Auxo. Apparently this happened while Teresa and CJ were being shuttled aroudn their memories by the eyes in the dark. Once Stacey's connection to Auxo was cut, she realized how little there was left of her life, soul and existence without that connection, and she went crazy - and that's also when she started getting older faster (her life force was spilling out of her).
7. SBT was not involved in any of that. Her breakdown, visions AND the science shit were all (ultimately) influenced by Auxo.
8. If by visions you mean the visions of Hector trying to survive in Auxo's burned out city-scape ...you know, I'm not entirely sure why that happened. It seems theres some sort of connection between that world and CJ's world, since Hector and Rosa spoke to each other in their dreams, enough that Grandfather noticed and got involved, which from the sounds of it is all very, very unique. WHY that connection exists is not clear to me. My theory is that there's some threads of some fate-like thing involved - like the world is very Important (with a capital I) so of course CJ sees visions of it at an important time. Or its because the path of Auxo trying to both create CJ's birth and so that he comes and saves her from tentacle kaiju left imprints that CJ could see. OR the visions were deliberately sent by Auxo as part of her efforts to make it so that CJ would come save her from tentacle kaiju. It's a little muddled because there's a fucking lot. And why did Cynthia see Hector and his world? I dunno. All of my theories feel a little weak on explaining everything, and I'm content with just waiting for future explanation at this point.
9. Stacey and Sonia were both working on biomedical stuff as part of their career as biomed researchers. The gene serum they got - and that they presumably used to birth CJ - was handed to them by Hector, from the labs on his world, universes and eons away. But Stacey and Sonia were both influenced by Auxo into using this serum to birth CJ - they presumably tanked their careers in order to do so due to Auxo's influence, and it was under this influence that all the birth-a-god talk happened.
10. Yes, she got it from Hector, passed through a portal that Auxo presumably opened that stretched across space and time. The serum was, presumably, created by Auxo herself, using the life energy of everyone who was dead and turned to stone in that world. Remember Auxo's rant about how she would make iterations of CJ by taking a little bit of goodness from "everyone"? And then her later rant about how iterations kept failing, so she ended up taking more, and more? It looks like for the most recent batch, Auxo just up and sucked the life force of every single person on that world dry (remember the "draining influence" CJ felt when he stepped foot there, plus all the stone bodies you saw everywhere) and condensed it into a liquid. A few vials of pure, extremely potent liquid goodness, derived from a colossally fucked up source. The serum itself is not a god-making serum, however - Auxo explained this to CJ once she became lucid: other iterations of Glory that Auxo managed to lead to the birth of would always die - most often to her other sisters, or to other factors. So the serum was just to ensure that CJ would be incredibly strong and healthy both physically, spiritually and otherwise - in order to prevent CJ from goddamn dying before he could realize his potential and come save her from tentacle kaiju.
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11. This got explained earlier but just to be clear: Cro and CJ got rerouted to the ruined cityworld while Teresa went ahead. Cro is there because she is in the lead - she's able to track Auxo through the infinite via her attempts to draw CJ to her, through Teresa and otherwise. Cro knows where to go and takes CJ with her. Cro mentioned that normally this wouldn't work - but Auxo's attempts to draw CJ to her are clumsy and obvious enough that Cro can just do that. And Auxo's attempts are clumsy and obvious because she's scared and desperate.
12. Do you mean Motley, the "jester girl"? She only popped up once, so if you mean someone else let me know. But I'm pretty sure she's one of the daemons - the scary eyes in the dark. She mentions that her form was different from what she was used to - and she mentioned that it was because of CJ's godly presence that this was so - so just being close to CJ caused one of the scary eyes in the dark to take the form of a sexy young girl. Sort of illuminates what Cro says about molding flesh to his liking, a bit.
13. This part...I'm not actually sure about. I'm not sure what Mika and Allen were doing there, either. There was literally no followup on that scene, as the next time we see Cro, its when she's being told she's beautiful by Auxo, and Mike and Allen don't show up again. TBD, I guess.
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14. Hector was always going to turn to stone. The draining effect of that blasted city-world does that, and I would guess that at some point when you've been there long enough, its irreversible. The reason Hector lasted as long as he did at all was apparently because of his connection to Auxo via her shard on that world - his mother, Teresa, aka the talking corpse. The eyes in the dark taunted him with this fact, Grandfather mentioned it as leverage to get him to become his goddess-hitman ("you don't have that much time left anyways"). It was always gonna happen. He was lucky he lived long enough to find love and sire three daughters.
15. Hector learned how to hurt spiritual beings by channelling his anger and compassion into his attacks, and was lucky enough to figure out that the amber tears left on the stone corpses of his world could be used to power these attacks so taht they could pack enough punch to do damage. Without the amber tears - he still couldn't hurt spiritual beings. I imagine his knack for this sort of channelling comes from being the son of a shard of Auxo - the corpse-on-the-ground Teresa.
16. You mean Grandfather? He wanted Hector because he was able to kill spiritual beings, a skill he learned from surviving in the burned out city world...and also because he thoguht Hector woudln't falter when it came to stopping the goddesses, since he came from an entire world that was destroyed by one. These combined, he thought would make him a good "goddess hitman" - someone who could take out budding shards, manifestations or even the goddesses themselves, in order to stop them from destroying the world.
17. From what I can gather, Hector and Stacey both fell prey to the daemons - the eyes-in-the-dark. Both were brimming with emotions they liked - a lifetime of hate, loneliness, lack of agency and resentment - especially towards Auxo. And they amplified the absolute crap out of these emotions. Hector's emotions came to a head when he tried to kill Stacey and couldn't, and decided to go after the goddesses instead - one in particular. Stacey's emotions came to a head when she was facing CJ that last time in Auxo's realm. Remember how CJ and the others said that the tentacle kaiju was like a huge half-soul - and remember that half-souls, ESPECIALLY big ones are raw emotions given form on the Other Side. That tentacle kaiju was a horrible mashup of all of this hatred, malice and loneliness from both Hector and Stacey - and it was all directed at Auxo, so it all glommed into this one huge thing that terrorized Auxo while she hid and tried to call for help.
18. CJ's mom had life, a career and love. A budding biomedical career with the woman she loved - fun but scatterbrained, the future seemed pretty bright for her and for Sonia too. THen one day Auxo, from very far away, decided that CJ needed a mom - and since Auxo only works in broad, distant strokes and doesn't know how to do things with any gentleness or finesse, she basically took over CJ's mom's mind, body and life (and, to a lesser degree, it seems, Sonia's), and puppetted her in the role of birthing and caring for CJ. Remember what she said, when she was hanging from that rope in Auxo's realm and thoguht she was talking to Auxo: she's not even a slave - a slave at least has control of their own limbs and words. Its implied that many of the things she did were completely out of her control and just puppetted by Auxo. And when they weren't, the overarching orders were impossible to go against... so when the order is "take care of Cj and do nothing else", that's all she did. No friends, no leisure time, just taking care of CJ, work at a shit job so she can take care of CJ, and sit at home and stare at the goddamn wall when she's not doing either of those things. Remember, CJ's mom once upon a time had a life, and a career, and love. Literally all of those things were gone - upended utterly by Auxo, and she coudlnt' do anything about it. And then, when her connection to Auxo was cut....well, what did she have left? No friends, a no-prospects job, no career growth, and still a child to take care of. And, long enough after the connection was cut, she started aging. Hard. Losing life force because she wasn't connected to Auxo anymore. Her life has been horribly unfair and painful.
19. If by No Face Man you mean Grandfather, then no. Not directly. It was his order to Hector to kill CJ and the goddesses that put Hector on the warpath to go after Auxo - which resulted in him becoming part of the tentacle kaiju monster. But it wasn't Grandfather's idea for Hector to go after Auxo directly.
20. All the stuff in that fight all took place on the Other Side. So they were all there - but only as their soul forms, or Other Side forms or whatever you want to call it. Once the fight was over and Auxo regained herself again (on that grassy plain), Auxo then kicked out all the shards she didn't want around - Leah, Vickie, and Kieran - which is why they weren't aroudn for the big talk with Auxo, despite Leah and Vickie being there for the tentacle kaiju fight.
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Hope it helps!
Hey there! If this is the right place to make SCP suggestions, I'll make one - I dropped $8 already on the game, so hopeully it goes through! But I'd really like to see SCP 1155 "Predatory Street Art" in the game, as it was written by a good friend of mine. I havne't written any SCP's myself, so this is the closest I can get. Inclusion might be tricky due to how the SCP is contained, but I can pretty safely say that a little stretching of its containment to make it work won't be minded. Thanks in advance for considering!