Fridge Brilliance
First and Last Lines
Alright, we all know about the end of book 6, how the very last words of the book are the title, applying to a completely different person than you expected them to (unless you're a certain kind of Genre Savvy). But, in books 4-6...- Look at the last lines of book 4"... you will be taken to the Hall of Death, strapped into a cage, hoisted above the pit, and—" he gulped, averted his eyes, and finished in a terrible whisper, "dropped on the stakes until you are dead!"
- ... said by Kurda, who is well aware that that will be his own fate regardless of the outcome of his plot, though no one else knows this yet.
- It's Kurda who first shows Darren the Hall of Death. Kurda takes Darren on a tour, but it would have been just as easy — easier, even — from the writer's point of view, to have someone else, such as Larten, Arra, or Vanez do it. Larten even points out how busy Kurda must be.
- Darren's first words to Kurda are"He told us the message was for the Vampire Princes only."
- ... "he" being Harkat, "the message" being that the night of the Vampaneze Lord is at hand. And the Vampire Princes.
- The fact that when Harkat first begins to speak, the first two things he says introduce two of the major questions of the entire saga — Harkat's own true identity, and that of the Lord of the Vampaneze.
- Contrast the last few lines of book 6 with the last few lines of book 9. The series' highest point and its lowest.
Fridge Horror
The Spider Bite
- Imagine your son inviting his friend over, and an accident occurs where you have to take your kid's friend to the hospital.
Characters' actions that were likely provoked by Mr. Tiny's mind-influencing power.
- Darren reaching out to grab the ticket to the Cirque — confirmed in canon.
- Annie barging into Darren's room at exactly the wrong moment, causing Madam Octa to bite Steve. Darren says that normally Annie is very good for not barging into his room without knocking. The one time she does is when he's got Madam Octa crawling over Steve. Mr Tiny could have influenced her to do it! Or at least, he could have influenced Darren to practice with Steve when Annie was nearby and likely to walk in.
- Larten blooding Darren — confirmed in canon.
- Steve interpreting Darren's secrecy as betrayal, instead of realizing he's just scared — confirmed in canon.
- Gannen trying Steve in the Coffin of Fire — confirmed in canon.
- Arrow suggesting that Darren undergo the Trials.
- Gavner "remembering" the cave from his Trials and thinking he knows a faster path than Kurda's.
- Arrow nominating Darren to become a Prince."I've never been known as a great thinker. Normally, I act first and think later — if at all! — but a thought was swimming like a fish, deep within the ocean of my brain, and eventually it surfaced."
- Possibly much earlier than that. Could he have influenced Steve's (legal) father to leave his mother, for instance?
- Steve's murder of Shankus. The narration says he looked as surprised as the rest of them.
- If we were to get a more in-depth look at the initial Vampaneze breakway...
Fridge Logic
Time Travel and Replacements
The whole time travel "Replacement Theory" makes absolutely no sense. In Temporal Mutability terms, it's somewhere between Enforced Immutability and Rubber-Band History. Essentially, if someone goes back and takes some person out of their "place" in history, then that person's actions will still be performed in exactly the same way, but by a different person.- So, if you go back in time and kill person A (or, you know, scare them away from meeting their destiny), then from that point on, step by step, day by day, the exact things they would have done would be done by something else.
- So, the grieving family of some would-have-been dictator are sitting somewhere, suffering through the world their brother would have created, and wondering why the dictator who did come to power (who we'll call A-prime) is spending all his ill-gotten gains making statues of them, rather than A-prime's own family. A-prime came to power based on favors from A's old teachers and friends, not his own. A-prime is getting revenge on A's old enemies who he'd never heard of — and his own enemies? Are they scared? Do none of them start making plans to flee the country? Of course not — they would have had nothing to fear from A, so it never occurs to them to fear A-prime.
- Let's break down one aspect of it for a second. So, people can time-travel, but time is still a fixed flow. All people are, in a sense, anchored to the time they were born + all the time that passes as they age. So, if someone goes into another time for 36 days, and 5 hours, they will come back into a time exactly 36 days and 5 hours after the time when they left. No matter how much they time travel, or how rarely they return to their anchor-time, their anchor continues to move with the standard flow of time from their birth. (It might not even be possible for people to stay away from their anchor for too long).
- All time before your anchor is unchangeable to you. You can remove one person from it, but someone else will take their place, as in the example of Dictator A-prime, above. If you try to change something that can't be smoothed over by pulling in an A-prime, the Clock Roaches will come and eat everything, and it will be more painful than anything anyone can imagine.
- So where does "the universe" (for lack of a better term) get A-prime?
- Does it just pull the nearest person? What features does a person have to have in common with the original in order to be able to be A-prime?
- Does "the universe" have a stock of A-prime's at the ready, in case a time traveler swoops in and kills you in two minutes? Does "the universe" make sure someone else with the same necessary background is right behind you, ready to step in?
- And what happens to A-prime's old life if they're called to fill in for A? What happens to the role they would have played? Do we need an A-prime-prime? A-prime-prime-prime, to fill in for them? Or is this just assuming that anyone who doesn't have biographies written about them can be just discarded so easily?
- If we go back to Darren's case, what would someone need to be in order to become Darren-prime?
- Would it be the person sitting in the front row at the Cirque the very next night? Would it have to be a pair of friends? Would it have to be a pair of siblings? Might they even have to be half-siblings who don't know they're related? Would they have to be under a certain age? Would one have to come from a hallmark-card, Tolstoian "happy family", and the other from significantly less comfortable circumstances? Would the former have to have a sibling that the latter could reproduce with? What if the latter hadn't read the book where Steve saw Larten and Alicia's portrait? Would they confront Larten saying they'd read it even without having any memory of such? Would "the universe" implant that memory in their heads?
- Or would the universe just choose another vampire with reputation enough to get sympathy from the Princes, and have that person blood a child?
- And let's look at Steve's timeline — Mr. Tiny visits Gannen and tells him and the other Bearers of Destiny to look for a human to try in the Coffin of Fire. Hearing of this, that the coming of their Lord is at hand, the other vampaneze start building up their strength and weapons, excited for a war. This provokes Kurda's "last desperate roll of the dice" — he wouldn't have taken such drastic steps without first witnessing that.
- What was the Coffin of Fire set to look for, and can Tiny change it at will, without actually accessing the thing? If it was set to react to Tiny's blood, then it would have to wait until Tiny could father another pair of human sons, and those sons would need to grow to be 12 or so before they could be called to adventure, whether through Larten or someone else. Or does "the universe" reprogram the Coffin of Fire? In that case, does "the universe" re-program Darren-prime's DNA to match Darren's? How much of the fabric of the universe, not just people's minds, gets messed around? In that case, might Darren-prime's friends and relatives all be programmed to forget them, and Darren's friends and relatives all programmed to recognize them? Would Darren then be fazed out of his old life and into Darren-prime's life? In that case, can you actually say "Darren no longer becomes a vampire, and grows up as a human" if Darren-prime gets fully switched with Darren beforehand?
- Is Mr. Tiny fate-bound to intervene for these strangers the way he did for his sons? The intervention there went way beyond getting Darren the ticket and getting Larten to blood him.
- The book says that Darren-prime will, essentially, have no free will. But that doesn't just apply to Darren-prime and Steve-prime, that applies to everyone who interacts with them.
- If you went back in time, to a day where a ship sank, and saved the ship that sank, but sunk a different ship in its place, would the survivors of the first ship go on to do everything the passengers of the second ship would have done? Would powers and titles and contracts belonging to people on the second ship be transferred to people on the second ship? Vice versa? (so that the same heirs would get their inheritances). Would this be done in a way that historians could look back on and not be puzzled? Would "the universe" just make it impossible to look that closely at it? Or would this just unleash the Clock Roaches?
- And where do you draw the line? Des Tiny went back in time and changed the abilities of vampires, and created the concept of the vampaneze by convincing the first ones to break off from the clan. I don't think it takes a genius to surmise that he made it so the vampaneze can't control their Horror Hunger. Evanna explains that that doesn't trigger the Clock Roaches because humans didn't know about it. It doesn't change the mainstream human telling of history. But how could that possibly be what "the universe" cares about, especially since that same "universe" allows Tiny and the others to see into a future where humans are destroyed by the Lord of the Shadows. How could that universe allow Desmond to go back, change the vampires' powers and create a separate clan, and then think, "hmm, nope, that doesn't have a big effect at all, we're good"?
- Tl;dr — Life is too complicated for replacement theory to work.
- So, if you go back in time and kill person A (or, you know, scare them away from meeting their destiny), then from that point on, step by step, day by day, the exact things they would have done would be done by something else.
