zachary2020 wrote:Lurker, I wanted to get back to you on this. I've re-read what you wrote, and I really don't see a call to address each point of what you've written, though I enjoy reading your well-expressed ideas, for sure!
Thanks for the compliment. You addressed most of what I brought up, but there's a few things I'd like to bring back up if you would be willing to indulge me with a response to them. I'll get to that later, though. For now, I'm going to address your initial counterpoints.
zachary2020 wrote:I agree with you about there being a foreshadowing of Gemma's "twist" of character, but there was a hint (and much speculation, though not on this forum -- that I've read, anyway), about Daniel's folks.
Which hint exactly? Some parents just really aren't all that involved in what their kids do.
zachary2020 wrote:Bree said that Daniel befriended her, when all the others were making fun of her and she was sittingin the lunch room alone. A kid whse parents had been in the Order could feel an emapthy for another "wierd" kid.
But Daniel isn't a weird kid as near as we can tell. Everything we've gotten about him so far suggests that he's the average guy. Bree's the odd one.
Also, it's pretty obvious that Daniel knows absolutely nothing about the religion (whether it was the fact that he stayed up all night long trying to find out something about it, or the fact that he has wanted Bree to tell him about it on several occasions, or the fact that he just demonstrates a consistent ignorance of it), and it would be quite opposed to what we've seen so far if his parents were in the religion but didn't try to make him conform to their practices. The two people who we know have been part of it (Gemma and Bree) have expressed their parents enforced strict, borderline zealotry where making their kids be involved was concerned.
zachary2020 wrote:Birthday parties, outings/kid parties at the zoo, picnics with a bunch of kids in the park. Every kid has gone to parties -- and later, the tween parties -- in this country, anyway... unless they are isolated and super sheltered.
Other than relative's birthday parties, I've not gone to any myself, but I acknowledge that most kids have. But I also didn't get the impression that we were talking about just any kind of party. I thought we were talking about social parties among teenagers. The kind that typically involve no intended purpose or theme, and which pretty much just feature a bunch of people standing around doing nothing but drinking (whatever liquid it might be that they're consuming).
I certainly didn't get the impression that Daniel had invited her to a birthday party.
zachary2020 wrote:The premise of the whole vlog series was that Bree isn't your average, "typical" girl, so the idea of her not being a phone hound fits with that.
We have gotten the impression that her using the phone is a normal thing, though. In the same vein as most teenagers.
In "
He Said, She Said," the entire video is nothing but Bree and Daniel talking on the phone, with both sounding like they're used to it. Bree also casually invites Daniel over during that conversation -- if only to edit the video of their conversation and upload it. In "
I Probably Shouldn't Post This...," Bree expressed anger that Daniel didn't just call her and tell her what he and her dad had talked about -- which would also suggest that her receiving phone calls from Daniel is not out of the ordinary, or a big deal.
Then, of course, we have "
Where's Daniel?," in which Bree calls both Daniel's cell phone and his home phone (and mentions talking to his parents). Now, given what came before, we can say that Bree using the phone isn't that big of a deal. She sounds pretty casual about the whole thing. She also has both Daniel's cell phone and his home phone, and doesn't give any indication that she's not used to dialing either. She also invited Daniel over fairly casually in "He Said, She Said." Added to that, in "
My Difficult Decision," Bree said she's been friends with Daniel for two years. Since we know that she's known him that long -- since even before he graduated from high school (we know this thanks to "
My Parents Suck...") -- the idea that she would have never called his home phone before and spoken to his parents just seems ridiculus to me.
No offense intended, but the idea is just really, really, really ridiculus to me. I can't imagine that as a reasonable possibility. A possibility, sure, but not a reasonable possibility.
zachary2020 wrote:You looking for a prepositional solidity in a plot that has taken odd twists and turns already and that the writers said would be changed according to user input -- and that's illogical.
A basic characteristic of the plot is that it can take on the colors and twists of the fans' ideas.
They also said that it wasn't going to be a "Choose Your Own Adventure" story, though. They said they have some pretty solid ideas about what they would like to see happen, and gave the impression that fan input will be a peripheral thing at best (and in light of how little impact we actually had on the Nov. 28 chat and the Jonas thing, I'd say that's true).
Also, I strongly doubt -- even if fan input had a major impact -- that it would justify altering reality at random. Bree's a girl this week, but let's make her a boy next week, and then the week after that, fan consensus will decide that it liked her as a girl better and we'll reverse the plot twist of her being a male with another plot twist that she was actually a girl all along, etc.
I don't think that would be very fun for very long. In fact, I think the notion that the reality of the story could alter at any time, no matter how logical it is in light of previous developments, would be terrible. I hope the Creators intend to continue staying as far away from that as possible. It's okay if fan suggestions affect something like whether Daniel goes straight to Jonas' from his house or stops to investigate Bree's place first (though even that is more involved than the Creators said our influence would be), but if everything we should expect to be able to believe can be changed without rhyme or reason, that's not good.
Good storytellers won't make plot inconsistencies, no matter how much they want to change something because of an idea they got later on. Once they've set something in stone with logic, they won't go back and try to chisel it out for any reason. A good storyteller will make the best of what they have, and I think these guys want to be good storytellers -- at least if they want to go further in their careers than this (which we know they do).
zachary2020 wrote:There's certainly enough ground on which to base this plot twist if they decided it was worth doing: never seeing Daniel's parents; his emphasis -- at least twice -- that they are "hands off"; his not even considering asking them for help -- even in a dire situation like they were in; his admant dislike of her religion (as if he's personally invested against it, for more reasons than his frendship with Bree).
Personally, I disagree with that conclusion, but I'm also probably looking at this differently than you.
By the way, the fact that he didn't ask his parents for help made perfect sense. I wouldn't have asked them for help either. If he had, he would have been putting them in the same situation that he was in. It would have been wrong to ask somebody for help and force them into a life of being stalked just to help yourself.
As far as his dislike of her religion, I really do think he's got plenty of reason to despise it. He never made a big deal out of it in the early videos. It was always Bree acting like she had some reason to be offended, as though Daniel was insulting her beliefs. He even told her in "I Probably Shouldn't Post This..." that he didn't care about it or see it as a problem in their friendship, and she said "Well I do."
Added to that everything that's happened since and Bree's continued refusal to tell him anything about the religion (again, remember that he knows nothing about it) and it's no wonder he hates it.
zachary2020 wrote:Also, a weakness in the ideas id that Parents who are in the Order have seemed to be more controlling than his parents _apparently_ are (if they're actually still alive), but that idea could be explained away easily (as have other plot holes), if the writers decided they wanted Daniel's parents to be (or have been) members of the Order.
That one thing could probably be explained away (though I don't know that it could be done easily), but why would the Creators even want to? For that matter, there's plenty of other plot holes that I am convinced could not be explained away.
zachary2020 wrote:What you wrote here, kind of points up for me that we are apparently approaching this from two different starting points:
You're looking for plot components that would stand as admissable
evidence in a "real world" setting, and, if I read you correctly, sift ideas into "plausible" "not plausible" -- which I think is a fine approach.
Where I'm coming from is that I gave up on exepecting a logical progression of events back in early October. It's more like a psilocybin trip than a good glass of sherry, and I fully expect "absurdity", though there's little or no "absurd" when the plot is evolving with the influence of what we all write... i.e. my perspective on plausibility is that it exists along a spectrum more than in a category (which probably means I'm more likely to get disappointed in plot twists, though).
Again, though, the Creators aren't making what we say serve as the core of the plot's progression. They have ideas about what they want to do with it too, and -- if Nov. 28 and "The Test" are any indication -- will not compromise that just because of fan speculation.
While the plot is mallable, foundational aspects of reality can't just shift at random. Granite can't suddenly become squeezably soft as though it's always been that way. Logic and reason will still have to prevail in order for a coherent story to emerge. For instance, if Gemma is revealed to have been a villain all along, they will have to be able to explain her earliest videos (which don't support that development at face value). If she's revealed to have been a good guy all along, they will have to explain the change in her advice after "I'm Scared To Go Home..." and why she was with Lucy.
Ultimately, whatever happens as the story progresses, the pieces of the puzzle will all need to inductively fit together to make sense. Right now, the pieces of the puzzle that include Daniel's parents in the plot don't fit that way. There's so much that they'd have to change or contradict that it's just not worth it, even if they wanted to do it.
Anyway, with all that addressed, I'd now like to bring up those things I promised to. I'll just throw them in a quote box below. I'd like to know how you think things like this could be explained away without creating logical inconsistencies:
Lurker wrote:And at no point since then Daniel would have asked "How did you manage to talk to my parents who don't exist?" He wouldn't have reasoned before now that -- if Bree was somehow talking to people at "his" house who shouldn't be there -- that it meant his place was compromised? He would have been talking about going home weeks ago -- even before Jonas' offer came along -- with that knowledge in his mind?
How dumb would he have to be?
...
As far as we know Daniel isn't sitting on a fortune or living in a big house. We've definitely never been given anything to suggest that.
...
Why would Daniel be lying about something like this (and how could he have expected to get away with it)?
I realize I've had a lot to say in this post, but if you could get back to me on the major points, I'd appreciate it. I know you said this isn't like a major theory of yours or anything, but if it's still something you consider a possibility, since we're discussing it, I'd like to know how you feel that such problems could be reasonably resolved.
Kimmy wrote:Honestly, I'm starting to enjoy reading the posts of Lurker and others who think about the underlying structure almost as much as watching the videos.
That's very nice of you to say, Kimmy. Thank you.
). Yeah, unfortunately I do have to get back to work, and have a meeting with HR (about saving my technical support job), this afternoon, so it might be night before I can repsond.