The "best thing to happen to Kinger's lower half is not foreshadowing, but "backshadowing". Hear me out.
So we all remember "Kinger's Special Place" and how those Checkmates Socks (Plus Kinger "wearing" one of them) caused a lot of fans to worry over the fate of our beloved chesspiece?
Yeah. The more I think about it, the more I feel we're looking at this from the completely wrong angle. It's not telling us what WILL happen to Kinger...
It's telling us what ALREADY happened to him and WHY he's the way he is now.
Gangle's supposed "Near-abstraction" moment in EP 4 made me think back to Kinger's core memory with his abstracted wife. He couldn't recall the string of events that lead up to it, but that moment in the fort when she was calm enough for him to caress her was forever ingrained into his mind.
Maybe it's because said moment was what saved him from immediately following Queenie into abstraction.
"Erm, eckshualee, Gangle snapped back from abstracting and she didn't become insane like Kinger." Yeah. Because she was just STARTING to abstract before Pomni offered to switch shifts with her. Meanwhile, I think Kinger was already deep into abstracting before ending up in the pillow fort with Queenie. That silly image of him wearing the Queenie sock? That was actually HOW CLOSE he was to completely breaking. Kinger still managed to snap back, but the mental damage that abstracting causes was already done. THAT'S why his mind is so fragmented now.
When I recontextualize everything this way, So much starts to add up for me. Both his and Abstracted!Queenie's behavior in the light and dark become parallels. He can't recall the events between Queenie abstracting and before he wandered into the pillow fort because he was probably HARDCORE dissociating. Why he was more paranoid and unstable than usual after the gloinks stole his fortress in the pilot. And finally, how he's been able to last longer than anyone else in the circus because that core memory is his ANCHOR.
...Or maybe I'm just on extreme hopium + copium over my favorite character and the checkmates socks are just comfy socks and nothing more. We'll just have to wait and se
So we all remember "Kinger's Special Place" and how those Checkmates Socks (Plus Kinger "wearing" one of them) caused a lot of fans to worry over the fate of our beloved chesspiece?
Yeah. The more I think about it, the more I feel we're looking at this from the completely wrong angle. It's not telling us what WILL happen to Kinger...
It's telling us what ALREADY happened to him and WHY he's the way he is now.
Gangle's supposed "Near-abstraction" moment in EP 4 made me think back to Kinger's core memory with his abstracted wife. He couldn't recall the string of events that lead up to it, but that moment in the fort when she was calm enough for him to caress her was forever ingrained into his mind.
Maybe it's because said moment was what saved him from immediately following Queenie into abstraction.
"Erm, eckshualee, Gangle snapped back from abstracting and she didn't become insane like Kinger." Yeah. Because she was just STARTING to abstract before Pomni offered to switch shifts with her. Meanwhile, I think Kinger was already deep into abstracting before ending up in the pillow fort with Queenie. That silly image of him wearing the Queenie sock? That was actually HOW CLOSE he was to completely breaking. Kinger still managed to snap back, but the mental damage that abstracting causes was already done. THAT'S why his mind is so fragmented now.
When I recontextualize everything this way, So much starts to add up for me. Both his and Abstracted!Queenie's behavior in the light and dark become parallels. He can't recall the events between Queenie abstracting and before he wandered into the pillow fort because he was probably HARDCORE dissociating. Why he was more paranoid and unstable than usual after the gloinks stole his fortress in the pilot. And finally, how he's been able to last longer than anyone else in the circus because that core memory is his ANCHOR.
...Or maybe I'm just on extreme hopium + copium over my favorite character and the checkmates socks are just comfy socks and nothing more. We'll just have to wait and se