Is there any indication before or after that this might be the case, outside of the Dead Moon Circus being all about dreams and the like? Does this mob even have the power to do that? It doesn't seem so from what else I've read about it so far.
Who gains what by this occurring? It can't be a time advantage, if they wake up in the same day as the theory supposes. They can't have done much in that time. Unless there's some "You die in the dream, you die in real life" thing going on that you haven't mentioned. Does this being the case advance the plot in some direct way, or is it just a neat cherry on the sundae?
From reading about the episodes and the characters, along with a few quote pages and theory pages, it seems that the whole awakening thing is about Awakening as Sailor Senshi. Also that Super Sailor moon might actually be a mass murderer.
How the dream maps to reality in terms of people dying or whatever isn't really relevant. Maybe the people they kill wake up (or more horrifyingly, maybe they never wake up...) or maybe you die in the dream and you die in real life; it's rather tangential to their plans, which is to find Pegasus. You know, the guy who hides inside people's souls and inhabits their dreams and stuff.
The powers of the Dead Moon Circus are crazy and somewhat inconsistent. Their servants are mostly, but not entirely useless, and the powers they demonstrate are usually more weird than dangerous. But their minibosses... their minibosses are actually never defeated in a straight-up fight. You get the distinct impression that the Amazon Trio could walk all over the senshi... if they weren't a bunch of lazy fucks putting in the absolute minimum effort. They are never actually threatened or even really slowed down by the senshi at all; the only thing that the senshi do is save the lives of their victims, they never manage to stop their plots.
What we do know they can do is actually kind of neat. They snap their fingers and stuff just happens; people trip and fall, bags rip open, their implements and weapons appear out of nowhere. Their powers aren't flashy and don't have visible mechanisms like a lot of the baddies.
And the Amazones Quartet? Who the eff knows! One of them casually causes Usagi and Chibisua to switch ages at one point on a lark!
It seems entirely plausible to me, then, that the Dead Moon Circus only has power within dreams. It isn't until Queen Nehelenia shatters her own dream mirror and spreads the shards across earth that that they do anything to the physical world... and even then, she uses it to hypnotize people just as much as to create monsters.
But as to the power specifically to trap people in the mind, that is Queen Nehelenia, like, core gig. In her arc in the Stars season, that is exactly what she does to the senshi, so she can create a situation where she is all-powerful and they are basically at her mercy. She even goes all inception on Usagi. I think that slots in nicely with the powers and attitude of the Dead Moon Circus and the way they act throughout the season; they are in a place where (almost) nothing can harm them or even notice them as something out of the ordinary; the only thing that threatens them at all is the power of the other being kicking around with power over dreams.
I admit, my objection is a bit off topic, but why do you hate the Indoctrination Theory?
I can't speak for sketch, but on my part because it's bullshit grasping at straws for the express purpose of trying to erase the ME3 ending, because people are cranky they didn't get what they wanted.
Basically, the whole thing is a pretty massive misunderstanding of how indoctrination works in-universe, and amounts to little more than circular reasoning, and dismissing everything that doesn't agree with the theory as a hallucination.
It's also awful writing besides - worse than even the whining about the ending of ME3 would have you believe the ending already was - because it means that literally everything you did is pointless, you never had a choice, it's all a dream, reapers win, game over. Which would be an awful way to end a series whose entire driving theme was that one person can make a difference, and fighting together can overcome any obstacle.
In the real ending, Bioware didn't fulfill what they promised initially, but still wrapped the whole thing up neat enough. In the indoctrination ending, we're meant to believe that Bioware, for no apparent reason, suddenly turns around, savages their own reputation intentionally with an ending so obscure that practically nobody actually understands what they were going for because it's all hinging on tiny clues and semi-obscure mass effect series lore, and then shits on the entire story they've spent seven years telling. And then made an expansion for that ending that put more detail into the choices that according to indoctrination theory never actually happened, but never clarify the indoctrination point.
When I say that SuperS as a season is "All a dreaaaaaaam" I don't mean that as a way of dismissing it, the way the Indoctrination Theory is supposed to for ME3. Like, the season still ends up mattering in this viewing, a lot! The events at the start of Stars lead directly from it and aren't really changed by this reading.
I just mean, straight up, the arc feels a lot more coherent to me when viewed through the lens that the events are happening in a haze of dream logic, with the villains as literal nightmares imposing themselves into everyone's dreams. It turns the weird tangents and strange themes of the season into signs of the constructed unreality and it ties a lot of plot points together that before were isolated or poorly explained.
I should also note that generally I really, really hate most of those theories. Indoctrination theory is not unique for me in that regard, it's just easy to point out exactly why it's bullshit.
"In gravity, Stone is really dead, because the capsule shakes around, which represents seizures, a symptom of hypoxia!" Or maybe it's shaking because she's REENTERING THE FUCKING ATMOSPHERE. ST ELSEWHERE WAS 26 YEARS AGO GET THE FUCK OVER IT.
I should also note that generally I really, really hate most of those theories. Indoctrination theory is not unique for me in that regard, it's just easy to point out exactly why it's bullshit.
"In gravity, Stone is really dead, because the capsule shakes around, which represents seizures, a symptom of hypoxia!" Or maybe it's shaking because she's REENTERING THE FUCKING ATMOSPHERE. ST ELSEWHERE WAS 26 YEARS AGO GET THE FUCK OVER IT.
I feel like they're used as a blunt instrument, when really they should be used as a fine scalpel. There's no point in believing that Ed, Edd, and Eddy takes place in a universe made up of dead kids from different time periods. At best, it's a fun-but-kinda-pointless mental exercise. But I feel like if there's a place where it belongs, this is it. It's not missing the point of the ending (Inception) or being applied as some sorta weird joke (Rugrats). It makes sense in the context of a show being about dreams, and answers some interesting issues that the show otherwise had.
Comments
Is there any indication before or after that this might be the case, outside of the Dead Moon Circus being all about dreams and the like? Does this mob even have the power to do that? It doesn't seem so from what else I've read about it so far.
Who gains what by this occurring? It can't be a time advantage, if they wake up in the same day as the theory supposes. They can't have done much in that time. Unless there's some "You die in the dream, you die in real life" thing going on that you haven't mentioned. Does this being the case advance the plot in some direct way, or is it just a neat cherry on the sundae?
From reading about the episodes and the characters, along with a few quote pages and theory pages, it seems that the whole awakening thing is about Awakening as Sailor Senshi. Also that Super Sailor moon might actually be a mass murderer.
The powers of the Dead Moon Circus are crazy and somewhat inconsistent. Their servants are mostly, but not entirely useless, and the powers they demonstrate are usually more weird than dangerous. But their minibosses... their minibosses are actually never defeated in a straight-up fight. You get the distinct impression that the Amazon Trio could walk all over the senshi... if they weren't a bunch of lazy fucks putting in the absolute minimum effort. They are never actually threatened or even really slowed down by the senshi at all; the only thing that the senshi do is save the lives of their victims, they never manage to stop their plots.
What we do know they can do is actually kind of neat. They snap their fingers and stuff just happens; people trip and fall, bags rip open, their implements and weapons appear out of nowhere. Their powers aren't flashy and don't have visible mechanisms like a lot of the baddies.
And the Amazones Quartet? Who the eff knows! One of them casually causes Usagi and Chibisua to switch ages at one point on a lark!
It seems entirely plausible to me, then, that the Dead Moon Circus only has power within dreams. It isn't until Queen Nehelenia shatters her own dream mirror and spreads the shards across earth that that they do anything to the physical world... and even then, she uses it to hypnotize people just as much as to create monsters.
But as to the power specifically to trap people in the mind, that is Queen Nehelenia, like, core gig. In her arc in the Stars season, that is exactly what she does to the senshi, so she can create a situation where she is all-powerful and they are basically at her mercy. She even goes all inception on Usagi. I think that slots in nicely with the powers and attitude of the Dead Moon Circus and the way they act throughout the season; they are in a place where (almost) nothing can harm them or even notice them as something out of the ordinary; the only thing that threatens them at all is the power of the other being kicking around with power over dreams.
(MarauderShields2016)
Basically, the whole thing is a pretty massive misunderstanding of how indoctrination works in-universe, and amounts to little more than circular reasoning, and dismissing everything that doesn't agree with the theory as a hallucination.
It's also awful writing besides - worse than even the whining about the ending of ME3 would have you believe the ending already was - because it means that literally everything you did is pointless, you never had a choice, it's all a dream, reapers win, game over. Which would be an awful way to end a series whose entire driving theme was that one person can make a difference, and fighting together can overcome any obstacle.
In the real ending, Bioware didn't fulfill what they promised initially, but still wrapped the whole thing up neat enough. In the indoctrination ending, we're meant to believe that Bioware, for no apparent reason, suddenly turns around, savages their own reputation intentionally with an ending so obscure that practically nobody actually understands what they were going for because it's all hinging on tiny clues and semi-obscure mass effect series lore, and then shits on the entire story they've spent seven years telling. And then made an expansion for that ending that put more detail into the choices that according to indoctrination theory never actually happened, but never clarify the indoctrination point.
When I say that SuperS as a season is "All a dreaaaaaaam" I don't mean that as a way of dismissing it, the way the Indoctrination Theory is supposed to for ME3. Like, the season still ends up mattering in this viewing, a lot! The events at the start of Stars lead directly from it and aren't really changed by this reading.
I just mean, straight up, the arc feels a lot more coherent to me when viewed through the lens that the events are happening in a haze of dream logic, with the villains as literal nightmares imposing themselves into everyone's dreams. It turns the weird tangents and strange themes of the season into signs of the constructed unreality and it ties a lot of plot points together that before were isolated or poorly explained.
"In gravity, Stone is really dead, because the capsule shakes around, which represents seizures, a symptom of hypoxia!"
Or maybe it's shaking because she's REENTERING THE FUCKING ATMOSPHERE. ST ELSEWHERE WAS 26 YEARS AGO GET THE FUCK OVER IT.