Overall:
- Molly being raped at all is questionable in retrospect
- It being USER2 behind the rape instead of Pareidolia who's shown the same capabilities, the ability to copy others, and the actual desire to have girls raped seems unlikely
- Pareidolia has always been more capable than it's let on (apparently bested the others in their seasons at least once, albeit the circumstances may have played a part, but the overall power levels and how they actually work, aren't exactly clear in the first place)
- Pareidolia still has reason to keep Sensei on it's side even in it's season (He might rely on a different USER or god if given the chance otherwise, and there's no way that Pareidolia wants that)
- USER2 is probably coming for Pareidolia's ass. Lmao.
Nevertheless, it's impossible to say for sure. We can just agree to agree it's not clear for now, as it's probably meant to be. There's no way you could convince me there's a 0% chance, tbh. At least for now. If USER2 starts having Sensei rape individuals then It'd be different, and as Maya has said:
A few things I'd point out are:
- I know this is your segue to question Sekai's credibility, but arguing what exactly happened to Molly isn't the point. There was divine intervention there regardless of how far gone Molly may or may not be; I merely want to think about whether it was USER2 that was behind it or not. I used her words to rule out HOPE, but whether Sekai was lying or not does not increase the odds of true culprit being Pareidolia (in fact it decreases because math)
- I didn't assume Pareidolia has no further reason to manipulate Sensei. In fact it does; it still relies on Sensei to "learn how to feel" at the end of the day, and Sensei relies on its one-sided promise about bringing Maya back. What I actually assumed is Pareidolia has no further reason to lie about what happened to Molly if it was the one behind the scene since Pareidolia has no trouble admitting this time it's its own doing with Karin.
- Following up the previous bullet point: Pareidolia continuing keeping Sensei on its side sounds reasonable, but doing this by lying about what happened to Molly does not. Shifting blame no longer works as soon as the same trick is pulled on Karin. If Pareidolia doesn't deny its doing with Karin then "lying about Molly so Sensei remains on its side" makes little sense.
- Your claim "Pareidolia isn't all powerful even in his Season. It's capable and likely has been far more so than it's let on, which may have been hinted......" sounds self-contradicting. Regardless, I know and agree that Pareidolia can interfere to a certain extent even in the old chapters (whether I agree with your interpretation on Pluto Was Never Really A Planet is a different story), but the key piece that connects this shown fact to Pareidolia being the possible culprit of the Molly incident remains missing. Revealing how much it can do in other scenarios doesn't immediately equate increasing its chance of being the mastermind of a particular scenario if Pareidolia cannot be proven to be the only capable gods at the time. If today Lavender's Green didn't have USER2's name on it I'd consider the possibility of Pareidolia to a great extent with its shown tendency and whatnot, but choosing to disregard the displayed USER2 because we now assume Pareidolia was likely always pretending to be weaker than it actually was is far-fetched.
(I have to cherry pick only a few points to respond because some looks very apples to oranges with low relevancy to my question, or not really proving anything. Let me know if I misunderstood or took things out of context because of it)
But I finally can see where our divergence kicks in; you will automatically assign a certain level of possibility to every statement entities like Pareidolia and Sekai made being lies. And I tend to believe what they say until it is proven otherwise by finding out their hidden motives in the future events, or unless they are just sounding overtly non-serious or full of red flags since the beginning. You mentioned that taking their words for granted without a reason to do so brings up complications, but to me refuting their every point brings up even more complications (not from Sensei's perspective but from reader's perspective, or my own since I don't want to one-sided generalize about it).
Because what that means is that you are required to assign currently unverifiable motives along with plenty more assumptions for the hypothesized lies. Things like "Sekai/Pareidolia just wanted Sensei and us to think he did, so he'd be more willing to rape others and collect others, later", "Pareidolia is probably regretting not gaining more control over Sensei", or "Pareidolia was likely always pretending to be weaker than it
actually was" are all something that is related to motives and cannot be verified. These are the good amount of assumptions you have to make in order to accommodate the off chance of them lying; meanwhile, believing what they said only needs one assumption that is "they're telling the truth regarding a particular subject". We can agree to disagree here as long as Occam's razor still sits in my head, but to be fair I realize this isn't a digenetic reason on my end so I won't press it further.
