Damn, episode 10 was fire imo. Yeah, the minigames weren't the best, but meh. This may turn into a bit of a long post, and I'm probably missing some details, so, after reading this, if anyone can fill me in or correct me, feel free. I may have to go back and do a playthrough from the beginning again knowing what we know now about certain situations.
So, A FEW SPOILER ALERTS FROM HERE.
I've been racking my brain over who the traitor is like everyone else. Lots thought it was Nick at the start since he's friends with Vinny and this could be his way of getting some revenge for Vinny being forced to leave coupled with how his room was kinda left alone when the Alphas trashed the mansion, etc. But that would be too easy imo. Some are saying Jacob now since he seems to have a bit of focus this episode and the fact that he was kinda pissed with his hazing. However, after giving this some thoughts, I've come up with my own idea. I have a feeling I'm in an EXTREME minority about this, but I'm trying to play detective here. Who do I think is the traitor?
Rusty himself.
WHAT? How? Why?! Alright, let's look at some things we know. He's one of the two names on the university. He wanted to be the Prepsident but was turned down. He went on a couple dates with Jill, and she said it felt like he was playing a role when he was with his friends in front of her. The look he gives Tremolo when he comes out with Jill, if you are on her path, at the end of episode 9, almost looks like there's a bit of, not only shock, but jealous anger in his eyes. Cathy helped quite a bit when he decided to start the DIK fraternity. Can't remember at the moment exactly what he said she did, but she did help. Yes, this raises a question of why he would do this to Cathy then with the cluck. I'll touch on that eventually. He was the first one to notice the Cathy cluck, but here's the real question with that: Why the hell was he looking at Rooster during a party? Shouldn't he, as the DIK President, be making sure the party's running smoothly or playing some games or drinking or talking with some chicks or his brothers? Who the hell would be scoping Rooster at that time? Does he have something to do with the camera in the closet? What about leaking the Jade/Tremolo video to Stephen Burke? If you share that during the Hell Week analysis with the other DIKs, the video is leaked to Burke; if you don't share it, he doesn't know about it. Was that him? If so, why? As of right now, the DIKs don't know that Stephen is divorcing Jade and deciding he needs to go find himself, which would imply he's not going to be the university president after this. What would his connection to Beth, the cafeteria girl who was caught hanging up the pictures of the DIKs and presumably the Cathy cluck, be? Why would she do this for him specifically?
As of right now, we have no idea if the story of the game is like Telltale's The Walking Dead, i.e., several different paths but ultimately one destination no matter who you end up with or what you do, or like with many choice-based AVNs some of us have played, where the end destinations are similar, but with numerous different directions, such as in Once in a Lifetime. Right now, for example, Stephen Burke IS divorcing Jade regardless. He's likely NOT going to be the president anymore after this. So, my reasoning with Rusty being the traitor comes with a lot of speculation about possible futures that may or may not happen (assuming I'm right of course) and the knowledge that I can accurately recall of events that have already happened during and before the story.
The biggest revelation at the end of 10 is that Beth is the one posting the stuff all over campus about Cathy and the DIKs. While we don't have anything definitive yet as to why he would do this, here's some theories. Like we know, he wanted to be the prep president. That didn't happen, so he started up his own frat with a lot of help from his dad and some from Cathy. It's not unreasonable to think Cathy knows he's a Burgmeister. Bella knew, so why wouldn't Cathy and Jade and other faculty members? I'd like to think the DIKs outside of Tommy know, but we don't have confirmation of that as of yet. Jill, knows of course, and the DIKs know she's a Royce, so yeah, while we don't have confirmation, it'd make sense that the DIKs would know. How would you be the president of a frat and people don't know your last name, especially when it's on top of the office building, metaphorically speaking? Anyway, Rusty was kinda pissed that he was turned away from the preps. You could almost argue he made the DIKs out of spite. While Jill doesn't care much for wanting her name to be out there, Rusty seems to since he was ready to use his name to get ahead.
Cathy, imo, was the first chess piece for him that needed to fall. This is why her cluck was the first huge drama point to happen. Now, while this semi-tangent I'm about to explain may not seem to have anything to do with Cathy, hear me out. It's not unreasonable to assume Rusty is aware of Jade and Stephen's problems. Cathy is Jade's best friend and Cathy is friends with Rusty too. It's also not unreasonable for Cathy to have discussed Jade's marriage problems with him for some ideas on what she may be able to do or say to try and help. It's certainly possible that the both of them assumed that, at some point, the two of them were going to get a divorce anyway, which, like stated, would probably result in Stephen leaving. With the presidency being vacant now, what does that mean? Well, you can't exactly have a student being a university president. But you know who you could have? His father. I mean, it IS their university after all. Who else should be running it? We know that Rusty likes his dad, even after being cut off after the mansion was trashed and his dad had no problem shelling out for him the entire time. If he figured that the Burke's marriage was really on the rocks, it would only be a matter of time when Stephen would leave and give Rusty an opportunity to ask his father for whatever he wanted.
So, what does that have to do with Cathy? Well, if suddenly Burke is out and Mr. Burgmeister is in - and ESPECIALLY if the Jade/Tremolo video is leaked (and let's face it, Jade would probably eventually fess up to Cathy at some point that Stephen got a hold of a sex tape of her after raging that he took most of her divorce money because of it) - then Cathy would probably want to look into it. Hell, Jade may even confess outright that she was with a student though whether or not she'd admit it was a DIK at all or Tremolo or whatever, would remain to be seen. She would probably put two and two together, what with Mr. Burgmeister now in charge, that the most likely culprit for ruining her friend's life, was Rusty. So she would be a potential loose end/open mouth, and she needed to go.
But why Beth posting her picture all over school and presumably giving the picture to Rusty to post on their own Rooster page? Why frame his own frat? Well, first, we know that the picture of Cathy was taken in the girl's locker room, so a guy wouldn't have been able to take it in the first place. Beth is a girl, so yeah, she could have gotten it at any time. Why would she do this though? Here's my theory. We know it was Tybalt who told Rusty no. We also know now that Tybalt lied to Trent about there being a fire when Tremolo and Derek set of the sprinklers, so he's not above lying his ass off to get what he wants. It's possible that Tybalt himself didn't want Rusty to be president since he likely wants it for himself. Right now, we don't really know if Rusty and/or the other preps know each other, if at all. But, since he's in their tax bracket, he probably does. We can also only speculate if he's bitter at the rest of them for not getting in or if it's only Tybalt. It's KINDA implied really that, despite having the preps be egged thanks to the Hell Week requirements, he may not have as much of a problem with most of them as he does Tybalt because he went to Jill's recital when Tremolo mentioned it. He knows she stays with the preps. At that point in the story, if you're seeing Jill, Rusty doesn't know about the two of you dating yet, so he wouldn't have any reason to be jealous of anything involving Jill and Tremolo. If he did have a problem with the preps in general, he probably wouldn't have gone to the recital. But what does Beth have to do with any of this?
Well, she did sleep with Gordon.
From our brief scenes with Gordon, we know he seems to like her. He walks in on her hooking up with someone in the theater room at the DIK Halloween party if you let the preps in and is pretty upset. Now, if Rusty is still bitter with the preps as a whole and not just Tybalt for turning him down, he could simply hide his disdain for them and pretend to be friends with the others outside of Tybalt in secret. We really have no idea if Rusty texts with them or talks to them on the phone in private, but he would probably know Gordon if he did and he would probably know one way or another that he had fooled around with Beth a few times by now as she implies during one of the Gender Studies games (the d9 thing). Now, obviously, he can't monitor Beth 24 hours a day, but if, for instance, he's able to speak to her a party, which she has been seen at multiple times, he could 'convince' her to do him some favors for him or else he'll ruin her because of the connections he has. What would he tell her to do? Well, the ultimate goal would be to shack up with Gordon on a more permanent level in time, whether she really wanted to or not. Not that Rusty would give a shit one way or another. Gordon probably wouldn't be made aware of this since he was chill enough to want to speak to Tremolo during the dorm party and say he's not a fan of Tybalt and doesn't really like the petty rivalry the frats seem to have. He'd probably be mortified that someone he'd call his friend (Rusty) would be blackmailing Beth into doing some fucked up shit for him, like taking pictures of Cathy to leak and then posting the Hell Week wall pictures all over the place as well. I have no doubt that Rusty knows Cathy may be able to put up a strong front but would ultimately be pretty traumatized by the whole thing and decide to leave, thus, as mentioned, potentially saving himself any unneeded scrutiny if he sets his father up to take the reins from Stephen Burke upon the inevitable divorce he probably saw coming a mile away. Hell, for all we know, Mr. Burgmeister and Mr. Burke know each other too (not an unreasonable assumption) and Stephen could have been sharing the idea of a divorce to the old man all this time.
But, why would Rusty be selling out the DIKs by using their own Rooster account? Because they're just a stepping stone. I don't think, deep down, he cares as much about the DIKs as he's letting on. It's all just a role he's playing like Jill said. Remember, he and Tommy basically started the frat to get back at the preps for rejecting him. Sure, Tommy may enjoy the frat lifestyle, but Rusty has his own goals. Could he have had someone install the camera in the closet? It's possible. As DIK President, he's probably spoken to Magnar at some point about university stuff, being a fellow president. Tremolo doesn't have a problem doing so, and Rusty is reasonably sociable too. If Rusty asked if Magnar knew someone who could do that, he would probably know. While I wouldn't be surprised if Magnar would ask why the hell he would want to do that in particular, it'd probably be easy for Rusty to pay him off and just say not to ask any questions. Magnar does seem to imply that the Betas are always in need of money. Though, since I have seen people suggest that Betas are the ones behind things since they have no frat house and would probably love benefitting by getting rid of either the DIKs or the Jocks, perhaps Rusty promised them the DIK mansion if he helped him collapse the place eventually. Just imagine that huge library the place had that got trashed and later became Tremolo's room.
Why the closet though? Well, it was the only room in the house that wasn't either unused (the trashed library) or had an utter lack of privacy outside the bathroom, and having the camera installed in the bathroom would probably set off several red flags that even Magnar wouldn't be able to look past if he was promised the mansion. However, the closet was likely used for private shenanigans like when Derek, Jacob and Arieth had some fun....and like when Tremolo and Sarah did, if you go that route. Look at all that juicy blackmail material. Derek setting up shop was unfortunately just an unforeseen thorn in his side with this part of the plan. But how did the camera start flashing? Well, like Tremolo's dad said, it could have been because of the blackout in the house. And where was the last place we saw Rusty before the blackout? In the basement by the dance floor, and after his little scene, he disappears. Now, we know he was on the roof afterwards, but he WAS right there, a stone's throw away from the electrical equipment, close enough to flip the switch and leave without being seen. Why'd he do it? Probably just in a bad mood after being rejected by Micha and wanted to ruin everyone else's fun. The camera going on the fritz was just an accident, and it lit up after the power came back on. Derek, being drunk off his ass, probably wouldn't have noticed immediately upon turning off the light and going to bed. Only when he started to sober up did the light bother him.
But, you may ask, after the debacle with the laptop and the original Cathy cluck, why would he give Tremolo the code to the safe in order to use it? Well, Tremolo had been doing a lot of planning and organizing and stuff. But you know what it could also be? When things start spiraling, like with the Hell Week posters being printed and posted for instance, someone else had to have access. The laptop has the pictures still, no doubt, and Tremolo's new and they don't really know a lot about him still. What a convenient scapegoat. But, what about when Derek shows them his texts with Ashley about the camera and stuff? He acts all surprised! Yep. What an act it is, and it's so very easy to get out of being a suspect when you're the fraternity president. Isn't it convenient too that he doesn't take shrooms during the BBQ too? Smoking weed is one thing. You usually just mellow out. Shrooms may make you blurt things out by accident. Just look what happened to Derek blabbing about the camera and Nick blabbing about Heather.
I know I'm probably just reaching and I appreciate you getting through this massive wall. But what do you think? Any merit behind any of these theories?
Also, you're a dead man, Vinny! A FUCKIN' DEAD MAN!!!!!