My original question is “Did Pareidolia impersonate USER2 and cause the Molly incident?”, something I think you implied to be possible to a certain degree if I am not mistaken.
(and I am gonna refer to Pareidolia as "he" later on because typing
it constantly feels extremely awkward lol)
If the answer to my question is yes, that means Pareidolia was constantly lying about his situation and what he can do. Not just during Molly incident, he'd be lying every time he said "as the days go by, I become stronger", “the most I’ve spoken… probably ever” during
Ad Infinitum, and the “this is my first time trying this” during
Paranoid.
If he is lying during all of that, the follow up questions to someone lying are “What for?” and “To whom?”, and this is the part I remain unconvinced.
Why lying about being his first time throwing millions of affection point and not admitting to his doing in
Lavender's Green if he has no problem admitting his shenanigans against Karin? Why lying about his still growing power when it apparently can already get Molly raped? And why lying not to Sensei, but to viewers by using the name USER2?
He will not need to lull Sensei into picking him if he was already this capable. He will not need to say "oh that's actually not me" to what happened in
Lavender's Green if he is apparently now this capable in the new chapter; he doesn't have a reason to keep lying (he could've pulled a "It was me!
Dio! Parold E Dolia" on Sensei but he didn't). Most importantly, he did not need to pretend to be USER2 if no one other than the viewers can be deceived. Sensei wasn't the target of that proposed deceit because he couldn't even properly figure out who did that anyway. Sensei could only assume it was HOPE, the CAPSLOCK guy, because HOPE was the one that gave him the ultimatum. Sensei would’ve kept misunderstanding anyway had he not had asked, so there was essentially no one to lie to except for the viewers.
I could take more steps back and ponder what motives Pareidolia could have to answer each of my doubt, but just gaslighting Sensei is not strong enough of an argument. The only lie Pareidolia needed to tell was to convince Sensei that he is "a friend", that he is "on his side" in the form of false promises to
maybe pull Sensei closer and have him choose the "right god". Pareidolia's plan to will work without any impersonation.
tldr is that without further decisive evidences, the whole pretending to be USER2 scenario remains something that involves an overly elaborate plot and an unnecessary stunt on Pareidolia's end to either achieve some very elusive goals or to fool no one in the game but our keen eyes; meanwhile assuming whoever got Molly raped back then being just a different god is much more straightforward and requires a lot less assumptions.
Pareidolia seems to likely just be gaslighting. Only Pareidolia has claimed others did this.
First it claims it was USER2 (caps lock guy), then says USER2 wanted Sensei to think it was HOPE (which doesn't make much sense at all), then says they all do everything, and that thinking about it, makes it not make sense... after it bragged about it's power, which according to it, is something they all could do, which makes bragging seem a little pointless.
It's basically just saying "it wasn't me, but don't think about it, and make sure to blame the others".
I agree all of this is not easy to interpret, but this is not a proof to "Pareidolia is instead the one that got Molly raped". I could argue that /////guy
IS the culprit, and the whole "/////guy wanted you to think it was the caps lock guy" (an proposed incentive of Wire god told by Pareidolia) was the gaslighting part and should not be taken seriously.
This I am guessing is because Sensei worded the question incorrectly. Sensei wanted to know who exactly was the one that kept telling him to rape his students during Chapter 3 (the expected answer here is HOPE). But if Pareidolia read his question as "which one of you want me to take something that doesn't belong to you?" then the answer is unmistakably
all of them. And all of them do everything to get their fills.
edit: my mistake; I realize I was the one that quoted this dialogue to begin with. You were just saying this might not be trustworthy or should not be interpreted too literally, which I agree.
The only one that's actually shown it can and would do this, is Pareidolia. It can apparently do most things. Even before it's season, it showed that it could change appearance and the way it communicated:
I understand this is the source of your theory, that you’re interpreting these occasions where Pareidolia spoke in USER2 fashions as, by extension, being capable of impersonating USER2 and doing shenanigans under USER2's name. From what I am seeing, this could be his attempt to reach out to Sensei during Wire god's season when he wasn't that capable of many things, and nothing more.
Besides, if Pareidolia really could go full impersonation based on these scenes, he didn't need to still talk in ////lower case instead of the proper ////CAPSLOCK during
Abyss and
Ad Infinitum. I understand that without those lower cases we as the players would never figured out that this was in fact a different god, but according to what you said this would be exactly what Pareidolia would have wanted.
It doesn't seem able to actually affect the stats of the girls, at least. Just pretend it does, like how something pretended it did with Molly, and recently Karin.
Molly did feel kinda weird all of a sudden as soon as Sensei threw his 6M MOLLY POINTS on her. Though this was drunk Molly so my argument is weak as hell, still this at best can only prove that the tricks done on Molly and Karin are the same; it can't prove that the users of the tricks are the same.
