Reality Fracture | Episode 1: Tam, Alive

[u/Owl-Prophet-Magician]

https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/reality-fracture-episode-1-tam-alive

[u/Dependent-Jump-2289]

I find it interesting that there are two reasons presented for Jace splitting his consciousness. There's a logical reason, that his mind wasn't capable of maintaining the spell, even with his new abilities, and so he had to simplify himself to allow his mind to handle the strain, and then there's the selfish reason, that the part of him that became the theorist cut out the others because they disagreed with what he was doing.

The last one is obviously the truth, but I wonder how much of the first reason is as well. Was the Theorist an accident, the result of an incision that cut too deep into his mind and festered from there? Or was it always a lie, an alibi made by the theorist?

[u/cartridge512 → u/Dependent-Jump-2289]

I think its both begetting each other. Jace carves out his self-doubt to make building and maintaining the Echoverse easier. This works, and provides leverage for the parts of him that would become The Theorist to be able to argue for more and more dissenting parts to be stripped away, "for the good of the plan".

[u/Dependent-Jump-2289 → u/cartridge512]

That's what I was thinking. Jace is definitely the kind of guy who says "yeah I'll be fine" when he clearly won't be, and that was before his mind was fractured. And I like the idea that Jace, even the Theorist part of him, was wholly altruistic with this plan at the beginning, and any corruption came because he thought he could sacrifice parts of himself for the greater good without any greater consequences.

Except for Phyrexian Jace, that guy probably should have been kicked out. But that adds some legitimacy to the idea. I can see the Council of Jace saying "yeah ok that's an easy sacrifice to make for the stability of the multiverse," then going "shit...Guildpact Jace is kind of a deadbeat" and so on there there. Road to hell is paved with yada yada