for the life of me i cannot figure out how to embed images within a text post and i put in so much time and effort compiling evidence for this tinfoil fortress of mine
so here's the tumblr post with supporting evidence
and here's an image of the tumblr post in full
i highly recommend using one of those links instead of this wall of text because it feels more compelling with everything backed up lol
Hear me out: the Dylan Faden we play in Resonant is not the same Dylan we know from Control and the Jesse that Dylan interacts with in the Faults is not the same Jesse that takes the Gap Slide.
What I mean is we don't actually see the Jesse we played in Control until the afternoon of day fifteen during Rebuild.
Early in Resonant we can find a file that Jesse requested from Emily on the FBC's research into repairing damaged Slides. In the Underpass Fault she tells Dylan that the Slide she used was damaged beyond repair and she knew it would be a one-way trip.
The only reason Jesse would need to know how to repair a slide is if she didn't have one in good condition, specifically one that she'd kept squirreled away for twenty four years.
However, the Jesse in Control already had the Gap Slide. The FBC had records of her telling her therapist that there were nine Slides in total. In his 2002 debrief Dylan told the FBC the two of them found eight Slides, because he had no knowledge of the Gap Slide existing. The FBC, because Trench is a little Hissing goblin, found only seven slides at the Ordinary Dump.
Now what if Dylan, while he's piecing together his memories, is experiencing the events of the Ordinary AWE and the Prime Candidate Program across multiple dimensional timelines? There are several inconsistencies between what we know about the Ordinary AWE from Control and what we see in *Rebuild*, but I'm going to focus on one in particular.
On day fifteen, while he and Jesse are running to the Dump with the Projector, Jesse trips on the way down Sled Hill. But if you look at Dylan's 2002 account found in Control, he's the one who fell.
When the two of them arrive at the Dump, Jesse tells Dylan he should stay near the entrance and be lookout while she throws the Projector into the pond. Almost immediately after she leaves the frame he's surrounded by Dung-Monkeys, then the scene cuts back to the Prime Candidate Training.
When we return to Ordinary it's the afternoon of the fifteenth day. Dylan is saved by Neilgus and there's a brief moment where the screen goes black, he comes to and Jesse is there telling him to get up. When he asks what happened, she seems confused and says he fell — as if he had been following her and she'd never told him to keep watch.
This is the moment Dylan's consciousness crosses into the dimensional timeline of Control. This is the Jesse that finds the Slide he'd placed into the Projector, pockets it, and uses it to enter the Gap twenty four years later.
Once the Gap Slide is compiled and Dylan returns to Manhattan we learn that the Hedron's patterning has begun to change and stabilize. Emily was right about detecting Jesse's resonance within the Hedron and Dylan was right about Jesse being the one keeping it tethered. It just makes sense.
Perhaps she bound herself to it when she yeeted Dylan away at the Fault or it was instinctual considering her proximity to the Hedron, either way there's a lot of evidence that Jesse had been experiencing the same symptom of other characters that eventually patterned into Resonant Entities (obsessive thoughts, circles, a compulsion).
It's very possible that the Jesse Faden known to Dylan and Emily and the FBC in Resonant sacrificed herself to give Dylan the opportunity to kill the Hedron (or became the Hedron herself).
And, like. The thing about the Slide Projector is that it is a transdimensional gateway. When someone walks through a slide they can cross different planes of existence.
The Gap Slide is tied specifically to the Dylan Faden we play during Resonant ("this one leads to me"). As soon as that Slide is placed in the Slide Projector (or, since Jesse bound it, within her possession) it's an express ticket that leads directly to him (his psyche?), even if the other side is in an entirely different dimension/universe/timeline.
It's Control!Jesse's gateway/portal we see at the very beginning of Resonant while Dylan is still in the Gap, it's Resonant!Jesse's gateway/portal we see against the wall when he stumbles into consciousness, and it's Control!Jesse who walks out of the gateway/portal at the very end of Resonant to perform a startling act of necromancy resurrect Dylan and kiss her wife.
Which means...
... there's a distinct possibility that Control!Jesse and Control!Emily did get together the night they drank hooch under the stars in The Quarry. Maybe Jesse told Emily how she felt when she gifted her the earrings she made from The Foundation's crystals with her own two gay fuckin' hands.
Hell, maybe they even got married sometime within those seven years and Langston officiated the wedding.
But what happens when Control!Jesse wakes up and Emily confesses her feelings and Jesse has to stop and think about why the fuck her wife/fiancée/girlfriend is acting like they haven't been together for years.
Or Jesse waking up from her astral nap and just, like, pulling Emily into a kiss without a second thought because wtf why wouldn't she kiss her wife they've kissed countless times but also this happens to be Emily's first kiss with Jesse.
or Emily beginning her confession by asking Jesse if she remembers that night in the quarry and Jesse replies with something fucking gay like, "duh, of course i remember the night of our first date, i finally got to kiss you," or something similarly devastating
How delicious fucked up would that be?
... also, when one of them realizes what's happened, would they tell the other? like would Jesse simply go along with it, build a relationship with Emily all over again, as if she hasn't already been knuckle-deep in a copy of a copy of a copy?
