Awakening Origami [Paper Mario Spoilers]

[Halyo_Alex]

Bit of a weird idea, but one that I realized after playing Paper Mario: Origami King; Olly and Olivia could just be Awakened paper folded into the shapes of people to make it less expensive to Awaken them.

I mean, Origami Toad literally calls the technique he used to make Olly the "Fold of Life", which takes dedication, precision, and (I believe) "putting a bit of your soul into it". At the very least he does say that Olly and Olivia really have souls, so it's fairly analogous to Awakening in that regard, if he somehow had Breaths to put into them.

Paper is also a potentially useful substance to Awaken, given that it's organic in origin. Folding it into an Origami person would also reduce the cost, given that it's a life-like shape, and would give the paper some level of rigidity and stability rather than being, you know, a flat sheet of paper.

Also given how Olly goes rogue, it's safe to say his awakening command might not have been visualized properly...

What really intrigues me is the extra powers he manifests... Like the "thing" bosses all being under his command, those could also be Awakened... Except that a lot of them are made of metal or plastic, which... Well we know how tough it is to Awaken metal, but plastic is weird because it's made of oil which is made of living things. Does that make it too far removed from being organic to easily awaken? In terms of Olly's other powers, folding things into Folded Soldiers could be like if Nightblood was somehow able to use his own stolen Breaths to Awaken Lifelesses (Lifelessi?). Makes me wonder, then, if Olly would be considered a type IV Entity despite being organic... Hm. Is that what a type V would be? A sentient organic object instead of a sentient inorganic one, like Nightblood? Well, regardless, Olly's other powers seem to be too all over the place to really fit as powers in a hard magic system like Awakening, or even hijacking other Shards' systems for himself... Right?

Jeez, this post just keeps getting longer. At first I had just planned to basically point out "hey couldn't something like Olly exist in the cosmere because of Awakening?" But here we go, an entire mini-theory, basically just to challenge myself to do it.

So we know that Nightblood (almost spelled it Knightblood, good job me) does in fact have some of Ruin's investiture (for some special reason that isn't normal to Awakening steel) via WoB. If Olly was planned to be made, let's assume that something similar happens when he's Awakened, and he somehow gets a chunk of a different shard's Investiture... Well, I can think of a couple candidates given his behaviour in Paper Mario (since Nightblood's command, Destroy Evil, seems very much aligned with Ruin's intent of destroying). Odium could be one, given how he gets so unnaturally upset with the Origami Toad for writing on his paper (especially when that writing turns out to be a heartfelt wish for him to be a good king and not the "scribble" that Olly claims it to be). Another candidate would be Ambition, since, well, he is VERY ambitious throughout the game, his ultimate goal to be turning the Mushroom Kingdom into a kingdom of Origami. Would that make him Evil like THE Evil on Threnody, made of Ambition's splinters from the battle with Odium? Possibly. That might explain his maniacal nature, at least in part. Perhaps he would only need Odium's Investiture in order to manipulate things the way he does (and, side note, Olly does share Odium's colors: white and gold, and purple (for Voidlight)). Nightblood's alleged inability to learn and change (according to Vasher, which may not be fully reliable) may also explain why Olly ends up so stuck in his ways even when Olivia tries to talk him out of it after chapter 2.

But speaking of Olivia, how does she fit into this theory? Olly folds her based on the Origami Toad's designs, and uses the Fold of Life on her himself. As established earlier, this would be roughly equivalent to if Nightblood could spend his acquired Breath to awaken a type IV on his own. What's interesting about this is that Olly would be spending a HUGE chunk of his own Breaths to do this, though as neither of them are metal, that could make this more feasible. After all, without needing the 9th Heightening, you could spend far fewer Breaths on either of them. Perhaps the Origami Toad just did the equivalent of giving Olly an excess amount of Breath, which left Olly with a surplus he could Awaken with. If so, that could explain the apparent power difference between Olly and Olivia; the latter of which seems to be inferior to Olly at almost all points, except for the obligatory "power of friendship" moment at the end of the final boss. However, that same final boss fight really shows how powerful Olly is by comparison; he does stuff that borders on straight-up reality warping, which would take huge amounts of Investiture to pull off, especially considering that he's an Awakened object, not a mortal person. He claims that part of the power he exhibits is due to the sheer amount of Origami around at the time, which, fair enough, that could be a mechanic of whatever magic the Fold of Life is truly from in that game. However, this almost sounds like he's on the cusp of forming a Perpendicularity just from sheer origami presence alone. Well, the paper he's using is very brightly colored, perhaps it's dyed with the Tears of Edgli? Is that stuff confirmed to be Invested? If so, that would add to the Investiture around at the time, perhaps acting vaguely like a metalmind or infused gemstones and giving him an extremely large reservoir of power to work with.

Speaking of infused gemstones, some of Olly's powers do seem similar in concept to some of the Surges. Point one, he floats/flies everywhere, i.e. Gravitation. And while it's not transforming from one material to another, he does reshape into the four Vellumentals (which could be considered "transforming between essences") and into two extra forms for the final boss. Perhaps some of his powers are similar to Tension or Adhesion? He does stick a lot of stuff together to make his Origami Castle...

Okay, I've been rambling enough. If I think of more stuff I'll either edit it in, or put it into another reply in this thread...

Edited July 29, 2020 by Halyo_Alex