About the Philosopher's Union...
Do people remember the old Laurel Wreath Galaxy (Philosopher’s Union) theory of Ratio’s origins? There's some blink and you miss it info on the new Improv Tour. This post on X summarizes it well. The quick and dirty summary is that there’s two main things pointing to this theory.
The first is that Ratio’s character story 1 mentions Professor Rond from his home planet uses the Philosopher’s Calendar, there is no other location relating to Philosopher in the name other than the Philosopher’s Union:
The second is this curio that released the same patch as he did, about the same philosophy as he has and is related to the Philosopher’s Union:
The Philosopher’s Union was first introduced in 1.0 as a memory bubble on Herta Space Station. Essentially it’s a civilization following the Erudition ruled by scholars that was attacked by the Machine Empire (Emperor Rupert, Genius #27):
The problem with the theory was that it was believed that the Philosopher’s Union was destroyed, meaning Ratio would either be extremely old and traumatized or the Philosopher’s Union survived somehow:
The last thing we knew that happened is that Masked Fools infected in-organic beings with a troll virus in the Philosopher’s Union:
In the latest Improv Tour we learn the fate of the Philosopher’s Union:
(Please don’t mind my terrible screenshots, it was really annoying to take these screenshots!)
The Intellitrons of the Machine Empire enslaved the humans of the Philosopher’s Union:
The Masked Fool Enroute was the one who created the virus mentioned previously:
He distributed it to the Philosopher’s Union so they could overthrow Emperor Rupert.
Only the Elation did not truly bring peace to the Union, instead it plunged it into a civil war:
And ultimately, the Intellitrons became enslaved by the Philosopher’s Union:
So essentially the Philosopher’s Union still exists and survived the Machine Wars, so Ratio doesn’t have to be a traumatized 143530598 year old man for him to be from there (I’m exaggerating but it was a really, really long time ago).
But if this theory about Ratio’s origin is true, it makes his relationship with Screwllum realllllyyy interesting considering his civilization might still keep Intellitrons as slaves…