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Yep. I figured I'd garner that kind of perception while trying to segment an ongoing arc, as opposed to trying to segment an already-completed arc. And until we get said case, the reveal of the Koji Haneda/Amanda Hughes double murder at Rum's hands (either 945–947 or 948–950) is going to serve as said case, for me. File 899–File 946: No Koji Haneda/Amanda Hughes, Asaka and Rum File 947–present: Koji Haneda/Amanda Hughes, Asaka and Rum That may not be enough for you, but—for now—it's enough for me.

Rum Arc Discussion Series: Wakasa Rumi

@Both @MeiTanteixX and @DCUniverseAficionado in general, because I am too lazy to select and quote, and I trust you both not to edit you posts or delete them later. Gin's moves don't represent an original threat IMO. Ancient memory from the pre-DCTP edogawa proboards time, but I seem to remember people anticipating a Gin threat development after Kir's intro case where Gin declared his continuing suspicions about Kogoro after the sniping was interrupted. That suspicion that maybe Gin would do something further to Kogoro was used to manipulate people's perceptions of Eisuke, i.e. he was a plant by the BO to spy on Kogoro. Now we are in a very similar situation. Gin complains, some suspects show up around Kogoro and the kids, and people suspect they could be BO following up on Gin's worries. Personally, I think Gin's words are a tactic to make the suspects more suspicious by encouraging people to think they were sent by the BO to look at Kogoro. Gosho could certainly do this and make it so, but I'm not holding my breath. I'll start worrying when Gin's not sitting in the Porsche. That's not to say Gin's threat isn't interesting or relevant. It just isn't in the same category of threat development as what happened in past arcs where the titular arc character was announced to be making moves. Gin's threat to Kogoro is one of many small threats, along with the BO being worried about "Asaca", Mary's likely involuntary shrinking, the deletion of data, the suspects being suspicious, Kohji's death etc that, from our current perspective, are mostly independent from one another. Speaking in very wide writing theory generalities, the strongest starter plot structure for a mystery is to establish one main threat/conflict/issue that readers can rally around, and then introduce subplots which teasingly circle it, like remoras following a shark. The Vermouth arc followed this structure exactly. Vermouth's identity and target was the shark threat, and the goal of the APTX drug, Jodie's past, the Miyano's past, Shinichi's connection to Vermouth, The Vineyards, Itakura, Haibara's fears, etc, were the remora issues. Eventually each of those subplots was attached to the main plot with ample opportunities beforehand for the reader to speculate how they all tied together. The Bourbon arc started this way too (shark = detective Bourbon on the move), but the pacing was a severe problem. And then partway through, the Akai family sideplot was dropped into the pool as a second shark to distract from the main one. The Rum arc already has lots of remoras, maybe even more than the Vermouth arc, but we only have a shark's shadow (Rum, uh, exists.... somewhere. And maybe he's doing something.) Borrowing political terms, that's not rallying the base. The fact that the remora issue Gin-continuing-to-be-suspicious-of-Kogoro is being mistaken as a shark is a bad sign, plot-structure wise. And back to the big picture, I'm not saying the Rum arc is all bad. It's just had a rough start, one that wasn't planned to maximize impact and use characters to their fullest. (info-dumpy, failure for main threat to materialize) I think that's a valid complaint to field at this stage. Enough chapters have gone by. But there is plenty of time for things to be redeemed. Claiming we are already in part 2 of the Rum arc is jumping the gun to the max. There has been no paradigm shift. We are still in info dump and suspect reveal mode. The Rum arc has had no file equivalent to the Mystery Train case or Golden apple.