Talk:Irregular/@comment-4736714-20130321181718/@comment-4736714-20130321215912

We don't know what "chosen by the tower" means. We don't even know if it means anything -- it could have simply been Headon yanking her chain. He could have been talking metaphorically about Baam's talents (see when Lero-Ro uses the exact same "you have simply failed to be chosen" line to refer to Regulars who lack talents despite being 'chosen' as Regulars.)

In fact, rereading Chapters 1, 76, and 77, Headon never says that Baam is chosen (or if he did, I missed it.)  The point could simply be that both Baam and Rachel are unchosen, but Baam went forward anyway. Read carefully -- Rachel assumes that Baam was chosen, but Headon never explicitly says it to either of them. He could simply mean "chosen" in the same sense that Regulars are chosen. (That is, "chosen by the tower" might simply mean "chosen by Headon as a Regular".  That would mean Headon taunted Rachel with the fact that she is an unchosen Irregular to make her react the way he wanted, without mentioning that Baam was also an unchosen Irregular and was not chosen, either.)

My understanding is that all the "chosen by the tower" nonsense was invented by readers after Chapter 76 because they wanted to believe that Baam was an Irregular and Rachel wasn't (partially because if you take the terms literally, it led to he conclusion that Rachel was an Irregular and Baam wasn't, which nobody wanted to conclude -- so they needed an answer to that.)  But none of that argument matters now, because we know from SIU that both Baam and Rachel are Irregulars (and, therefore, if Irregulars are chosen by the tower, Rachel must have been chosen by the Tower.)

Anyway, my point isn't to argue over what that term means; my point is that we don't know what it means or if it has any long-term meaning at all (seperate from just "very skilled / having the qualities of a hero" in the sense Lero-Ro used it, or "chosen as a Regular" in the way people usually use it.)  Fans have attached a lot of speculation to the term, which is why it should get a sentence or two in the speculation section, but I don't think we know enough to attach any more meaning to it at this point. Nothing canonical has actually indicated that Irregulars are chosen by anyone, and we do know that Rachel is canonically Irregular, just like Baam.

Remember, the term Irregular literally means "one who has not been chosen." The idea that Baam was chosen by some higher power has always seemed a bit weird in light of that; it seems much more likely, rereading Ch. 76 in light of the more recent chapters, that what Headon was doing was just taunting Rachel with the fact that she wasn't chosen and giving her the impression that Baam was in order to turn her against him, when, in fact, neither was chosen.

That's how this page became such a mess -- it got filled with fanon theories based trying to slice the term as fine as possible in order to settle arguments over whether or not Rachel was an Irregular. I didn't care that much either way, but since it's been established by word of god, we should trim most of those theories and focus on the things that we definitely know (especially from Vol 2 Ch. 27, which explicitly indicates that Irregulars are not inhabitants of the tower and that this means that only an Irregular can kill Zahard -- from a plot standpoint, it's looking increasingly like those two are the most important parts of what it means to be an Irregular, at least at the moment.  SIU has explicitly stated in the chapter notes that that's the only reason FUG is interested in Baam.)

Also, looking at chapter 76, it really looks like Rachel did demand and receive a test directly from the Guardian. After she says "Please!  Let me--"  Headon says that he has no choice and presents her with a challenge. This is likely because, as an Irregular, she has the right to demand a challenge from him, and he has no choice but to comply. If we assume that the Regular system was established by Zahard and that the rules that allow Irregulars to demand challenges from the Guardians predate that, it is likely that the important part in that respect is that Rachel, Baam, Zahard and so forth come from outside the tower. This is speculative enough to belong in the speculation section, of course, but it seems to fit everything most closely.

In any case, Yu Han Sung explicitly states in Chapter 58 that only an Irregular can receive a test directly from a Guardian; since Headon is a Guardian, and presented Rachel with a test directly, it's immediately obvious that Rachel qualifies as an Irregular as far as that goes.