Board Thread:Speculation House/@comment-14138255-20141031002615/@comment-24891101-20141128085048

As one of this theory's major partisans, I shall explain:

Firstly, observe the scene stylistically. There's an odd haze and blurring applied to the entire sequence, which immediately sets it apart from every other scene. The music is also eerie and ethereal. This suggests that this scene is unreal, to some extent, and the most obvious source of unreality is a dream sequence.

Next, her appearance: She looks suspiciously similar to Yang. Almost too much, by some's lights. Bluntly, she looks exactly like Yang. We can say that they were lazy, or ran out of time, and had to reuse assets, or we can attempt to ascribe meaning. Accepting the general consensus that she's Yang's mother, her apparent youth and great similarity is a problem, if they actually met. However, in a dream, both are explicable: Yang's projecting part of her own self-image onto her mother, who she's been obsessing about, and also subconsciously working from photos almost two decades old. There's wish-fulfillment and projection tied up in her ostensible appearance.

Lastly, Doylistically, it seems a profligate waste to introduce this mysterious character, who vanishes as suddenly as she appears, and who has a connection to Yang (a maternal one, accepting the prevailing winds), who's disappearance much had been made of, only to have her literally speak to her connection. It's a waste of a plot arc and mystery, and poor writing. Much better to serve as a driving force for a Yang-centric arc next volume, where her obsession with finding her mother is renewed.