Swan Song Wiki

"Swan song isn't in her vocabulary; revenge is."

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Click here for the dictionary, and here for the all the wiki pages.

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## **OFFICIAL DESCRIPTION**

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Originally "**Scarlet Swan**" and six years in the making, **Swan Song** is the remake of the series of IT'Z's inside joke created by Rin Aguinaldo in early 2018, revolving around the chaotic detective Swan Swagmire chasing her criminal rival, Langley Langston, with her legal guardian, Detective Gonzalo, who went through cryonics.

It wasn't until January 2024 that Swan Song was actually made into a story, written and edited by Aguinaldo herself.

## **SHORT SUMMARIZATION**

> "The inventor of IRIS, a powerful virtual assistant that can trigger electrical circuits from anywhere is Felipe's mother, engineer Sofía Gonzalo. After spending 19 years in suspended animation, Felipe wakes up from cryosleep and becomes a detective, adopts the orphan Odette, and years later works with her and Langley Langston to retrieve IRIS when it falls in the wrong hands before it can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction, and before Felipe runs out of time."
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## **CHARACTERS**

#### **Protagonist**

* **Swan Swagmire**- the fun-loving daughter of the late **Dorothy and Siegfried Quagmire**; Detective Gonzalo has adopted Swan, however he does not consider himself to be her "adoptive father" and instead refers to himself as her "legal guardian."

#### **Deuteragonist**

* **Detective Gonzalo**- diagnosed with progeria at 15, Felipe Gonzalo is the youngest known detective in Madrid. He became Swan's legal guardian after he took care of her when she was orphaned.

#### **Tritagonists**

* **Langley Langston**- he is a well-known serial thief locally referred to as the **Phantom Thief**, also known for working for the mafia. Langley is later revealed to be the cousin of Miles Meyer and the son of Sotto Voce who turns out to be Miles' uncle, Marston Meyer.
* **Miles Meyer**- Swan's classmate Miles Meyer has been her best friend since primary school and has had the biggest crush on him. Miles is Langley's biological cousin.

#### **Antagonists**

* **Marston Meyer**- the deputy warden of the Wall is friends with Detective Gonzalo and Swan, with Miles being his nephew. Near the end of the story, Marston is revealed to be Langley's father and that he is Sotto Voce, the leader of an Italian mafia.

#### **Supporting**

* **Serio Dominguez**- Detective Gonzalo's childhood friend and his co-captain in their school's *fútbol* team in 1998. While Gonzalo is in cryosleep, he graduates from medical school and became Dr. Dupain's assistant.
* **Dr. Dupain**- the mentor of Engr. Sofía Gonzalo, Serio Dominguez's superior, and Gonzalo's doctor when he went under cryopresevation. Dr. Dupain is also the one who engineered IRIS based on Sofía's blueprints.
* **IRIS**- Sofía Gonzalo's invention, IRIS, is a powerful virtual assistant that could power electrical circuits from anywhere. Dr. Dupain takes up IRIS' development following Sofía's passing.

#### **Minor**

* **Sofía Gonzalo**- mother of Detective Gonzalo who died before creating IRIS. While she is a student at MIT in the United States, she is her professor, Dr. Dupain's apprentice.
* **Philip Gonzalo**- Detective Gonzalo's late father and Sofía's husband. He was a detective in the Madrid Police Department and was killed while attempting to defend his wife from the mafia in a gunfight.

#### **Cameos**

* **Danilo Espinoza**- one of the main characters of **STRAY** who is first mentioned and seen in Case #4: The Alcatraz Prison Break working under Warden Meyer as his second-in-command at the Wall.
* **Henna Espinoza-Diaz** (mentioned)- Officer **Danilo Espinoza**'s wife, a forensic scientist for the Madrid police.
* **Julian Navarro**- **Léa**'s older step-brother in the **Beyond Worlds** series is now a junior detective in Barcelona Police Department, first seen in Case #6: Disappearance of D.B. Cooper.
* **Léa Navarro**- Now an astrophysicist at age 29, Dr. Navarro is **Detective Navarro**'s younger step-sister, engaged to be married to **Hiro Hamada**.
* **Hiro Hamada**- The 29 year-old robotics engineer, young CEO, and tenured robotics and technology professor is the fiancé of **Dr. Navarro**.

## **DETAILS**

#### Prologue

* Gonzalo and Swan's narration are written in first person past tense as it points out that the two are only recalling the events in the prologue as memories.

#### Case #6

* **Julian**, **Léa**, and **Hiro** both thought of the same thing when they all saw Swan; she looks like Léa when she was her age. This is evident by Swan's narration about how she noticed the three looked at her strangely.
* Swan and Langley are walking on the pavement after Swan's visit to the Barcelona Police Station. Swan hints she might've fallen on some plants when Langley shoves her. This means that Langley is on the side where the traffic is, absent-mindedly being on the more "dangerous" side like a gentleman.
* Langley says outright that he's Italian in the sixth chapter, although hints of Langley's nationality has been sprinkled throughout the story as early as the first chapter:
	+ He calls Swan "*Caretta*" which means "sweetheart" in Italian.
	+ He says, "Fucking hell, my *chiacchiere* is finally—" in the second chapter before getting cut off by seeing Swan visiting him in his cell. Chiacchiere is an Italian pastry.
	+ Langley makes a specific pasta and nails the right pronunciation of the dish, "*aglio e olio*"; he also gets offended when someone pronounces the dish wrong.
	+ Langley also called Swan “*coglione*”, which means “idiot” in Italian.

#### Case #7

* Langley mentions to Swan that he is influenced by Harry Houdini like his father and that his favorite story is how Houdini got discovered because he escaped someone else's handcuffs. This mirrors the trick he used to escape from Swan’s handcuffs in the Prologue when they first met.

#### Case #8

* Gonzalo's phone number has “+34” in the front as it is Spain’s calling code. Even the arrangement of the nine digits represented by the letter “X” is accurate; two, three, then four.

## **TRIVIAS**

* Swan Song's title is originally "Scarlet Swan", although this was changed because writer Rin Aguinaldo thought the title doesn't really make sense as it is only another case of alliteration, which is already prominent among three main characters—Swan Swagmire, Langley Langston, and Miles Meyer. To add to this, the motif of the story is no longer scarlet, it's changed to amaranth.
* Swan Song is the first story of **IT'Z** to be completely written, edited, and illustrated by one person.
	+ Contrary to popular belief, **Stefen Sanchez** is not an author nor a ghostwriter of Swan Song writing alongside Rin. When **Cj Sanchez** asked him about it, Stefen responded with, "She'd lie, but she really did write everything, like, literally all of it. She just asked me for pointers and shit but that was all the help I did. The story was a hundred-percent her."
		- Before Swan Song, **The Arcana** held the record of having only two people — Rin Aguinaldo and **Austin Dy** — complete the whole story.
* All main characters of the story (with the exception of Felipe Gonzalo) are all born under a water sign. Swan is a Cancerian, Langley is a Scorpio, and Miles is a Piscean.
* Rin claims that Swan and Langley were not based on anyone, and that only Gonzalo (**Stefan Sanchez**) and Miles (Cj Sanchez and **Jace Blanchett**) were. This came as a surprise to a lot of readers as they were sure Swan was based on Rin herself. Rin also admitted that she only imagined a "random guy" as Langley and never knew who she based him on.
	+ Some readers thought that Langley was based off of Austin Dy, although this was quickly debunked by Rin, saying, "I planned the characters on January 2018, and I met Austin in May the same year. How could I have based my character off of someone I haven't even met yet?". Although this is the case, Austin would be Rin's first choice for Langley if Swan Song were an animation or a film.
* Langley Langston was never meant to be the love interest of Swan in the inside jokes and the only plausible reason why he is in Swan Song is because Miles became an antagonist.
* In the inside jokes, Detective Gonzalo, Swan Swagmire, Miles Meyer, and Langley Langston were the only original characters. The rest of the characters, Marston Meyer, Serio Dominguez, Dr. Dupain, and even IRIS, weren't, and were only added later on for the book.
* Swan and Gonzalo's parents weren't meant to have a bigger role and they were originally nameless. It was only after Philip and Sofía Gonzalo's deaths that they became plot devices for the story to move forward.
* The chapter names are based on actual unsolved cases in the real world, all of which were discussed by BuzzFeed Unsolved. The unsolved cases are still related to the contents of the chapters:
	+ Case #1: Heists of the Pink Panthers: The Pink Panthers are an international network of jewel thieves that have carried out several of the most daring robberies and thefts. The group has about 800 core members, many of whom are former soldiers with extensive military and paramilitary backgrounds. Swan introduces Langley — a thief — in this chapter.
	+ Case #2: The Monster with 21 Faces: In 1984, the organization behind the blackmail letters in the Glico Morinaga case in Japan went under the moniker "The Monster with 21 Faces." This chapter relates to Langley again, as he is a master of disguises, like the aforementioned suspect.
	+ Case #3: Planning Operation Alcatraz and Case #4: The Alcatraz Prison Break: Three prisoners — Clarence Anglin, John Anglin, and Frank Morris — broke out of the maximum-security Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary in June 1962. In Swan Song, Swan helps Langley escape the Wall, a maximum-security prison complex.
	+ Case #5: The Fall of Amelia Earhart: Amelia Earhart, an American aviator, disappeared on July 2, 1937, during an attempt to circumnavigate the globe along the equator. Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, were flying a Lockheed Electra aircraft when they lost contact with radio operators. The IRIS jet Swan and Langley were in lost fuel and they almost crash-landed near Ibiza.
	+ Case #6: The Disappearance of D.B. Cooper: The man who hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727, in American airspace on November 24, 1971, is known by the media as "D. B. Cooper." The disappearance of the man parallels to how Gonzalo was nowhere to be seen in this chapter.
	+ Case #7: Harry Houdini, Escape Artist: Harry Houdini was renowned for his escape performances. His moniker alludes to French magician Robert-Houdin, who served as his magic tutor. When Swan feels she was responsible of the missing IRIS orb, Langley comforts her by saying she is the only one who could "escape" from a situation, much like Houdini.
* Since romance isn't Rin Aguinaldo's forte when it comes to story writing, everytime there are romantic scenes especially with Swan and Langley, Rin needed to shake the cringe off and try to play the scene in her head multiple times to check before moving forward.