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cindersfall · 13 hours ago

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Reading CxC currently (I'm real early on so forgive if any of this gets horribly jettisoned as false afterwards) and indeed Harper's terminal ennui towards her obviously very well off and free circumstances make her a gripping character for me. Especially how, as it's been progressing, you see more and more that she's just outright ignoring or seemingly unable to pay attention to that anyone else would be extremely concerned and attentive about. She works for a drone company. She mentions completely nonchalantly that she knows they bomb innocents and straight up assigns the same importance to this as the fact that her coworkers are wearing tshirts. She keeps talking about the end of history, but history is going on around her—within her hands—and she just doesn't care. Hell, given that she's helping the military drone strike people and the context of the 'history is ended' quote is mentioned in re: the Armenian genocide, you could argue she's the one ending history.

Makes it very interesting to me where this might be going thematically. Also, not only invokes ennui novels to me, as Bavitz has mentioned is an influence, but also all of those comics about people in dead-end office jobs which only have the moral 'work is boring' but only defines work as 'thing you do in a cubicle' and never actually mentions what any of the characters *do* (see: Dilbert and its many cousins).

Harper's circumstance seems to be commenting on that as like, "okay, work sucks, but what is that work? when we aren't just stuck within panels of desksitting and meetings, what is the world like around them?" and then it's complicity in mass murder and the expansion of US imperialism. which Harper *still* has The Dilbert Attitude about. And that you can be numb to your role and feel disconnected from its consequence and have that newspaper strip 'nothing ever happens' perspective but it doesn't prevent you from being an active agent in history nonetheless, whether or not you even notice.

So just think it's interesting from the view of like, yeah, Harper has this insanely privileged stable job and life, but can even that change her own apathetic perspective? And can her apathetic perspective change the realities of her job? Why, why not? I'm still early on so I can't say if all this ties together neatly but I think it definitely is engaging and helps introduce some themes I expect will be expanded upon and revisited more as I continue.

(Also aside, I have considered Harper as a sort of exaggerated parody of the audience surrogate protagonist. She's certainly the most traditional protagonist-y out of any Bavitz work I've started thus far, the guy who doesn't know shit about fuck and thus learns things at the same time the audience does, but her internal narration often skips over things that maybe should be explained, but does take the time to explain things like Twitter, Discord and the concept of commissions that everyone reading would already know. Her gaps of knowledge and the reader's gaps of knowledge just don't line up, making her a sort of subversion to this type. This is interesting to me too.)

im still not sure what the hell was up with part one, all i can think of is that bavitz wanted to warn their readers who, upon reading about the sordid lives of gramm and mimmy might be tempted to think "whew! what a mess! clearly the answer is to touch grass and have a normal life with a 9 to 5 job in a nice apartment, going to bars, dancing with friends doing excercise and hanging out with co workers!" and part one was him preempting that by showing how that world has its own issues, where its insipid, inane, lacking of meaning or purpose, where you are surrounded by people who are either robots or aliens, where eventually you just die and none of that mattered at all.

but then, is that actually true?

more than being authentic, harpers life feels less like a raw depiction of a middle class office worker and more just the artificial obverse face of gramms life. this is presumably what he is running away from, what he imagines his life would be like if you turned all the parameters of it to its diametrical opposite. it makes sense in how its the negative space of everything gramm is, but i dont know if it makes sense as a depiction of something real. and i say this as someone who managed to live the white collar wagiecuck life where i had to hang out with coworkers and got to conventions and do scrum meetings.

or perhaps its an exaggeration of it? a heightened caricature? but if it is its in a way unlike that of the heightened way in which gramms life is depicted, another lifestyle i am familiar with. gramms life feels real in a way harper's didnt.

and what is up with harper anyway, she became completly irrelevant to this story? was her purpose just to be an empty point of view character for the reader to use as an entry point into this world? much like many accuse harry potter of being? if she is she seems like a grotesque parody of it, a satire of the concept of the self insert protagonist.

#txt #cockatiel x chameleon #bavitz

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cindersfall · 3 days ago

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