#but most of my interpretations for it could match this analysis somehow
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[BSD 119] Theory/Analysis
"Other Half"
I think this ties into the 'opposites/complements'. Fyodor realised Dazai had Chuya and now he's about to realise Atsushi has Akutagawa (Light & Shadow). He is looking for his 'other half' quite literally - the sole being that will complement his existence.
Basically 2 halves that complete each other. Like a jigsaw puzzle (except it's only 2 puzzle pieces that only fit each other).
Fyodor's comment "even Dazai was not fit to be my other half" could be interpreted as this: 2 puzzle pieces that seem almost identical and look like they would fit, but when you try to connect them you realise there are small differences to the shape.
Meaning, the pieces - no matter what - are not meant for each other. In this example one piece has it's perfect match - the only puzzle piece that will ever be his other half: Dazai has Chuuya.
That leaves Fyodor searching...again (seriously, this guy has lived over 2k years and he is still at square 1). So for now I'd like to assume that Fyodor's realisation that Dazai couldn't be his other half happened during the prison arc. Fyodor had been 'testing' Dazai to see if he was fit for the 'other half' role.
Also, in the end (just before Fyodor's "death") where Dazai reveals that he's alive and that Chuuya was never a vampire, Fyodor's shock seems more on point if you think of it as the reaction of realising Dazai's other half was Chuuya this entire time.
Next part will be about Atsushi in Fyodor's endeavour for his 'other half' and how it involves Akutagawa:
"So, why can Atsushi NOT be Fyodor's other half?"
Glad you (nobody) asked!
...First I'll go on small rant on why it's impossible for our lovely 'bookmark' to be the 2k+ old rat's other half.
Enjoy my constantly changing mind's thoughts :)
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What's needed to be the 'other half' of anyone?
Synergy
This is the closest and most(?) accurate word to describe the 'other half' business.
In short, 'synergy' is the interaction of two 'anything' that produce a greater effect together rather than apart.
Think how Akutagawa and Atsushi work better and are stronger when fighting together/ complementing what the other needs (Atsushi using Akutagawa's coat/combining abilities is an excellent example of this) rather than when fighting alone.
"So, their abilities being compatible is all they need to be the 'other half'?"
...Well no
Synergy isn't just about abilities, it's about effect.
Imagine you have a fire...ok good, now think of something that would make the flame rage higher - destroy more...do you have it, good
I have no idea what you thought of and it doesn't matter (maybe this whole thing wasn't a good example...). Well I thought of gasoline. You know the "don't add fuel to fire" saying?...ok.
Now think of Dazai and Chuuya for a moment (shouldn't I be talking about Aku n Sushi???)
Hypothetical scenario:
Chuya starts a fire (small, like a campfire or smth).
Then Dazai comes along and pours gasoline where the fire is.
Well...it's interesting right? (you're getting sidetracked!) oh.
Basically that's 'effect' (cause and effect - gasoline and raging fire)
So synergy = effect(a) + effect(b) = cause = effect(c)
(I really hope this makes sense to you who somehow found this)
effect(a) = first half (FH)
effect(b) = other half (OH)
cause = e(a) + e(b)
effect(c) = FH + OH = Best performance, Godly power, and more.
We continue ;-;
I wanted to sidetrack and explain soukoku's synergy/other half bs but I need to get back to our (often forgotten) protagonist and his edgy bf...So off we go!
Ok, finally back on track! ...(did you forget where we left off?)
Here! "So, why can Atsushi NOT be Fyodor's other half?"
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2. Fyodor's obsession with the 'bookmark'/Atsushi's ability.
I could be done by just saying: "abusive relationship" but I won't...I'm too far in to stop now.
Let's start by seeing everything right with 'other halves':
Synergy: When they are alone, they are a pebble, but when they're together, they are a dual piloted mecha that in theory can kill a god...In short, they work best when together.
Ability compatibility/harmonisation
Essentially soulmates (the literal tied-together-by- the-soul type): will only ever have this synergy with their other half. Meaning the full potential of their power will never be understood/unlocked unless done with their other half.
Literal other half: basically all I've said above. Their puzzle piece only fits with their other half.
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⋘ ERROR ⋙
⋘ [Brain] is not responding ⋙
⋘ Restarting... ⋙
Ok...let's get back to the main Question:
"Why can Atsushi NOT be Fyodor's other half?"
I'll get straight to the point:
There is no synergy
They are not destined/fated
They don't help each other
Fyodor only wants to use him as the bookmark
Fyodor is aware that Atsushi is not his other half (he called Atsushi his "remaining option") but is still forcing it upon him.
You can't force someone to be your other half. It's a soulmate thing.
Fyodor is looking for godly power, not a companion/partner (not meant romantically).
Fyodor won't be able to do what he wants anyway because there is no synergy in play here. (maybe he'll use the 'page' to force it, but it probably won't work. He could also try getting Aku to kill him and then steal his body, but I still don't think it'll work)
And the last and most important point is:
Atsushi has Akutagawa
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Akutagawa is Atsushi's other half. Therefore no matter what Fyodor does, he will never be able to fit Atsushi's puzzle piece.
I considered writing down why Aku is Sushi's other half based on their abilities, but maybe it'll be in a seperate post. For now here are the main points:
Darkness and Light
Yin and Yang motif
Like, I'm sure most people are aware, these two might as well be the definition of this motif.
"Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary and at the same time opposing forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts and the parts are important for cohesion of the whole." Georges Ohsawa. (1976). The unique principle : the philosophy of macrobiotics. George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation.
Just realised this is the same as the synergy I was talking about earlier...Oh well, I guess it all ties together in the end! :D
██████████ ᴄᴏᴍᴘʟᴇᴛᴇ!
Here is the TLDR:
Fyodor is looking for some form of ultimate power, so he needs a 'other half'.
Dazai has Chuuya so Fyodor chose to instead pursue a literal God-like being - The Bookmark: Atsushi.
Atsushi's other half is Akutagawa, so Fyodor can't have him anyway.
Yin and Yang is an important motif in this whole other half business.
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Why Trey's a Weirdo
@wordycheeseblob your question on that Trey meme led me to write up a little analysis on Trey! I admit, I got a little carried away with this ^^;
Okay, so! On the topic of Trey being a freak/definitively not "normal", there are a number of different things you could look at. It's up to personal interpretation, but generally, there are some things that point to him being absolutely WEIRD.
The most obvious aspect is the teeth thing. We all know he's, uh, very fond of teeth. While that's odd, there are - in my opinion - other things that make him far stranger.
Trey can be considered kind of freaky because of how perceptive and clever he is, specifically because he hides this fact. He sees what people do, he understands the cause-and-effect of things, and he uses that information to reach his goals - mostly, avoiding conflict. I'd say he's honestly rather Machiavellian. Looking at everything from his Labwear vignette, to his Wish Upon a Star vignette, to Vil's Labwear vignette, Trey is shown to manipulate situations and people around him, in order to keep the world around him in the state he wishes. He's also quietly very violent and vengeful, as suggested with his desire to continue with the Spelldrive/Magift match at the end of Book 2, for the express reason to use magic against those he felt anger towards.
That's not to mention his Unique Magic/Signature Spell - it's perception manipulation, plain and simple. That's both terrifying, and honestly pretty strange. Especially considering how he uses it on his dormmates... DEFINITELY not something a "normal" person does.
Trey also is strange in how normal he appears. He is unusually humble, caring, and competant... to a suspicious level. He intentionally tries to make himself seem "normal" (ex. Trey's Halloween vignette). And he also ASSERTS how normal he is multiple different times. Most of the time, if people genuinely point out that you're eccentric or odd or somehow not normal, many times... chances are you're not the "normal" person you think you are.
There are a few more things that could also be added, but these are my main arguments on Trey's "normal" vs "weirdo" status ^w^ There IS a reason why he's at the top of Idia's (I don't remember the exact phrasing) "Turbo sus vice housewardens to be avoided" list, after all. He's just as weird as Jade or Rook, simply better at hiding it.
#twst#twisted wonderland#trey clover#my darling baker ♡#krenenbaker's :)#I love Trey so much (*´◡`*)♡
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Feel free to answer this whenever you want; I just had to write it down because I've been seeing this analysis in the "Hannibal meta" tags for some time. I came across an analysis, or rather multiple analyses, that blatantly dismiss the Hannigram hug. Despite being a big romance fan and interpreting it romantically, the analyses mostly argued it was a tactic for Will to push them both into the sea. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Additionally, I vaguely recall a post suggesting that Will's 'it's beautiful' remark is actually distracting and disturbing, but I don't recall the details. The gist of the analysis was to not interpret the embrace and the words as romantic but rather as a rejection. Whenever you're free, could you help me understand this? Thank you; you're the best. ❤️
Okay, I'm laughing a little at this because I think...I think...I just might be the originator of the interpretation that Will used the embrace as a tool to throw the both of them off the cliff:
I almost hate to suggest this, but it’s possible the reason Will pulled Hannibal into his arms at the end of “The Wrath of the Lamb” was because he knew that the gesture would be overwhelming to Hannibal because Hannibal is in love with him. With that touch, Hannibal wouldn’t be able to think ahead to what must be coming next. (All that business about touch making us who we are and putting hands on shoulders for authenticity.) Which doesn’t mean that Will wasn’t authentically feeling the moment, but just that he knew exactly why it would work. (x)
I can't find any posts in the hannibal meta tag that you're referring to, either about the embrace or the "It's beautiful" line, and it could be either that I'm just not going back far enough (that tag is way busier than I expected it to be) or that one or the other of us are blocking each other.
So I'm not sure I understand the logic of what you're responding to, but I would say that with both points and with analyses about Hannibal in general, the biggest and most frequent mistake that I see people make is their inability or unwillingness to manage nuance. This is especially problematic in a show that is primarily concerned on the character front with duality and transformation. Hardlining a strongly polarized opinion almost never serves people well.
Both (the romantic and the tactic) can exist, but more importantly...my take on this is not just that both can exist but that neither can exist without the other.
Obviously the tactic couldn't work--it couldn't exist--unless it was overwhelmingly romantic for Hannibal. But it has to be for Will as well because it is only in its authenticity that the gesture has power over Hannibal.
And if it wasn't authentic for Will, then there would have been no need for Will to go over the cliff. The same is true for the "It's beautiful" statement: if he doesn't mean it, then there's no reason for him to die alongside this man who helped him see that beauty. My conclusion from the above post had been:
I don’t think he planned for suicide specifically or that he knew exactly what he expected to happen between himself, Francis and Hannibal (in the sense that I doubt he’d have leaped to his death if Hannibal and Francis had somehow managed to kill each other without involving him), but I think finally accepting his and Hannibal’s relationship as one that’s in love helped ready him to take that dive off the cliff. When the moment comes, when he’s finally killed with Hannibal and is awash in the beauty of that moment, it doesn’t surprise him to the point of inaction. He’s able to draw Hannibal gently into his arms and guide them both into the abyss. The beauty, the love–they simply make his path more clear.
Perhaps less easy to see from the point of view of looking at the finale in isolation is that the romance couldn't exist without the tactic either. More specifically, their interest in loving each other stems from Will's ability to match Hannibal's cleverness, manipulation, and opportunism with his own. That has been the point of the show from the start, from "You and I are just alike" to "I see myself in Will" to "I don't expect you to feel self-loathing or regret or shame. You knew what you were doing and you made your own decisions, decisions that were under your control.... You found a way to hurt me. I wonder how many more people are going to get hurt by what you do" to "Did you think you could change me, the way I've changed you? --I already did."
All of this is their "zero sum game." It is a cornerstone of their relationship that they each respond to the other's manipulation with manipulation, even when it's blatantly transparent. And that push over the cliff was blatantly transparent. Hannibal didn't fight it, he submitted to it as a kind of weird trust fall that started with the catch and ended with a death. Of a very particular sort.
Is this a rejection? I mean, yeah, sure, by one of way of looking at it. Will is taking their fate in his hands and sentencing them to death, which is definitely not sending the message that he's okay with their mountain of sin and iniquity.
But it's also a marriage, in a Shakespearean kind of way ("All...now marry in an instant"), and also in a Christian way: "Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His bride has made herself ready."
I chose that quote because of its direct use of "the Lamb" which the the show instructs us through its title is the lens through which we should view Will's "wrath." Hannibal has already been established in the wife/mother (the woman clothed with the sun) role in the ritual by the Red Dragon, which puts Will in the husband/child role, similar to the dichotomy involving the Christ-child. The show has positioned Will as Christ for at least two seasons at this point, tbf, and in placing Will as Christ, then his sacrifice is by definition born of love. Christ takes human sin on himself to be washed clean through his death for those who believe and submit themselves unto him. For Hannibal this becomes a very literal baptism in the "roiling Atlantic" where "Soon, all of this will be lost to the sea."
So the question then left at the end of the series is not, "Does Will reject Hannibal?" No--he takes Hannibal's sins on himself, as Christ bore humanity's sins on the cross. That has been the story.
The real question is, "How deep and real does Hannibal's baptism go?"
If one views the finale as the definitive end of the show instead of a stepping stone to seasons we'll never get to know (I prefer thinking of it as a stepping stone, to be clear), then I'd say probably the stronger interpretation because of the Biblical undertones and Hannibal's ultimate submission is that dark!Will doesn't win, BUT that Hannigram totally does. And them going to visit some old Testament comeuppance on Bedelia doesn't contradict that.
They called to the mountains and the rocks, 'Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?' Revelation 6:16, 17
WELL, NOT BEDELIA
#bear answers#hannibal meta#hannigram#the wrath of the lamb#a criticism of hannibal criticism#hannibal lecter#will graham#book of hannibal#one mistake the fandom frequently makes#is assuming that hannibal is immutable#he may be the irresistible force#but he is not the immovable rock
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How to type yourself- MBTI version
This sounded so good when I was busy helping someone with their ask. I hope it is as useful as I think it is!
Here are some very basic questions that can get you started:
How do you think you perceive the world around you?
a. Do you directly take in what's there in your surrounding using your five senses, without thinking much about what it could be (Present-> Information)?
b. Do you relate the things in your immediate surrounding to the experiences you've previously encountered(Present -> Past relation -> Information)?
c. Do you find immediate connections in your external environment, by observing things around you? You are more interested in the possibility presented through the information, rather than the information itself. (Present Possibility -> Information)
d. Do you come up with your own predictions or interpretations of the environment you'll happen to be in, by unconsciously observing your immediate surroundings? (Present -> Future Possibility -> Information)
How do you come to conclusions about a situation?
a. With the help of an internal framework, or logic that a lot of people have trouble understanding. This might not necessarily match the societal way of thinking, can seem long-winded and useless, but it has been pretty accurate deducing the situation. (Information -> My logic -> Conclusion)
b. With the help of an external logical framework pre-existing in our environment. You extensively make use of the rules, and frameworks put forth by the society to get what you want, and come to conclusions. Your decisions may focus more on its application and immediate benefit, rather than the theory, or the logic behind it. (Information -> Pre-existing logic to get what I want -> Conclusion)
c. With the help of an internal moral system. What matters to you the most is how you feel about the situation. Does it make you happy? Do you feel guilty making a choice, even if everyone around you seems to be okay with it? Have people called you selfish, because you chose to prioritize your feelings over the groups, while making a decision? (Information -> My feelings on this -> Conclusion)
d. With the help of an external moral system. If a group feels something about it, you are more likely to agree to that feeling. Your feelings are based on how a large group of people feel about it. At the same time, you won't agree to a decision, if you realize that it would negatively affect a lot of people. (Information -> Externalizing my feelings to see what others feel -> Conclusion)
Which of the following do you agree with?
a. The rules, and regulations put up by the society. You don't understand why everything around you must be done cause of a certain logical framework. Sometimes you feel like these rules never take your feelings into consideration. It is hard for you to accept this logic, because of how black & white it could be. You tend to think this external framework inhibits people from doing what they want, and only prefers those that do more "meaningful" or more productive things.
b. Somehow, people always think you are rude. You try to help them by providing a logical analysis of what is wrong with a situation, but they don't want that. They seem to want you to agree with the entire group's opinion about a situation, which you think is stupid. People tend to exhaust you, because you struggle to understand the use of emotions to navigate society. You do wish your decisions are accepted by the society, despite the lack of emotions in it.
c. You have a hard time getting out of your mind. You fear that engaging with your immediate surrounding might introduce a lot more information, that might disrupt the perception you have about your environment. You don't understand people who can just indulge in the moment. Everything for you needs to be well thought out, since you believe that you can't act unless you have a clear view of a future in your head. You tend to speak and think more figuratively, making it difficult for others to understand you, leaving you behind in the process.
d. You struggle with repetition. You don't like it when people constrict you and force you to only think in a particular way. You don't understand why they choose to only stick to that one past experience, when you know for a fact that there are tons of different possibilities. You don't take time to reflect on your past experiences, which means you might end up making the same error more than once. You find it annoying when people choose not to do something, or explore an idea because of some weird past experience that they've had.
e. You don't like it when you are forced to think of other possibilities. Why should you, when you know for a fact that this has always worked? You are open to trying new things, only if you have had an experience with something similar before. Possibilities don't guarantee success, so you would rather pick something that you know would work, than engage in a possibility. People have called you rigid for that.
f. You don't understand planning. It's not that you can't plan, it's just that every information that one needs, is always in front of them. You don't like to contemplate or sit in your head that much, since you don't understand how that'd help you decide on what you want. Furthermore, a lot could change, so what is the point in coming up with a clear focus on the future, if nothing is constant?
g. You tend to have an inner turmoil at times. You know you always make decisions based on how productive or useful they are, but you just wish you did them based on how you feel. You really hope people wouldn't undermine you on making a decision based on your inner morals. You wish people understood that despite your productive, and more applicable decisions, you aren't a monster that doesn't have or value emotions.
h. Just because you agree on a common consensus, doesn't mean you are illogical or stupid. You think it's high time people noticed that the social connections, agreeing and accepting an external framework, all comes from an internal logic. Just because this internal logic doesn't seem "logical", it doesn't mean you don't think. Prioritizing a group's feeling, making sure that they agree with your decision, and sometimes agreeing based on what others think and feel is a logic of it's own. There is a reason why everyone feels the same way about a situation.
#mbti#mbti typing#how to type people#anime mbti#estj#entp#infp#esfp#intp#infj#enfp#esfj#isfj#istj#isfp#istp#enfj#entj#intj#estp#introverted sensing#extroverted thinking#extroverted sensing#extroverted intuition#introverted intuition#introverted thinking#introverted feeling#extroverted feeling#mbti introduction
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"His concept of art makes no sense." Yes, that's been boggling my mind forever. If there were always a transformative aspect to it or something (which I assumed to be the case because of his little arts and crafts table), it'd make sense. But... there isn't really? Hannibal's kills are pretty consistent (TV show, not sure about the books) with his lofty ideals of transformation, elevating things etc. whereas Moonjo keeps confusing me. (Another rewatch for analytic purposes is necessary, huh?)
This has been running through my head for days and still I'm not sure I can give you a good answer (it's not my first time talking about it, but I don't have a very steady opinion on the matter). I'll try to stick to reason as much as I can.
Let's start with what we know. Moonjo has said about what he does: "I break things up, put them together, and recreate".
Now, that could be him talking about his little craft work with jewelry (even though I think the more appropriate word, in this case, would be "take" instead of "break up", since the teeth are material to him, not remainders—he doesn't break the material, he acquires/collects it from a source). That could be it, but based on the final result of his "masterpiece", let's consider he values his work on people more.
Then, the transformative aspect, in this case, it’s not off the table. In his own way, he’s elevating gruesome acts, people’s nature, and murder, all to the level of art.
Since you mentioned Hannibal and is aware of his methods, I think is safe for me to make a brief comparison between them. Consider Hannibal’s tableaus first. The only people involved in the making of them are Hannibal and his victims (his material); then his art pieces are presented to the world, and the rest of the world’s role is of the audience. You may take it in with horror or awe, but the work is done; you’re not supposed to physically interact with his art, because you’re not part of it.
Moonjo’s art, on the other hand, is interactive. He’s an artist who inserts himself in the art he makes (beyond the part where he kills the victims; he dedicates a longer time to them). Other people may interact with it, too (although I would not recommend it). Everybody has partial free will and can make their own decisions, as long as they are in tune with the rules and the desired ending—if they are not, these people are taken (quite literally) out of the play.
I mainly refer to Moonjo’s art as “performances”, because it’s always a single-watch show, with no records to tell they actually happened but the teeth he collects (which I believe are some sort of souvenirs, little reminiscences Why does he put them in rings instead of just keeping them? Good question. I don’t really understand their purpose either.).
It begins with him finding someone to play the main role—usually of a person driven insane before they die (as I believe was the case of the previous people who lived at Eden), but, most recently, the role he tried to fit the foreign guy (the one who used to live in room 303 and had a very concerning diary) and Kihyuk into, but only Jongwoo performed with honors: of the man who had a killer confined under his skin, yet to be freed from his shell (I say “freed” but someone else could say “ripped out”, it depends on your interpretation. The point is Moonjo having a role in their becoming, since it seems important to him that he does, one way or another).
After he chooses this person, there is all the theatrics involving the other tenants at Eden, the manipulation of reality that makes people question what they know, what is right, who they can trust, why are other humans like this and, you know, what the hell in general. Let’s not forget that Moonjo is not only the self-inserted artist, but also the main audience of the show. He enjoys watching people getting confused, losing their cool, being confronted with truths about themselves and with the realities they are afraid of. He wants to know what they will do in the unusual situations he creates for them.
Normal life is so boring, isn’t it? Go to work, make money, look like a perfectly decent human being to appease others. What a (cruel, demanding, annoying) joke. Moonjo has to play the same boring role everyday, like everyone does to thrive in society. He's the neighbourhood's nice doctor outside. But not when he's at the residence. In his society, he chooses the roles, and people have to play by his rules if they want to survive. That’s what it means to be a god in this little paradise called Eden. It may not be a good place for the rest, but it’s perfect for him. The normal world is too dull and lacks flair. But not Eden (as a concept, not the building, of course). A place which came out of a dream, that you’d expect in a movie or in a dark painting, with distorted faces that give you nightmares.
The horror of it all—that’s the real art. Carefully shaped immorality. To him, the route that leads you to your death is as important as the the final act's execution. Perhaps, it is the process what he enjoys the most. Because there is a story behind it, a story he creates himself. You don’t “just die”.
So when Moonjo looks at Jongwoo and says they do something similar, it’s because they really do. They create their own world. Jongwoo’s is a fictional one, a safe environment where he can explore his thoughts and desires without anyone getting hurt (or judging him), and Moonjo’s little world may look more real at first, but it’s all his reflection. Eden, without him, without his vision, is just a place where people go to be tortured and die. Moonjo and his experimentation of human nature give meaning to it. He’s a man with a philosophy... an artistic, romanticized philosophy. He’s not doing it for anyone other than himself and his own appreciation.
He doesn’t care about recognition, or any kind of opinion about what he does, good or bad. Till Jongwoo, he was perfectly fine out of the radar and only sharing what was necessary with the other residents (they would not understand him, anyway).
There is a scene, in the last episode, where Jongwoo asks him “Why do you do this?” and Moonjo responds “There is no reason. That’s what people are made of. It’s your instinct to chew each other out when we’re with one another, then grow tired as we watch them suffer”, and I’m not sure if it was actually him and not Jongwoo’s subconscious self (the hallucination or the alter persona or the version of him that Jongwoo presented to the world in his story I have to worry about so many details because of the last episode Istg the ending only complicates everything), but considering the option he did say that at some point… It kinda matches the “I don’t want to hide myself and I’m tired of everyone's pretenses” mindset, doesn’t it? And there is also another scene (that I’m almost one hundred percent sure truly happened), in which he asks Jongwoo “You had fun when you killed everyone here, didn’t you?”, which supports the idea of him doing it for entertainment (and expecting Jongwoo to do the same). Observe that when he says “(…) then grow tired as we watch them suffer”, he makes use of the word then, which suggests that he is definitely not tired (bored) as he chews them out. On the contrary, he is having fun, as much as Jongwoo must have had when he took his place.
So there are these two motivations that (may) converge when it comes to his art: to create a romanticized, utopian reality, crafted by his hands; and a source of entertainment.
#answered#strangers from hell#Writing this I remembered something I've read somewhere:#[hell is just heaven for bad people]#I have no idea who said that#but I’m using it to explain why Moonjo’s crafted reality is utopian#and not dystopian (as most of us would think)#anon (and anyone else) if you've read all this: thank you. your faith in my madness is appreciated#I know it may have seemed like I romanticized things. But that's what Moonjo does#and it's easier to explain his art when you try to think like him#You may also have noticed I did not talk about the bracelet (only the rings)#this thing deserves its own post (I'm still working on it Istg)#but most of my interpretations for it could match this analysis somehow#not all though#things get a little complicated when you put Jongwoo in the equation#he mattered to Moonjo more than he was supposed to#so it's hard to compare him with his other works#Moonjo wouldn't want us to put them on the same level#and I tried to respect that as much as I could#anyway. if anon or anyone else would like to add to this (no matter how) remember you're always welcome.
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CHAPTER 217 - my comment and analysis (focus on drakemma and mikey)
Please, beware of spoilers if you haven't already read it!
After reading the chapter over and over again, I can finally organize and write down my thoughts. These are just my personal observations so, as always, take everything with a grain of salt.
Firstly, let's focus on the most painful, yet soft details:
It's been two years since Emma's death, yet Draken still keeps in his room this wonderful picture of her and the teddy bear he gave her as a birthday present. And what does this tell us?
It confirms again that Draken has always loved Emma.
It confirms again that Draken still loves Emma.
It goes without saying that Draken's still suffering. And the fact that he keeps tender and beautiful memories of her, such as the teddy bear and the picture where she smiles so beautifully, means that Emma's still his gem and his light, in my opinion, someone he associates with love and innocence.
The fact that now he has the teddy bear probably means that, after Emma's death, Mikey gave it to him, or Draken visited Emma's room and asked Mikey if he could keep it, or maybe it's a matching teddy bear.
Now, let's move on to the very moment my eyes filled with tears: Draken saying he still dreams about Emma, specifically Emma telling him to help Mikey.
What does this tell us? This truly says a lot, if you ask me.
Emma appearing in Draken's dreams means, of course, that she's important to him and he loves her.
But it also means, somehow, that he's still grieving and Emma is still very much present in Draken's heart (she will be in the future, too, in canon).
And last but not least, Emma's always wanted to save Mikey, she stated that herself shortly before her death, and having her say (though in a dream this time around) similar words once again is very touching in my opinion, because with this expedient Wakui reminds us one more time that Emma loved Mikey more than anyone else and he still assigns to her that great power of love which can lead to good resolutions, even though she's not physically there anymore.
Why is Emma the one appearing in Draken's dreams telling him to help Mikey? Does Draken decide to help Mikey only because it's Emma the one "asking"? I'm going to answer these two questions in one shot because in my opinion they're strictly connected.
First off, let's not forget that a dream is just a dream. It's not like the "actual" Emma magically appears in front of Draken as a ghost and manipulates his mind into making him complete tasks. No, just no. A dream is connected to the person's "psychic activity", so it's actually Draken's mind, not Emma per se, who actively suggests him to do something for Mikey through those dreams. Why am I saying this? Because, in my opinion, the dreams Draken talks about in this chapter are very much rooted in the way he himself sees Emma and Mikey. Let me explain: Draken knows that Mikey needs his help and he simultaneously knows that Emma loved his brother dearly, and the result is that his mind processes and puts these two awarenesses together so that at night he ends up dreaming about Emma (the person he associates with love) telling him to help Mikey (something he already wants to do). In my opinion, this is the deeper meaning of those dreams. Draken saying that he can't abandon Mikey is not just him taking action to please Emma. Emma's words in Draken's dreams are actually Draken's mind speaking. He loves his friend, he'd never turn his back on Mikey with such a light heart and without even trying (in the future Draken is disillusioned and gives up on Mikey, but in this timeline it's time to try everything). Even though Mikey makes his friends despise him, Draken still feels the pain of losing him. All of these, not only Emma's words in his dreams, are the reasons why Draken wants to get Mikey back.
I've noticed a general discontent, which I don't understand to be honest. Some people are disappointed because they interpreted Draken's words as him wanting to help Mikey just because of Emma's influence. But I think it's not like that at all. I'd rather say that Emma, in this case, acts as a sort of glueing force. Her romantic love for Draken and her sibling love for Mikey are very much alive in Draken's heart and they serve as a unifying force in a circumstance where Draken is in pain yet still willing to do something for his friend. This dreams (please, don't forget they are just dreams after all) about Emma asking him to help Mikey just give Draken the right push. And don't forget that up until this moment, Draken was still convinced that Mikey hated them all, yet he meant to get him back! Why would he decide to help such a person and to join another gang in order to get said person back if he didn't heartily feel like that? Emma's words in Draken's dreams must not be read alone, they must be read along with Draken's pre-existing respect and love for Mikey. It's only at the end of this chapter, after talking with Takemichi about future Mikey, that Draken actually understands his friend has only been sacrificing himself and this new awareness is just a side benefit and not the real drive, because Draken had already decided to get him back even before figuring out Mikey's actual intentions. So, in conclusion, did Draken decided to help Mikey because Emma is the one asking? My take is that no, that's not the only reason, that's the "push", what drove Draken to shed some light on his own conscience, what Draken needs to finally take action. He wants to save his friend, but before talking with Takemichi and before figuring out Mikey's intention, Draken's conflicted because he thinks Mikey turned his back on them, but he joins Brahman anyway, with the goal of saving Mikey. Deep inside of him, he knows what he has to do and he keeps wondering how and why things turned like that, he's probably obsessing over the whole situation. Here's where the dreams about Emma take over. It's Draken's mind producing those dreams, it's Draken's mind putting those words in Emma's mouth because he knows, he knows helping Mikey is what he himself wants and what Emma would want. That's the reason why he joins Brahman even before realizing that Mikey did everything to protect them all and not just out of resentment. Draken has always wanted to save Mikey, unconditionally.
Look at his bitter smile here. It's heartbreaking. This boy is fed up with all the suffering, he's broken. He lost Emma, he lost Mikey, he lost Toman, he just wants his friends to be safe and happy.
#tokyo revengers#drakemma#draken#ken ryuguji#emma sano#draken x emma#mikey#manjiro sano#tokyo revengers my comment and analysis
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Carbon as a major factor in the origin of life and carbonated water.
Summary: They both think too much and are highly interpretive of their surroundings - objectively, of course. So it is inevitable that they will do the same with their soul mate brands, but things will look really simple on a trip to the zoo, where many carbon-based life forms are gathered, an element that is also part of their trademark formula.
Notes: This is part of the first challenge done on Twitter by @DcstChallenges, with the theme of soulmates. Don't hesitate to join on twitter and participate or support future challenges.
The system of soulmate identification was nothing more than an inefficient diversity of methods with a huge margin of error or at least ambiguity.
Statistics and probability confirmed this, Senku made use of these calculations in trying to understand this phenomenon, ruling out unprovable facts such as the resonance of dreams or thoughts, or slightly questionable ones such as writing on one's own skin and this also appearing on the other person's (how many could be writing on their own skin and inventing that it was their soulmate who had written to them?). Also the countdowns to over a thousand years were also proof of the untruthfulness that came with it.
Rooted to the facts, the mark on Ishigami Senku's right forearm was supposed to be the mark of his soul mate, but to him it was nothing more than the affirmation that he loved science.
At a certain point, he came to think that simply marks like his did not mean that someone was his soulmate, but that they simply had similar enough tastes or interests that they could hit it off. Which would explain why most people who found his markings ended up being a couple.
On his arm was tattooed the formula NaHCO₃, one of the most important compounds in history, to which he gave the meaning of being what proved that his destiny was science.
On the contrary, Asagiri Gen wondered if among his peers there would be someone whose first word they would cross with him would be that compound; would they pronounce it as the formula read, or would they simply say 'sodium bicarbonate'?
Eventually, his peculiar mark of soul mate became just another joke in his extensive repertoire, with the formula actually demonstrating his deep love of soda, with every bottle of cola that fell into his hands being his destiny.
They didn't think about it often, in fact they even forgot they had such a mark as they were so focused on their respective scientific and psychological/magical matters. So that Saturday, the marks on their arms were not foremost in their brains, instead they found themselves early in the morning preparing to leave for the zoo.
Byakuya found it opportune to distract his busy eleven year old son from incessant curiosity from time to time, offering visits that were stimulating and fun enough that Senku couldn't refuse, though there was no way he would have declined because he appreciated the old man's affectionate intentions... sometimes, when he didn't force him to wear a cap because of the sun.
At the same time, with the pressure of socialisation and the opportunity to experiment with his own charisma, Gen spouted witty remarks and questions to uncover those classmates who invited him on this outing. Exploiting his charisma and his wit to make their company more pleasant, until he was able to get a break after the lion section, offering his companions to set aside a table until they returned with snacks.
Had Senku perhaps taken two seconds longer to heed his periphery, he would have continued the tour with his father to leave and subsequently go for a bite to eat together, but inevitably he noticed the wrist of a young man of about fourteen or fifteen.
NaHCO₃
And he immediately asked Byakuya to pause, sending him to sit down to wait, which the elder somehow interpreted as a coy statement that Senku was hungry, so like a good tutor he retreated to get food.
Senku adjusted the straps of his backpack and positioned himself in front of the jet-haired boy, who was arranging a pair of pretentious sunglasses. He thought of a few probing questions, certain that the young man in front of him was also a science buff (What else could that mark mean?).
But Gen won the speak, slightly taken aback. "Are you lost?" he asked at the boy's sudden appearance.
So Senku dismissed all the questions he had thought of, remembering where they were and convinced that Gen was there for academic reasons.
"Elephant gestation lasts about twenty-two months and during elephant pregnancy the calf grows to a hundred or a hundred and fifty kilograms." he said.
‘Huh?!’
Senku counted thirty seconds, in which his determination showed in the way his brow tightened with each passing second. Gen remained expressionless despite the discomfort, inwardly contorting his face in stupefaction ‘What the hell is this...?!’
"Hah~," he regained his composure immediately and smiled. "as interesting as elephants being afraid of bees." replied, assuming this was one of those kids who liked fun facts... until realised he was looking for something more technical. "It's because bees can get into the mucous membranes and delicate parts of the elephant like the trunk, mouth or eyes and sting them. Of course, they can't pierce their skin, but you should know that.
This time it took ten seconds, which made the major sweat, until Senku smiled slyly.
"Not bad." the younger acknowledged.
Immediately, feeling a great deal of encouragement to exchange his extensive knowledge with Gen, he surmised that perhaps such chemical reactions, like the one he was feeling, were the explanation for why people who could not see colours got it when they met the person they matched with. Or how eye colour could change when they met, nothing more than physiological reactions related to hormones and perhaps genetic compatibility.
Interest was also piqued in Gen, who was trying to explain why Senku had taken the seat next to him so deliberately. When would he get the chance to meet someone so slightly peculiar again? The intrigue to know how effective his skill would be with this boy was agitating.
"Are you sure you're not lost." Gen echoed, holding his hands out to his sides in an effort to appear receptive. Senku's body language indicated he was being cautious. "Your parents won't be angry that you got separated from them, animals and information plates are so entertaining that they do this all the time."
Senku denied, lifting his face from the horizon to Gen. "You assume I'm coming with my family when the likelihood of me coming for a school trip is seventy-five percent, considering the offer they have for students on weekends." replied quizzically at that miscalculation.
If this kid had information about the elephants' pregnancy, why was Gen surprised that he also knew that accurate figure?
"You're right from a monetary and practical perspective," Gen said, not doubting that Senku was correct. "but, statistically, weekends are used for family and friends." the boy seemed unhappy that Gen didn't give an accurate figure "I think if you came with friends, you would have been lost together, and you don't look angry enough to explain away an argument."
Because of his sullen nature, Senku looked at him incredulously, slightly annoyed by the blatantly accurate analysis. He attributed his discomfort to the lack of numerical data that could have helped him compare and assimilate the diagnosis.
"Go on." Senku demanded.
Gen's hands continued the expressive mimicry, unconsciously showing his mar. "If it was a school trip, your teacher would have already reported you missing, the same applies if you were accompanied by the parents or relatives of your friends; the responsibility for a child who doesn't belong to them would have already mobilised them. I see you're learning a lot, but the absence of an alarmed teacher" Gen glanced around before continuing. "-means that a school trip is not the case."
"Efficient, a ten billion percent efficient." Senku credited.
All it took was a push. "Or could this be a distress call?" Gen moved slightly closer to add privacy. "Are you running away from someone?" he added in a sympathetic, empathetic tone.
Senku closed his eyes, weary of the other's deductions. "Fine, my father couldn't wait for us to go out to get something to eat, I know exactly where he is."
Gen smirked, proud that he had so neatly broken down the boy's suspicious barriers "So you came to me to entertain yourself in the meantime?" he remarked, considering he was apparently the only one who was also alone in waiting and thus became Senku's target. "You don't seem like the kindly type who would come up with an interesting fact just to entertain others without getting something in return." he mentioned intentionally.
If it was not help the younger man required, was looking for something more, an his restless gaze confirmed it.
The small, calloused hand pointed to Gen's forearm. "Your mark, it means sodium bicarbonate." said.
Among the things Gen expected to hear next was not his mark of a soul mate "I'm aware of that." replied. He wasn't aware of was that wearing a short-sleeved shirt in the heat would attract the attention of a stranger that day.
Senku smiled. The older might be different from what expected in terms of methodology and analysis, but that he knew the significance of his tattoo evidently earned him a ten billion points.
Gen for his part recalled the Monster Hunter player who explained the original use of NaHCO₃ for soda, which was the origin of the joke that, looking the boy straight in the eye, he backed away from wanting to change to an allusion to cheating on chemistry exams.
"Do you know what it means?" Senku asked with abrupt energy. Revolutionary inventions and the many uses of NaHCO₃ flashed through his head.
Unexpectedly, that excitement rubbed off on Gen and he replied. "I know what it means. "
Byakuya didn't wonder at first why Senku had decided to leave his arm exposed for the rest of the tour. The heat was reason enough... until he noticed that his son kept staring at the mark when he always downplayed it.
"In the rest area there was a boy who had the same mark as me." Senku revealed, making his father's jaw drop to the floor.
Sure, it had to be something like that, but Byakuya could never have guessed it was that encounter. And it wasn't his fault either, the last time Senku had been dismayed by his mark, it was when he explained to a stranger in Monster Hunter the uses of NaHCO₃, pleading for the component's inclusion in more video games.
As a result, Byakuya dragged Senku back to the zoo in search of his soulmate, admonishing him for being so insensitive and for letting the encounter go unnoticed without remorse. Disgruntled, Senku reaffirmed that all this talk of love and romance was as tedious as it was counterproductive.
Gen was satisfied on the way to the train station, the talk he had with the boy stretching into a mutually stimulating mix of technical commentary on carbon and life on earth, and a smattering of curiosities and humorous observations that he knew would please the youngster. He had been put to a demanding test, in a way that none of his companions could ever have done.
Which was perhaps why he ignored them until one mentioned:
"Asagiri, that boy you were talking to when we arrived, I saw him before we left and on his forearm he had a mark similar to yours." he alluded hesitantly.
The pieces fell into place... and Gen lost his senses once again.
It certainly wasn't the first and wouldn't be the last time sodium bicarbonate would bring them together under a new manifestation.
#sengen#senku#gen#dr stone#I'M SO BAD WITH ENGLISH#SORRY IF I WROTE SOMETHING WRONG#soulmates#byakuya
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I’M SCARED - ANALYSIS
While Another World will live rent-free in my head forever, I’m Scared makes me want to scream. I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I know that I had to do an analysis of this one as well.
Disclaimer: I’m not telling you what to think. I’m writing my analysis based on how the song is presented. You are free to make up your own mind about it.
Part I: This is personal
Since I can’t find an interview where Brian talks about I’m Scared, I’ll discuss how he sees himself as a songwriter and how that influences the song. In an interview about his album Back To The Light, Brian says:
"(...) I can only function if a song means something to me regarding human relationships. I like to write about things that are personal, rather than about politics and other wider issues.”
He labels himself as a personal writer who, above all else, writes about human relationships. That is important in the context of I’m Scared, as it allows me to assume that the voice in the song belongs to himself, not a made up character.
Brian worked on this album during a period of massive emotional turmoil for him, while he was struggling with his mental health and thought his life was in ruins. That, as you will see, also relates to this specific song.
Edit / addition:
Since writing this analysis I’ve come across an interview where Brian (very briefly) talks about the song: GW: "I'm Scared" is an interesting one.
MAY: Yeah, that goes back a long way. I kept doing different versions of that, as I kept finding out that I was scared of more and more things. And I figured that most of us are. We just keep it inside. I think it's good to let all that stuff out sometimes. Do a bit of screaming. — Guitar World Magazine, January 1993.
Here, Brian says that the song took a long time to write, but he also “confirms” that it’s about his own fears. In other words, this song is about himself.
Furthermore, Brian has revealed (on his live stream last week) that ‘I’m Scared’ is the first song he wrote for the album. Do what you will with that information.
With all of this in mind, I’ll break down the lyrics and the story that they tell.
—
Part II: The Story
You take me to the party You put me on the stand You're pumping up my heart To the beating of the band You toss it in the air And you don't care where it lands You take it, you break it You're hurting me There’s a clear dynamic set up here. There’s a ‘me’ (Brian, presumably) and a ‘you’ (someone else), but this dynamic is framed in a certain way right off the bat because the person he’s with is doing everything, and doing them to Brian (’You take me to the party’; ‘You put me on the stand).
The phrase, ‘Pumping up my heart’ seems to be a metaphor for attraction and the heart-racing sensation that it often causes. Then after ‘pumping up [Brian’s] heart’, this person carelessly plays with it and breaks it, hurting him. This person that he’s with is in control while Brian is presented as passive and, frankly, rather powerless in comparison.
Because I wasn't prepared I couldn't go where you dared You got my whole soul bared I never knew that you cared (No it just ain't fair) I’m scared (x13)
This chorus more or less explains the imbalance in control by implying that it relates to bravery. Brian doesn’t consider himself as daring as the other person, which would make him less able/likely to take control in the dynamic.
Also, ‘you got my whole soul bared’ is interesting because it implies that this person understands Brian on an intimate level in spite of him not opening up; Brian didn’t intentionally bare his soul to them but they can somehow see it regardless.
You take me out to dinner And you swallow me whole You're nothing but a sinner With a dark black soul I figured I could handle you But I'm just a toy You're getting bolder and bolder You're just a bad bad boy
This verse is the game-changer. It describes that Brian went out to dinner with whoever this person is. The difference in bravery/control between them is consistent, but the metaphors that describe the dynamic here are not emotional as they are in the first verse. They are sexual. ‘You swallow me whole’, ‘sinner’, and ‘toy’ have those clear connotations, which heavily implies that there is a sexual aspect to this dynamic.
(Moreover, being swallowed whole alludes to a... very specific sexual act and I frankly don’t know what to do with that information, but I’ll leave it here: It’s a blowjob, folks.)
Now, let’s address the elephant in the room, shall we? It’s that last line. It changes everything about this song.
Brian is singing about a man.
The ‘you’ is explicitly gendered as male. That is non-debatable. Moreover, gendering the ‘you’ in this verse, specifically, is a bold move because it includes so much sexual language. Brian describing himself as this man’s toy, singing about being ‘swallowed whole’ and being unable to handle him... It alludes to a sexual relationship, and I didn’t read into that. That’s just how it’s presented.
What you staring at You're such a scaredy cat When I know that I just can't fight it So what you staring at You're such a scaredy cat Because I'm only scared that maybe I might like it
Edit / Section changed due to new interpretation:
This bridge is interesting mostly because of the way Brian sings it. The bolded lines are sung in a tone that’s different from that of the unbolded ones. It creates the feeling of two people speaking to each other. This makes even more sense when you look at the lines themselves. “What you staring at, you’re such a scaredy-cat” seems like a taunt, whereas “When I know I just can’t fight it” and “Because I’m only scared that maybe I might like it” are framed like responses to this taunt. This paints a picture of the man taunting Brian for staring/being scared, and Brian “responding” to this with the bolded lines.
Now, as far as the meaning behind the bolded lines goes, the ‘it’ is unspecific. However, when you view them in the context of the previous verse, which has a very sexual tone, I think it’s safe to assume what it is that he can’t fight. What he’s scared of liking. It’s about attraction, and it’s about sex.
After this fear of ‘maybe liking it’ has been sung, the song breaks off into a section in which Brian sings about everything that frightens him. When you listen to the recording, the fears are thrown at you in a rapid pace and it’s difficult to hear them as they pan from ear to ear, but here are some of them:
I'm scared to change, I'm scared to stay the same I'm so scared I want to die I'm scared of dying I'm scared of my thoughts I'm scared of being found out
The bolded fear ‘I’m scared of being found out’ is the last thing you hear when you listen to the song because Brian screams it; it’s louder than anything else. But overall this whole section is a major red flag for his mental health deteriorating; it presents fear as a constant whirl in his mind. Each fear seems to produce yet another fear until it becomes a spiral of sorts.
(Interestingly, the spiral seems to grow out of his fear of ‘maybe liking it’.)
Following this section, the lyrics jump back to the story of Brian and the other man:
You take me to the limit You take me to the brink You left me with the blues When you found me in the pink You know just what you're saying But your metaphors stink I gotta lick it,or stick it Or this is the end
Edit / section changed due to new interpretation:
As we return to the verse structure, we also return to the dynamic, with the lines “You take me to the limit, you take me to the brink.” These illustrate that the man has taken Brian to “his limit”, probably emotionally, and “to the brink,” which, again… if you look at it in relation to the language and connotations of the previous verse… it can be seen as a, um, sexual brink, if you know what I mean.
“You left me with the blues when you found me in the pink”. As @iwilltrytobereasonable pointed out in the comments, in the pink is an old metaphor for being in your optimal state of health and wellbeing. The blues is a self-explanatory contrast to that. To me, this line is Brian saying, “You met me at a time where I was doing well but, because of what you did to me, I’m now depressed. So fuck you.”
Now, “I gotta lick it or stick it, or this is the end” is still mysterious to me, but as someone pointed out in the comments, it might be a form of ultimatum. Because this dynamic is written as sexual, I’m gonna assume that the ultimatum is, too. Since Brian “couldn’t go” where the other man dared, does this refer back to that? Was he given the option to either “lick it” or “stick it”, but couldn’t go there so it just ended? To me, that makes the most sense.
The Hidden Lyric:
Before I move onto the melody, there’s one last thing that I want to talk about, which is a hidden lyric toward the end of the track. By “hidden” I mean that it wasn’t included on the lyric sheet, but you can hear it, muffled in the background. As Brian sings, “I’m scared, I’m scared” repeatedly, there’s a single time where you can hear him quickly yell “Maybe I’m wrong!” afterward.
So the hidden lyric is:
I’m scared (Maybe I’m wrong!)
And… this line kills me because, keeping everything in mind about the narrative of this song and the emotions that it discusses… What might Brian be wrong about?? And why does that scare him so badly?? I think it’s pretty self-explanatory but it seems to be an acknowledgement that he might be wrong… about himself.
With all of That out of the way, I want to end by discussing the melody of the song quickly.
—
Section III: The Melody
If you read the lyrics to this song before listening to it, chances are that you’re gonna be thrown off as soon as you press ‘play’ because the melody and overall tempo of the song does not match the content of the lyrics at all. It’s a fast-paced, guitar-heavy beat that makes your head spin. The singing is aggressive and full of confidence, which immediately diminishes the heavy words that are coming out of Brian’s mouth.
Because the beat is so overwhelming, Brian can sing ‘I’m scared’ about 50 times (or more, I haven’t actually counted) in the song and it won’t really land because the rhythm is too distracting. The rhythm tells you something else, it says, ‘bang your head and forget about it’
I definitely find it alarming that he sings about such intense fear in a nonchalant way, in a way that almost forces the listener to look past it. Why would Brian choose to do this? I dare suggest that it is to present this song as the ultimate case of irony. It’s as if he’s saying, ‘I’m pouring my heart out to you and you don’t even notice because I’m singing like everything’s fine. I’m pretending that everything is fine.”
—
Final Thoughts:
So, why does this song make me want to scream?
Well, I think that should be obvious by now. I know this analysis could make some people uncomfortable but, frankly, I don’t care. I don’t think it’s appropriate to ignore the obvious implications of the song’s narrative simply because we don’t want to question what we think we know about Brian’s sexuality. The fact of the matter is that I’m Scared is about a man, and not only that, it is intentionally sexual in tone. That, I think, is non-debatable. What it means, well... As I said, you are free to ponder that on your own.
#let's be honest i could write a thesis on this song#not tagging this post because i don't think i should put it in the tags#but please feel free to reblog and like and comment if you want :)#or better yet: send me a message so i can ramble about it more#my analysis //#edited: 8/12/2021
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headcanon : more tva lore, but this time what mobius does specifically. and maybe a general timeline on whatever tf is happening with him up until the tv series. you know the rules, folks. if canon says otherwise sometime in the future, things will change.
warning: and PLEASE DO NOT REBLOG as this is a private headcanon i have that applies specifically to my own portrayal and interpretation.
division. mobius describes his job scope as “pursuing dangerous variants” but make no mistake, this man is a scholar. he’s been described as an academic many times by show creators and mr h/iddleston himself, and how i see this can be interpreted as, is him working under a specific Behavioural Study of Dangerous Variants Division — the quickest way i can describe his job is likening it to the Behavioural Analysis Unit in FBI, aka it uses behavioural analysts to assist in criminal investigations.
role ( on-field ). that being said, while mobius is authorised and has gone out for field-duty many times, the procedure to which one may operate while on-field falls under the head of the minutemen. which, in this case, is hunter B-15, whose team has been assigned under mobius. mobius is not a hunter. he does not have the on-field experience as a hunter, but he’s crucial in terms of analysing the crime scene and is the head of many investigations even prior to sylvie’s case.
minutemen. when mobius was transferred into the TVA, he did not have his start as a minutemen. this obviously contrasted ravonna’s story because we saw how she went from being a minuteman ( a hunter ) and climbed up ranks until she was a judge. mobius has always been “recruited” as a scholar, and while he’s excellent at it, it does gives him the disadvantage of not being as combat-ready as most of his coworkers are.
behavioural study of dangerous variants division. so mobius particularly studies variants that has a high nexus rate events. these means “characters” that tend to stray from their set path more than others. he’s studied thanos ( aka why there were many infinity stones lmao ), shang qi’s mom, a few english poets, known conquerers like mehmed II and known inventors, nikola tesla etc.
variants he’s studied - loki. loki has always had a suspiciously high nexus rate events — but more than it was sinister ( although there were few cases wherein a loki was truly unhinged ), loki’s nexus rate events had always happened simply because ( for the lack of better term ) loki does whatever the fuck he wants. so this means, alligator loki who ate the wrong neighbor’s cat. or that one loki who decided to elope cause they fall for that one person they met by chance. a loki who walked the wrong path that one time. mobius has always been fascinated by this. but it wasn’t until sylvie’s case was confirmed to be a direct cause from an L-variant that he finally sat down and studied loki completely.
variants he’s studied - others. mobius finds stephen strange particularly hard to capture. they’ve finally developed a protocol for him, but even that took a while. B-15 likes the challenge though. the first variant mobius managed to convince ravonna to have around for a behavioural study when the variant wasn’t particularly dangerous or has a high nexus rate event is a variant of tony stark. he finds tony stark very charming, if not a little bit arrogant ( that’s somehow attractive too ) ; was almost convinced by tony for a one-night-stand. capturing carol danvers left a lot of dents to the agency’s walls. variants like nebula and rocket never quite could get pass the robot-detection gate.
other mindless facts.
# other than loki, wade wilson has a matching ( if not higher ) nexus events rate. he’s always somewhat known about the TVA beforehand, and mobius and wade is on first-name basis even though mobius is sure that each variants of wade has never met him before.
# other than 1130, the variant that struck most and stayed with mobius is a variant of loki who’d only recently become a mother and was captured a few weeks after the birth. mobius tried hard convincing ravonna that loki and the child should stay, extending their lives, by helping with his study. ravonna refused ( for good reasons; because that loki variant showed an extremely high capture rate, which meant they’re very deadly and significantly dangerous ), and for a long while, mobius can’t open an L-variant file or look at it.
# the capture of celestials and eternals are under a different division altogether.
# sylvie’s variant number is L-0734.
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How would you rate Sabatini's biography on Cesare? I love it, but I wondered if you had any other (English) recommendations? Also take a shot everyone Sabatini interrupts his narrative to talk about how hot Cesare was sfhttjjggj
I think as far as Cesare bios goes, I’d rate his biography 7/10. I have conflicted feelings with Sabatini’s work, because I love his writing style, his sense of humour is great, it matched mine right away, and he has such a genius way of pointing out the hypocrisy and double standards applied to the Borgia family. He cleverly shows how much of the Borgia myths and general accusations thrown their way are connected to politics (shocker!) and to their Spaniard, and less nobly origins. Not to mention how he exposes the historical bias against Cesare, and general dishonesty with him, from primary sources to modern historians such as Gregorovius, that paragraph Sabatini wrote about him was truly a moment in the Borgia historical literature for me, I'm glad he said it. I just wish he hadn't fallen so hard for the Machiavellian Prince archetype about Cesare. The more I re-read his work, the more it becomes clear to me he took Machiavelli’s writings about Cesare at face value, fell in love with the image presented by him, and then proceeded (whether consciously or unconsciously) to apply this interpretation, one that has its limitations and flaws on their own, to all the facets of Cesare’s character, and all the other aspects of his life lol, which resulted in this too strict, robot-like persona. There is no nuance, no deepth to Cesare’s Sabatini, he exists only as the stoic, unscrupulous, unfeeling Machiavellian Prince. It’s a mistake I see being made time and again by most of Cesare’s biographers, many who follow Sabatini too blindly, or just Borgia biographers in general tbh, but Sabatini’s bio acutely illustrates this particular issue better than the other bios I’ve read I think, (with the exception perhaps of Beuf’s “work”, who somehow managed to outdone Sabatini in this Machiavellian presentation of Cesare, taking it to new extremes with super dramatic and misleading writing, for the most part). And you know, I always get the impression Sabatini had his own conflicted feelings in regards to The Prince, and its clear-headed, pragmatic politics. He seemed to admired it and feel repulsed by it at the time. And those mixed feelings sometimes ended up leaking into his view and writing about Cesare and some historical events, and what he believed had happened (e.g., the take of Urbino), and I find that very interesting. In any case, the point is: Sabatini’s Cesare is unrealistic, and it constantly enters into conflict with what Sabatini also presents as evidence for his history. I mean, he insists throughout the book in reaffirming Cesare was a utter egoist, cold man. Only moved by his ambition and thirst for power. He was incapable of kindness, or of being considerate with others, of feeling compassion, without ulterior motives involved. All of his actions were always calculated to only serve his own interests. Everyone around him were pawns to be used and discarded when they were no longer of any use to him. We are to believe he was a cynic, a block of ice, essentially. We are also to believe he never had genuine emotional bonds with anyone, much less with women. Women were interchangeble to him. Sabatini was convinced he was a man incapable of having a sentimental side, of loving or of having any connection with them beyond the physical aspect. But then, in between chapters, sometimes pages, he also tell us how Cesare seems to have deeply grieved the death of his cousin, Giovanni Borgia, whom he refers as Mio Fatre in his letters. He gives an honest, if quick, account about the marriage and relationship between Cesare and Charlotte d’Albret, in which Cesare’s obvious feelings for her can be seen, as well as his kindness and respect towards her. Sabatini admits the evidence shows they may well have loved each other, and that when leaving Charlotte in charge of all his affairs in France, as the governor and administrator of his lands and lorships there, as well as his heiress in case of his death, Cesare shows “his esteem of her and the confidence he reposed in her mental qualities.” And of Cesare’s policies and behavior as its ruler in the Romagna, it reaches a point where his mere self-interest doesn’t quite alone explain his relationship with this romagnese subjects and many of his decisions. It undermines Sabatini’s claim that it was for show and for his political gain. Last but not least, what is one supposed to make of the hypothesis he posits to the what I like to call, the Dorotea affair? This event is the peak of his contradiction and his mental gymnastics, because to be sure, his hypothesis is not far-fetched. I will concede I thought it was the first I read his bio. But over the years, between carefully separating fiction from history and reading other sources, then going back to his bio, I recognized his hypothesis is one of the plausible ones, certainly more plausible than the official sensationalistic narrative of Cesare simply abducting the innocent maiden Dorotea out on a whim, to satisfy his lust, (the fact Borgia scholars are still repeating this narrative with a straight face is beyond my comprehension), I can see Cesare doing what he proposes, it def. aligns better with my understanding of him, and all the historical material I’ve read about him and his times, however, this hypothesis is completely irreconcilable with Sabatini’s Cesare. So, he says one thing, then he says another that’s incompatible with the first thing he said, and then proceeds to show evidence that either puts into doubt or confirms the opposite of his characterization of Cesare. And that’s only considering the historical info he dedided to include in his bio. If he had included some of the info Alvisi presents in his Duca di Romagna, a work he must have checked out, if not read it all, given one of the languages he spoke was Italian, and Alvisi’s bio is the best and most authoritative historical work made to date about Cesare and his life, I believe he would have struggled a lot more than he did. It just seems like he enters into a trap of his own making. Turning an already difficult task more difficult than it needs to be, honestly. Ironically, his stance is as messy and contradictory as the aforementioned Gregorovius in his Lucrezia Borgia, where you also have two Cesare(s): the one he sees and wants to present versus the one that emerges from the his own writing at times and historical material he himself exposes it. Overall, his work frustrates on some fronts, and I think it could have been better. It has its faults, some the typical faults/vices fond in Borgia biographies, others very much his own, but nevertheless I have a fondness for his bio which I do not share with others bios on Cesare, or the Borgia family. It is the only bio in the English language I find myself reading again and again, and the one I would put it first as better, or more decent, in this language about Cesare. I admire his honesty, and his bravery in challenging a little bit of Cesare’s dark legend, and the baseless accusations attached to his name. I appreciate what he tried to do, the very least of what I expect from a serious historian when dealing with figures as infamous in popular imagination as Cesare and Rodrigo Borgia. There is no denying his work was one of the main works which advanced Cesare’s historical literature, and the approach to his figure. Moving slightly from the literary, colorful, villain-like character of the Italian Renaissance, towards starting to be more seriously studied as a historical figure properly. And oh my god, yes, interrupting the narrative to talk about how hot Cesare was. It’s funny you mentioned that, because I don’t remember him doing that so much (time for a re-read!), but that's one of the characteristics of the Borgian/Cesarean historical literature heh. I’m yet to read a bio where authors do not feel the need to take a moment to talk about how hot he was, some even a poetic way lol, it’s so amusing, and always the one thing I know I will agree with them, if nothing else. Also, I think Borgia bios have huge potential for drinking games! Like: take a shot of tequila every time Cesare gets badmouthed for no reason, or baselessly asserted guilty of questionable murders, fratricide, rape, and abduction. Or when Juan and Cesare envied and hated each other narrative is repeated. Or when Guicciardini, Sanuto, Cappello and Giustinian are uncritically used as credible sources for Rodrigo and Cesare. Every time Lucrezia gets painted as the Good Borgia, the pretty, passive doll who was the helpless victim of the terrible Borgia men. Or when authors get uncomfortably shippy with the Cesare/Lucrezia relationship resulting in exaggerated claims such as: Lucrezia was Cesare’s only exception, or they were unusually close as siblings, etc. And of course, whenever Cesare’s hotness and allure has to be talked about dsjdsjsj, the list is long, and I think it will get you drunk very quickly. I know I couldn’t keep up back when I was reading Sacerdote’s bio, and I was drinking wine so. As for recs in the English language, I would say Woodward’s bio has its value in terms of sources and historical documents. I also think his analysis about politics, about Cesare’s goverment in the Romagna, and also concerning the conclave of 1503 are generally good. His last five, four chapters are the best ones imo, so if you are interested in these points I mentioned, it might be worth checking out. I would just open a caveat saying that as far as a biography about the person of Cesare Borgia is concerned, it is weak and to be read with a grain of salt. I was mostly unimpressive by his work on that front, and I thought about quitting time and again. He likes presenting himself as the impartial historian, (a big red flag that only makes me twice as cautious when reading any historical work) writing in a mostly sober tone, but of course like all scholars, all people, he has his bias, and they do come to surface from time to time. He displays an peculiar antipathy and ill will towards Cesare at times, which leads to harsh, confusing, unsubstantiated claims about his character and some of the events about his life. In contrast, you can see he is more benevolent and fair towards Rodrigo Borgia, and a constant thought I had while reading his bio was that he obviously chose the wrong Borgia to write a bio on. Had he chose Rodrigo as his Borgia subject, I believe we would have had a pretty good bio about him and his papacy.
#ask answered#anon ask#cesare borgia#césar borgia#house borgia in history#auth: rafael sabatini#long text#i thought many times about making this shorter#but as it is said: yolo djsdjsdjs#i have many thoughts about sabatini#and the influence of his Cesare in followers scholars' works#i also think he had an interesting mind of his own#and i think that's part of the reason why i love his writings so much#despite their flaws#so yeah
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Book!Geralt/Netflix Jaskier Update
Hi Readers,
So, it’s been over a month since I updated Posada Remix, my Book!Geralt/Netflix Jaskier fic. But I posted Chapter 6 today.
It is probably my most popular fic, and I don’t normally take this long to update. But I’ve gotten some negative feedback about the concept. I’m already neurotic about my writing, so that made me nervous about posting. But I’ve also gotten enough support that I’m determined to push through it.
However I do feel the need to express where, in my heart, this fic comes from.
First I’ll start with explaining the negative feedback.
The negative feedback has been around the concept of ‘shipping’ show Jaskier with any other version of Geralt. There is a perception out there that mixing and matching Jaskier/Dandelions and Geralts is an attack on Netflix!Geralt.
I received a novel length comment about how I was Wrong to write a fic that people enjoy in part at least because Jaskier is treated with more affection than he is treated in the show.
The comment was all about how Jaskier is Not That Great Actually and What About Netflix!Geralt.
There was also a tumblr post getting a lot of notes saying to “fuck that noise” about this concept. Again, the perception being that the fic concept is somehow mean or uncaring to Netflix!Geralt and favors Jaskier. I have seen a few tweets to that affect as well.
There are so many ways that argument could be taken apart logically, but rather than do that, I’ll just share where my inspiration came from, and it wasn’t from any place of hate for any characters.
I am reading through the books and the first thing that struck me about Book!Geralt was how sensitive he is to people asserting that he is a mutant or unfeeling. He really dwells on it and I feel bad for him!
His friendship with Dandelion is AHMAZING but Netflix Jaskier just has this wonder and adoring quality to him that I thought would be LOVELY for Book!Geralt to experience.
I LOVE interdimensional stories (watch Counterpart, pls. Or Fringe.), and thought this would be an incredibly fun, rich opportunity to play with these worlds. And I couldn’t resist the opportunity to put these two together.
It is all for love and all for fun.
Yes, many fans, including myself, wished the Netflix show showed a more affectionate side of Geralt in their relationship, such as can be seen in the books, game, and in Hexer. And yes, mixing and matching the dimensions like this can be a way to create the warmth and tenderness that we wanted to see.
But interpreting that as some negative attack on Netflix!Geralt requires a leap that simply isn’t based in reality, at least for me.
I’ve written close to 200k words in various fics about our Netflix grumpy snowman and I would be very hard pressed to find the energy for that if I didn’t love him and find him fascinating. And if he has to sit out the first part of my Posada Remix fic, he’s going to be just fine.
Anyone who is still offended by this fic is more than welcome to read one of my many fics about just Netflix!Geralt. I suggest Paying Attention or Roses are Red for soft!Geralt. (ETA: Or Offerings, or Marbles, or Paying Attention, or The Song of Geralt, or It's a Trap, really honestly, any of them)
As for the criticisms, I’m not against analysis and critique. But I wish people could discuss fic ideas they want to see without shitting on the ones already out there. I wish they could refrain from vilifying others based on the fun fictional fantasy hijinks they enjoy.
I know that a lot of the hate fic writers get is in bad faith and should be ignored. It is often shippers trying to score points against their NoTp or whatever. In fact, after earnestly replying to the comment I received, I ended up deleting the whole thing. (thank you to the lovely supportive writers in the Jaskier X Witchers server that talked me down)
But I love these characters enough that I still felt the need to clarify, in case there were actually any concerns people were making in actual sincerity. I’m a ridiculously earnest person at the end of the day.
So there you have it, I’m a multishipper having a good time playing with different versions of characters I love. It’s a simple as that.
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What's going on with Wally Franks in your AU? I had trouble following the game, and the wiki seems to say that he quit the studio and retired without ever learning its darkest secrets, but I think you have him as one of the escapees (turned into a Boris?)
Okay I have a lot of rambling thoughts about the ending of the game if youre curious but I'll stick those at the end. As far as Escape AU goes:
Yes, Wally was a Boris clone! He did not fully get outta there; he's the murdered Boris at the very beginning of the game. Dying doesn't really seem to stick for ink creatures in the Studio, so he was able to come back -- but since he spent most of his time in the Studio [glados voice] really busy being dead, he doesn't have the years of trying to survive an inky hell that the others have; he just has that one really bad time where he was turned into a cartoon and murdered, and some weird and probably equally upsetting memories of briefly waking up from death. He never wandered the studio and was never sent to the puddles, so he has some real bad nightmares/insomnia now but is otherwise doing okay in his day-to-day life, and has no trouble speaking. He's probably able to hold down a job before too long!
Mostly Wally is there because I wanted Wally to be there, and I haven't fully sorted out the LORE for him in Escape AU (I don’t know if he never left or if he got lured back), but if you're interested in trying to sort out some of the canon associated:
So basically what I've gathered as someone who is obsessed with bendy and has watched all the cutscenes and all that but hasn't actually played the game and was real late to the fandom, TAKE WITH A GRAIN OF SALT:
- The game leaves things a bit ambiguous
- There were, in the original game, a lot of hints that the Boris you befriend in the Studio is Wally. (He’s sorta handy, kinda cowardly, likes food -- and we get an audiolog dedicated specifically to letting us know that Wally will straight up steal your cake off your desk; they’d be a good match!) There's several reasons it makes a kind of narrative sense and it was the prevailing theory before DCTL came out, but it was never confirmed one way or another.
- Two smaller things I’ve seen connecting Wally to Boris: the wrench you pull out of a Boris' chest, and the "Who's Laughing Now" written on the wall beside him being a really neat hint once you get to the audiolog where Wally complains that everyone is acting too serious for a cartoon studio and should crack a smile now and again. (this is most of why I went for the dead Boris as Wally)
- in Dreams Come To Life, Buddy is (spoilers) transformed into a Boris at the end, and it's commented on how perfect he is, implying he may be the "perfect Boris" you befriend in the game. The Boris in Boris and the Dark Survival is referred to outside the game as "Buddy Boris" and, since he has a safehouse, there's an implication that BatDS bridges the gap between DCTL and BatIM. The fact that Henry keeps affectionately referring to Boris as "buddy" becomes a fun retroactive “coincidence,” but also all the various implications that Wally sure would have made a good Boris now go nowhere. It ended up feeling like a retcon.
- in the end of the game you can see letters to Joey from Allison and Wally, implying they (and Tom) are alive and well and continued their lives after the Studio shut down, which is interesting since, uh, Allison and Tom are also now toons???
- there's a popular interpretation (called the Story Theory I think?) which I encountered in Adobe-Outdesign's analysis, that what this apparent contradiction means is that the "sketch dimension" (the cartoony world where most of the game takes place) is actually a story created by Joey using the Ink Machine, populated with alternate/fictional versions of the employees of the studio. So the Real Allison left, but in this story Joey’s writing, she didn’t. Henry-the-protagonist might not be the real Henry Stein; instead he's just one of Joey's characters, based on his IRL friend. Etcetera! So in real life, Wally retired, as his letter indicates. But those fictional versions are still real people, real consciouses, because the real ink machine that Joey really has hidden in his apartment is bringing Joey's story to life. I like the interpretation a lot as a take that fits the game well but also I have no idea where DCTL fits in this. IS DCTL PART OF JOEY'S STORY OR DID ALL OF THAT REALLY HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE??? IF THERE'S A LOOP IN DCTL (as slightly implied by Dot) ITS A STORY RIGHT??? WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS FRANCHISE
- the alternative interpretation to this is that somehow Allison and Tom (at least, if not others) got lured back to the Studio after she sent her letter -- after all, she's still keeping in touch. I tend to assume this is what’s going on in most fanfiction and AUs that have any possibility of escape, since you’d presumably want the employees to actually be themselves rather than Joey Drew's Weird Friendfiction brought to life. The impression I've gotten in this version is that sending them to the Bendy Dimension gives Joey control over the script there, so instead of creating people for his fictional retelling, he's forced his actual employees to play out this story, but I don't know that I've seen this fully spelled out
SO THATS, UH, SOME OF THE RELEVANT BACKGROUND INFO I THINK
Before running into the much more coherent Story Theory, my own attempts to make sense of the ending went in the exact opposite direction; that rather than Joey's apartment being a brief step out of the Story and into the Real World, that Joey's apartment is something of a dream, where Henry and Joey, of course, imagine the world that they know, even if they're not actually in it anymore.
I also REALLY liked the theories linking Joey to Bendy -- Bendy may have been created without a soul, but that doesn't mean one can't get, y'know, shoved in there... or that maybe a soul could be possibly stolen and absorbed by a creature who lacks one........ yknow..... it could happen. I like the idea that Ink Bendy's shifts in behaviour towards Henry reflect Joey's conflicted feelings towards his old friend (which is still there in the Story Theory version, it's just symbolic instead of literal).
So you defeat Beast Bendy and suddenly Joey is there, finally, in a place that looks like the real world but certainly doesn't feel real. The calendar in Joey's apartment cycles through the month of August but never moves past it, and I can't shake the idea that Joey could be just as trapped in the cycle as Henry, also never quite deviating from his own script, only briefly appearing in a memory of his own apartment when Henry releases his soul from the demon he created.
I don't know that this could ever shake out enough to be any sort of Actual Theory, but in my brain it's still kind of the background of Escape AU because it's a premise that makes it possible for the employees to actually be themselves. So, the cartoon studio is real, but the things that show up in Joey's apartment might be hit or miss as to whether they're a memory from Joey's real apartment, or if they're imagined wishful thinking on Joey's part.
#i know you have questions you always do#we all write on the walls#IM SORRY FOR SO MANY WORDS IM INCAPABLE OF BEING SUCCINCT#Escape AU#wally franks#i am not 100% sure i know what im talking about but that's okay
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Holy Hell: 3. Metanarrativity: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship? aka the analysis no one asked for.
In this ep, we delve into authorship, narrative, fandom and narrative meaning. And somehow, as always, bring it back to Cas and Misha Collins.
(Note: the reason I didn’t talk about Billie’s authorship and library is because I completely forgot it existed until I watched season 13 “Advanced Thanatology” again, while waiting for this episode to upload. I’ll find a way to work her into later episodes tho!)
I had to upload it as a new podcast to Spotify so if you could just re-subscribe that would be great! Or listen to it at these other links.
Please listen to the bit at the beginning about monetisation and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to message me here.
Apple | Spotify | Google
Transcript under the cut!
Warnings: discussions of incest, date rape, rpf, war, 9/11, the bush administration, abuse, mental health, addiction, homelessness. Most of these are just one off comments, they’re not full discussions.
Meta-Textuality: Who’s the Deleuze and who’s the Guattari in your relationship?
In the third episode of Season 6, “The Third Man,” Balthazar says to Cas, “you tore up the whole script and burned the pages.” That is the fundamental idea the writers of the first five seasons were trying to sell us: whatever grand plan the biblical God had cooking up is worth nothing in face of the love these men have—for each other and the world. Sam, Bobby, Cas and Dean will go to any lengths to protect one another and keep people safe. What’s real? What’s worth saving? People are real. Families are worth saving.
This show plugs free will as the most important thing a person, angel, demon or otherwise can have. The fact of the matter is that Dean was always going to fight against the status quo, Sam was always going to go his own way, and Bobby was always going to do his best for his boys. The only uncertainty in the entire narrative is Cas. He was never meant to rebel. He was never meant to fall from Heaven. He was supposed to fall in line, be a good soldier, and help bring on the apocalypse, but Cas was the first agent of free will in the show’s timeline. Sam followed Lucifer, Dean followed Michael, and John gave himself up for the sins of his children, at once both a God and Jesus figure. But Cas wasn’t modelled off anyone else. He is original. There are definitely some parallels to Ruby, but I would argue those are largely unintentional. Cas broke the mold.
That’s to say nothing of the impact he’s had on the fanbase, and the show itself, which would not have reached 15 seasons and be able to end the way they wanted it to without Cas and Misha Collins. His back must be breaking from carrying the entire show.
But what the holy hell are we doing here today? Not just talking about Cas. We’re talking about metanarrativity: as I define it, and for purposes of this episode, the story within a story, and the act of storytelling. We’re going to go through a select few episodes which I think exemplify the best of what this show has to offer in terms of framing the narrative. We’ll talk about characters like Chuck and Becky and the baby dykes in season 10. And most importantly we’ll talk about the audience’s role, our role, in the reciprocal relationship of storytelling. After all, a tv show is nothing without the viewer.
I was in fact introduced to the concept of metanarrativity by Supernatural, so the fact that I’m revisiting it six years after I finished my degree to talk about the show is one of life’s little jokes.
I’m brushing off my degree and bringing out the big guns (aka literary theorists) to examine this concept. This will be yet another piece of analysis that would’ve gone well in my English Lit degree, but I’ll try not to make it dry as dog shit.
First off, I’m going to argue that the relationship between the creators of Supernatural and the fans has always been a dialogue, albeit with a power imbalance. Throughout the series, even before explicitly metanarrative episodes like season 10 “Fan Fiction” and season 4 “the monster at the end of this book,” the creators have always engaged in conversations with the fans through the show. This includes but is not limited to fan conventions, where the creators have actual, live conversations with the fans. Misha Collins admitted at a con that he’d read fanfiction of Cas while he was filming season 4, but it’s pretty clear even from the first season that the creators, at the very least Eric Kripke, were engaging with fans. The show aired around the same time as Twitter and Tumblr were created, both of which opened up new passageways for fans to interact with each other, and for Twitter and Facebook especially, new passageways for fans to interact with creators and celebrities.
But being the creators, they have ultimate control over what is written, filmed and aired, while we can only speculate and make our own transformative interpretations. But at least since s4, they have engaged in meta narrative construction that at once speaks to fans as well as expands the universe in fun and creative ways. My favourite episodes are the ones where we see the Winchesters through the lens of other characters, such as the season 3 episode “Jus In Bello,” in which Sam and Dean are arrested by Victor Henriksen, and the season 7 episode “Slash Fiction” in which Dean and Sam’s dopplegangers rob banks and kill a bunch of people, loathe as I am to admit that season 7 had an effect on any part of me except my upchuck reflex. My second favourite episodes are the meta episodes, and for this episode of Holy Hell, we’ll be discussing a few: The French Mistake, he Monster at the end of this book, the real ghostbusters, Fan Fiction, Metafiction, and Don’t Call Me Shurley. I’ll also discuss Becky more broadly, because, like, of course I’ll be discussing Becky, she died for our sins.
Let’s take it back. The Monster At The End Of This Book — written by Julie Siege and Nancy Weiner and directed by Mike Rohl. Inarguably one of the better episodes in the first five seasons. Not only is Cas in it, looking so beautiful, but Sam gets something to do, thank god, and it introduces the character of Chuck, who becomes a source of comic relief over the next two seasons. The episode starts with Chuck Shurley, pen named Carver Edlund after my besties, having a vision while passed out drunk. He dreams of Sam and Dean larping as Feds and finding a series of books based on their lives that Chuck has written. They eventually track Chuck down, interrogate him, and realise that he’s a prophet of the lord, tasked with writing the Winchester Gospels. The B plot is Sam plotting to kill Lilith while Dean fails to get them out of the town to escape her. The C plot is Dean and Cas having a moment that strengthens their friendship and leads further into Cas’s eventual disobedience for Dean. Like the movie Disobedience. Exactly like the movie Disobedience. Cas definitely spits in Dean’s mouth, it’s kinda gross to be honest. Maybe I’m just not allo enough to appreciate art.
When Eric Kripke was showrunner of the first five seasons of Supernatural, he conceptualised the character of Chuck. Kripke as the author-god introduced the character of the author-prophet who would later become in Jeremy Carver’s showrun seasons the biblical God. Judith May Fathallah writes in “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural” that Kripke writes himself both into and out of the text, ending his era with Chuck winking at the camera, saying, “nothing really ends,” and disappearing. Kripke stayed on as producer, continuing to write episodes through Sera Gamble’s era, and was even inserted in text in the season 6 episode “The French Mistake”. So nothing really does end, not Kripke’s grip on the show he created, not even the show itself, which fans have jokingly referred to as continuing into its 16th season. Except we’re not joking. It will die when all of us are dead, when there is no one left to remember it. According to W R Fisher, humans are homo narrans, natural storytellers. The Supernatural fandom is telling a fidelitous narrative, one which matches our own beliefs, values and experiences instead of that of canon. Instead of, at Fathallah says, “the Greek tradition, that we should struggle to do the right thing simply because it is right, though we will suffer and be punished anyway,” the fans have created an ending for the characters that satisfies each and every one of our desires, because we each create our own endings. It’s better because we get to share them with each other, in the tradition of campfire stories, each telling our own version and building upon the others. If that’s not the epitome of mythmaking then I don’t know. It’s just great. Dean and Cas are married, Eileen and Sam are married, Jack is sometimes a baby who Claire and Kaia are forced to babysit, Jody and Donna are gonna get hitched soon. It’s season 17, time for many weddings, and Kevin Tran is alive. Kripke, you have no control over this anymore, you crusty hag.
Chuck is introduced as someone with power, but not influence over the story, only how the story is told through the medium of the novels. It’s basically a very badly written, non authorised biography, and Charlie reading literally every book and referencing things she should have no knowledge of is so damn creepy and funny. At first Chuck is surprised by his characters coming to life, despite having written it already, and when shown the intimidating array of weapons in Baby’s trunk he gets real scared. Which is the appropriate response for a skinny 5-foot-8 white guy in a bathrobe who writes terrible fantasy novels for a living.
As far as I can remember, this is the first explicitly metanarrative episode in the series, or at least the first one with in world consequences. It builds upon the lore of Christianity, angels, and God, while teasing what’s to come. Chuck and Sam have a conversation about how the rest of the season is going to play out, and Sam comes away with the impression that he’ll go down with the ship. They touch on Sam’s addiction to demon blood, which Chuck admits he didn’t write into the books, because in the world of supernatural, addiction should be demonised ha ha at every opportunity, except for Dean’s alcoholism which is cool and manly and should never be analysed as an unhealthy trauma coping mechanism.
Chuck is mostly impotent in the story of Sam and Dean, but his very presence presents an element of good luck that turns quickly into a force of antagonism in the series four finale, “Lucifer Rising”, when the archangel Raphael who defeats Lilith in this episode also kills Cas in the finale. It’s Cas’s quick thinking and Dean’s quick doing that resolve the episode and save them from Lilith, once again proving that free will is the greatest force in the universe. Cas is already tearing up pages and burning scripts. The fandom does the same, acting as gods of their own making in taking canon and transforming it into fan art. The fans aren’t impotent like Chuck, but neither do we have sway over the story in the way that Cas and Dean do. Sam isn’t interested in changing the story in the same way—he wants to kill Lilith and save the world, but in doing so continues the story in the way it was always supposed to go, the way the angels and the demons and even God wanted him to.
Neither of them are author-gods in the way that God is. We find out later that Chuck is in fact the real biblical god, and he engineers everything. The one thing he doesn’t engineer, however, is Castiel, and I’ll get to that in a minute.
The Real Ghostbusters
Season 5’s “The real ghostbusters,” written by Nancy Weiner and Erik Kripke, and directed by James L Conway, situates the Winchesters at a fan convention for the Supernatural books. While there, they are confronted by a slew of fans cosplaying as Sam, Dean, Bobby, the scarecrow, Azazel, and more. They happen to stumble upon a case, in the midst of the game where the fans pretend to be on a case, and with the help of two fans cosplaying as Sam and Dean, they put to rest a group of homicidal ghost children and save the day. Chuck as the special guest of the con has a hero moment that spurs Becky on to return his affections. And at the end, we learn that the Colt, which they’ve been hunting down to kill the devil, was given to a demon named Crowley. It’s a fun episode, but ultimately skippable. This episode isn’t so much metanarrative as it is metatextual—metatextual meaning more than one layer of text but not necessarily about the storytelling in those texts—but let’s take a look at it anyway.
The metanarrative element of a show about a series of books about the brothers the show is based on is dope and expands upon what we saw in “the monster at the end of this book”. But the episode tells a tale about about the show itself, and the fandom that surrounds it.
Where “The Monster At The End Of This Book” and the season 5 premiere “Sympathy For The Devil” poked at the coiled snake of fans and the concept of fandom, “the real ghostbusters” drags them into the harsh light of an enclosure and antagonises them in front of an audience. The metanarrative element revolves around not only the books themselves, but the stories concocted within the episode: namely Barnes and Demian the cosplayers and the story of the ghosts. The Winchester brothers’s history that we’ve seen throughout the first five seasons of the show is bared in a tongue in cheek way: while we cried with them when Sam and Dean fought with John, now the story is thrown out in such a way as to mock both the story and the fans’ relationship to it. Let me tell you, there is a lot to be made fun of on this show, but the fans’ relationship to the story of Sam, Dean and everyone they encounter along the way isn’t part of it. I don’t mean to be like, wow you can’t make fun of us ever because we’re special little snowflakes and we take everything so seriously, because you are welcome to make fun of us, but when the creators do it, I can’t help but notice a hint of malice. And I think that’s understandable in a way. Like The relationship between creator and fan is both layered and symbiotic. While Kripke and co no doubt owe the show’s popularity to the fans, especially as the fandom has grown and evolved over time, we’re not exactly free of sin. And don’t get me wrong, no fandom is. But the bad apples always seem to outweigh the good ones, and bad experiences can stick with us long past their due.
However, portraying us as losers with no lives who get too obsessed with this show — well, you know, actually, maybe they’re right. I am a loser with no life and I am too obsessed with this show. So maybe they have a point. But they’re so harsh about it. From wincestie Becky who they paint as a desperate shrew to these cosplayers who threaten Dean’s very perception of himself, we’re not painted in a very good light.
Dean says to Demian and Barnes, “It must be nice to get out of your mom’s basement.” He’s judging them for deriving pleasure from dressing up and pretending to be someone else for a night. He doesn’t seem to get the irony that he does that for a living. As the seasons wore on, the creators made sure to include episodes where Dean’s inner geek could run rampant, often in the form of dressing up like a cowboy, such as season six “Frontierland” and season 13 “Tombstone”. I had to take a break from writing this to laugh for five minutes because Dean is so funny. He’s a car gay but he only likes one car. He doesn’t follow sports. His echolalia causes him to blurt out lines from his favourite movies. He’s a posse magnet. And he loves cosplay. But he will continually degrade and insult anyone who expresses interest in role play, fandom, or interests in general. Maybe that’s why Sam is such a boring person, because Dean as his mother didn’t allow him to have any interests outside of hunting. And when Sam does express interests, Dean insults him too. What a dick. He’s my soulmate, but I am not going to stop listening to hair metal for him. That’s where I draw the line.
Where “the monster at the end of this book” is concerned with narrative and authorship, “the real ghostbusters” is concerned with fandom and fan reactions to the show. It’s not really the best example to talk about in an episode about metanarrativity, but I wanted to include it anyway. It veers from talk of narrative by focusing on the people in the periphery of the narrative—the fans and the author. In season 9 “Metafiction,” Metatron asks the question, who gives the story meaning? The text would have you believe it’s the characters. The angels think it’s God. The fandom think it’s us. The creators think it’s them. Perhaps we will never come to a consensus or even a satisfactory answer to this question. Perhaps that’s the point.
The ultimate takeaway from this episode is that ordinary people, the people Sam and Dean save, the people they save the world for, the people they die for again and again, are what give their story meaning. Chuck defeats a ghost and saves the people in the conference room from being murdered. Demian and Barnes, don’t ask me which is which, burn the bodies of the ghost children and lay their spirits to rest. The text says that ordinary, every day people can rise to the challenge of becoming extraordinary. It’s not a bad note to end on, by any means. And then we find out that Demian and Barnes are a couple, which of course Dean is surprised at, because he lacks object permanence.
This is no doubt influenced by how a good portion of the transformative fandom are queer, and also a nod to the wincesties and RPF writers like Becky who continue to bottom feed off the wrong message of this show. But then, the creators encourage that sort of thing, so who are the real clowns here? Everyone. Everyone involved with this show in any way is a clown, except for the crew, who were able to feed their families for more than a decade.
Okay side note… over the past year or so I’ve been in process of realising that even in fandom queers are in the minority. I know the statistic is that 10% of the world population is queer, but that doesn’t seem right to me? Maybe because 4/5 closest friends are queer and I hang around queers online, but I also think I lack object permanence when it comes to straight people. Like I just do not interact with straight people on a regular basis outside of my best friend and parents and school. So when I hear that someone in fandom is straight I’m like, what the fuck… can you keep that to yourself please? Like if I saw Misha Collins coming out as straight I would be like, I didn’t ask and you didn’t have to tell. Okay I’m mostly joking, but I do forget straight people exist. Mostly I don’t think about whether people are gay or trans or cis or straight unless they’ve explicitly said it and then yes it does colour my perception of them, because of course it would. If they’re part of the queer community, they’re my people. And if they’re straight and cis, then they could very well pose a threat to me and my wellbeing. But I never ask people because it’s not my business to ask. If they feel comfortable enough to tell me, that’s awesome. I think Dean feels the same way. Towards the later seasons at least, he has a good reaction when it’s revealed that someone is queer, even if it is mostly played off as a joke. It’s just that he doesn’t have a frame of reference in his own life to having a gay relationship, either his or someone he’s close to. He says to Cesar and Jesse in season 11 “The Critters” that they fight like brothers, because that’s the only way he knows how to conceptualise it. He doesn’t have a way to categorise his and Cas’s relationship, which is in many ways, long before season 15 “Despair,” harking back even to the parallels between Ruby and Cas in season 3 and 4, a romantic one, aside from that Cas is like a brother to him. Because he’s never had anyone in his life care for him the way Cas does that wasn’t Sam and Bobby, and he doesn’t recognise the romantic element of their relationship until literally Cas says it to him in the third last episode, he just—doesn’t know what his and Cas’s relationship is. He just really doesn’t know. And he grew up with a father who despised him for taking the mom and wife role in their family, the role that John placed him in, for being subservient to John’s wishes where Sam was more rebellious, so of course he wouldn’t understand either his own desires or those of anyone around him who isn’t explicitly shoving their tits in his face. He moulded his entire personality around what he thought John wanted of him, and John says to him explicitly in season 14 “Lebanon”, “I thought you’d have a family,” meaning, like him, wife and two rugrats. And then, dear god, Dean says, thinking of Sam, Cas, Jack, Claire, and Mary, “I have a family.” God that hurts so much. But since for most of his life he hasn’t been himself, he’s been the man he thought his father wanted him to be, he’s never been able to examine his own desires, wants and goals. So even though he’s really good at reading people, he is not good at reading other people’s desires unless they have nefarious intentions. Because he doesn’t recognise what he feels is attraction to men, he doesn’t recognise that in anyone else.
Okay that’s completely off topic, wow. Getting back to metanarrativity in “The Real Ghostbusters,” I’ll just cap it off by saying that the books in this episode are more a frame for the events than the events themselves. However, there are some good outtakes where Chuck answers some questions, and I’m not sure how much of that is scripted and how much is Rob Benedict just going for it, but it lends another element to the idea of Kripke as author-god. The idea of a fan convention is really cool, because at this point Supernatural conventions had been running for about 4 years, since 2006. It’s definitely a tribute to the fans, but also to their own self importance. So it’s a mixed bag, considering there were plenty of elements in there that show the good side of fandom and fans, but ultimately the Winchesters want nothing to do with it, consider it weird, and threaten Chuck when he says he’ll start releasing books again, which as far as they know is his only source of income. But it’s a fun episode and Dean is a grouchy bitch, so who the holy hell cares?
Season 10 episode “fanfiction” written by my close personal friend Robbie Thompson and directed by Phil Sgriccia is one of the funniest episodes this show has ever done. Not only is it full of metatextual and metanarrative jokes, the entire premise revolves around fanservice, but in like a fun and interesting way, not fanservice like killing the band Kansas so that Dean can listen to “Carry On My Wayward Son” in heaven twice. Twice. One version after another. Like I would watch this musical seven times in theatre, I would buy the soundtrack, I would listen to it on repeat and make all my friends listen to it when they attend my online Jitsi birthday party. This musical is my Hamilton. Top ten episodes of this show for sure. The only way it could be better is if Cas was there. And he deserved to be there. He deserved to watch little dyke Castiel make out with her girlfriend with her cute little wings, after which he and Dean share uncomfortable eye contact. Dean himself is forever coming to terms with the fact that gay people exist, but Cas should get every opportunity he can to hear that it’s super cool and great and awesome to be queer. But really he should be in every episode, all of them, all 300 plus episodes including the ones before angels were introduced. I’m going to commission the guy who edits Paddington into every movie to superimpose Cas standing on the highway into every episode at least once.
“Fan Fiction” starts with a tv script and the words “Supernatural pilot created by Eric Kripke”. This Immediately sets up the idea that it’s toying with narrative. Blah blah blah, some people go missing, they stumble into a scene from their worst nightmares: the school is putting on a musical production of a show inspired by the Supernatural books. It’s a comedy of errors. When people continue to go missing, Sam and Dean have to convince the girls that something supernatural is happening, while retaining their dignity and respect. They reveal that they are the real Sam and Dean, and Dean gives the director Marie a summary of their lives over the last five seasons, but they aren’t taken seriously. Because, like, of course they aren’t. Even when the girls realise that something supernatural is happening, they don’t actually believe that the musical they’ve made and the series of books they’re basing it on are real. Despite how Sam and Dean Winchester were literal fugitives for many years at many different times, and this was on the news, and they were wanted by the FBI, despite how they pretend to be FBI, and no one mentions it??? Did any of the staffwriters do the required reading or just do what I used to do for my 40 plus page readings of Baudrillard and just skim the first sentence of every paragraph? Neat hack for you: paragraphs are set up in a logical order of Topic, Example, Elaboration, Linking sentence. Do you have to read 60 pages of some crusty French dude waxing poetic about how his best friend Pierre wants to shag his wife and making that your problem? Read the first and last sentence of every paragraph. Boom, done. Just cut your work in half.
The musical highlights a lot of the important moments of the show so far. The brothers have, as Charlie Bradbury says, their “broment,” and as Marie says, their “boy melodrama scene,” while she insinuates that there is a sexual element to their relationship. This show never passed up an opportunity to mention incest. It’s like: mentioning incest 5000 km, not being disgusting 1 km, what a hard decision. Actually, they do have to walk on their knees for 100 miles through the desert repenting. But there are other moments—such as Mary burning on the ceiling, a classic, Castiel waiting for Dean at the side of the highway, and Azazel poisoning Sam. With the help of the high schoolers, Sam and Dean overcome Calliope, the muse and bad guy of the episode, and save the day. What began as their lives reinterpreted and told back to them turns into a story they have some agency over.
In this episode, as opposed to “The Monster At The End Of This Book,” The storytelling has transferred from an alcoholic in a bathrobe into the hands of an overbearing and overachieving teenage girl, and honestly why not. Transformative fiction is by and large run by women, and queer women, so Marie and her stage manager slash Jody Mills’s understudy Maeve are just following in the footsteps of legends. This kind of really succinctly summarises the difference between curative fandom and transformative fandom, the former of which is populated mostly by men, and the latter mostly by women. As defined by LordByronic in 2015, Curative fandom is more like enjoying the text, collecting the merchandise, organising the knowledge — basically Reddit in terms of fandom curation. Transformative fandom is transforming the source text in some way — making fanart, fanfic, mvs, or a musical — basically Tumblr in general, and Archive of our own specifically. Like what do non fandom people even do on Tumblr? It is a complete mystery to me. Whereas Chuck literally writes himself into the narrative he receives through visions, Marie and co have agency and control over the narrative by writing it themselves.
Chuck does appear in the episode towards the end, his first appearance after five seasons. The theory that he killed those lesbian theatre girls makes me wanna curl up and die, so I don’t subscribe to it. Chuck watched the musical and he liked it and he gave unwarranted notes and then he left, the end.
The Supernatural creative team is explicitly acknowledging the fandom’s efforts by making this episode. They’re writing us in again, with more obsessive fans, but with lethbians this time, which makes it infinitely better. And instead of showing us as potential date rapists, we’re just cool chicks who like to make art. And that’s fucken awesome.
I just have to note that the characters literally say the word Destiel after Dean sees the actors playing Dean and Cas making out. He storms off and tells Sam to shut the fuck up when Sam makes fun of him, because Dean’s sexuality is NOT threatened he just needs to assert his dominance as a straight hetero man who has NEVER looked at another man’s lips and licked his own. He just… forgets that gay people exist until someone reminds him. BUT THEN, after a rousing speech that is stolen from Rent or Wicked or something, he echoes Marie’s words back, saying “put as much sub into that text as you possibly can.” What does Dean know about subbing, I wonder. Okay I’m suddenly reminded that he did literally go to a kink bar and get hit on by a leather daddy. Oh Dean, the experiences you have as a broad-shouldered, pixie-faced man with cowboy legs. You were born for this role.
Metatron is my favourite villain. As one tumblr user pointed out, he is an evil English literature major, which is just a normal English literature major. The season nine episode “Meta Fiction” written by my main man robbie thompson and directed by thomas j wright, happens within a curious season. Castiel, once again, becomes the leader of a portion of the heavenly host to take down Metatron, and Dean is affected by the Mark Of Cain. Sam was recently possessed by Gadreel, who killed Kevin in Sam’s body and then decided to run off with Metatron. Metatron himself is recruiting angels to join him, in the hopes that he can become the new God. It’s the first introduction of Hannah, who encourages Cas to recruit angels himself to take on Metatron. Also, we get to see Gabriel again, who is always a delight.
This episode is a lot of fun. Metatron poses questions like, who tells a story and who is the most important person in the telling? Is it the writer? The audience? He starts off staring over his typewriter to address the camera, like a pompous dickhead. No longer content with consuming stories, he’s started to write his own. And they are hubristic ones about becoming God, a better god than Chuck ever was, but to do it he needs to kill a bunch of people and blame it on Cas. So really, he’s actually exactly like Chuck who blamed everything on Lucifer.
But I think the most apt analogy we can use for this in terms of who is the creator is to think of Metatron as a fanfiction writer. He consumes the media—the Winchester Gospels—and starts to write his own version of events—leading an army to become God and kill Cas. Nevermind that no one has been able to kill Cas in a way that matters or a way that sticks. Which is canon, and what Metatron is trying to do is—well not fanon because it actually does impact the Winchesters’ storyline. It would be like if one of the writers of Supernatural began writing Supernatural fanfiction before they got a job on the show. Which as my generation and the generations coming after me get more comfortable with fanfiction and fandom, is going to be the case for a lot of shows. I think it’s already the case for Riverdale. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the woman who wrote the bi Dean essay go to work on Riverdale? Or something? I dunno, I have the post saved in my tumblr likes but that is quagmire of epic proportions that I will easily get lost in if I try to find it.
Okay let me flex my literary degree. As Englund and Leach say in “Ethnography and the metanarratives of modernity,” “The influential “literary turn,” in which the problems of ethnography were seen as largely textual and their solutions as lying in experimental writing seems to have lost its impetus.” This can be taken to mean, in the context of Supernatural, that while Metatron’s writings seek to forge a new path in history, forgoing fate for a new kind of divine intervention, the problem with Metatron is that he’s too caught up in the textual, too caught up in the writing, to be effectual. And this as we see throughout seasons 9, 10 and 11, has no lasting effect. Cas gets his grace back, Dean survives, and Metatron becomes a powerless human. In this case, the impetus is his grace, which he loses when Cas cuts it out of him, a mirror to Metatron cutting out Cas’s grace.
However, I realise that the concept of ethnography in Supernatural is a flawed one, ethnography being the observation of another culture: a lot of the angels observe humanity and seem to fit in. However, Cas has to slowly acclimatise to the Winchesters as they tame him, but he never quite fit in—missing cues, not understanding jokes or Dean’s personal space, the scene where he says, “We have a guinea pig? Where?” Show him the guinea pig Sam!!! He wants to see it!!! At most he passes as a human with autism. Cas doesn’t really observe humanity—he observes nature, as seen in season 7 “reading is fundamental” and “survival of the fittest”. Even the human acts he talks about in season 6 “the man who would be king” are from hundreds or thousands of years ago. He certainly doesn’t observe popular culture, which puts him at odds with Dean, who is made up of 90 per cent pop culture references and 10 per cent flannel. Metatron doesn’t seek to blend in with humanity so much as control it, which actually is the most apt example of ethnography for white people in the last—you know, forever. But of course the writers didn’t seek to make this analogy. It is purely by chance, and maybe I’m the only person insane enough to realise it. But probably not. There are a lot of cookies much smarter than me in the Supernatural fandom and they’ve like me have grown up and gone to university and gotten real jobs in the real world and real haircuts. I’m probably the only person to apply Englund and Leach to it though.
And yes, as I read this paper I did need to have one tab open on Google, with the word “define” in the search bar.
Metatron has a few lines in this that I really like. He says:
“The universe is made up of stories, not atoms.”
“You’re going to have to follow my script.”
“I’m an entity of my word.”
It’s really obvious, but they’re pushing the idea that Metatron has become an agent of authorship instead of just a consumer of media. He even throws a Supernatural book into his fire — a symbolic act of burning the script and flipping the writer off, much like Cas did to God and the angels in season 5. He’s not a Kripke figure so much as maybe a Gamble, Carver or Dabb figure, in that he usurps Chuck and becomes the author-god. This would be extremely postmodern of him if he didn’t just do exactly what Chuck was doing, except worse somehow. In fact, it’s postmodern of Cas to reject heaven’s narrative and fall for Dean. As one tumblr user points out, Cas really said “What’s fate compared to Dean Winchester?”
Okay this transcript is almost 8000 words already, and I still have two more episodes to review, and more things to say, so I’ll leave you with this. Metatron says to Cas, “Out of all of God’s wind up toys, you’re the only one with any spunk.” Why Cas has captured his attention comes down more than anything to a process of elimination. Most angels fucking suck. They follow the rules of whoever puts themselves in charge, and they either love Cas or hate him, or just plainly wanna fuck him, and there have been few angels who stood out. Balthazar was awesome, even though I hated him the first time I watched season 6. He UNSUNK the Titanic. Legend status. And Gabriel was of course the OG who loves to fuck shit up. But they’re gone at this stage in the narrative, and Cas survives. Cas always survives. He does have spunk. And everyone wants to fuck him.
Season 11 episode 20 “Don’t Call Me Shurley,” the last episode written by the Christ like figure of Robbie Thompson — are we sensing a theme here? — and directed by my divine enemy Robert Singer, starts with Metatron dumpster diving for food. I’m not even going to bother commenting on this because like… it’s supernatural and it treats complex issues like homelessness and poverty with zero nuance. Like the Winchesters live in poverty but it’s fun and cool because they always scrape by but Metatron lives in poverty and it’s funny. Cas was homeless and it was hard but he needed to do it to atone for his sins, and Metatron is homeless and it’s funny because he brought it on himself by being a murderous dick. Fucking hell. Robbie, come on. The plot focuses on God, also known as Chuck Shurley, making himself known to Metatron and asking for Metatron’s opinion on his memoir. Meanwhile, the Winchesters battle another bout of infectious serial killer fog sent by Amara. At the end of the episode, Chuck heals everyone affected by the fog and reveals himself to Sam and Dean.
Chuck says that he didn’t foresee Metatron trying to become god, but the idea of Season 15 is that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all their lives. When Metatron tries, he fails miserably, is locked up in prison, tortured by Dean, then rendered useless as a human and thrown into the world without a safety net. His authorship is reduced to nothing, and he is reduced to dumpster diving for food. He does actually attempt to live his life as someone who records tragedies as they happen and sells the footage to news stations, which is honestly hilarious and amazing and completely unsurprising because Metatron is, at the heart of it, an English Literature major. In true bastard style, he insults Chuck’s work and complains about the bar, but slips into his old role of editor when Chuck asks him to.
The theory I’m consulting for this uses the term metanarrative in a different way than I am. They consider it an overarching narrative, a grand narrative like religion. Chuck’s biography is in a sense most loyal to Middleton and Walsh’s view of metanarrative: “the universal story of the world from arche to telos, a grand narrative encompassing world history from beginning to end.” Except instead of world history, it’s God’s history, and since God is construed in Supernatural as just some guy with some powers who is as fallible as the next some guy with some powers, his story has biases and agendas. Okay so in the analysis I’m getting Middleton and Walsh’s quotes from, James K A Smith’s “A little story about metanarratives,” Smith dunks on them pretty bad, but for Supernatural purposes their words ring true. Think of them as the BuckLeming of Lyotard’s postmodern metanarrative analysis: a stopped clock right twice a day. Is anyone except me understanding the sequence of words I’m saying right now. Do I just have the most specific case of brain worms ever found in human history. I’m currently wearing my oversized Keith Haring shirt and dipping pretzels into peanut butter because it’s 3.18 in the morning and the homosexuals got to me. The total claims a comprehensive metanarrative of world history make do indeed, as Middleton and Walsh claim, lead to violence, stay with me here, because Chuck’s legacy is violence, and so is Metatron’s, and in trying to reject the metanarrative, Sam and Dean enact violence. Mostly Dean, because in season 15 he sacrifices his own son twice to defeat Chuck. But that means literally fighting violence with violence. Violence is, after all, all they know. Violence is the lens through which they interact with the world. If the writers wanted to do literally anything else, they could have continued Dean’s natural character progression into someone who eschews the violence that stems from intergeneration trauma — yes I will continue to use the phrase intergenerational trauma whenever I refer to Dean — and becomes a loving father and husband. Sam could eschew violence and start a monster rehabilitation centre with Eileen.
This episode of Holy Hell is me frantically grabbing at straws to make sense of a narrative that actively hates me and wants to kick me to death. But the violence Sam and Dean enact is not at a metanarrative level, because they are not author-gods of their own narrative. In season 15 “Atomic Monsters,” Becky points out that the ending of the Supernatural book series is bad because the brothers die, and then, in a shocking twist of fate, Dean does die, and the narrative is bad. The writers set themselves a goal post to kick through and instead just slammed their heat into the bars. They set up the dartboard and were like, let’s aim the darts at ourselves. Wouldn’t that be fun. Season 15’s writing is so grossly incompetent that I believe every single conspiracy theory that’s come out of the finale since November, because it’s so much more compelling than whatever the fuck happened on the road so far. Carry on? Why yes, I think I will carry on, carry on like a pork chop, screaming at the bars of my enclosure until I crack my voice open like an egg and spill out all my rage and frustration. The world will never know peace again. It’s now 3.29 and I’ve written over 9000 words of this transcript. And I’m not done.
Middleton and Walsh claim that metanarratives are merely social constructions masquerading as universal truths. Which is, exactly, Supernatural. The creators have constructed this elaborate web of narrative that they want to sell us as the be all and end all. They won’t let the actors discuss how they really feel about the finale. They won’t let Misha Collins talk about Destiel. They want us to believe it was good, actually, that Dean, a recovering alcoholic with a 30 year old infant son and a husband who loves him, deserved to die by getting NAILED, while Sam, who spent the last four seasons, the entirety of Andrew Dabb’s run as showrunner, excelling at creating a hunter network and romancing both the queen of hell and his deaf hunter girlfriend, should have lived a normie life with a normie faceless wife. Am I done? Not even close. I started this episode and I’m going to finish it.
When we find out that Chuck is God in the episode of season 11, it turns everything we knew about Chuck on its head. We find out in Season 15 that Chuck has been writing the Winchesters’ story all along, that everything that happened to them is his doing. The one thing he couldn’t control was Cas’s choice to rebel. If we take him at his word, Cas is the only true force of free will in the entire universe, and more specifically, the love that Cas had for Dean which caused him to rebel and fall from heaven. — This theory has holes of course. Why would Lucifer torture Lilith into becoming the first demon if he didn’t have free will? Did Chuck make him do that? And why? So that Chuck could be the hero and Lucifer the bad guy, like Lucifer claimed all along? That’s to say nothing of Adam and Eve, both characters the show introduced in different ways, one as an antagonist and the other as the narrative foil to Dean and Cas’s romance. Thinking about it makes my head hurt, so I’m just not gunna.
So Chuck was doing the writing all along. And as Becky claims in “Atomic Monsters,” it’s bad writing. The writers explicitly said, the ending Chuck wrote is bad because there’s no Cas and everyone dies, and then they wrote an ending where there is no Cas and everyone dies. So talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Talk about giant craters in the earth you could see from 800 kilometres away but you still fell into. Meanwhile fan writers have the opportunity to write a million different endings, all of which satisfy at least one person. The fandom is a hydra, prolific and unstoppable, and we’ll keep rewriting the ending a million more times.
And all this is not even talking about the fact that Chuck is a man, Metatron is a man, Sam and Dean and Cas are men, and the writers and directors of the show are, by an overwhelming majority, men. Most of them are white, straight, cis men. Feminist scholarship has done a lot to unpack the damage done by paternalistic approaches to theory, sociology, ethnography, all the -ys, but I propose we go a step further with these men. Kill them. Metanarratively, of course. Amara, the Darkness, God’s sister, had a chance to write her own story without Chuck, after killing everything in the universe, and I think she had the right idea. Knock it all down to build it from the ground up. Billie also had the opportunity to write a narrative, but her folly was, of course, putting any kind of faith in the Winchesters who are also grossly incompetent and often fail up. She is, as all author-gods on this show are, undone by Castiel. The only one with any spunk, the only one who exists outside of his own narrative confines, the only one the author-gods don’t have any control over. The one who died for love, and in dying, gave life.
The French Mistake
Let’s change the channel. Let’s calm ourselves and cleanse our libras. Let’s commune with nature and chug some sage bongs.
“The French Mistake” is a song from the Mel Brooks film Blazing Saddles. In the iconic second last scene of the film, as the cowboys fight amongst themselves, the camera pans back to reveal a studio lot and a door through which a chorus of gay dancersingers perform “the French Mistake”. The lyrics go, “Throw out your hands, stick out your tush, hands on your hips, give ‘em a push. You’ll be surprised you’re doing the French Mistake.”
I’m not sure what went through the heads of the Supernatural creators when they came up with the season 6 episode, “The French Mistake,” written by the love of my life Ben Edlund and directed by some guy Charles Beeson. Just reading the Wikipedia summary is so batshit incomprehensible. In short: Balthazar sends Sam and Dean to an alternate universe where they are the actors Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, who play Sam and Dean on the tv show Supernatural. I don’t think this had ever been done in television history before. The first seven seasons of this show are certifiable. Like this was ten years ago. Think about the things that have happened in the last 10 slutty, slutty years. We have lived through atrocities and upheaval and the entire world stopping to mourn, but also we had twitter throughout that entire time, which makes it infinitely worse.
In this universe, Sam and Dean wear makeup, Cas is played by attractive crying man Misha Collins, and Genevieve Padalecki nee Cortese makes an appearance. Magic doesn’t exist, Serge has good ideas, and the two leads have to act in order to get through the day. Sorry man I do not know how to pronounce your name.
Sidenote: I don’t know if me being attracted aesthetically to Misha Collins is because he’s attractive, because this show has gaslighted me into thinking he’s attractive, or because Castiel’s iconic entrance in 2008 hit my developing mind like a torpedo full of spaghetti and blew my fucking brains all over the place. It’s one of life’s little mysteries and God’s little gifts.
Let’s talk about therapy. More specifically, “Agency and purpose in narrative therapy: questioning the postmodern rejection of metanarrative” by Cameron Lee. In this paper, Lee outlines four key ideas as proposed by Freedman and Combs:
Realities are socially constructed
Realities are constituted through language
Realities are organised and maintained through narrative
And there are no essential truths.
Let’s break this down in the case of this episode. Realities are socially constructed: the reality of Sam and Dean arose from the Bush era. Do I even need to elaborate? From what I understand with my limited Australian perception, and being a child at the time, 9/11 really was a prominent shifting point in the last twenty years. As Americans describe it, sometimes jokingly, it was the last time they were really truly innocent. That means to me that until they saw the repercussions of their government’s actions in funding turf wars throughout the middle east for a good chunk of the 20th Century, they allowed themselves to be hindered by their own ignorance. The threat of terrorism ran rampant throughout the States, spurred on by right wing nationalists and gun-toting NRA supporters, so it’s really no surprise that the show Supernatural started with the premise of killing everything in sight and driving around with only your closest kin and a trunk full of guns. Kripke constructed that reality from the social-political climate of the time, and it has wrought untold horrors on the minds of lesbians who lived through the noughties, in that we are now attracted to Misha Collins.
Number two: Realities are constituted through language. Before a show can become a show, it needs to be a script. It’s written down, typed up, and given to actors who say the lines out loud. In this respect, they are using the language of speech and words to convey meaning. But tv shows are not all about words, and they’re barely about scripts. From what I understand of being raised by television, they are about action, visuals, imagery, and behaviours. All of the work that goes into them—the scripts, the lighting, the audio, the sound mixing, the cameras, the extras, the ADs, the gaffing, the props, the stunts, everything—is about conveying a story through the medium of images. In that way, images are the language. The reality of the show Supernatural, inside the show Supernatural, is constituted through words: the script, the journalists talking to Sam, the makeup artist taking off Dean’s makeup, the conversations between the creators, the tweets Misha sends. But also through imagery: the fish tank in Jensen’s trailer, the model poses on the front cover of the magazine, the opulence of Jared’s house, Misha’s iconic sweater. Words and images are the language that constitutes both of these realities. Okay for real, I feel like I’ve only seen this episode max three times, including when I watched it for research for this episode, but I remember so much about it.
Number three: realities are organised and maintained through narrative. In this universe of the French Mistake, their lives are structured around two narratives: the internal narrative of the show within the show, in which they are two actors on a tv set; and the episode narrative in which they need to keep the key safe and return to their own universe. This is made difficult by the revelation that magic doesn’t work in this universe, however, they find a way. Before they can get back, though, an avenging angel by the name of Virgil guns down author-god Eric Kripke and tries to kill the Winchesters. However, they are saved by Balthazar and the freeze frame and brought back into their own world, the world of Supernatural the show, not Supernatural the show within the show within the nesting doll. And then that reality is done with, never to be revisited or even mentioned, but with an impact that has lasted longer than the second Bush administration.
And number four: there are no essential truths. This one is a bit tricky because I can’t find what Lee means by essential truths, so I’m just going to interpret that. To me, essential truths means what lies beneath the narratives we tell ourselves. Supernatural was a show that ran for 15 years. Supernatural had actors. Supernatural was showrun by four different writers. In the show within a show, there is nothing, because that ceases to exist for longer than the forty two minute episode “The French Mistake”. And since Supernatural no longer exists except in our computers, it is nothing too. It is only the narratives we tell ourselves to sleep better at night, to wake up in the morning with a smile, to get through the day, to connect with other people, to understand ourselves better. It’s not even the narrative that the showrunners told, because they have no agency over it as soon as it shows up on our screens. The essential truth of the show is lost in the translation from creating to consuming. Who gives the story meaning? The people watching it and the people creating it. We all do.
Lee says that humans are predisposed to construct narratives in order to make sense of the world. We see this in cultures from all over the world: from cave paintings to vases, from The Dreaming to Beowulf, humans have always constructed stories. The way you think about yourself is a story that you’ve constructed. The way you interact with your loved ones and the furries you rightfully cyberbully on Twitter is influenced by the narratives you tell yourself about them. And these narratives are intricate, expansive, personalised, and can colour our perceptions completely, so that we turn into a different person when we interact with one person as opposed to another.
Whatever happened in season 6, most of which I want to forget, doesn’t interest me in the way I’m telling myself the writers intended. For me, the entirety of season 6 was based around the premise of Cas being in love with Dean, and the complete impotence of this love. He turns up when Dean calls, he agonises as he watches Dean rake leaves and live his apple pie life with Lisa, and Dean is the person he feels most horribly about betraying. He says, verbatim, to Sam, “Dean and I do share a more profound bond.” And Balthazar says, “You’re confusing me with the other angel, the one in the dirty trenchcoat who’s in love with you.” He says this in season 6, and we couldn’t do a fucken thing about it.
The song “The French Mistake” shines a light on the hidden scene of gay men performing a gay narrative, in the midst of a scene about the manliest profession you can have: professional horse wrangler, poncho wearer, and rodeo meister, the cowboy. If this isn’t a perfect encapsulation of the lovestory between Dean and Cas, which Ben Edlund has been championing from day fucking one of Misha Collins walking onto that set with his sex hair and chapped lips, then I don’t know what the fuck we’re even doing here. What in the hell else could it possibly mean. The layers to this. The intricacy. The agendas. The subtextual AND blatant queerness. The micro aggressions Crowley aimed at Car in “The Man Who Would Be King,” another Bedlund special. Bed Edlund is a fucking genius. Bed Edlund is cool girl. Ben Edlund is the missing link. Bed Edlund IS wikileaks. Ben Edlund is a cool breeze on a humid summer day. Ben Edlund is the stop loading button on a browser tab. Ben Edlund is the perfect cross between Spotify and Apple Music, in which you can search for good playlists, but without having to be on Spotify. He can take my keys and fuck my wife. You best believe I’m doing an entire episode of Holy Hell on Bedlund’s top five. He is the reason I want to get into staffwriting on a tv show. I saw season 4 episode “On the head of a pin” when my brain was still torpedoed spaghetti mush from the premiere, and it nestled its way deep into my exposed bones, so that when I finally recovered from that, I was a changed person. My god, this transcript is 11,000 words, and I haven’t even finished the Becky section. Which is a good transition.
Oh, Becky. She is an incarnation of how the writers, or at least Kripke, view the fans. Watching season 5 “Sympathy for the Devil” live in 2009 was a whole fucking trip that I as a baby gay was not prepared for. Figuring out my sexuality was a journey that started with the Supernatural fandom and is in some aspects still raging against the dying of the light today. Add to that, this conception of the audience was this, like, personification of the librarian cellist from Juno, but also completely without boundaries, common sense, or shame. It made me wonder about my position in the narrative as a consumer consuming. Is that how Kripke saw me, specifically? Was I like Becky? Did my forays into DeanCasNatural on El Jay dot com make me a fucking loser whose only claim to fame is writing some nasty fanfiction that I’ve since deleted all traces of? Don’t get me wrong, me and my unhinged Casgirl friends loved Becky. I can’t remember if I ever wrote any fanfiction with her in it because I was mostly writing smut, which is extremely Becky coded of me, but I read some and my friends and I would always chat about her when she came up. She was great entertainment value before season 7. But in the eyes of the powers that be, Becky, like the fans themselves, are expendable. First they turned her into a desperate bride wannabe who drugs Sam so that he’ll be with her, then Chuck waves his hand and she disappears. We’re seeing now with regards to Destiel, Cas, and Misha Collins this erasure of them from the narrative. Becky says in season 15 “Atomic Monsters” that the ending Chuck writes is bad because, for one, there’s no Cas, and that’s exactly what’s happening to the text post-finale. It literally makes me insane akin to the throes of mania to think about the layers of this. They literally said, “No Cas = bad” and now Misha isn’t even allowed to talk in his Cassona voice—at least at the time I wrote that—to the detriment of the fans who care about him. It’s the same shit over and over. They introduce something we like, they realise they have no control over how much we like it, and then they pretend they never introduced it in the first place. Season 7, my god. The only reason Gamble brought back Cas was because the ratings were tanking the show. I didn’t even bother watching most of it live, and would just hear from my friends whether Cas was in the episodes or not. And then Sera, dear Sera, had the gall to say it was a Homer’s Odyssey narrative. I’m rusty on Homer aka I’ve never read it but apparently Odysseus goes away, ends up with a wife on an island somewhere, and then comes back to Terabithia like it never happened. How convenient. But since Sera Gamble loves to bury her gays, we can all guess why Cas was written out of the show: Cas being gay is a threat to the toxic heteronormativity spouted by both the show and the characters themselves. In season 15, after Becky gets her life together, has kids, gets married, and starts a business, she is outgrowing the narrative and Chuck kills her. The fans got Destiel Wedding trending on Twitter, and now the creators are acting like he doesn’t exist. New liver, same eagles.
I have to add an adendum: as of this morning, Sunday 11th, don’t ask me what time that is in Americaland, Misha Collins did an online con/Q&A thing and answered a bunch of questions about Cas and Dean, which goes to show that he cannot be silenced. So the narrative wants to be told. It’s continuing well into it’s 16th or 17th season. It’s going to keep happening and they have no recourse to stop it. So fuck you, Supernatural.
I did write the start of a speech about representation but, who the holy hell cares. I also read some disappointing Masters theses that I hope didn’t take them longer to research and write than this episode of a podcast I’m making for funsies took me, considering it’s the same number of pages. Then again I have the last four months and another 8 years of fandom fuelling my obsession, and when I don’t sleep I write, hence the 4,000 words I knocked out in the last 12 hours.
Some final words. Lyotard defines postmodernism, the age we live in, as an incredulity towards metanarratives. Modernism was obsessed with order and meaning, but postmodernism seeks to disrupt that. Modernists lived within the frame of the narrative of their society, but postmodernists seek to destroy the frame and live within our own self-written contexts. Okay I love postmodernist theory so this has been a real treat for me. Yoghurt, Sam? Postmodernist theory? Could I BE more gay?
Middleton and Walsh in their analysis of postmodernism claim that biblical faith is grounded in metanarrative, and explore how this intersects with an era that rejects metanarrative. This is one of the fundamental ideas Supernatural is getting at throughout definitely the last season, but other seasons as well. The narratives of Good vs Evil, Michael vs Lucifer, Dean vs Sam, were encoded into the overarching story of the show from season 1, and since then Sam and Dean have sought to break free of them. Sam broke free of John’s narrative, which was the hunting life, and revenge, and this moralistic machismo that they wrapped themselves up in. If they’re killing the evil, then they’re not the evil. That’s the story they told, and the impetus of the show that Sam was sucked back into. But this thread unravelled in later seasons when Dean became friends with Benny and the idea that all supernatural creatures are inherently evil unravelled as well. While they never completely broke free of John’s hold over them, welcoming Jack into their lives meant confronting a bias that had been ingrained in them since Dean was 4 years old and Sam 6 months. In the face of the question, “are all monsters monstrous?” the narrative loosens its control. Even by questioning it, it throws into doubt the overarching narrative of John’s plan, which is usurped at the end of season 2 when they kill Azazel by Dean’s demon deal and a new narrative unfolds. John as author-god is usurped by the actual God in season 4, who has his own narrative that controls the lives of Sam, Dean and Cas.
Okay like for real, I do actually think the metanarrativity in Supernatural is something that should be studied by someone other than me, unless you wanna pay me for it and then shit yeah. It is extremely cool to introduce a biographical narrative about the fictional narrative it’s in. It’s cool that the characters are constantly calling this narrative into focus by fighting against it, struggling to break free from their textual confines to live a life outside of the external forces that control them. And the thing is? The really real, honest thing? They have. Sam, Dean and Cas have broken free of the narrative that Kripke, Carver, Gamble and Dabb wrote for them. The very fact that the textual confession of love that Cas has for Dean ushered in a resurgence of fans, fandom and activity that has kept the show trending for five months after it ended, is just phenomenal. People have pointed out that fans stopped caring about Game of Thrones as soon as it ended. Despite the hold they had over tv watchers everywhere, their cultural currency has been spent. The opposite is true for Supernatural. Despite how the finale of the show angered and confused people, it gains more momentum every day. More fanworks, more videos, more fics, more art, more ire, more merch is being generated by the fans still. The Supernatural subreddit, which was averaging a few posts a week by season 15, has been incensed by the finale. And yours truly happily traipsed back into the fandom snake pit after 8 years with a smile on my face and a skip in my step ready to pump that dopamine straight into my veins babeeeeeeyyyyy. It’s been WILD. I recently reconnected with one of my mutuals from 2010 and it’s like nothing’s changed. We’re both still unhinged and we both still simp for Supernatural. Even before season 15, I was obsessed with the podcast Ride Or Die, which I started listening to in late 2019, and Supernatural was always in the back of my mind. You just don’t get over your first fandom. Actually, Danny Phantom was my first fandom, and I remember being 12 talking on Danny Phantom forums to people much too old to be the target audience of the show. So I guess that hasn’t left me either. And the fondest memories I have of Supernatural is how the characters have usurped their creators to become mythic, long past the point they were supposed to die a quiet death. The myth weaving that the Supernatural fandom is doing right now is the legacy that will endure.
References
I got all of these for free from Google Scholar!
Judith May Fathallah, “I’m A God: The Author and the Writing Fan in Supernatural.”
James K A Smith, “A Little Story About Metanarratives: Lyotard, Religion and Postmodernism Revisited.” 2001.
Cameron Lee, “Agency and Purpose in Narrative Therapy: Questioning the Postmodern Rejection of Metanarrative.” 2004.
Harri Englund and James Leach, “Ethnography and the Meta Narratives of Modernity.” 2000.
https://uproxx.com/filmdrunk/mel-brooks-explains-french-mistake-blazing-saddles-blu-ray/
#transcripts#supernatural#supernatural podcast#<60mins#this is first and foremost a podcast about cas and misha collins
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Practical GCSE Advice
Tips From A New Year 12 Who Somehow Got All 9s
Don’t worry, I’m not becoming a studyblr. I’m writing this on results day as a sort of farewell to GCSEs and to impart some “wisdom” upon the youngsters before I move on to A-levels. I’m going to keep this to specific, practical things you can do to improve, none of that vague nonsense. Subject-specific tips for maths, geography, triple science, language, literature, graphic comms and comp sci under the fold because this is too bloody long already.
General Tips:
Don’t go revision crazy. People will always emphasize revision, but so long as you’re revising effectively (see below) you’re safe to start revising about a month before mocks, and two months before your final exams. In terms of a revision schedule during those months, I worked with one or two hours per day, with a free day on Friday and Sunday.
Use apps to stay organised. Put your school timetable and exam dates in your calendar of choice with appropriate reminders and colour coding. To keep track of homework and revision, use Adapt - you can put in your GCSEs and it tracks which topics you have covered and how many times, as well as allowing you to input homework and your school timetable. During study time use Forest (free on Android) to lock yourself out of your phone for a certain amount of time.
Pay attention to lessons from the start. From the beginning of Year 10 every lesson is a GCSE lesson, and everything you learn could come up in an exam. Follow along with your teacher, make the best notes you can, do the work and understand the concepts as early as you can. You’ll thank yourself in a year as you watch the rest of your class wonder what a ribosome is when revision time comes.
Revise effectively. Use Adapt or a textbook to keep track of your confidence level on every topic, so when you’re revising you can focus on the ones you don’t understand whatsoever. Also, don’t just read stuff when revising. You have to train your brain to retrieve the information. Memorise vocabulary and basic facts using flashcards, then answer exam questions. Lots and lots of exam questions.
Use your teachers. They want you to succeed because it reflects well on them! If you don’t understand something after a lesson, pop back at break or lunch, or shoot them an email and they will help. Don’t just bank on it not showing up in the test because Sod’s Law dictates that it will. After Christmas in Year 11 they will often start revision sessions or intervention. Attend them for any subjects you’re even slightly shaky on. They’ll boost your grade like nothing else, even if it does take up some of your chill out time.
Buy textbooks and study materials through school. If your school offers you textbooks and workbooks it’s likely that will be the best deal for them, since they’re purchased in bulk. Grab all you can in Year 10 and talk to the school if you can’t afford many - they may be willing to help. If you know any higher-level teachers see if they have any sample study materials from CGP and the like. My English teacher gave me a lovely set of sample CGP Macbeth flashcards that would have proved really useful.
Make flashcards at the end of every topic. Stay on top of them. You want a term on one side and a definition on the other, or a quote and analysis etc. If you don’t like endless bits of card floating around use Quizlet - you might not even need to make them yourself as many people have shared GCSE flashcards there.
And finally - don’t forget you’re a human! Humans need regular sleep, healthy food including breakfasts, hydration, fun and social time. Make time in your day to take care of yourself. Your brain works better when you’re healthy so often an extra hour of sleep will do more for your grade than an extra hour of revision. Hanging out with your friends and keeping up with your hobbies reduces stress.
Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about any of this stuff, or if you just need advice I’m here too! I’ve done it before, I can help you out.
Subject Specific Tips:
Edexcel Maths:
Use CorbettMaths. All the time. If you haven’t done every one of his worksheets at least once you’re not grinding hard enough. Jk, but seriously this guy used to teach me in real life and he’s awesome. He makes flashcard packs, videos on every aspect of GCSE maths, daily challenges, textbook exercises, practice exam questions... literally everything you could ever need.
Practice everything until you’re sick of it, and then do ten more questions.
You’ll need to memorise some trig identities. Don’t memorise them as a table, that’s hard. Memorise them as these triangles, sketch them out in an exam and work it out on the spot. Easy.
AQA Geography:
Don’t goof off during your fieldwork. Don’t make the same mistake as me. If I ever had to do the fieldwork paper I would not have got a 9. Even though it’s a field trip, even though you’re with your friends, this will directly impact your GCSEs and you need to treat it like an exam.
Memorise vocabulary then move onto exam questions. Geography is very formulaic and exam questions repeat themselves - take advantage of that.
Memorise. Your. Case. Studies.
AQA Biology, Chemistry and Physics:
A l l h a i l f r e e s c i e n c e l e s s o n s .
Practice those reading comprehension questions where you’re presented with information and have to answer questions about them. A surprising amount of people get overwhelmed because they haven’t revised it. You can’t! You have to read and understand it within the exam.
Memorise your bloody equations for physics or you will fail. Use Quizlet, learn them all by the end of year 10 even if you don’t know what they’re about yet, practice using them.
Buy the CGP workbooks and complete them! Make sure to buy the answers too, because CGP are scammers.
AQA English Language and Literature:
Identify 10-20 brief quotes from each piece of literature so you have a few for each character and theme. They can overlap! Also, memorise the author’s intentions for each one. With poems (for those of you who have to do them... I’m not salty, I promise) ask your teacher to recommend 5 that match up with the most themes and memorise 3 quotes from each. Remember to analyse the rest of the poems too - any of them could come up so it’s good to have an understanding.
Memorise structures for every question. The examiners will tell you not to use structures. Shut up, I got all 9s. Structures are the best way for slow writers to ensure they get everything they need to in. TETAAC (topic, evidence, terminology, analysis, alternative interpretation, context) works for lit essays and can be modified for every other question. Work out how many paragraphs you can write in 40 minutes and take that into account when planning. Once the plan is done it’s just a matter of making it sound frilly. English: hacked. My normal plan for a lit essay is a one-sentence thesis statement for an intro, 3xTETAAC paragraphs and a conclusion which reiterates everything but better.
Don’t worry if your grade is terrifyingly low to begin with. That’s just how English rolls. You’ll slowly develop the skills you need and start to make 3 or 4 grades of progress throughout year 11.
OCR Art and Design - Graphic Communication:
Think long and hard about whether you want to do graphics or fine art, if your school offers both. Graphics is designing logos, fine art is whatever you want. I should have taken fine art in retrospect.
Make as much work as possible from the very start, even if you haven’t decided on your portfolio project yet. Everything, and I mean everything, can be shoehorned. If you make a lot of work you have some leeway and can leave out your early stuff so your overall portfolio looks better.
Annotate as you go and store all your thoughts digitally. Even if you have no clue what you’re supposed to write in annotations, put down your thought process. It’s easy to tidy up something you wrote a year ago, but it’s really hard to stare at a letter F made out of newspaper and remember where on earth you were going with it.
To make enough work you will need to stay after school often and give up a lot of lunch times. That’s just how it goes. At least with the right crew it can be fun - the combo of my friends and the very chaotic art teachers at my school made my Thursday graphics sessions something to look forward to.
OCR Computer Science:
Use Quizlet flashcards to memorise terms. Being able to correctly define terms is half the battle, literally. You’ll basically get an instant 9 on the first paper if you memorise every term defined in the textbook. Luckily, someone beautiful and generous by the name of sporkified (wink wink) on Quizlet has created two sets with everything you need to know for the entire qualification.
Practice programming in your chosen language before your programming project starts. Learn to do everything mentioned in the textbook and try it out on a sample project. Many will tell you to not bother about the programming project, it doesn’t matter. That’s true to some extent, but excelling in the programming project can tip you up a grade as well as making the algorithm questions on paper 2 easier for you.
Take part in Cyber Discovery. Give it a Google, sign up. It’s really hard if you have no practical computer experience but doing it gave me a real edge with paper 2 which is where you want to focus your energy as it’s weighted more. Also it’s fun.
#certified crystallised post#crystallised infodumps#revision tips#exams#revision#gcse#gcse 2020#gcse 2021#gcse 2022#gcses#gcse maths#gcse geography#gcse biology#gcse chemistry#gcse physics#gcse english language#gcse english literature#gcse art#gcse graphics#gcse computer science#queueranium
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My brain had suddenly not thought the same way it did, oxygen isn’t getting to it the way it had, blood doesn’t run through it the way it had, it feels like, to a degree, an implosion, not unlike the shift that happens with tectonic plates at the earth’s surface. This means now I can hear my vertebrae at the base of my skull and beneath, the skull cracks at the fissures as if a point of gravity like a warp is reshaping it. My decision making now is questionable, not criminally questionable, but the decisions I make veer off into peculiar themes, for instance, the whimsy of advertisements. The reactions to them are strong, which may be heightened by a coinciding isolation, all of which could be explained away as neuroses, as so much can be, but the integrity of the diagnosis that that could be is greatly compromised by intangibles. I surmise that this has intended to be, for one, a narcissists’ program, in which the language is designed to close off the possibility of social and cognitive maturation. It, instead, endlessly punishes reflection, reason, positive thinking to include any emotional flourishes of joy, exuberance, self-acceptance, an inclination towards the trajectory of all healthy development…It has, I believe destroyed–an embarrassingly easy remedy for all of this notwithstanding–the reward system, an internal resonance for clear thought and careful consideration–qualitative thinking. I can’t wrestle with concepts in the same way I have before. There was a more careful consideration that’s not there anymore, which means the work that I do could suffer for it. The brain is an array of sorts or at least behaves that way, a receiver of input, often vastly ego-centric, easily, near-instantly at the mercy of impulse, which has never quite been that way in adulthood, the way it is now. The formulation of words, increasingly what I would like to articulate comes from an alien place, not that what’s alien has the facility to manage words and construct documents the way I do, but it isn’t concerned with the same things I’m concerned with. What this means is the concern I have for, for example, certain social or creative issues is nearly bankrupt, which means the history of careful, qualitative reasoning and feeling towards those subjects seems gone. This means that that has to be cultivated again, because it necessarily has to be, but it also means a new apprehensiveness towards the retention of new information. Again, a weakening of the faculties, a constructed impairment. This brain, now, acts not unlike a computer server, as if somehow, the neurons were network nodes (not nodes of Ranvier), and all of the sensory duties of the imagining brain were outsourced to a remote terminal. This means, for example, a thought is met with, incorrectly, insufficiently, a thought meant to be thought, perhaps–because functional-integrity is compromised–genuine, is distorted or otherwise presented as if controlled by a foreign catalyst, a facility with thought, with concepts, i.e. design, creative flourishes are intercepted physically, cranially, as much as that can resonate physically, and it’s changed into something that I believe corresponds to what the intruder believes is how a person thinks or means to think. This means that a premium, ironic, considering the possibility that this is of a technological source, is placed on control, not at all on the preservation of thought, or the possibility for general thinking, let alone advanced thought. Whenever an attempt is made to achieve a state of lucidity about the current circumstances, a punishment ensues in the form of blackmail, again social mutilation (anti-social behavior) or some other accusation of criminality or gross immorality. This may be the longest instance of sexual harassment I know in recorded history, as my penis is critiqued multiple times an hour, from flaccid to erect state. It abhors erection, like it’s alien or criminal. All of it is finessed to some degree by an ambiguity, in this case humor amongst other things, the use of interpersonal acrobatics, the continuous promise of a later reward. For instance, one of the things that happens, and this plays off of an already-intrusive guerilla marketing, data-mine marketing (likely a cover for pure harassment), is the establishment of a visual language that always to some degree points to something being advertised, a product you might potentially buy, which on its face is innocuous. But upon closer inspection, it does seem to gain accuracy with each attempt at subverting the feeling of even casual autonomy, any sense of self that comes from personal decision making. What this means is that over time a kind of probabilistic thinking ensues as a reaction to constant probability based harassment(e.g. Probabilistic Psycho-Linguistic Verisimilitude and Infinitesimal Approximations of Neuro-Physiological Reception in Experience Perception. Memory-Thought modulation analysis in the conversion of external stimuli into creative thought and output, partly through continuous tracking of parallel experiential or verisimilarly stimulated brains of a large population sample, and reward system increasingly tailored to positive correlative confirmation signs. Behavioral analysis through the continuous introduction of external and internal stimuli and continuous tracking of subsequent associated epistemological formulations especially in regards to the subsequent introduction of symbolically-associated stimuli, stimuli congruent with particular, personal, accurate or inaccurate epistemological assumptions.). This has the potential to render the target overtly spatially and socially strategic…which can cause irrevocable overt symbolic-interactionism brought on by among other things, helplessness: the methods of harassment are slight and mimic the symptoms of still socially-maligned mental illnesses such as schizophrenia. If you can imagine, an artist, especially one adept at symbols, abstract representation, is made to feel that he or she is responding to what vaguely seems like a phallic or feminine image, and he is, for example, then made to know that he or she is somehow influenced by that prompt to purchase which confirms his or her latent homosexuality, over time this admonishment, necessarily slight, acts as a kind of whip, to which an artist necessarily would respond to with a re-habitual sort of inclination towards the object he wishes to avoid, however ambivalent he might be. Over time the whip makes the artist, like Pavlov’s oft mentioned canines, salivate at the ‘sound of a bell,’ i.e. whip. This kind of harassment I think maybe tends to coincide with what would be a delicate time for an artist, or anybody, especially an inwardly focused artist or person, transgression bound, piqued by curious psychological phenomena, bouts of clairvoyance, synchronistic peculiarities, a lot to navigate through without the addition of systematic, injurious harassment. If for instance it can be said that a person who constructs by some act of fate, his own clairvoyance, a streak of running into exactly what’s foreshadowed as a relational need or otherwise a break from an ideal state, is monitored by someone from an objective point of view who has knowledge of human behavior and the journey of humans, artists, he could potentially be subject to this knowledge, general knowledge, the artists’ knowledge, what the monitor knows the artist knows, what he knows many don’t know about these phenomena, the limits of their efforts to remedy the issue, to include among other things what would be professionally or socially unhygienic to pursue, and particular knowledge of marketing or other forms of harassment to cause irrevocable psychological damage. It keeps a record like a fingerprint for every instant of short and long term audio memory, neuro-instantaneous-configuration, and also manipulation at the cochlear nerves, perhaps induced neuron degradation aided by an overly nitrogen-rich diet that allows sounds to be affected. Either neuron or nerve frequencies are altered to match incoming frequencies, pressure disturbances that create sound. That means that as fast as the speed of sound, an incoming signal is intercepted before a conscious sensation of hearing can be registered. Also communication from preparatory (internal) speech center can be altered to fit incoming signal, or to conform incoming signal to preparatory (internal) speech (i.e. Attempts to further resolve name to voice, signal to name, voice/signal to image...performs as if it may not have specific local knowledge of content, but effects of it, how a datum associates with another datum (e.g. what regional voice and statement placates, even if the value of a statement or effect is unknown--how that's measured, how it's configured, what it means against other data, for instance, if a communal-neuro-topographical map worked with all measurable phenomena associated with brain activity), a relational database, e.g. what might correlate neuro-physiologically to what’s known through data-mining (what an image might sound like, what an algorithm for what an image is like, what a person thinks an image correlates to, would attempt to resolve if it had to ascertain the locus of significance in service of connecting data-processing-of-ephemera to verisimilitude in external thought processing, increasingly how an algorithm could think for you, could be used to subvert reasoned conclusions, to make empirical inquiry or research, entertainment, compromise trusted academic sources for instance by playing to statistically known impulses instead of supplying objective findings, papers, objective search results.) Points to what I had written earlier though about conquest through earnest action and exploitation of assumed unknowns. Audio converted in real-time to legible probable English (what the word most certainly will be at the start of pronunciation) audio interpretation is augmented by visual symbol confirmation, i. e. when audio fails, or when audio may certainly fail to be adequately echoed. Appears to analyze cord vibration state, speech initiation, and compares that against a database and predicts usage in tandem with image analysis, which could be gathered from a databank of images (Bing "like" image search) and image/word-concept association. The process of instantaneous ranking, a number assigned to every possible word outcome given an initial vocal cord vibration state, or speech initiation state, say 200 words starting with 'Bal...' (Ball, balcony, ballerina, balances, etc.). The words are then ranked based on probability which can begathered from historical usage and altered by the microsecond, nanosecond, etc., as the vibration, speech initiation, word formulation further produces a word outcome, until the dwindles to one word, or the listener is trained to hear one word out of possible multiple words, the most probable word given priority amplification. This code can be improved ad infinitum, based on linguistic, probabilistic, psychological, and environmental factors. A listener, possibly an operator on duty somewhere might correct machine code (?) as he notices errors in operation). Sound retrieved from temporary or long term audio memory, as well as the preparatory audio center is manipulated (enhanced or otherwise, modulated, withheld or diminished to produce effect.). Semantics, kinesiology and ephemera analysis, computational linguistics, linguistics itself, sonar, lip reading, etc. coupled with near-real-time incoming quantitative and qualitative data stream can all be used to induce the feeling of a second presence, a second set of eyes with you, and this is--if we were to assume that the data stream is coming from a witting or unwitting transmitter; perhaps an surreptitious or agreed upon installation of a transceiver on the person of the subject--without including the possibility for manipulation of the central nervous system, the frequency that governs or instructs, for instance, heart palpations, the perception of touch. A person could be outright impaired in various ways directly, or indirectly by, for example, stress, what are known as pain-points, if a cue were abusive, as in Pavlov's experiments with dogs, if a known involuntary, or voluntary made near-involuntary by conditioning were triggered to induce, for instance, a fetal-position defensive reaction. Where perception-valleys are present, neuro-experiential displacement is allowed to flourish, that means that with the aid of 'in,' a provincial cue, regionalism in terms of perceptual-familiarity, a person could be lulled into one form of intelligence, say the idea that a person is highly efficient at guessing various truths about your condition based on incoming data, but when the observers' analytical peak reaches a crescendo, possibly employing the infinitesimal, in terms of what can be gleaned, and as this contrasts knowledge of, a comfort level with previous analysis-attempts, a person could incorrectly conclude the 'real' presence of another entity. Audio-psychology, or other physio-neuro sensations can be used to create stories, especially if the belief-quotient of the participant/study/victom is high. Most people are not self-critical down to their neuro makeup, the particular universe of their mind and brain. Perception valleys, but for now, in as much as what's known about what it could know shows change modulated by location and some activity, for instance, a steady increase in rate of accuracy, or due to the fallibility of the senses generally but a known unreliability made increasingly more unreliable by sense-degradation, perception itself of this rate of change has to be called into question, as well as a perception valley, not only instances of impressions of what's known, but also for rates of change. While it can certainly be gleaned that some things are known (that had been, for instance, known to be unknown, in some cases unknowable particularly) and gleaned that some things are being increasingly known, there's still what's already known which is (x, unknown in quantity, quality, thus 0 to infinite, bad to extensive), and what's is increasingly being known that can't be known, that's changing at a rate that's congruent with known rates of change or not. Simultaneously, with that system there's a presentation of it, altruistically perhaps seeks partly, which may itself be a function of an outcome (to disinform, socially engineer some degree of.(cont.)..some degree of ambivalence, a familiarity with a signal presence to undercut the severity of what's being performed, to provide the illusion of a bevy of expected mercies, plethora of cognitive biases such as religious assurance by way of affiliation, assurance based on regionalism, etc. Mentalist tricks, and tricks such as game participation, match-maker, religion-based such as relieving you of talents buried, muscles not adequately used, which can lead to further illogical trains of thought.) to steer thought away from accurately assessing the scenario in general, the general nature of the problem, the specific nature of aspects of the physical problem, to attain a specific and/or general end through whatever can be suggested, including, as stated before, involuntary or near-involuntary responses to audible stimuli, which can provide new data. Other intrusive-(faux) inner-directed sensory cues can function in the same capacity. What's problematic, obvious, but needs to be made plain is that if more is known than prepared for or conceived, than more can be known based on responses to what's assumed to be known, for instance if internal functions of a subject are known, but the subject doesn't know that this is known, he will perform defense maneuvers internally, assuming that he is protecting something unknown. The information gathered from what’s newly known, now that along with internal functions known, the subject has unknowably provided, internal defense maneuvers, can be used to subdue another similar party or subject, or disarm the subject unawares, as they say, so that the subject's assumptions make him incapable of conceiving of a collapse externally orchestrated, thus attempting to solve an internal problem assuming an internal origin, not to mention, the peculiar conundrum that would arise if the subject knew what was known. Every response provides data, so nothing can be done, tactically, that wouldn't make worse the circumstances. If, what's known and had been known, for instance, is thought itself, an ability that would naturally need to be kept under-wraps, and along with thoughts known, thought processes, tendencies, probability, etc., now even a common sense response (silence, repose, a stalemate) is data, itself a maneuver. The continuum to some degree as much as feasible is the most appr. response. In terms of 'maneuvering' around this problem, what seems to me the most pragmatic approach is to, at the least, facilitate open communication (in qualitative proportions) relative to, or as a function of a rate of degradation of value certainties such as primarily the lived life, as much as valued the vital organs, the sustainment of societal functions. I.e. What can't be openly stated that needs to be has to be increasingly openly stated in measures where the positive difference (what's preserved) between what's stated and what's prevented by openly stating is optimal. In what can possibly take place, voluntary or involuntary reaction to perception valley nadirs (closest to truth, gravity), actual knowns could make more real unknowns, exacerbate the perception of a truth, accuracy in reflected/echoed truth, i.e. a known thought known could make more real the perception of a thought known, causing a relinquishing of a hold, a defense due to that assumption, that something is definitely known, or a certain capability of knowing is certainly known. Or in not knowing a thought is known, a knowing center is known, a person could activate defenses that become newly known data, available to disarm. The knowing that's synthetic, that means to make real a data-mined synopsis of a history and now, as much as real-time reporting and application can be that, has approximated the sensation of knowing, as I've said before, so the physiological indication of what it means to have thought, or applying a thought, especially to some external prompt--itself made to seem internally orchestrated, yet an outside prompt, the idea that some other entity, at least the way I would dream of it, is supplying a question that requires an answer, an answer I'm willing to readily give: the neuro-physiological sensation that I am, in a semi-conscious state, the recipient of a question asked of me by someone not me, the idea that it has to be answered, and that the options available, the memory or knowledge bank known is what's actually there, and all that's there, the idea and correlating sensation that that answer is the right one, that I have thought that thought, the desire to interact, that the voice supplied is of the image it's associated with, and that the subject would communicate in this way as a matter of fact, the rendering of the image to, beyond the fact of it's value--how well it's rendered, which is desired to fall into a valley of non-consideration, a given too well constructed to be fully-appreciated in a way that allows for effect-reception to subside and reasonableness to return tide and sufficiently critique--supply an increasing nudge towards what would be still not be a too unreasonable delusion of grandeur--of the grandiosity in each behavior of mine, as it's perceived, or some major failing of sense, that the elements of unconsciousness and visualization that would have to exist to make that point clear are what's actually there, and that that point made is one most salient, like a vacuum, that renders null excess-not-instantaneously-anti-thesis to what it means to convey, to make self-evidently true, that this is more than enough for completion--the sense of it that can guide, though, as I've written many years ago, truth and completion are separate things; one seeks conclusion when truth is tedious, and conclusiveness seeks truth when it's methodology and intentions are dubious, are questionable, to dress expedience, the rhythm of being undeniably-seemingly right or smart-sounding. But writing this, too, in a lucid wakeful state is subject to question, as I've left a state verifiably not my subconscious, the striving moment to moment is compromised as well, the certainty of whether or not impetus is genuine, has been eroded, outside of what's objectively, perhaps statistically sound in the findings of a most-reliable scientifically verified and peer reviewed analysis, and there's evidence that impulse itself, moment to moment, is directed by inauthentic catalysts--intentionally and directly orchestrated by some external source. What it could mean to allude to is simulacrum, but that's a psychosis term publicly. It's connected to weaving varying stories together that have 'no rights whatsoever' to be linked! Speed is not truth, nor is public consensus, nor is the spectre of utter demoralization and humiliation. In these conditions it's certainly difficult to objectively and somehow artfully probe into the idea of creation that seeks creation, or always in preparation of some future ideal. This is me inundated in another consciousness. The reasoning is now foreign, too. It has been that way for some time, but there's less of an obvious differentiation between the way I would feel about certain topics, even in sleep state that's barely leaving unconsciousness. The only way to maintain a sense of objectivity now is largely because of the nature of the thoughts themselves. Partly the game that's played here is rewarding the subject, in this case, me, with a right to healthy sleep, external peace through a decent lack of debilitating continuous sexual harassment, emotional abuse, discreet sexual and psychological assault, if I don't fight against diminishing qualitative thinking, which is preserving my identity. The continuous narcissistic drone that induces unhealthily defensive immediately rectifying mindset (of course at the expense of longterm planning and almost all deep, carefully considered thought). For instance, it continues as if there's some known secret violent, or sexually deviant behavior performed that has to come to light, of course through this style of torture. What it actually seems to be more and more is a conditional crime pre-punishment, a future-looking consequence based on inductive reasoning--ideally the crime, that, when this discreet torment has been completed, will, by its nature, have proven all of the tortuous actions taken upon me, just. But I believe this is based on a hunch that's arisen from the belief in congruence of data from a particular surveillance, even more daunting if that surveillance was coupled with conditioning by persons who would seek this outcome, the justification for that kind of surveillance and discreet torment then. This information, however, doesn't prove the truth of any one act, only the perceived likelihood, perhaps in the court of public opinion, which isn't sufficient. The persuasion that's continuously transmitted is, in a semi-conscious state, even made to seem to be me at the gut of consciousness--i.e. what it would feel like, neuro-physiologically to think and know it's me thinking--slyly, disarmingly persuading someone else to follow a line of thought that's anti-thesis to what I'd most like to suggest, but it may actually fit in more with what would be congruent with the evidence that supports the truth of an instance of transgression, which is what's sought after. At this point, it's really only the fact that I don't think those things, that I don't consider that content and often thus(thereby) genuinely don't like it, that confirms for me, the foreignness of it. It does tend to resemble what's described by Foucalt in Madness and Civilization when he says that power itself takes this route regardless of the people who associate themselves with it, so that all persons in those positions that act as factors in this system behave as needed to support an outcome. In that book he describes three tactics the asylum-keepers use to sedate the subject, longterm*: silencing through ex-communication, through various means, ending regular social interaction; playing to, however belittling it is and beknownst it is to the subject, their idea of grandiosity, their belief of their superiority or deep importance, the delusion that they're a high-ranking official or royalty or a celebrity, whether or not they actually really feel that way, even if they only play along to someone else's suggestion; and the third escapes me, but it believe it has something to do with thwarting immediate goals. Fear is another tactic, or some kinds of trauma tantamount to what traumatic occurrence has caused an initial inhibition ( as flawed as that sounds), and the use of family-ties to persuade, to bring the subject to his right-mind, the definition of which is malleable as necessary like-wise, like what I had written earlier, to justify the tactics used, often what's sought is an ideal external to who the person actually is, an unchanged personality that's often only what it has to be to put loved-one's minds at ease...for instance a person could finish school and be considered insane because, for example, school is ‘unnatural’ for his ilk (by way of his new knowledge he's writes or speaks like he aims to escape himself, or belittle rather than enlighten--usually the case when there's class-transcendence, when the actual numbers for progress are lost on an insular community, the national goal of education, or how education actually relates to affluence or career success, or gives a country it's competitive edge--generally preferred-- regardless of provincial opinions about individual cases), so a community could be persuaded, by the nature of their conditioning, to right the wrong of his enlightenment, to prevent continual learning, to, as overtly illegal and unethical as it is, seal off any chance for further naturally-resulting intellectual development. The problem in 2020 is that the knowledge of these conditions and disorders are known and that increasingly that knowledge is used to mislead the unwitting or support defamation or serve as peripheral intangibles used to wrong someone, i.e. it's weaponized. So street level skullduggery graduates and with the science of thought, there is increasing certainty, less error, so that the chance for something like this, an objective document, is less and less reliable. This might not be a reliable document. There could be for instance a gradual move towards planned happenstance, that secures planned outcomes. I had mentioned the systematic prevention of enlightenment or discreet impairment of the brain as it might be used for, for instance, discrete maths, or quantum mechanics, so lineage, documented familial inclination towards higher-learning, may more and more be seen as insurance against this. Gradually I'm made to become more and more comfortable with a second presence in mind, who, before any guarantee of compensation or noticeable benefit implores me to 'get out' or 'go up' or do a myriad of things as if I can, at will, make those outcomes happen, or as if the fact of my being or maturation isn't in itself, right, or self-evidently wrong. What it feels like, as I've stated before is rape, a marathon of rape-marathons, that itself forcibly becomes a new norm, and I'm responsible for my own pain, guilty for being violated, guilty for being hurt or protesting the rape-marathon in any way at any given time, especially if that protest gives some semblance of respite. The idea is to simply have it stop: I would like it to stop, I have never known this to exist, It was never a reality to me, I don't want it, I have nothing to prove. I only have to become more intimate with what I'm most interested in, and this something I can do without any help. The goal is the extensive depletion of the brain, mind, and eventually everything else. The prize, I believe, is what would strike a person who might encounter me, what would constitute a strength, and so one might like to see me or someone, for example, lose their ability to think in the way they are accustomed to thinking, especially if it's unique or adequate, or proven. Reasons can be as malleable as they have to be, to be sure I don't pontificate or don't mull over problems in the same way. There's an urgency in disrupting creation or thought production that reminds me of poverty-stricken children battling for crumbs or pieces of food, a certain scarcity-mindedness, or zero-sum, end-game, stubbornness. The chief goal here would be sabotage for highly-personal ego-driven reasons, not reasonableness. I'm made to believe that I should make some arbitrary authority my authority where there is none, and one is certainly not wanted or needed. There are large amounts of external stimuli present around me under the guise of helping me think. What this means is a demeaning attempt to forcibly outsource responsibility, which I believe is to make me comfortable with encroachment, especially to reveal private information, even information it is illegal for me to knowingly reveal, illegal for someone to forcibly extract from me, or frame me for relinquishing. Even as thoughts or thinking can be approximated, specific thoughts are more and more echoed in media, but not as general foresight or the synchronicity-high that follows a break from the ideal, a relational dependency, what state of being and thinking would have to take place to make sufficient meaning, or the actual events as genuinely foreseen meaningful encounters, but something else, almost as if I can't think unless each thought is good enough( this bypasses the feat of controlling each thought to even close to that extent to begin with), which they can never be if they're subjectively assessed, and goodness itself has to be questioned here if thoughts are more and more produced (which they are) by some far less adequate (for what I do) external transmitter, as preposterous as this sounds, the fact that I would ever have to consider a second presence in mind as a police for any reason. *The third here was constant references to the past--the asylum keeper would find a way to have the subject ensnared in his own past, which they could always refer to, if they've been keeping good notes, and the subject would ideally keep searching for some answer not readily given--partly due to an unkempt or unreliable memory in tandem with continual subliminal and overt cues to stop actively thinking--but instigated by past psychologically unresolved occurrences that are constantly urgently alluded to, one by one, until a certainty is achieved that further sedates the subject. Non-empowering recollection. More and more, in the morning and at other times, like in Iowa, in the morning, a foreign personality takes over, in the same way a foreign laugh did then, a foreign consciousness, for instance what would be the way I would seem to go in a more generically paternalistic manner (and also paternalism or masculinity as brutishness, manliness as primitiveness), a voice less fluid, a word selection accounts for less nuance, which is even less refined than the initial incapacitation of the basal ganglia, other parts of the brain responsible for high level processing of concepts and a usual work-history-consistent manner of contemplation: what would work for flavors of contemplation, art-thinking for art-writing. More and more the spine is the outermost protruding part of skeleton behind me, the skull is continually pushed forward, the trapezoids are tightened and forced high along with my shoulders (to sit at the top of my torso not at the sides) and ass is coached to increasingly remain tucked under, the back is therefore elongated and bows outward like a bulldog where it approaches the neck(notes from earlier: There’s a constant incoming at a particular numerical rate, a transmission of the kind of stimuli that can’t be easily thwarted. One of the things this results in, or has occurred in this instance alongside it is an ever tightening of the muscles around the trapezius and upper latissimus dorsi, the sides and back of the neck. Quickly, it feels primitive, not in that a person who is muscular there is primitive, but that it feels like the option to deviate from that is increasingly gone. The top half of the skull increasingly sinks into the lower one, the eyes are forced close together than normal–it more and more resembles down syndrome. It feels like it, too. Due a lack of sleep, and again, continuous aggression the eyes are sort of recessed into darkened skin that sits inside the eye sockets. What I have now, what I use to make art is a kind of secondary vision, it’s a secondness of vision. That sense is merely accessing footage, which I translate by way of recollection of what an ideal visual encounter was like. Again, the skull takes primacy, the eyes are a happenstance of the skull. My teeth are slowly reaching the beginning stages of brittleness, which I’ve seen happen quickly almost unnaturally to people I know.), a layman's cognitive consonance is expected to result from daily nudging to escape yourself, to 'leave your head,' as if leaning forward, an animalistic lean is what would make a person more himself. The overall goal is to completely disrupt bodily coordination. What this means, partly, is a conscious operation of the body to replace what should be thought-work, contemplation for interests and work, and other activities. The faculties are increasingly disrupted. Increasingly, simultaneously aptitude is compromised and replaced, the rate of intellectual growth is slowed, the quality of it increasingly less valuable, originality is directly minimalized as a result, and wherewithal for self-propulsion is increasingly made voluntary. The base-work of easy recollection, long and short term reflection, sign-creation, visualization, is forcibly outsourced, and all of it to mock all thought-processing as a means, itself, the reality of that depletion, to distract from an initial crucial loss of deep-meaningful consideration gained over time, through encounters, close-study, long-term deep careful-contemplation of the best that can be thought, for itself, it's own sake and as a foundation for future application. The brain is continually attacked, continually made to be atrophied object, as stated before, increasingly cadaver-centric. The body carries a head, an near-dead extremity, not a center. I'm made to reach, to partly consider at least as a fleeting thought the idea of my brain, my body and mind being diminished to enhance another life, of course, a life that hasn't worked for that reward and who boastfully will not compensate me for that depletion. The game here, as stated before, is to make a person believe many people are hiding from an anonymous machine that doesn't know who I am, and only plays to a person's ego (therefore a shameful thing to admit to being bothered by), their idea that this machine is referring to them and not some collective. The ego is conflated with thinking itself, it means to make the case that thinking, especially high-level thinking, or the way an educated person normally would think about his world, is only meant to nurture the ego. There's a lull in the machine's operation for continued thought-work and contemplation, but this is only to create the illusion of an order within this terror, and one the subject should subscribe to, an authority, where it would be most troublesome to a power-monger to not have one, where there should be none, a whip for thought where no whip is needed, an eye and narcissistic cloud for each thought, even after a major collapse of the faculties, the urgent establishment of an authority where it would only worsen not improve work. For every thought, there's its counter-thought, but not the specifically tailored counter-thought I'd employ to help me gain and retain healthy objectivity. Another game that's repeated here is the idea of inevitable competition, and a naturally occurring inevitable authority over that for the quality of thought a person possesses, logic with every thought, which is not my goal, and not desirable to me. By it's sheer presence, the authority expects forfeiture of sovereignty, not its own death. All of this is not the same as the carefully-tailored thinking I or any person might develop over time, that I have developed over time, the specific way of dealing with people I've cultivated over time (both fallible but uniquely fallible), that's particular to me. This is an externally-orchestrated intrusion on internal space, that can easily be made to seem like an internally-originating mental breakdown. There's a narcissistic drone, that of course works against what it means to administrate over which is the worst of egotistic impulses, the most publicly despised by the most people, but this is accompanied by continuous manipulation of bodily sensations, neuro-physiology and even thought production. What this could easily appear to be to some unwitting person watching is a person struggling with undesirable impulses and characteristics, a person who needs professional help. For instance, if an external presence is forcibly coaching a person to think of murder, in tandem with manipulating the brain, mind and body to viscerally feel that impulse at gut level, that external presence, now internally situated, would taunt or shame a person for even thinking along those lines which would be especially difficult to manage for a person who clings to moral standards. This person witting could perform a myriad of exercises to regain equilibrium, perhaps include that in a daily routine, but a person unwitting could be tragically set back by this constant shaming, which could erode at their form, their freedom amid granted societal freedoms, inalienable rights, or slavery amid all of the resources available for assuring freedom. The shaming would exacerbate impulse, which could lead to impulse-fulfillment. It means to diminish all strengths and not as germaine to some lesson or attempt to target someone else, and it means to outsource all thinking, all facility with various functions, all of the faculties, that are healthy and in some cases above-average. Each day the ability to clearly speak is more and more compromised. My facility with language is increasingly minimalized. Word selection or word memory as needed to sufficiently convey exactly what pertinent is compromised. The ability to convey nuanced thought is diminished, as an echo of actual loss of nuanced thinking. I get the strange feeling that the voice I'm left with is that of someone who makes bold pronouncements, as if drunk in grandiosity, that I would be given over to, as I've said before, delusions of grandeur, however congruent they might be with my actual experiences--not as a celebrity or a politician. The main point is that whereas before I would simply focus on the concept to be conveyed and language-usage-facility was subordinated as needed, now, more and more, I have to be sure speech is accomplishable, and I have to prepare for unpredictable preparatory-thought-failures in regards to overall poignancy and particularly individual word usage to reduce uncertainty (to minimalize latent egregious misinterpretation), and so where it may seem to be the case that one would gain a noticeable benefit from relinquishing conceptual wherewithal in service of immediately detectable thus resonant linguistic dexterity, that soon gives way to another voice less refined (less directed) and perhaps therefore less resonant, or perhaps additionally to some other less easily detectable benefit, e.g. pure (quality) thought for pure (quality) experience, not that the two are always mutually exclusive (that one couldn't be the other). Part of this erosion, I think, has to do with the idea that reality, real-reality is only gained through eschewing internal order, a private order, especially one that allows for deep healthy careful contemplation, reflection and foresight--even if only with definite plans and timely responsibilities in mind. As if dreamscape was a reliable window to some truth, it's treated as if all of its admissible in some invisible court, but what's manipulatable is imagery, like I said before the way a newly wakeful state, a state just before pure consciousness can yield the crest of inhibition, what dreams address mostly abstractly, especially as deep as orchestrated externally based imagery can be planted or seeded by mentalist cues. More and more the deepest unconscious whimsy, what's uncontrolled, is made to bear externally orchestrated fruit, or what can persuade or suggest at the base level of thought, especially in as much as it subverts structural integrity. Even if by only a delay in the body's reaction to the brain's signals, physiological sensations that sometimes accompany dreams, not that that's in anyway whatsoever a punishable offense itself (for instance an erection at the sight of a necrophilia orgy, at bestiality or something worse), can be manipulated to train personal tastes, or supplant the bedrock on which one might stand to declare something from a rightful or righteous as well as a reasonable standpoint. This might not seem like much if it weren’t for the fact that it's accessible, and especially to an unwitting subject, it could seem to be omniscience through authority, which could turn noble but, perhaps albeit reluctantly, strict adherence to morality, a kind of torture. A person who wanted to fully assume authority over a person could use this to control behavior over time, especially in an environment where morality is a kind of currency, the feeling of it, the feeling of goodness, a person's sense of his own deep piousness, or the way it's perceived by others. This could be disrupted to sway other people or make some point to a subject about the limits of how he can feel about himself, or a point about what a subject ought to feel about himself, given what's 'apparent,' what’s 'obviously' known. Their aim is for me to be aware on their terms, to see my own particular trajectory, the awareness I've cultivated, the style of thinking I've developed, nearly the only way to be that would suffice for seeing me through to this point, as wrong in itself, without justification needed for that final judgement, that certain prosecution. I'm blacklisted. Again, freedom is taken from me at a crucial point in my life, and I can't get those years back. I'm attacked by a transmission that reads thoughts, and certainly does so. This is a weapon of war. It's masked as probability, but that's not what it is. It prevents me from starting a viable business, and it rids me of every worthwhile idea. I can't pray. I'm made to viscerally experience consenting to inferiority, or recognizing a superiority that's made to seem true-in-itself, that's above empirical inquiry. More and more each morning it's difficult to articulate what exactly is taking place as immediate recollection becomes weaker. The sensation of being a host for another presence, another consciousness becomes more and more visceral, as if, for instance, the way I could know, neuro-physiologically, what it means to be myself, to be me knowing, was overtaken each time I slept. This is something I only somewhat consciously detect when I wake up, and it's a realization that's increasingly forgettable, like a temporary bout of Alzheimer’s, as much as memory could be a mood, an aphasia for short term memory. I can't remember exactly what was said, but it involved me remembering a date and conveying that to someone, but now more than any other time, the date recounted, and all of the sensation of knowing was present, as much as a person could think to know something or arrive at a conclusion, work through a problem logically, the sensation of the way the mind functions when it rationalizes. A date was given by me to someone who asked for it, but the date given was different then what I could glean from another channel of communication which was also not generated by me, even with the way I know I present images in a dream, another channel, both foreign, presenting two problems. One problem is the problem of simulacrum, the idea that a problem exists to begin with, that the environment is mine, that there's a problem that's mine to remedy. The second problem is that there's one channel that isn't privy to the other, and is determining perhaps by probability what it must be like to receive a sort of para-communication and communicate back, but failing at the transmission of specific data points. So, there could possibly be another channel of communication that's there subconsciously, the one induced by some outside coach, the subconscious machine code, one I don't consciously know, that's made to respond to this other unbeknownst to it, incoming channel with as much verisimilitude as possible, the way a person who has to parity check or verify a secure channel could read into what it has known about the way my neurophysiological behavior would correlate to a transmission. As much as it might seem to be exceptional to communicate in this way, especially for a truth that has to be weaved into a kind of persuasion, even when that means nothing at all, the correlation between the way something is said, the means of saying it and the truthfulness of it, I only get moments of possible relevance, that it's not all gibberish. Mostly, though, it's still persistent verbal assault that's optimized over time combined with a more and more accurate appraisal of my surroundings and physiological states, neurophysiological states, even thoughts, as images that are produced by me, made to be seen as I see the world (so perhaps an interception as a catcher's mitt back there for the way I see, as much as that can be thought or correlate to thought, but more and more it seems that the way this is known is by what could be gathered through large number analysis, the sample that a image-focused search engine would have to have, to...at one instance, say 'this image is like this one, so therefore this image might likely be this one,' especially the way this could work for facial recognition, and, on the other hand, the way words can correlate to imagery, so the often searched images as they correlate to words could coach AI machine code to know an image means this word, which it could stylistically, using a regional voice, say. There's also what correlates to image neuro-physiologically, that near-instantaneous and recordable state that can serve as one datum entry in a library, a relational database for image-text-neurophysiological correlation. This can be married with content recognition by an actual human observer, who by less and less of an imperative needs to coach the machine on what to know, especially for an increasingly large number conforming population, perhaps the erasure of inner-directedness, but certainly the reduction of micro-decisions, or at least the weight that each one of those might hold, the complexity of that with recollection, reminiscing, self-perception, self-awareness, and likewise all of the different types of awareness and sensations, especially in as much as that could disrupt the accuracy of large number assessments in an age where big-data is oil, where data is currency, and as much as that adherence to large number data, perhaps a cousin of the natural human tendency to conform to technology, as much as that reduces the likelihood for genuinely differentiate-able creation, the ability to work in that capacity, idea creation, and safeguard it, becomes increasingly valuable. So what seems to be playful in mind, the wackiness of preventing all of the myriad of ways a person could perceive the world or contemplate it, a steady stream of base-communication, only wide-eyed, exaggerated reactions, for one--that diminish sound outlook, that counters little moment-to-moment realizations, and sparks of self-perception or self-adulation, and past savoring, etc.--is not valuable in the sense of working with concepts, the elements of sensation to create ideas. Yes, as deplorable and disheartening as that sounds, there does exist work to dismantle thinking itself-to-demoralize, which is tragic for most professionals who actually need to contemplate to get work done. There are people with the means to demoralize people in that way--know what a person is thinking, which could mean something if it were a way to say something about the score between the two: the continuous encroachment on thought by the technological world and them, and use that to say the people’s thinking, which might largely make up who they are, is grossly redundant, thus useless--and if demoralization isn’t the goal, inherent illegality of this method notwithstanding, they might not appreciate why and how working through problems unaided, unhampered, with pinging faculties, often yields the raw substance of individual wherewithal (the numbers might point to documented aptitude, verifiable performance as more certain predictors of meaningful thought-work, but there’s evidence of crucial high-level innovation resulting from the later-perfected peculiar-mindedness of once-crude thinkers) which is important because it is infact so often the road enlightenment and inquiry takes, which civilization tends to trail. Considering that much more than what's obvious to me could be known by what's causing this, for at least image recognition, as I've said before, the way a search engine algorithm could link image to words or image to image, an arrangement, the means of detecting image production as it's received by my brain, how it would have to resonate physically, the elemental matter associated with it, and how that would have to correlate to at least what's analogous to an analog-to-digital way of having a non-human instrument interpret with increasing accuracy the actual content there, if we assume what's being felt, followed by what's seen is genuine, and not externally-originating orchestration ( assuming no manipulation based on raw data configuration, a coordinate assignment of each datum, the way that can be recorded and retrieved and over time correlate to meaning, health states, later behavior, entelechy, etc.). It's possible coordinates could be known within axis, a spatial verisimilitude in the way an thought would be orchestrated by a person, basically how a person would conventionally think, at least. If, for instance, it could know the way sensation, the way the brain reacts correlates to a type of image, e.g. a face, within that category, it could reference a library of images that are categorized based on tendencies in appearance that would better ascertain content, so only as much as facial features lead to more certainty are they categorized, in this case, the certainty of what correlates to thought, the way thought could be known with increasing accuracy. So what takes place is prompt in the form of a playful improv on image production awaits confirmation in the form of 'yes' or 'no,' the behaviors that fall under those categories, to know what seemingly ambivalent behavior is ultimately revealing, the way Charles Pierce (W. James?) posits there is no lie. Once the confirmation is received it becomes a brick stacked in service of certainty, the later improvs are more accurate, executed with confidence, for instance an animated image after once thought as static when probability is above perhaps 95%. It could be that in some cases only temporal disposition is known as it's associated with image after an image is thought, a one-off image produced and then externally manipulated, the following thoughts as much as disposition points to this, are perceived to be likely to follow the same pattern, so another face could be perceived by the machine, but in not knowing who the face is immediately or having in that following instance the capability to 'recognize' the type of face, it prioritizes a moment of possible continued follow-on manipulation with an animation like before, one that correlates to an old man, as opposed to say a cheerleader. There are supposedly recorded occurrences of ESP, phenomena, or technology that transfer another person's mind into another person, that would allow for a kind of symbiosis that could carry out this flavor of mischief. In the quanta-age, the one that follows this one, the data-age, it might be said that nothing could be known to be truly debunkable without knowing that, the entirety of circumstances, even though we know in theory one realm, the subatomic doesn't significantly disturb the other, 'reality' as such. If this is all quanta-sized, all physical matter as quantity, then it's possible that all that could be known, quantified, would adhere to principles of probability in as much as an understanding of the movement of gas, vapors, could be optimized, I mean, the way that led to this, to what would seem to be todays understanding of the way subatomic particles work. This could know in exponentially large magnitudes, all of the varieties of living, all of the scenarios a person might encounter that would re-introduce agency, only eluded by infinity, which I've stated before is problematic because of what it suggests, that there is a world so much like our own, that it has to be us (if this were not the case, then according to what infinite entails, then an Earth or a 'me' exactly the way I am now that would have to stop just shy at whatever difference would have to exist to make it not me, would negate the idea that this is not in some way finite, there would have to be an infinite just like infinite minus the smallest possible liminal quantity it takes to make this possible, a physical quantity that both exists and doesn't exist, exists and doesn't exist only as a function of this system--that there has to exist an exact duplicate of infinite or more within all of the nearly-identical copies of it, which would still not define existence as finite, the way that infinite would seem to need to be the case from a linear causal standpoint (Ephesians in the Bible, for instance, says men are not wont to reconcile a beginning and an end of existence), a particle would have to be 'newness,' enough to differentiate one infinity from the other but not enough to mean the two aren't the same, exist as what's not to be copied but also does not exist, the universe in how it functions would have to be always in the process of becoming itself, like a rising yeast as it's cooked, as experienced by someone who could only experience that in increments, like an electron that travels along a copper wire, not an external view of all states imaginable, every possible outcome, perhaps the way it actually is, the way we view a copper wire as opposed to the way an electron does.). There's an assumption that an externally originating transmission wouldn't know to work with a person's sensitive understanding of the way he communicates intimately with other people and to himself to arrive at a desired conclusion, so one would first have to assume in this case an alien-to-self-entelechy that understands this, that would have this understanding to do this, to cause mischief, or that an entity would know this is the path of least resistance, with no value intuition, not even finely tuned, only using knowledge of perhaps neuronal configuration, each one like a fingerprint instantaneously and what that tends to correlate to. There are simple filters for processing thinking that could cause large perceptual shifts just based on that, neuro-physiology, like a delay in thought, which I've stated above, an externally-based orchestration of the fundamental way a person thinks. Even now there’s more thought as murkiness in terms of recollection of what it's like to carry on with a line of thinking with the knowledge that what's thought is what intended to be thought or that a branch of thinking, what would follow what in terms of how I'd most like to state a truth, the easiness of stringing together words that would make a sentence that personally rings coherent, and more of smartly timed cues to suggest the inevitability of all of it, as if it was normal to think wrongly, as I've never thought before, like. for instance, it's a foregone conclusion that my mind is imminent domain; a voice cuts in with something that sounds like a intercom. The knowing center, especially objectivity as a base is continually compromised (one way you could approximate the gist of what's taking place, is if you could imagine this was of the utmost urgency, that for example, a person needed to know for certain that what I've made or some core part of me was exceedingly discreditable for sure, the way a person who has assumed his own superior rightfulness would have to save face for projecting onto an artwork for instance his own foibles and vices, hang ups and inhibitions). It could be that I'm being told something, but on the face I get nothing of definite value informationally but what would seem to be the goal for someone who needs to save face and can't do it, or is faced with the specter of it, a gradual depletion, everything that could be done in this span of time to creatively rewrite my conspicuous trajectory of making art for decades, having had made art for that amount of time and attending high school and college specifically for that. This is mostly taking place in the theatre of semi-consciousness, and it’s still performed as an ongoing court, which is problematic when this internal narration of external and internal meaning is epistemologically attuned, more and more knowing what it would take for me to believe or how it feels for me to know what I'd most like to reasonably think. By way of this, saliency is reduced. The feeling of knowing and thinking what I'd most like to think, and communicating that way is compromised. This saliency is difficult for me to achieve without sanctuary, an actual private or peaceful space in mind, a few minutes, within several years, of actual quiet, the actual guarantee of no added presence or accompanying voice, as well as--if at all recoverable--the feeling of knowing I'm alone in thought to contemplate what I'd most like to, through to completion, especially as much as it fits in with my artistic goals, through to satisfaction. As a side note, there's a tuft of muscle at the base of skull situated behind the ears that's increasingly bulky, and, as much as it's served as a barrier for it in the past notwithstanding, it does now, more and more, prevent the jaw from settling into an involuntary state, the mouth as it happens to a lot of us is overly worked, especially in those times that can last when I have to mouth what I'm meaning to say before I say it, to prevent egregious misspeaking or overly erroneous logic (In Strunk and White’s bestselling ‘Elements of Style,’ a book still in heavy use today, this is introduced as a technique to improve writing, so I’d imagine many millions of people still do this.), but I think this also has something to do this wakeful state, the continuous disruption of healthy sleep and this other thing, the entities we wrestle with, the externally-originating incoming that’s sent, as well as ourselves. The reaction animations are randomized and then made to seem significant. The follow-on statements are often directly proportional in emotional gravitas to the instantaneous belief response, the nearly-involuntary or involuntary one. An image of a known subject is shown, projected, and a follow-on animation is meant to indicate something permanent, some record of fact, like a how a person might deal with what's going on now (If you can imagine how much that could bring a subject into a state of comfort, the way Foucalt said that might occur after being treated in an asylum.), what's happening to me, symbolically, a gesture that's means more than what it is, which further inculcates a person in overly reading behavior as sign, to further eschew healthy selective awareness and selective observation. It's a basically magic 8-ball toy that becomes increasingly more apt over time, so that more and more the indications of randomness, the differences between how a person knows what’s believable as symbolically pertinent and what's orchestrated are diminished over time. This is exacerbated by external and internal cues to believe more, to contemplate less. The capacity for extended careful contemplation is reduced significantly within the first contact, and is almost lost completely a short time after that. It would think it would be nearly-impossible for the undereducated, underaged, disabled to be aware of what's taking place as it's happening. This is how a I imagine it would work: a list of options is run against a list of identifiers associated with each documented sensation. When one sensation registers, it's linked with an identifier, this sensation could be one of reflecting on someone of importance, possibly an influencer, a sub-identifier or subset of identification code could link this to a internal sense cortex, such as a visualization. This sensation and this image is connected to a symbolic animation option such as a turned head for a portrait. What then exists is a record of this projected image and this follow on animation option. I think the other possibilities for follow on animation are subtracted save for what would be most antithetical to a person's values, how a person would most like to think, so that over time as the same sensation is produced with it's associated image, the chances for thinking any other way but a way that points to a follow-on animation is diminished, especially when all other ways lead directly to the most antithetical thought. With images there appears to be, like I said before, an initial identification of what can be gathered to be what's sensed visually, by what's actually seen, what's visible in the visualization cortex, and what can be determined via datamining, especially if it's real-time data-mining or surveillance in general. In this instance there's what's identified based on image association, such as the way a code could determine what values and colors and facial features are displayed and what that's normally associated with...In this case, there's an association that might reveal that not much can be gleaned by listening other than perhaps sonic vibrations or a description that guides others, or what a person would like to think about the way this is working out, for instance, that a way of communication must always be kept in mind or enough to neutralize focus, the way a person would normally engage or go about doing whatever it is that he'd most like to do, especially if it's what has always been done. It seems to access pre-auditory cortex production of what would be sound to me, that's as much as possible not connected to cord vibration production of sound, so is able to reproduce, in a linguistic sense, what would constitute a phrase. It employs oralism to become increasingly adept at lip reading, so that an image's production of the appearance of a person talking is met with real-time congruence, i.e. speech that's naturally camouflaged with moving lips, with increasingly accurate English regionalism, so this points to an image capturer that is capable of processing many states or all possible states of speech production as it's seen by a person watching a person speak. The fact it might be more difficult to translate what would take place without having that vantage point, a frontal viewpoint as opposed to any other way makes me believe it's still in development. But what this also points to is an image capturer that works strictly with that, with say how a cord vibration might resonate visually on an RF spectrum analyzer or some other signal detector, the disturbance of a wave, the presence of a signal amongst noise and how that's altered to match specific points of speech production, such as what would correlate to an 'Ah' sound or a 'Juh' sound. I mentioned before about how a program could reference a dictionary of words associated with the evolution of cord vibration states, as the word develops, and that's optimized, the way high frequency trading works, so that for basketball, the first part of that word 'ba' would-open what would be the widest possible field for this word, words that start with 'ba,' and as that word's produced, following with 'sket' to produce 'basket,' the reference field becomes increasingly smaller, if you can imagine sand in a once top-heavy hour glass, this is the way it would work. So, by the time 'ball' is reached, the speed for correlating signal-to-word is near-instantaneous, or perhaps balancing as much as possible, offsetting what would seem to be a delay however slight at first recognizing and accurately matching visual-cue-to-word, so that by the time the image-to-word operation has been completed, all measurable perceptions, as much as possible, point to seamlessness. Of course, this all points to ominous possibilities for this kind of technology, like all readable sensations, as much as they can be detected, correlating to some kind of data, that's later compiled into information, sometimes information or just raw data that can be used to perform some task, sometimes made to be instantaneous reflex. So, as much as phenomena is data, this could be narrated as it occurs, or as much as narration understands the conditions for perception of phenomena and each correlating subsequent reaction, shortterm and longterm, actions taken by a subject can be predicted with increasing accuracy. And as much as this understanding--how legible information can be, and how intimate an actor can become with that information--can be used to act on a subject, discreet or overt actions taken upon a subject can be adjusted to produce a desired outcome. What seems to be the case with image recollection or if and when this is the case, an immediate foreshadowing of a action very soon to be taken, what seems to transpire is image production as much as possible is outsourced to this externally-originating orchestration, that means increasingly an impulse to reflect or foreshadow, is not coupled with an authentic near-involuntary produced image but an amalgam of an intended image and an externally-originating orchestrated one, or the externally-originating orchestrated one altogether. This could mean that as much as possible, as much as it achieves the perception of seamlessness, the absence of any sense of change in this basic function, images are instantaneously produced (the way that speed is perceived, what would constitute instantaneousness in a subject, i.e. as fast as thought, or usually how fast an image produced would respond to that associated impulse.), images and animation orchestrated by an externally-originating source are possibly synced with what would be the elements of that construction, and in the same way that words are detected by registering the evolution of cord vibration states, the evolution of thought as an image produced could be tracked then intercepted with a melded image--the butt end of a curtailed one, or entirely different image altogether. As much as movement can be determined by some close-read kinesiologically based prediction (that seems to work with a library of lifestyle and cultural content that would most likely correlate with temporal body states and sensations, like the changing consistency of surfaces and materials as they’re sensed, even if just the memories of those touches, what they mean in particular contexts, what a change in touch, the memory of one means for a narrative, the way that’s forcibly illustrated, and other sources of incoming data, like audio, etc.), an intended action, the one meant to be foreshadowed is displayed with increasing succinctness for both motion and image-accuracy, even if in the vein of mockery--possibly, decreasingly, a cover for a lack of actual capability in response time, rendering, animating, and the certainty of a lasting impression of seamlessness, that the thought produced is my own, tricking me into believing that the thought-work it takes to visually conceptualize has been minimized (...an increasingly apt seduction into weakening that natural but also painstakingly-strengthened capability) . As far as the evolution of cord vibration states goes, it seems this capability works best when the subject is at a standstill, when positioning is ideal. This could mean this capability reverts back to conservative operation if it has been predicting the outcome of a future statement based on a prompt for a response, the probability of an action most likely to take place, based on data already collected, and positioning is no longer ideal, especially when a body is in motion. This means adjustments for the evolution of cord vibration states are conditional, i.e. what would likely, first, be word production detection, followed by the identification of which word would most likely follow. Over time, a library of phrases might be compiled and referenced based on circumstantial context along with neuro-physiological states, physiological states, and this would be insured with conditional word production, as each word further confirms the likelihood that a particular statement will be made i.e. sounding based on the evolution of cord vibration states and the data associated with it, the statistical likelihood that a word will be produced based on incoming data. When a subject is in motion and cord vibration states are difficult to detect and thus predict, this system seems to err on the side of a continual second presence, a continuum in the mind and ear of the subject, so that it attempts to match a predicted phrase, vice a repeated one, to the subjects internally-originating phrase, based on the data it has available: first, the most likely phrase to be produced based on circumstantial context--externally-originating stimuli, or an externally-originating prompt for a response, followed by the insurance of this, what would most likely further reduce ambiguity, the decreasing likelihood that this phrase won't be produced, based on the evolution of cord vibration states. But when detection fails, when it's most likely to occur--when a subject is in motion, when there's attenuation, a power outage, etc.--it is possible for an externally-originating near-real time veri-simulation of a subject's speech production to differ from an internally-originating phrase produced by that subject, especially as a subject varies word selection within adhering to the likelihood that a particular phrase will be produced, i.e. beginning a phrase with words that fit that likelihood. It's possible that what could be identified as pre-auditory speech, or what neuro-physiologically would constitute audible thought can be repeated back near-instantaneously, or with what the most statistically and linguistically sound response would be, that would work in the context of what the nature of a given phrase would most likely be. The likelihood a repeated phrase is fit might be increased over time through involuntary physiological confirmation, so as much as possible, especially with modulation and repeater delays, an increase in seamlessness, a diminishing perception that a second presence is artificial. This is the same process used with internally-originating image production to counter all internal dialogue, peculiarity of thought, especially carefully considered contemplation. This morning was the furthest yet I had been semi-consciously another self. That means for as much as consciousness could be that without being that, I was thinking and speaking in mind as someone else, a commentary that's fluid even though it's incongruent with what I'd most likely think and what I'd most like to think. So, before and after that state was the experience of, as much as I can pinpoint, me as I should be, but in between those times was an action as much as it can be that at rest, in a semi-conscious state that was not originated by me. There's still no way to tell if more can be done to curtail wherewithal within me, any remnant of any genuine agency. Even after that, was a snack of a meal, a bowl of cereal, eaten with the facial muscle-memory of another, like another person altogether minus a consciousness that follows a tendency to reason in a certain style, the way I'd usually like to ascertain things. And furthermore on the previous day, while even approximating these unusual occurrences, the mind went the way it would sometimes do in the past--but for past reasons, hinder even the basic work of reason, documenting observations, and sufficiently capturing the function of this encroachment. Thought those notes might seem to be the same as always, yesterday, they were a laborious chore, like building a wall. More and more the mind is bludgeoned with unwavering abuse, like I said before, everything that would diminish strength, or work against anything that has always worked in my favor. I haven't been alone in mind for some time now. I haven't prayed or reflected alone now for some time. I haven't read a book alone for a while, for at least a few years. I’ve been unemployed for over ten years. There's no way to convey to the people around me that this is unnatural. They seem to succumb to what might be a kind of universal spectre of shame for me, for some reason, that at every turn, at every point of rightful repulsion at this continual violation, even at the bud of impulse, I might be forced to reveal, to the chagrin of loved ones or the most highly-respected and treasured keepers of our collective becoming selves, with their looming non-budging judgement, a deviance that would mar my name with what my obituary would most likely have to avoid alluding to, or some other reason, a communal goading at the interpersonal level of interaction or perhaps an amalgam of little concessions of inferiority, that a man should be bludgeoned just cause, just because of what's obvious, some evidence that would be sure to emerge, even if only in the mind of everyone that that needs to be in mind of, what would have to make-sense to make that case, to avoid the socially unhygienic prospect of declaring someone is being wronged by a lot of people, that a lot of people are wrong, even a lot of people we like or love. This could be happening to them, too, the people around me I'd like to convey this to. Though I might not be able to accurately determine to what degree in the past or the immediate past when I was addressing a particular object in way that would betray infact what was before me, it seems that it's possible for this to be known to an outside observer, but to an observer who would have a difficult time making that final determination as to what, given a 1:2 chance of guessing correctly, I was referring to infact. It would seem that as much as this is compromised--the degree to which I could correctly make a determination involuntarily or other wise, nearly such, about the fact of what I was observing--an outside onlooker reading that language--the kinesiology of me, the neuro-physiology of me--might need a level of certainty above, say, 60% or more for a true or false supposition. What would seem to take place is that given the uncertainty of that sensation in regards to how it might correlate to the truth, this outside observer might err on the side of verbal confirmation, especially if that confirmation has historically meant the strongest likelihood of truth. So, what could happen is that when multiple modes of communication are collected and interpreted, priority is given to one mode of communication over the other ( e.g. instead of the two taken in tandem and given the same weight of pertinence) when the accuracy of either is subpar, when the two contradict each other, or they convey different types of information. And because, like I said before, the program seems to stick with a continuum, a continuous second presence, no matter what, a error can last, I believe, until new data prompts an information review that changes that. But even in this case when new data is available, the program might empty something that would seem logical, soundly tactical like two follow-on actions that cover the possibility for both outcomes a true and a false. What may be happening is the program is at times assuming a non-human subject when this happens, or a poorly coded definition of what would constitute a human subject, and so assumes nothing will seem amiss when a subject would naturally seek experiential consonance, but only if the outside actor is aiming for seamlessness and not necessarily-detectable-mischief. Whereas before what had only seemed to be conditional response to the evolution of cord vibration states is now a direct response to thought content as it's communicated in the pre-auditory cortex (preparatory speech or dialogue connected to conceptualization), the suppression of all sensation of saliency, the healthy operation of the brain and mind, or what thought-work is like when it's in an optimal state, the neuro-physiology of it. The goal here would seem to be the inner most point at which thought resonates. The problem this outside actor seems to have is a problem of ownership of the thinking process itself (not a particular one), a personal intellectual pursuit, the inner-most sensational highs of empirical delight, meaningful reflection, the maturation of creative thinking, and the extreme clarity and succinctness that I've known, at times, when I reason, as crazy as that sounds. It continues to communicate that it's wrong for me to think, or that thinking especially as it goes for my ethnicity (or social-economic status) in this country--which is interesting considering my ancestors and all of the work that has gone into silencing their intellectual voice, or breeding out intellectual wherewithal--is not a native past-time, and so this is hate crime. Now that it has snuffed out privacy to the furthest extent yet, it communicates that all empirical inquiry is useless for me, and for that matter it seems to want all of existence to be viewed as only a material conquest, where, of course, I only take instruction, grateful to be paid. Seems like: Something that behaves as a transceiver in me, that's solar powered, that receives code that runs elsif statements that increasingly respond to the entirety of physiology of the infinitesimal, and it varies the degree to which it reveals this to me. Some code is stored and run in a simpler state, a local code in me, when not in receipt of a transmission, which is revealed when I am out of the way of transmission, e.g. when underground, going through a tunnel, in an underground aquarium, on a high-speed rail or subway train, and sometimes on a plane. It sometimes goes away completely during a storm or heavy overcast, or it’s attenuated, disrupted, as if an incoming stream of data they receive that’s continually interpolated, continually made informational is now unreadable. This happens with power outages as well, black and brown outs, which makes me think about electromagnetic emissions. Whatever new behavior I perform that's not readily documented by a reverse transmission, e.g. behavior underground, is interpolated through probability and 'question and answer' confirmation sequences in the form of sensual cues and my para-responses, nearly involuntary or exactly that. Uses timing of bodily functions to predict moments of significance, how a mind might still make folk-sense out of physiological changes, to disrupt sense, experiential-traction for later or instantaneous use in reasoning, by, for instance, modulating the natural sound a digestive system might make, a stomach growling, to mimic actual bestial groaning, a sound that's congruent with what we'd might like reason those organs could make in the realm of possibility. Continually exacerbates anterior-stance defensive mindedness by increasingly more succinct suggestive and incisive verbal or image cues, that might advertise or blend well within sensed stimuli, or are cued based on newly data-rich information, whose goal is to sever all internal and external ideas of social cohesiveness that includes me, a cohesiveness that continues, that's a reality outside of the reality I actively know. This could possibly be happening while an actual external social program is in place to exile me, to ex-communicate me, to actually sever those relationships, or the inverse, to strengthen them, possibly by a means made to seem to be working against that goal, to me. (elusive gap in communication, i.e. a kind of blackmail, that can't be known to me, due to the gravity of a deed, the perceived reality of it, as much as the crux of believability could be known, more than what's normal for above-average thinkers, e.g. if it could be known that knowing stomach groan would be reasoned to be a gut-knowing, that because that's the locus, that's the truest in the same way the most expensive, creative, or heartfelt mode of communication could be assumed to be the most truthful or true at all.) Whatever physiological mechanics takes place that causes that reaction, the chemical way, for instance, that could happen, could be induced as much as that could be a dopamine high, a reward for that gesture...If the signals the brain receives through the nerves that tells it how the body is feeling could be intercepted and modulated, then a number of physiological tales that exploit the folk-sense knowing bodily functions could be told to create an alternate physiological reality, also as much as nerves control bodily functions, this could be used to actually harm the body. It seems to have been used that way for me and is still being used that way, so I'm a victim of assault, a crime that's still happening...The code would have to be deployed with a large data spatial sample of cranial space and how sound heard tends to resonate, and once implemented, a spatial-tuning through a 'question-and-answer' confirmation sequence and thus more accurate sonic verisimilitude--what a sound is like as it's heard by a subject. As I've stated before, if the cochlear nerve frequencies could be modulated before they reach conscious listening, if the pre-auditory cortex, the signal that that generates, could be used to modulate incoming sound, the cochlear nerve frequencies, and if the sound that's stored in long term memory could be modulated, all of that could be used to further manipulate perception or a folk-sense of bodily functions, especially neuro-physiology.. Worst case scenario: various auto-code a.i. machine code intelligences, each one coaching the less sophisticated one it subordinates, perhaps increasingly less coached at the apex by a human who never gets worse at understanding what he knows about machine code, but can glean what a subject knows in general by how a subject manages this conundrum, and he can work to know more of what that person knows and surpass that, of course. As this process degrades the intelligence of the subject, the machine code is more perceived to be close to the subject, to be an entity, and so thus the problem of perhaps returning to a state of intellectual equilibrium or to the convincing ambivalence that accompanies objective observation becomes more difficult as time goes by and the process takes its natural course, especially if the cue of reasoned natural (regional or professional ) speech that was once initially associated with quietude and emotional unavailability in this program is compromised or that what was once recognized as that reasonable state is only that relative to this adjusted sense of departure from reason, and the head coach is becoming more and more reasoned to the same degree that the subject is becoming subdued. Also, if an incoming signal created a mild disturbance in continuous magnetic resonance detection for that particular path, for instance, the eyes to the occipital lobe, at a very small magnitude of detection, it might be possible to translate the difference between a sample signal's path-traveled signature, and the current signal's path-traveled signature, (at a given frequency, each wave sent) and predict with increasing accuracy what the source transmission must be like for the current signal, based on what's known about the sample signal's correlation to past inferred source transmissions--If an instance of disturbance at an extremely small magnitude, what a wave does to continuous MRI, is known to correlate to a particular light or color value in instantaneous optic reception, based on large number samples. If this process could be streamlined and recorded and monitored in real-time or near real-time (as an animation, multiple facsimiles of the inferred source transmission, one after the other at a desired speed), a person who is knowledgeable in visual language could approximate with increasing accuracy--as the process becomes increasingly more streamlined, as the number of verified samples increases, and MRI becomes increasingly more accurate (or whatever medium of detection serves as a foundation upon which to compare samples)--what the content of the source transmission is, i.e. what the subject is probably sensing, e.g. looking at, or hearing, etc. That info, in as much as it could be handled could be used to, for instance, along with modeling inference, influence an unwitting subject, or help correct discreet issues with sense organs, or artificially enhance them. There was a stock, Shopify that increased many folds, %300 or more, over an initial $100+ asking price at nearly the same time I touched down in Hong Kong and experienced a sonic-psychological bludgeoning that continues now. That's not unprecedented but its abnormal. I bring that up because the market is supposed to operate with an invisible hand, if we exclude the possibility of front-end manipulation of website data, so those numbers at least correlate with the timing of that event, i.e. if all targets if more than me were inner-directed people, a prize amongst marketers, then that data, whatever finality that would mean, could be sold or used make more accurate market predictions. If it's just for me which it seems to be at times, then whatever data about me that has already been collected is used as a basis for new incoming data to form a complete picture. This is ongoing thought collection, not just naturally occurring communication that someone is listening in on. Where one repeater stops another repeater that works with probability picks up where the first one left off, especially after a wordy sequence that can't be reasonably believed to be replicated (made up words, etc.) that fast, so a signal that sends back what's transmitted stops and another repeater finishes. This is done to complete the illusion of a smartly listening ear surveilling, whether or not one is actually there. I think this is the script: demoralization that doesn't look like desperation or a kind of terrorism. To make infer intention, or pursue desire based only on discreet cues, nothing concrete, but no desire fulfillment or return to objectivity. To compromise structural integrity through a combination of denial and command. It's difficult to achieve this if the subject doesn't recognize an authority where there is none. This means if, for example, a game is being played, a person can forever elect not to play, but by playing or even recognizing gameplay as an option he renders himself subject. One game is to have a person believe he's avoiding becoming a sociopath, while goading him into placing the highest the importance on what a group of his friends and family thinks, so to give up considering social norms and consequences for the often arbitrary customs and consequences of another social group. One way to gain authority is to brute force voluntary assistance, so that if there is an ambiguity around the truth of some possible moral deviance, 'help' in the form of a convenient distraction is provided, especially when the goal is to simultaneously cover up some horrific wrongdoing and further condition a subject to think he's a bad person, unworthy of inalienable rights, the fact of the subject's perceived silence, through communication failure, on this issue is used to suggest the inherent validity of the oppressors' claims. The brains functions are more and more outsourced in the vein of help, helping to think, the loss of functionality converted into new content or other ventures, but this really only leads to full knowledge of the inner-workings of the subject's mind. To reverse-engineer wherewithal, confidence, agency to correct it, as if it goes without saying it's a criminal act. Here, it's at least a social crime. What they do is constantly interrupt momentum through humiliation and other forms of immediate demoralization, which is deadly for people who need motivation to perform or improve. Every free impulse down to the neuron is made to seem to be connected to some bad outcome, or all personal interest is made to seem to be at the expense of community well-being. Learning a new discipline or skill, reading a book, a good one, and staying fit, are all punishable offenses. Grooming and caring for your appearance or some other self-care, healthy pride behavior is a punishable offense, met with an equal and opposite force every time. Every thought is critiqued and vigorously redressed, made to, at least, seem to be orchestrated by someone else, especially thought connected to personalized internet search, as I've said before, by an outside catalyst, almost as if there was a direct financial benefit to it, or some other party directed benefitted from this much suppression. Thinking is vigorously redressed as if thinking is a privilege that only some local central figure can enjoy. So in regards to what has been before, has always been since birth, but significantly diminished to a degree at some point, perhaps 2004, (when the wings went) was a way of working, particularly with what’s needed fundamentally to make the kind of work that has to be constructed of sorts, this has been replaced by--and this is the way lies work that are crafted with love--a new 'software,' as conveyed to me by what's transmitted, an update, so much more in the way of a hubbub visually around every thought that endeavors to create or carefully contemplate, as if a highly developed software could as much as possible, as creepy as that sounds, mimic human thought, genuine creative inquiry, especially of the kind that resonates inside visually, if you can imagine someone, some technologist, the way they drift off, like a reluctant virus, into their own staunch conclusions about what the humanities are worth. What it needs to do, to save the ego of that kind of architect, is to be sure that this is what I truly want, and it vigorously does so, because what mustn't be is a certain antithesis to his own sense of superiority. This must close in on the infinitesimals, certainly the only few of them, that make up the creative liminal. Beyond the fact that this is problematic, that fact that it exists, is the lies it tells about what a personal trajectory is worth, really worth to anyone, what my specific one is, its progress, and what it's doing for me. It means to replace genuine contemplation, wholly-organic, with neuro-physiologically, or more scarily, neurologically cued thought-content, the way that personal search can be entertainment now, increasingly has to be that now, so deemed by shareholders and what have you. An approach to enlightenment through search, however that might arise, is constantly met with what would doubly steer you wrong empirically and supply your base carnal yearnings with increasingly what it needs in lieu of objectively sound progress. It does this over time and what it's like is an undesired host in the vein of pampering, ornate more than accurate, gaudy and sensational more insightful, as a shepherd for quality thinking, what the west calls the best that can be thought, the way that a runner can be juiced, against their will injected with steroids that improve time but erode at form and knowing, but upon losing that supply, he finds he's more weak than he was when he started receiving, unbeknownst to him, those dosages. I would never willfully agree to this. Thought is not supposed to be shepherded at the collegiate level. It's supposed to be developed. There are resources available to guide, projects to be completed, but I would think the utmost dishonor one can do to a thinker or an artist is to take away his mind, his sense, his approach to world. I suppose this becomes more of an unforgivable encroachment the further you are along in your intellectual or artistic journey. What tends to occur is a weaving of thoughts to fit an always morose story, often one that plays to emotional finality, a denouement, or denouements, one after the other. This is necessary for the layman who sees empiricism as a temporary state, like adolescence. A man, especially my kind of man, of being, for this invader, must be returning, true to nature, back to some entirely illogical bedrock. This is not implicit bias, this is baked in and solidified bias. 'It's foregone conclusion...' is how their thoughts always begin, '...that this subject is inferior, and so how his thinking must go, he must be searching for a return back to normality for him which is only subsistence. What can happen when a person is wont to or conditioned to concede serfdom where there aren't circumstances for it, to defer to an authority where there is none, is that a foreign presence seeks a story that best fits their base ideas about a subject, the opinion of a subject low enough to prevent the loss of their sense of superiority. So, especially if unbeknownst to a subject, all data-mined information, over time, a surveillance data, data and thus information from elsewhere is combined to form a complete story of the subject, one of the subject being continuously watched. And this information is used blackmail a subject, to pressure him in a number of ways that ultimately serve to eliminate agency. For instance, a person becomes 2D to address the need of a force of state to always understand each behavioral impulse, psychological impulse, internal disharmony, and neuronal anomaly. What often occurs is the foreign presence exacerbates ego, by constantly goading you to give in to carnal impulses at the foreigner’s cue, so a deeply narcissistic toxically hyper-masculine environment will want a man to bludgeon an adversary on cue, of course under their watchful 'objective' eye. As I've said before, rightful retribution can take decades if need be. It doesn't have to answer to linear goading, a constant driving to perform revenge as if the amount of persistent instigation ought to achieve a certain outcome at a certain time or else, of course, the consequence of socially-lethal mutilation. Though, in general, occasional (as in yearly) encouragement to defend one's self, itself, isn't bad. It's often good to fight back in self-defense, and righteous personal discourse on defense in between victimhood and rightful retribution or resolution can often serve as a balm until victimhood has ended. I had said something about the cognitive bias of associating complexity with gravitas in assessing the validity of communication. People, culturally, give more weight to temporarily unverifiable truths that are creatively communicated or expensively communicated, or communicated using antiquated but sacred means, or means traditionally understood to be truthful. Just like a person could be predisposed to bonding with people who are likewise suffering, under societal foot, a person can give consideration to a truth proportional to the obstacles to being in reception of that truth, so a person could more dismissive of a truth clearly or lazily communicated than one that is perhaps sent by post as a sentence, one letter at a time. This is complexity bias, which is easy to exploit. As much as understanding or reception is hard-won, even when no valuable or truthful fact has been communicated, a person might still tend to consider this line of communication because it's anomalous. And as much as pressure and circumstances necessitate resolution, this other unresolved line of communication could intermittently supplant a healthy objective focused reception over time, especially when neither provide the truth that's sought, and as much as the unresolved line of communication exponentially transmits more than the traditional one...so much so that the method of communicating even when it hasn't ever yielded any worthwhile transmission or actual truth--a transmission that justifies the inefficiency of that transmission method--can become the default of considering a statement to be true. Irony is also employed as a way to overstate the soundness of a realization, but it's also employed in this way as a failsafe for an underwhelming attempt to actually deter that line of thinking or a check for not understanding the context of a statement, until it can detect some level of physiological self-affirmation. And it uses something like a facial recognition software for digital cameras and applies it to neuro-physiological impulses. I'd imagine this works on an x,y plane and becomes acceleratedly more adept at synching this plane of visualization with neuro-physiological impulses, over time. But still, an actual limit to manipulation. What this seems to work with most are those images that are sensationally weighted, so specific people and specific types of people, and as much as traits and expressions can be approximated, as much as veri-simulation can be achieved, and as tedious they get, peculiar particular truths to be communicated, this allows for the seamless implementation of a kind of exacerbation execution on top of an authentic one that genuinely taxes the body, diminishes all creative thought or facility with active thinking. Image manipulation tends to migrate from a Darwinistic emergence of the most optimal images and movement in terms of resonance, to how they can be best used as instruction, to the use of those images as instruction. So crudely, what takes place is a replacement of those faculties--that add to the development of thought--with excitations, an externally-originating orchestration, what could be thought that would most likely lead to increased excitability in a subject mentally, and this is often coupled with external stimuli meant to further outsource the kinds of thinking that might add to carefully considered thought, like acumen, inner-directedness, and modes of conceptualization. I had said something about the cognitive bias of associating complexity with gravitas in assessing the validity of communication. People, culturally, give more weight to temporarily unverifiable truths that are creatively communicated or expensively communicated, or communicated using antiquated but sacred means, or means traditionally understood to be truthful. Just like a person could be predisposed to bonding with people who are likewise suffering, under societal foot, a person can give consideration to a truth proportional to the obstacles to being in reception of that truth, so a person could more dismissive of a truth clearly or lazily communicated than one that is perhaps sent by post as a sentence, one letter at a time. And as much as understanding or reception is hard-won, even when no valuable or truthful fact has been communicated, a person might still tend to consider this line of communication because it's anomalous. And as much as pressure and circumstances necessitate resolution, this other unresolved line of communication could intermittently supplant a healthy objective focused reception over time, especially when neither provide the truth that is sought and as much as the unresolved line of communication exponentially transmits more than the traditional one...so much so that the method of communicating even when it hasn't ever yielded any worthwhile transmission or actual truth--a transmission that justifies the inefficiency of that transmission method--can become the default of considering a statement to be true. Sarcasm can be employed as a way to overstate the soundness of a realization, but it's also employed in this way as a failsafe for an underwhelming attempt to actually deter that line of thinking or a check for not understanding the context of a statement, until it can detect some level of conviction, some physiological affirmation of truth. It seems to reference a library of sensations that correlate to ideas especially the most oft thought ideas and the phrases that normally follow, for instance, if a neuro-physiological, physiological or kinesiological sensation were indicating a relinquishing of a hold, a preparation for engagement, an oft repeated follow on statement might be, 'Oh, she's lovely!' What this system seems to accomplish is a speedy recognition of which phrases are more likely to correlate to these near-involuntary sensations or impulses to express something. But it takes moment-to-moment cues from those sensations, and mirrors those for as much as they can ascertain which phrase is most apt for a sensation or a pertinent reference, so an expedient copy of that process. So now it could be that there's an urgency, as far as the operation of this goes that places a premium on speed at the points that would most render an intercepted phrase-sensation correlation turned phrase spoken before a subject could speak it, a considered instant-recall of a shared cultural or personal content reference. And in cases when this is not the case and there is an actual working library of specific stored personal official--or cultural content that a person or a machine would know--something different might be taking place: There could be a group of subjects subject to the same forced second presence or transmission, let's say for instance if there was some way someone would benefit from a reduction in the quality of faculties, the ability to reason, moment to moment, a machine might know to monitor a group with the same working algorithm that conditionally specifies a library of content as it's associated with a specific identifier, e.g. metadata that's known to have been communicated in a particular way that's different from other metadata, and has been recorded, too. This second presence hypothetically would continue in this way until the subject would give in to a new aversion to the optimal function of his faculties, or otherwise would be dulled by that presence as much as that would negate the edge that comes from singular independent pursuit. But by this way, the use of conditional attention, a group of reasonable people could reasonably conclude an algorithm is personally addressing them, especially if it employs super-fast infinitesimally precise operations that react to neuro-physiological, physiological, and kinesiological sensations with unendingly increasing accuracy. Seems to match image to impulse in the same way it adjusts to the evolution of cord vibration states, so that a nerve signal is intercepted or induced in some way, and an image is produced that most likely correlates to that signal, where there's is no overriding context and instruction for movement, as instantaneous as possible, there seems to be a system for approximating intended motion as those intentions develop. Today is the furthest this transmission has gone in making what had, up until now, clearly been a second presence, less clearly that. So like each morning when my consciousness is increasingly less clearly mine, as that has to be called into question more and more, most of my internal voice, where preparatory-speech would be allowed to continue a teased out freedom of voiced-contemplation, to a degree, automatic voice, to the same extent like the way I had drawn--my voice as a check on the state of my thinking and an easy commentary is given no other options than, like I said before, the most undesirable thoughts and impulses--not in a understandable way, the way we all know how inhibitions can be a hobgoblin amidst freedoms and social norms, customs and virtuousness, the way, for instance the behavior of a criminal-sexual-minority has to be rationalized by somebody somewhere, and therefore that person or persons might be subject to considering what it must be like to be that and that they must know to stop at some point in that contemplation or consideration as much as it seems to grant them permission to behave that way, but a forced result, and not strictly that, a reverse of a pole, an electromagnetic switch for the wrong way to be, but a particular chain of thought that's never been quite that way, so I can't conclude it's just an underlying egotism awry in a functional way--explainable, but sadly control-lost in that respect, at the helm of subconscious-will to speech and imagery. And though it might seem like a strangely tedious thing to keep track of, the inner-workings of the mind at rest, too often in those under-reasoned areas of our union, truth is architecture not enquiry, so, for instance, for a once told fib--especially a damaging one, a social-snuff, that begs to be reconsidered by the subject it damages--it might be the interest of a person or consortium--where later perhaps the evolution of data-consideration-thus-qualitative-information-refinement leaves a past-case bare--to dress the elements of truth, not what would ever be admissible in a reasonable court, but what might make a court not consider reopening a case, or what would possibly make a judging person reason with a caveat in mind, for a hidden truth, objectivity only as that, an adherence that would render that quality, objectivity, stale, to finish a case in a way that might only readily be seen as rightful, the way we know a defending army mostly would need to be lethal. This seems to be a running theme these days, an external and internal conditioning, for instance, a person's ethical foundation, a sense of morality, forcibly deconstructed, the external factors that describe how a person is, fabricated; the elements of many multiple layers of particular truths manipulated to fuel belief of the validity of the most socially-maligned kinds of wrongdoings; and the internal facts of a person, bodily, psychologically, what can't be refuted by most people who think that way, that what seems to more tedious to bother sabotaging than it's worth, to them, is probably that way for everyone all of the time, and therefore the same requirements for belief should remain for the weightiest decisions and cases.
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Copyright King Ball Media. 2021. All Rights Reserved.
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A Look At Bakudeku’s Development (Based On That One Instagram Post): A Photo-Narrative Analysis
Word Count: 4,287 (Yikes…)
[This got long. Like, REALLY long. Don't expect too many colors. There's a lot to get through...]
For those out of the loop, I recently came across this Instagram post during unhealthy hours in the morning. The purpose of this post, I’d assume, was to debunk any negativity aimed at the Bakudeku dynamic/ship, claiming it was indeed not abusive and that the antis in question are ignoring canon in favor of playing Bakugo’s suicide instigation on repeat. Before addressing the post in question, I would like to state two things:
I am not stuck on Chapter/Episode 1 in the series. I have been caught up proper with every story arc up to the JT Training Arc and am roughly familiar with everything past that point. I don’t just take Katsuki’s now essentially forgotten suicide instigation into account; I’m taking every part of his actions well beyond that moment and how they reflect on him, internally justified or otherwise.
While I’m among the people who believe that Bakudeku as of the latest incarnation of the manga (up to Ch. 280) is indeed abusive, I am open to discussions on why it is not. In any case, however, I cannot ignore the fact that the dynamic/ship is incredibly problematic besides the skeletons in both Izuku and Katsuki’s closets.
So, in order to address this issue to the best of my half-awake brain’s abilities, I will review the screenshots within said post and break down how they factor into the Bakudeku dynamic and the overall development. Be aware that there are some manga and movie spoilers, and this is just MY OPINION. I could be wrong, and I’m okay with that. If you wanna talk without patronizing me, the comments are open. I also apologize in advance if I myself come of as patronizing. All the screenshots I’ll be discussing can be found in the video link above (or here).
Well then, no point in beating around the bush...
1) Izuku Taking Katsuki Out Of The Final Exam Gate (Anime Screenshot)
The first piece of “evidence” used to show the merit of Bakudeku comes from the Final Exam arc, shortly after Katsuki succumbs to All Might’s assault, only for Izuku to come in and deck the #1 Hero in order to grab Katsuki and carry him to safety, allowing them both to pass.
However, this photo marks a recurring trend throughout some of the other photos: they speak more about IZUKU as a character than Izuku AND Katsuki.
Izuku getting to save Katsuki is a major development… for Izuku. One that we’ve seen before. Think about it. The first time Izuku saves Katsuki towards the beginning of the exam, he has to punch Katsuki in the face because he was considering throwing the match just for working with Izuku. And after he’s been saved, Katsuki blows up (figuratively and literally) before aggressively kabedoning him. In this scene though? Katsuki got knocked the f*** out, so he really has no room to protest if Izuku comes in to save him a second time.
Plus, this isn’t really anything NEW with Izuku. We know that he’s aware in an abstract sense that what Katsuki did to him was “wrong,” but he doesn’t hold a grudge or any animosity to him towards that. He’s one of Katsuki’s biggest defenders and supporters, assuming Katsuki allows it. So really, him saving Katsuki isn’t really surprising or a major step forward, ‘cause he was always willing to do it from the get go. And again, Katsuki isn’t conscious during his second rescue, so we don’t really know if he would have let Izuku save him again or if he would have protested.
There’s nothing new here, and nothing balanced to the overall dynamic. Just Izuku being Izuku.
2) All Might Acknowledges The New Bakudeku Rivalry (Anime Screenshot)
Deku vs Kacchan 2 was a big moment for the Bakudeku dynamic. I’m not saying it’s a positive moment, nor am I saying it was necessary, but it was big. And in the aftermath of that fight, where Izuku and Katsuki are having a back and forth, All Might thinks to himself that the two have become true rivals now, or something along those lines. And it’s nice that he’s willing to spell this out for the audience and all, but uh…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: show, don’t tell.
All Might is essentially telling us that Izuku and Katsuki are rivals now. What does the story have to show for it? A brief conversation during their house arrest, followed by a massive stall due to the Shie Hassaikai Arc and Cultural Festival Arc (albeit with one more instance we’ll cover later), and then what essentially equates to Katsuki yelling at Izuku a lot during the Joint Training Arc.
...that’s ...not much.
And yeah, you could expect me to be a good bean to the author and wait until the later arcs, but even then, the execution… just falls kinda flat, at least for me. Going back to that particular moment with All Might’s thought process, it kind of reminds me of Eraserhead essentially acting as a mouthpiece for the Ochako vs Katsuki fight during the Sports Festival, but that’s a can of worms I won’t be indulging today.
What I’m getting at is this: All Might letting the audience know that Bakudeku have reached rival status is great! Now if only the series could deliver more on that...
3) Standing With Two One For Alls (Heroes Rising)
Okay, seriously, if you haven’t seen Heroes Rising yet, I implore you, GO. WATCH IT. It is an incredible film and I would recommend it with warm words. And I’ll admit, it gives us a better incarnation of Bakudeku compared to the rest of the series.
Yes, I said “better,” not “great.”
Look, I’m all for Izuku and Katsuki working past their differences and the clusterf*** that was their childhood, and maybe Horikoshi not being as integrally involved with the film’s writing as people think he is has something to do with it, but uh… you do not say “put myself as low as to working with Deku” or something like that and expect to be casually tossed aside, at least if you’re me. And while I’m glad there was some genuine emotional tension as Izuku gave Katsuki OFA, some part about it feels… off. Like, nothing was really truly resolved. Katsuki wasn’t given OFA as a sign of forgiveness, as an acknowledgement. Katsuki was given OFA because there was an AFO level villain about to wreck the place and kill some peeps and oh look, the narrative made it so that Katsuki was the only convenient holder around! It kinda stings when you look at it that way.
Not that it matters, because a big thing most people forget is that at the end of this movie, THE ENTIRE THING IS ESSENTIALLY SWIPED ACROSS THE DESK AND ON THE FLOOR. Even if it was going to have some level of effort towards the development of the dynamic, that effort is essentially GONE because Katsuki doesn’t remember SQUAT, and what happens to OFA after the fight is NEVER DISCUSSED. It’s just a hard reset, BOOM, back to normal. *Sigh*
Really, the whole double OFA thing was for convenience, less so for any emotional leveling up that could have been done. And even then, Izuku is still somehow the one putting more emotional input into the entire thing than Katsuki.
4) “I Thought You Were Gonna Get Ahead Of Me!” (Anime Screenshot)
Katsuki’s methods of motivation are… admittedly not for everyone. They seem to work fine for Izuku, as seen sometime after the Cultural Festival Arc, but again, that’s just Izuku. We know how he takes Katsuki’s words and turns it into motivation, but why does Katsuki bother at all?
Well, maybe this comes with desperately trying to find reasons to like a character but progressively despising him and his narrative placement more and more as time progresses, but here’s my angle on it: Katsuki just doesn’t want Izuku dragging his weight for nothing.
Keep in mind, we’re talking about the same Katsuki who held a grudge against Shoto for holding back during the Sports Festival. The same Katsuki who wanted the #1 Hero to go all out and would continuously press to fight him. The same Katsuki who wanted to fight a deadly villain even after being instructed to get back to camp for his own safety. The same Katsuki who challenged Izuku to a fight to finally determine where the gap was, and who was frustrated when he won because the power Izuku possessed was All Might’s, so clearly he shouldn’t have lost.
In short, Katsuki doesn’t like it when people don’t give it their all. And I believe it’s been stated once or twice that once Izuku makes One For All his own, there’s a good chance they’re gonna fight again. So it’s in Katsuki’s best interest to make sure Izuku isn’t half-assing anything, because he wants to prove he can beat Izuku at his best, thus proving that KATSUKI is the best.
So it’s less so for Izuku’s benefit as it is for Katsuki’s own.
5) One Giant Leap (Heroes Rising)
Arguably one of the best moments of the entire Heroes Rising film amongst the fandom is the big handhold scene between Katsuki and Izuku as they make a last gambit effort to take down Nine with two One for Alls. Admittedly this is one of the best if not the best moment throughout the entire progression of the Bakudeku dynamic thus far. I’ll give it that much.
...which makes it all the more frustrating because again: MIND. WIPE. The audience knows it happened, but in canon we never know if Izuku discusses it with Katsuki or if anyone else was aware of the moment in greater specificity. IT ESSENTIALLY NEVER HAPPENED, and I’m starting to legitimately wonder whether or not it was for the best...
6) Datte Atashi No Hero (Anime Screenshot)
First off: how? Second off: huh?
Believe me, the second ending of Season 3 is an absolute bop, don’t get me wrong, but uh… again, it provides NOTHING balanced for Bakudeku, once again relying on Izuku’s perspective on the entire matter. I once read an interesting meta about this ending and how it could be interpreted (take this with a grain of salt), but the biggest contender is that this is in fact Izuku’s fantasy. Think about it:
Izuku is a humble traveling warrior, with nothing to distinguish himself in his own opinion.
Ochako is a magician because she’s alien to Izuku, an unheard of phenomenon.
Tenya being a knight, Shoto being a prince, and Momo being a warrior princess all correlates to their high standings in society, heroic or otherwise.
The reason Katsuki is a barbarian king is because he’s familiar to Izuku in an ancient sense; he’s known him for a long time. The list goes on, but you get the jist.
With this in mind, it’s not difficult to understand that even Katsuki willing to work with Izuku would be another aspect of Izuku’s fantasy: to be able to stand beside his childhood friend once more. And remember the ending of that scene, when Izuku does that big sword slash? That’s him having fully mastered OFA. Both are things that could happen given the manga’s recent direction, but still have yet to happen because this is, again, a fantasy.
And apparently Datte Atatshi No Hero is a reflection on Izuku’s feelings towards Katsuki. Take that as you will, but again, this does not speak for Bakudeku as a whole. Just Izuku’s feelings on the matter.
7) Win to Save, Save to Win (Manga Screenshot)
Since I’ve already penned myself into a short story at this point, might as well take the time to look at this famous phrase from the story.
Personally, I consider it bulls***. It harms both characters overall; yes, I said both. It excuses Katsuki’s need to be a blunt powerhouse that only targets villains, and it redundantly demands Izuku do more of what he was already doing, albeit with less sympathy. I know it sounds corny to say saving is more important than winning, but in the heat of the moment, what gets to the civilians in danger more often? Seeing a guy in a cape deck the latest disaster right in front of them or from a distance? Or said cape guy risking life and limb making sure that this person gets to see life another day?
There’s no perfect answer to it, but that’s my stance.
And this quote, “Win to save, save to win,” justifies the one thing that keeps Katsuki from truly outgrowing his past: his need to be the best. If winning is on the same level then saving, and Izuku has an innate capacity to save, then that means it’s okay for Katsuki to have to win all the time, right?
No. It’s not. And that’s not speaking for all the “Gary Stu” crap, either.
Because being pressured into being the best is what caused Katsuki to hate any kindness offered to him by Izuku. The desire to be the best had him bully Izuku for a decade to ensure that Izuku remained the loser and Katsuki remained the winner. That desire characterizes arguably the worst aspects of Katsuki’s character, and those aspects aren’t gonna fly in the Pro Hero world. Because if Nana Shimura, Shota Aizawa, the Pussycats, Mirio, Sir Nighteye, and a handful of other incidents have taught us anything, it’s that even at their best efforts, heroes don’t win all the time.
Katsuki needs to learn this, or it will crush him in the long term. But he hasn’t. The narrative has kept letting him rack up wins, and his current actions in the manga were spurred on by the fact that he still has yet to truly take a loss.
Say what you will, but I don’t like this line. For what it says about Izuku or Katsuki.
8) The Only One Who Can Accept His Feelings… (Anime Screenshot)
Me @ #7: Wanna see me go off?
Me @ #8: Wanna see me do it again?
Izuku’s perspective on the entire Bakudeku situation is a major reason why most fans condone it. “Izuku doesn’t appear obviously bothered by Katsuki, so that clearly means it’s not abusive/problematic, so just shut up!” or something like that. Well, I’m no psychologist, so I won’t go into a spiel about people ignoring their pain for the sake of others or people trying to excuse others in order to place fault on themselves whether or not it be accurate.
Really, all I can say is that NONE OF THIS should be Izuku’s responsibility.
I’m not blaming this on Izuku because he hasn’t had actual friends or a healthy support system in a long while, but the fact that he decides to take on and enable Katsuki in his element just… doesn’t sit well with me. The logical conclusion would be talking, not throwing hands. I don’t care if they’re “distressed teenagers,” neither of them should be doing this, and Katsuki was fully aware that the teachers would stop them in the first place; that’s not simply adults meddling in what isn’t their business. Katsuki should have really figured out by now that maybe the best course of action is to actually vent to someone without blowing their face off, and I get that he’s absolute s*** at feelings, but really, that’s more of a red flag that he needs to actually get help. And if you think a little too hard on Izuku’s feelings of the matter, well…
Imagine being ostracized for so long that you lose all sense of self worth.
Imagine being told time and again that your worthless, which checks out for you because clearly if your worthless, the guy that enabled that mindset is obviously better than you, and he’s entitled to use you for his own ends.
That’s what I get from this scene.
And again, this is all from IZUKU at this point; virtually NOTHING from Katsuki.
9) Double Detroit Smash (Heroes Rising)
I’ve already said my piece about the film. At this point, it’s beating a dead horse with a stick. Moving on.
10) Word of God (Miscellaneous)
Here’s the thing about Word of God in fandom: the general consensus is that it’s nice to get confirmation from a credible source, but unless it is portrayed in canon, it’s just more words which may or may not be true.
In this case, Kohei Horikoshi, the mangaka for BNHA, is saying that eventually, Katsuki will have to apologize to Izuku. Eventually.
As in, it still hasn’t happened yet.
As in, Katsuki still has yet to decide that what he did in the past was wrong and he should try to fix it.
As in, it currently shows no bearing towards Katsuki’s current character nor the overall Bakudeku dynamic.
Sure, it MIGHT happen, but in another interview (or mayhaps it’s the same one), Horikoshi stated that Katsuki originally wasn’t intended to get as much screen time as he did. Both of these situations are different of course, but with the recent turbulence of the War Arc shaking up the manga, is it really so hard to believe that an apology might slip away from Katsuki’s thought process?
On the bright side, an apology could happen. But until it’s canon, then it’s only a possibility, and therefore can’t be used fully for the intended argument.
11) X-Catapult Handhold (Heroes Rising)
I bet some people working on the movie and some fans on the movie felt spoiled when they included not one, but two handholding scenes for Izuku and Katsuki.
And while the first handhold is certainly a marvel of battle tactics, again, there isn’t much else going on with it. Is it nice to see Katsuki working with Izuku again? Yes, but contrary to popular belief, it doesn’t go past that. Katsuki’s just willing to work with Izuku, full stop. He’d probably be willing to work with anyone because Nine is f***ing tank. And sure, getting a handhold tease is nice, but it’s only to facilitate Katsuki’s subsequent yeeting of Izuku at Nine in an attempt to do damage. Nothing more pressing about the circumstances of their past or anything like that.
12) A Bit of Advice (Anime Screenshot)
Look, this is one of the tamer, better looks at Izuku and Katsuki’s relationship. He’s willing to put his pride aside and give Izuku some advice. But remember what I said earlier in #4?
It’s not just to make sure Izuku gets better, but so Katsuki can feel like it’s a complete win when he beats his ass.
And if we take the line “It pisses me off” into account, we can look at that flaw from the same angle. Remember, Izuku has All Might’s power, the #1 Hero’s power. To Katsuki, that means he shouldn’t have the luxury of making mistakes. But Izuku does. He makes mistakes, and Katsuki sees them and he doesn’t get to exploit them. He still wins, but not because of those mistakes. And part of that pisses Katsuki off. Izuku shouldn’t get to slack. So, Katsuki gives him some advice. Advice that will no doubt help Izuku in the long run, for his (and Katuki’s) sakes. It’s a good outcome from a not very good reason...
13) Have You Made That Borrowed Power Your Own? (Manga Screenshot)
Yeah, no.
I don’t care if Izuku is used to this treatment, it still isn’t reinforcing an overall positive tone.
I don’t care if Katsuki acknowledges at some level that Izuku’s power is becoming his own, he still has the gall to say it was no wonder he passed BECAUSE of his power. Which may be true, but it’s not like Izuku was relying on it 100%, and lowkey comes off as Quirkist.
All it tells me is that Katsuki is starting to acknowledge Izuku, in the “gadfly I can’t get off my back” sort of way. Is this the “best development” y’all are rooting for? Basic acknowledgement of another human being?
14) Outta My Way Punk! (Manga Screenshot)
Katsuki reflexively tells Izuku to get out of his way.
Izuku is used to it, again, that does not excuse it.
Once again, Katsuki reverts back to his usual behavior instead of showing a more subtle approach to show the audience that maybe he’s changing beyond what a chorus of other characters saying “he’s changed!” has to offer.
...even if it’s not abusive, you can’t really say that’s a “good” relationship, either.
15) Blackwhip Training (Manga Screenshot)
Katsuki willing to train with Izuku to help him master his Quirk(s) is nice.
Still blatantly in his element with lots of needless yelling and dominance assertion, but still nice.
And keep in mind, right after it’s clear they aren’t getting anywhere and Izuku tries to rationalize it, Katsuki decides to dip seeing as it’s not worth his time anymore. And even before that, at least in my translation, Katsuki seems to be more interested in beating out Blackwhip instead of having Izuku get a handle on.
Again, maybe not abusive, but not exactly supportive, either.
16) ??? (Anime Screenshot)
I personally have no idea what they were going for with this screenshot, but if I had to guess, that’s after Katsuki gives Izuku an escape window whilst he faces off against All Might alone during their Final Exams.
While I understand that this is early on in their dynamic’s development, the fact still stands that Katsuki still wants to fight for fighting’s sake. He may have been willing to at least give Izuku a chance, but he still sees Izuku’s retreat as cowardly, even though it’s a perfectly valid way to pass the exam. He still just wants to fight.
There’s no mutuality in that sense.
17) Quote from Justin Briner (Miscellaneous)
I don’t have much of an opinion for Izuku’s English VA, but for what it’s worth, I think overall he’s a really cool dude. The same, however, cannot be said for his quote.
I can buy into Izuku wanting to get stronger because of Katsuki, since that is a major plot point. I can’t do the same for Katsuki seeing the good in people because we don’t ever see it, really? In fact, it’s more like people latch on to Katsuki and he just tolerates them until they’ve completely wormed their way into his life. There’s no scene where Katsuki considers someone a good person because of something Izuku did, or anything even vaguely along those lines, at least to my knowledge.
As for their relationship, there have been more downs than ups, and it isn’t relatable to me in the slightest. Maybe that’s just ‘cause I don’t get the overall appeal, but their friendship never really strikes me as a… well, friendship. You could argue that’s the point and that’s what makes them different and interesting, but I would much rather we see more concrete proof of their relationship being at more understandable highs and lows while actually demonstrating it was mutual.
But again. That’s just me.
18) Joint Training Pep Talk (Manga Screenshot)
I’m basically repeating myself at this point. Katsuki might be keeping tabs on Izuku, but again, it’s not entirely for Izuku’s benefit. He just wants to make sure his new “rival” (successor to the #1 Hero, I might add) isn’t dragging his feet through the mud and actually getting s*** done so their eventual third clash will actually be worth his time.
...this relationship is so one-sided in two entirely different ways, I swear.
19) Speaking With Kacchan So Naturally (Manga Screenshot)
Why are we congratulating Katsuki for adding one more person to his already (surprisingly) sizable tolerance pile?
Why are we congratulating Izuku for bridging a gap other people managed to cross with little to no effort even though he didn’t do anything wrong?
Izuku is essentially saying “Good job on me for finally getting the same treatment as everyone else from that one person after over ten years.” Good on him, but uh… that’s not exactly a landmark worth framing the way the fandom does...
The relationship might not be outright abusive, but HOO BOY the bar has never been set lower...
20) “You’ve got a good friend in him” (Manga Screenshot)
And finally, the pièce de résistance. Which is really more narrative mouthpiece-ing.
Even before that, Katsuki yet again can’t take a compliment from Izuku for whatever reason. Yet again, Izuku just shrugs off all of Katsuki’s discouragement, intentional or otherwise. And I love me some Dadmight as much as the next guy, but really, does he have a good grasp on relationships? His only friends in his life were David and Naomasa, and he’s been shown time and time again to not be the infallible man many think he is due to being the Symbol of Peace? But suddenly he goes “Bakudeku rights” and y’all jump on that with no room for argument?
Katsuki has yet to prove what All Might has been saying. Again, telling rather than showing, therefore removing the meaning from the entire thing. Unless Katsuki proves otherwise, I call bulls***.
-------------------------------------------------------
So, my final verdict? Bakudeku is fine. It’s just not as great as the rest of you are making it out to be. I’m not gonna dictate whatever you ship or what you enjoy, that’s not my place, but at least keep these perspectives in mind. You don’t have to believe them, but just… stay aware, y’know?
Alrighty, I’ve wasted enough of your time. If you’ve read it until the very end, then… thanks. Carry on.
-Crimson Lion (10 August 2020)
#bnha#boku no hero academia#mha#my hero academia#anti bakugo#anti bakugou#character analysis#meta#long post#vent#it's been a while#hopefully some people can get entertainment from this. for whatever reason...#just don't be a jerk about it okay?#that's all i ask#i was gonna keep this private#then I thought that would be too much effort wasted#and now we're here#10 August 2020#this took way too long#mostly because mobile formatting kinda sucks#at least it's out now#one day these will stop#today is not that day
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