#wwhauOh yheah

[sharkjumpers]

this scene in particular strikes a chord with me because it is here in which the other believes he has killed the real timothy hunter--and thus winning his single player game, claiming the title of "real"... but he is injured in the process. in other worlds he heals himself with magic or has someone else take care of his injury, but in this instance he sits with it and looks down and asks himself, "is this what it means to be real?" his first act as a real person is to experience the sensation of pain (not that he couldn't before--again, we see him injured, but something is obviously different this time. this time it means something. this time he acknowledges something else that has happened to him as REAL).

i think it's interesting in conjunction with this sentiment the other continuously carries: no one he ever hurt was real, so their hurt didn't matter. he never really hurt or killed anyone because they weren't real. when... a) as we see he just equated pain to being real and b) that's just not true. it isn't *our* world, but that doesn't stop it from being *a* world. we see so many different tims living so many different lives--each with their own rich history, their own relationships, and a world full of people operating independently from them. their worlds are real, as far as i'm concerned... but the other always felt out of place, like something wasn't real about him. and when confronted with the reality of the nature of his existence and the inability to go back home, he eventually breaks. he really didn't really start out just killing tims--it was, initially, a horrible accident after attempting to help. Anyway my point here was going to be that if you're convinced that you AREN'T REAL, you're able to convince yourself that no one ELSE is either. if your existence and reality was a lie, everyone else is is TOO. there is an extreme level of dehumanization of self and others that lets him continue killing tim after tim or molly after molly or mom after mom or dad after dad.

which is evident even though he repeatedly makes statements like "i'm the realest/the only real thing in a thousand worlds". the level of denial here is insane ("have never killed--only shadows of reality"). but as much as deep down he knows he isn't real, he's also placing himself on a pedestal of realness that allows him to seperate himself from the people he hurts. my point here was gonna tie back to this:

the other consciously played god and used the other worlds as his own playthings and made a game out of becoming more real than all the rest and could not have gone on as he did unless he fundamentally didn't view them as real. the thousand worlds of timothy hunter were dead by his hand and he should have had the chance to reconcile with that and live with the price of the things he did to get where he is. you made it to the real world, but at what cost? is it somehow better than any of the other worlds? The answer is NO.

life is full of pain and suffering and whenever the other caused pain or suffering or encountered it, he used to be able to just run off to the next world or hide. (see the parallel to how whenever tim felt an emotion he subconsciously split it away from himself and in a sense ran from it and moved on.) now he can't. There are no other worlds!!! This is it!!! And here he admits he needs someone REAL (implying he ISN'T) to teach him HOW to deal with it because it SUCKS and he doesn't know WHAT to do with it. And he pleads with Tim to show him HOW to live in the real world and to help him become right again and make up for what He is and what he's Done. And it means a lot to me because!!

there is something about being so alone and losing a family (who, if i'm to take "how many times can you get even with mum and dad before it gets bloody boring?" at face value, were BAD) and losing your entire not-real world that was born of This very Real Boy Who is also Very Lonely and was Neglected and--

--you alone have this unique connection to him, he needs you and you need him, there is a fundamental place in the world and a promise of SOMEONE who won't be taken from you or who HAS to keep a connection to you, so you AREN'T ALONE. And it's YOURSELF. and that's crazy BUT THEN HE JUST DIES. WHAT!!!