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luka--lu · 6 months ago

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Anthropological and philosophical analysis of Viktor’s story in Season 2 - Part I

Finally gathered thoughts that floated in my mind since Season 2 had ended. These will literally be my first posts ever, will be a bit chaotic, please be kind, I’m shy. But also very critical.

I’ll preface this by saying that I’m not a person with a disability. I cannot claim to know this experience, because I simply don’t. I love Viktor as a character and it so happens he has a disability, it’s something I always consider when engaging with his story. Besides, his story revolves around his disability since S1 Act 2 and he kind of falls into the trope of ‘disability as character motivation’, but he’s much more than that. And that’s what I want to explore in these posts.

My analytical approach is obviously influenced by my experience as an able-bodied person. I’ve had extensive courses on disability studies while at university and focused my bachelor’s thesis partially on disability representation in media (I focused on scars and ‘deformities’, something many Arcane characters have, but that’s perhaps for another post). To people out there who have disabilities and wish to engage with this post - please let me know your thoughts, I’m genuinely trying to learn more.

I want to stress that in my analysis I’m not saying Viktor is entirely ruined as a character or is bad disability representation. I analyse his story from the perspective of philosophical, cultural and social contexts, and through disability studies theory. I’m not an expert and certainly can't speak on behalf of people with disabilities, I'm talking as an anthropologist and enjoyer of storytelling and art.

That being said, I’ll try to make it coherent and divided by topics, because these’ll be long posts. Some thoughts are a bit disjointed, I’ll be sharing some of my ideas for how Viktor’s arc could’ve been improved. Hopefully it makes sense as a whole.

TRANSHUMANISM & POSTHUMANISIM

Transhumanism as a philosophy and social movement originates from the notion that many people are forced to live worse lives than necessary and can’t reach their full potential. One of the most important thinkers of transhumanism Julian Huxley argued that application of science can prevent poverty, illness and change the world for the better. He literally wrote that ‘the man can manage evolution’.

Viktor represents transhumanist ideology in a way that, in Season 2, he literally can’t refuse the job - he was forced the moment Jayce fused him with the Hexcore. Sure, he could have refused to use its power now residing in his body. But the writers chose to disallow him that choice. So Viktor ‘heals’ Huck and begins his Jesus Era. Viktor later asks Singed if the doctor believes in fate, which is followed by Viktor declaring evolution has a course - superseding nature. This way Viktor exemplifies Huxley’s idea of what transhumanism is:

(...) whether he [man, as in human] is conscious of what he is doing or not, he is in point of fact determining the future direction of evolution (...). That is his inescapable destiny and the sooner he realizes it and starts believing in it, the better for all concerned. (Huxley, Transhumanism)

If the Hexcore was actually sentient and controlled Viktor, then I guess it’s the soul of Julian Huxley.

The same way Huxley's work was grounded in a desire to make the world a better place, so is Viktor’s. His dream of betterment of his people's lives was the primary motivation of Viktor’s character, but it got hijacked by the magical mumbo jumbo of the Hexcore and Arcane powers in S2. His transhumanist ideology wasn’t developed organically, the story just jumps to act 2 and then 3 without proper explanation as to why he turned to this philosophy so radically.

Important to add, Huxley was a eugenicist. Kinda wild to take transhumanist ideas and write Viktor’s, a disabled man’s arc, the way they did. Viktor wanted to use technology to change the world, but writers said: ‘hmm, what if… magic?? And eugenics! because he has internalised ableism now!’ But more on that later.

Central question regarding transhumanism is who decides what’s an enhancement and what’s a limitation. The short answer is: it’s a personal choice, we can use inventions to improve quality of life if we wish. Yes, some things can be a choice, but in reality it’s kind of compulsory, because the society is built in a way that demands conformity.

Viktor changed himself instead of trying to change the world the way he intended to in S1. His arc was derailed from his initial will to act for the society that needed positive change. Progress for Piltover meant technological advancement in the name of scientific and economic gain. In Viktor’s transhumanist vision progress is about extending the self - to live without suffering, to cure physical and mental afflictions of Zaunites. It goes beyond his motivation to cure his disease, his actions in S2 don’t fit his characterization in S1. This is why I believe inserting parts of his original League Lore into Arcane would have made an amazing story with transhumanism as background.

Good part of technology is that it gives us opportunities for different forms of embodiment. Embodiment, important in phenomenology and feminist studies, means how we experience ourselves as a living body that feels the world as we inhabit it - how we experience it in connection to us, simultaneously being influenced and influencing the world. There’re plenty of theories that tackle this concept, but let me go the short way.

Transhumanist philosophers talk at length about progress in relation to embodiment. Critics ask questions about the ethical side: who’s gonna get to use the technology to enhance themselves? What about people who can’t afford technology used for the enhancement? How will technology influence the embodiment of certain people? Specifically, what does this philosophy say about disability?

I will talk more about disability in another section, but transhumanists consider physical disabilities as something open to changes. Different technologies can be used as mobility aids, advanced procedures could help with improving the standard of life for people with disabilities.

But there still remains a question: what kinds of disability are considered in need of improvement? If technology changes a disabled person's body so they can function similar to able-bodied people, then is the category of 'disabled' even relevant anymore? Is there a definite line when it comes to influencing the body with technology? What kind of progress do transhumanists actually seek and for whom?

We don't hear Viktor’s stance on ideas similar to transhumanist ones until his talk with Singed, but it's a bit convoluted and isn't developed well enough to be an interesting take on a very controversial and fascinating philosophy that is transhumanism. It’s only indirectly addressed at the end by Old Man Jenkins Viktor when he says ‘There’s no prize to perfection, only an end to pursuit’, meaning that the glorious evolution doesn't really have a destination, even though Viktor believed so.

The change transhumanists seek can never actually reach a final perfect end - who and when will decide what the end of human evolution looks like? What is the ultimate, trans- or even posthuman form we’re supposed to achieve? Arcane seems to argue that nobody will ever be able to decide, even with godlike powers and knowledge.

Old Man Jenkins Viktor calls back to primary belief of posthumanism, which Nietzshe wrote about:

Man is not the effect of some special purpose, of a will, an end; nor is he an object of an attempt to attain an ‘ideal of humanity’ or ‘an ideal of happiness’ or an ‘ideal of morality’. It is absurd to wish to devolve one’s essence on some end or other. We have invented the concept of ‘end’: in reality there is no end. (Nietzshe, Twilight of the Idols)

Posthumanism is another philosophy that provides an interesting context for analysing Viktor’s arc in S2. I first focused on transhumanism since his story originally involved using technology to change lives. But Viktor seems to mix transhumanism and posthumanism.

Posthumanism is more about getting rid of core values of humanism. it’s about going beyond what makes humans, well, humans, which is a lot of things (biology, culture, economy, science, politics, environment, religion, social relations ect.). Posthumanism states that humans aren’t really that special, and argues that there are many other creatures and things that are equally as innovative as humans. It’s a philosophy critiquing anthropocentrism. It dismisses the notion of humans as apex creatures that can control and bend the world to their needs and will. The will to extend ourselves and find power within us isn’t exclusively a human trait - all organisms and things on Earth have that potential (interesting that in the destroyed Piltover Jayce saw the flora and fauna still expanded at the top of the Hexgates).

Viktor’s story isn’t really about that, but it ties to posthumanism when Viktor declares that emotions clash with reason, humanity is a contradiction which causes destruction, so there’s the need to go beyond humanism. Viktor’s ideas about human nature aren't really posthuman. His thought as he was dying after Jayce's attack revolved around the humanist idea that humans actually have an unchangeable essence.

Posthumanism, as understood by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatarri, states that there’s no essence of ‘humans’. There’s only the potentiality, which comes from an individual will to create oneself, apart from fixed rules of the world. Funny enough, Viktor speaks about similar ‘charge, potential, impulse', but I don’t think it’s in any way connected to Deleuze’s idea. The philosophy of Viktor in S2 seems all over the place with trans- and posthuman ideas underneath, but it's an interesting mix that I wanted to explore, even if only on surface level.

Deleuze is fucking difficult to understand, French philosophers are the demons that always kick my ass, but they had some good stuff to say. In Postscript on the Societies of Control Deleuze claims that society is made by machines, not only in technological sense, but also by different systems: social, political, economic, religious ect. Every system is a machine. In the case of Piltover and Zaun, the social and political machines categorize people and program them to inhabit certain identities and spaces. Human body is also a machine consisting of different anatomical systems. We are machines living in machines, the flow of information and experiences between us and the world is constant. In a way, even before Viktor tried to change everyone into machines, the world was already run by machines.

I also think that technological posthumanism is an amazing lens to analyse the usage of Hextech and its final destruction of the world in Arcane. Technological posthumanism states that humans use tools and technology as integral to our identity and functioning. Inventions are made by humans, but inventions also invent humans - we use tools, art, machines that extend us, that make us. Humans don’t make technology because they’re free and rational, rather they’re free and rational because they make technology.

Donna Haraway says we're already cyborgs, because tool-making and technology is always a part of our evolution - we incorporate the world into our bodies. We use tools, but according to posthumanism, tools use us in some sense, like a parasite. Interesting that Viktor becomes literally a mix of flesh and machine, influenced by the Hexcore.

Going further, posthumanist thinker Bernard Stiegler writes:

(...) the pursuit of the evolution of the living by other means than life - which is what the history of technics consists in, from the first flaked pebbles to today, a history that is also the history of humanity. (Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1)

Evolution's course is always directed by technology and tools. Stiegler asks: ‘Who’ or ‘what’ does the inventing? ‘Who’ or ‘what’ is invented?.

Jayce and Viktor invent Hextech. Piltover, City of Progress, is made by the development of Hextech. Hextech invents Piltover’s identity, makes its citizens and government free, rational, innovative and progressive, in opposition to Zaun, which supposedly lacks these traits. Is it really Viktor who causes the calamity in the end? Or is it Viktor and Jayce’s invention of Hextech that caused the end of Piltover? Was it humans using technology, or was it technology influencing humans? Technology can be human’s progression in evolution (as Viktor represented) but it can be the destruction of the world (as Jayce saw in the apocalyptic Piltover). There is no predestined essence or course, there is only the potentiality.

Viktor’s arc with the transhumanist/posthumanist Messiah plot fits a subgenre of these philosophies which states there’s a possibility of a Posthuman God. It means that humans, no longer limited by nature, flesh and emotions, will be able to grow into a god-like state of intelligence. It’s not about ascending to a literal god like Viktor did, but more about posthumans being so advanced and intelligent that modern-day humans wouldn’t be able to comprehend it. It is tied to Nietzshe’s Overman ideal, but that’s another long story.

Summing up, the writers butchered Viktor’s character and did something typical for the general transhumanist discourse. That our problems are technological, not political and social, it’s about science that changes our embodiment, and we need this change because the world is unfair. But why is it unfair? Too difficult of a question for the writers apparently… I'll be dissecting it further below.

* Interesting to add, transhumanists of today go as far as suggesting we’ll be able to upload our minds into computers/certain devices and this way live forever. Viktor sorta reminded me about that with his astral plane self. There was a movie with Johnny Depp with this idea, Transcendence. This movie is bad tho (*Wendy Williams voice* Guess who’s jealous of Viktor Arcane? … JOHNNY DEPP!)

DISABILITY

In The capacity of contract Stacy Clifford Simplican distinguishes two ways of thinking about disability: medical and social. Medical model means that people have a medical problem when we compare their state to fixed diagnostic norms. The social model is about how society creates disability by making the world adjusted to able-bodied people, while disability is an exception to the norm, an anomaly.

What the social model explains is that the problem isn’t the disabled person’s body, the problem is that they didn’t have a chance to design the world that would accommodate everybody. Medical model is appealing to able-bodied people because it allows them to dismiss their anxieties connected to disability and the possibility of acquiring it. People would have to then face the fact that society is actually unfair, so the medical model allows thinking there’s a distinct difference between able-bodied ‘normal’ people and persons with disabilities. There is ‘us’ (able-bodied) and the Other.

The idea of a cultural Other is key in various theories, especially in post-colonial critical theories, disability studies, social stigma theory ect. It basically means that the dominant group considers everyone who’s an outsider or lacks certain attributes essential to the group, as inherently different, oftentimes meaning lesser, therefore considered ‘other than us’. The Other needs to be distinctly alien to the normative group or culture. In case of people with disabilities the line marking the difference is located in their bodies.

In season 2 Viktor literally crossed the line (haha see what i did there) by rejecting his disabled body and changing into the Machine Herald. By rejecting his embodiment, he wished to fit into the ‘perfect’ embodiment represented by the people of Piltover. However, I consider Machine Herald Viktor as the epitome of what Piltover society considers as the Other. At the end of S2, for people of Piltover the line between what’s worth saving and what’s dangerous yet again locates itself in the body of the Other. The body that originated from the embodiment of the disabled Zaunite.

Viktor’s body is central to his character. We see his embodiment is an experience of pain, struggle, not only physical (he feels his body eroding) and emotional, but also social, he’s a Zaunite in Piltover. He’s double stigmatised as an undercitizen and a disabled person. Theory of stigma tells us that problems disabled people experience oftentimes aren’t connected to the disability itself but to the unequal, negative approach, harmful representations and institutionalised practices that cause the stigmatisation. It all reveals itself in ableism. One of the most important authors of disability studies, Rosemary Garland-Thompson wrote at length about these topics, notably in Extraordinary bodies. I’ll be referring to her work a lot in this post.

Viktor changed his body in S1 and then again in S2, he became Machine Herald, what he thinks is ‘the most he’s ever been’. But Piltover still thinks of him as the Other, a threat - and we know that in their worldview ‘Zaunites’ equals ‘danger’. And here’s the thing - ‘disabled’ is a position you get in a concrete socioeconomic context.

Viktor’s Jesus arc and commune activities focus on ‘fixing’ people and allowing them to live on the outskirts, away from the stigmatising society. Paradoxically, he fixed Zaunites to be able-bodied, like Piltover’s society accepts, but Zaunites can’t join that society, they’re still on the outside. Arguably, they’re trying to create an alternative for the stigmatising society, a new ‘Herald’s vision’. But why does this vision involve getting rid of disabilities?

‘Overcoming limitations’ isn't really about transforming the body. As Abigail Thorn said: ‘You're not gonna fix homelessness by turning homeless people into inspector Gadget’. Arcane S2 Viktor took the wrong angle on the whole ‘helping the Zaunites’ thing. The show for sure states that. And that makes me sad and mad because it’s just.. idk stupid? Viktor as he’s established in S1 is fiercely intelligent, has very strong morals and convictions. He acts recklessly and crosses ethical limits only when it comes to saving himself from literally dying. I don't see how he would go from ‘In pursuit of great we failed to do good’ to complete opposite and being SO misguided in act 2-3 in the 2nd season. They character assassinated him so hard it’s almost unbearable. Still love him, but gods, look how they massacred my boy. Anyway-

Viktor’s disability makes him significantly different from the rest of the cast - as Garland-Thompson wrote, the figure of Otherness is a result of interpreting and giving meaning to bodies. It gives categories and paradigms, which then give us identities. By making Viktor a person with disability the creators had the responsibility of understanding that their writing has real life consequences. Representation in art and media is a means of identification for real life people who relate to Viktor’s embodiment.

Disability is not only a physical state of being, a form of individual embodiment, but also an economic one. It’s true for Viktor - he self-described in S1 as ‘a poor cripple’, using the language of his oppressors, clearly to pinpoint how he’s perceived by the normative majority of Piltover. I’d argue this doesn’t tell us how he actually feels about his disability. We don't really get his thoughts on it. I see many people assuming he thinks of it as an imperfection from the start and point to S1 when he shies away from the spotlight and then more obviously in S2 Jayce basically confirms to the audience Viktor’s internalised ableism in The Speech.

But I’m not so convinced. Viktor in S1 strikes me as someone who hopes his work will talk for itself, so he doesn't crave the spotlight, but it absolutely could be argued that the reason he hides in shadows is to protect himself from the scrutiny of onlookers. It might be an argument for him thinking poorly about himself and Arcane is known for ‘show don't tell’, but I sort of… wish they told us?

Viktor talks about his disease and focuses on his incoming death, which is central to his character in S1 after act 1. Disability and actively dying are different things though, but in sociocultural contexts are often considered almost the same. It seems to me that the writers made such an assumption - treating Viktor’s leg and his disease interchangeably.

Viktor’s internalised ableism wasn't prominent, I'd say nonexistent, in S1, his focus was on preventing his death, not on getting rid of his disability. He experimented on his leg and tested its durability when running. Season 1 already established that it was the wrong choice (although the running scene is contradictory with its message because of the ‘victorious’ framing and music). Viktor changes his mind at the end of S1 and asks Jayce to destroy the Hexcore. Never, not once, in S1 Viktor declares that he wishes to help people of the Undercity with getting rid of disabilities or that he wants his own to go away. He only speaks about his general health deteriorating.

But then we get Jayce saying Viktor ‘always wanted to cure what he thought were weaknesses; his leg, his disease’. Um- no, not true? Viktor always wanted to invent things to make a change for the disenfranchised. He couldn't do so because of his terminal illness and Piltover’s politicians not giving a damn about Zaunites. We don't know how he feels about his disability apart from recognising it as a part of his social status as a Zaunite in Piltover. We get the scene when as a child he shows Singed his leg, meaning he can’t play with kids and is lonely. This could mean he’s either shunned or can't access places where kids play. That's an issue of accessibility and how disability is created by alienating disabled people. It’s not enough proof to argue that Viktor dislikes his disability to the point of wishing to fix it when he becomes an adult.

I argue that Viktor’s internalised ableism was forced onto him by the writers. This way they put the responsibility of dealing with ableism on the disabled individual instead of asking the real question: why is Viktor experiencing ableism in the first place? Why is it Viktor who has to bear the burden of injustice and feel bad about himself? Apart from the positive sentiment of ‘disability is a part of humanity and doesn’t mean you’re broken’, the message of the ending seems to be: 'it's sad you feel bad about yourself, you need to hear you’re valid and get over your internalised ableism or you’ll doom everybody, but we won’t be addressing systemic oppression you'd experienced'.

The feminist, lesbian, poet, mother, warrior and an icon Audre Lorde pointed out the issues that stigmatised people face, especially having to be representatives of their marginalised position, having to use their intellectual and emotional labor to address oppression. I can’t agree that Viktor taking on the labor of realising his internalised ableism thanks to Jayce’s Speech is amazing writing. His humanity was denied by the oppressors so much he ended up rejecting it all together? The framing of Viktor’s motivation after becoming Machine Herald is extremely detached from his original character’s. I can’t- it seems like they made him self-loath and cause harm just because the final battle would look cool?

I like Arcane’s message that erasing disability is like erasing humanity and love wins in the end. But it's so naive, because it’s done at the cost of the disabled character’s entire arc and positions him as the villain to a society of mostly able-bodied people. I don't vibe with that writing choice. If the writers had the guts and we didn't live in capitalism, maybe we’d get more seasons and something truly revolutionary.

Feminist scholars pointed out how people’s standpoints shape politics, how identity, personhood and body are cultural constructs that need to be questioned. Standpoint theory suggests that representation is always a political act and thus disability representation needs to be treated as such. I don't think Linke and others thought about it this way while writing Viktor. They created a great character though, so allow me to open my ao3 tab and look up canon divergent fics.

Because of Viktor’s arc in S2 becoming about having his autonomy revoked and his supposed internalised ableism, we unfortunately got an interpretation that Garland-Thomson notes as widely accepted - that physical disability is a part of lower social status and a personal tragedy. We could have had Viktor as a transformative example of a physically disabled person who exposes social institutions of power and questions the notion of othering as a rule that permeates the Zaun-Piltover conflict. For that to happen, it wouldn't be Jayce who affirmed Viktor as valid - it would be Viktor affirming himself.

And we know he had the capacity to do that. In S1 act 1 he’s self-confident and we know he got to Piltover thanks to his intellect and resilience. Why would he lose these parts of himself so radically in S2? I understand that he was severely depressed and dying, that did change his perception of self when his health deteriorated. Yet, I believe in S2 the acceptance Jayce talks about could have come from Viktor seeing his own value. Garland-Thomson calls it 'speaking with one’s voice’. To be seen and accepted means having autonomy and possibility to speak about our embodiment with other people. We don't get to see/hear Viktor do that. He speaks of his mortality and deteriorating body in the context of disease, not disability. And he doesn’t really react to Jayce’s Speech.

If the creators wanted a really empowering story about a disabled character, they needed to address that. According to Garland-Thomson, the body is a text that needs interpretation by their owners. Giving meaning to his body, affirming it (maybe choosing to change it only to stop himself from dying) would mean that Viktor frees himself from symbolic and systemic violence, and rebels against fantasies and anxiety projected onto him by the normative society. That would have been based as fuck.

I ship JayVik, but it doesn't mean The Speech is all fine. Jayce might understand some of Viktor’s struggles but he’ll never understand him fully. It’s true that Jayce experienced horrors beyond comprehension, saw how his dream destroyed the world, he starved, had to reflect on his decisions sitting in a dark cave and injured his leg. Him acquiring a disability to parallel Viktor is a very important moment, yet it’s not the same as knowing Viktor’s experience of embodiment.

Jayce didn't live with a disability all his life in the society that considered it as something inferior. Jayce didn't live with despair and desperation of struggling to prevent himself from dying of an illness caused by the actions of an oppressive state. Jayce’s speech is emotional and important for his relationship with Viktor, and I did get teary eyed when he expressed how much he adored Viktor. But they lost me with ‘fix weaknesses, your leg, disease, and there’s beauty in imperfections’.

The Speech is sweet on the surface level but it rubbed me the wrong way, because not only it didn't make sense with Viktor’s arc, but it also feels weird to say that disability and terminal illness are an imperfection in which there's beauty. Imperfection is a tad insensitive of a term in this context... Having Jayce - who was more privileged socially, essentially able-bodied all his life and acquired his disability only recently - say this to Viktor, is kind of an odd choice. I do see what they’re trying to say: such experiences shape us but they don't define us. That Jayce loved Viktor as a whole human being with every part as integral to who he is.

At the end Jayce frees Viktor from his loneliness. Lovely stuff and I like it on a personal level, altho the Speech was poorly worded. Narratively, it tells me that the disabled character needed another person to say he was all he needed to be from the start. But it ignores the social context of why Viktor was lonely. Jayce's speech shifts focus from systemic oppression and inaccessibility to interpersonal connection he had with Viktor and the emotional side of it. It's possible to both establish a loving bond and acknowledge the discrimination Viktor experienced. But that didn’t happen in the story.

Viktor’s actions as written in S2 seem to stem from an immense need for acceptance and a wish not to be lonely. Of course he has Jayce in the end. My JayVik side is kicking its feet in the air and giggling, but when I look at it from a representation perspective it's kind of bad. Jayce is after all a privileged man who has never experienced life long marginalisation, chronic pain and despair of accepting his death when there's so much work to do for a good cause. And he might have understood how lonely Viktor was, how Jayce neglected his partner but still, Jayce cannot fully get it if it's not his lived experience.

Viktor is defined by his body by the unfair society he exists in and it's impossible for him to ignore it, because that's what shapes him every day. It's understandable he’d want to be healthy but I dislike the ‘Magic Cure for disability’ trope they went with in S2 when Viktor merged with the Hexcore. The trope is widely considered regressive and even harmful when it comes to nuanced disability representation. Viktor's case isn't as obvious, so I'm not trying to pass any finite judgement here. But I generally don't vibe with it.

I wish we knew if there were people with disabilities or sensitivity readers at any stage of the creative process of making Arcane.

I’ll be referring to the topic of Viktor’s disability in other sections of my posts, so it’s not really the end of this subject.

THE RADICAL OTHER

As I wrote earlier, the concept of the Other is extremely important in anthropology. There’s a more expanded and emancipatory theory that I'd like to touch upon - the concept of Radical Otherness.

In itself, this concept is disruptive. When we’re faced with the Radical Other, we’re confused. We cannot relate to them, cannot ignore them, our predisposed opinions and structures of understanding are being postponed. It creates a cognitive dissonance, forces us to change perspective, create space for the Other and look for Otherness in ourselves. It can also cause bigger fear and cause us to alienate the Other even further than we initially did.

Experiencing Otherness touches our bodies and senses without us having prior notice of it. This experience disturbs us, it calls on us, it asks us to respond and to react. German philosopher, Bernhard Waldenfels writes in Bodily experience between selfhood and otherness that people usually either welcome the Other as a guest or exclude the Other as an enemy. The Other is always transformed in a way that the normative society has disposal over them or they're available for the society's intentions. Radical Otherness, according to Waldenfels, is not available to anyone.

Viktor's disabled body is turned into a grotesque fusion of flesh and metal, then into an alien-like creature, not a cyborg which would be more in sync with transhumanist ideas of technological augmentation of the human body. The way Viktor looks in his god-like form is aesthetic but foreign.

What it means for disability visual representation is that Viktor either reinforces or rejects the sociopolitical relations that make the disability a kind of Otherness.

Interpreting Viktor the Machine Herald as rejecting oppressive notions, I’d say he symbolises what’s rebellious, exposing injustice and disrupting social order. He left Piltover behind and came back to cause a radical reinterpretation of the world. He looks absolutely different, strange, magical - and we know people of Piltover fear magic. But because he’s the villain and dies at the end, I'm more inclined to say the writers meant to show his transformation as a symbol of unpredictability, lack of stabilization, anarchy - and that’s both dangerous and brave.

Viktor as Machine Herald can be read as embodiment of personal freedom by rejection of cultural uniformisation. But if it were to be true, he should have rejected conformity while still disabled or at least not transform with Singed’s alchemy. By the time we reach the last episode his arc is a story of Piltover having to tame 'the freak’ as Garland-Thomson would describe it.

The freakiness of Machine Herald’s form is also an interesting choice, because it’s somewhat humanoid but unnatural. It reminds me of the practice of freak shows where people with unusual bodies and disabilities were displayed as freaks of nature, odd creatures. Able-bodied audience gawked at them and while looking in the face of the Others, they’d re-establish themselves as ‘the normal ones’. I hope you catch my drift and see how this is not a good look to have Viktor morph into an alien looking creature that all of Piltover fights in the end…

If I try to find positives in S2’s writing, I can speculate that Viktor becoming the Radical Other in an empowering sense would mean that he embodied an alternative to the status quo. Him leaving and in sense rebelling against domination of Piltover wouldn’t be an intellectual choice but a manifestation of his condition as a person. In this interpretation, his transformation is radical, it’s a positive marker of his individual story.

It’s still a story of oppression though - our Viktor doesn't save himself, Jayce does it for him. I’m not gonna be talking about Old Man Jenkins Viktor orchestrating everything to save himself by having Jayce sent on a mission to save main timeline Viktor. I’m focusing on the Viktor we got to know in S1. It’s beautiful to be seen and supported, the scene at the end was so loving and my AroAce ass relished it. I love JayVik, yeah, though I think the message of Viktor’s arc being so centered on Jayce’s affirmation of him made the message a bit less complex. They’re soulmates, your honor, but they’re so codependent it’s really toxic yaoi.

Jokes aside, it would be amazing if Viktor chose to become the radical Other. He’d make an autonomous decision to use his status of the Other as the ultimate ‘fuck you’ to the system. The system that overlooked him and prescribed him the identity of an undercitizen, ‘an outsider looking in’.

His arc would be even more profound if he recognised his internalised ableism and chose to become the Machine Herald the way he did in the League Lore. In League, his practices aren’t entirely ethical either, but that's besides the point. His decisions were made out of dissatisfaction with Piltover’s corrupt academia and politics, and the moral duty he felt to aid his fellow Zaunites in the face of calamities and everyday hardships. The old LOL Viktor is actually iconic for that.

The Arcane version of the Divorce arc could’ve made JayVik more complex if they let Viktor express disappointment with Jayce’s decision to weaponize Hextech and Council’s lack of interest in the Undercity’s issues. Then the 'our paths diverged long ago' would be more inpactful.

The character arc is a mess but I tried to reach and look for sth more interesting within it. I think the Radical Otherness of Machine Herald is a compelling angle. Not what writers intended, for sure not, I don’t think they taught anything through that deeply.

ENDING PART I...

I think it all could have been more interesting if Viktor wasn't influenced by Hexcore as we’re led to believe, because… this is cheap writing and yet again takes away his autonomy, which he was denied far too much in S2. The magical stuff took away from Viktor’s character and lost focus of his actual motivation.

I think what we got isn’t good enough, but I appreciate bits that can be read as more meaningful, that's where my idea for this 'essay' came from. I just wish the writers had the guts to let Viktor be angry, come back to Zaun, not do the cult stuff and just help people, join the rebellion, basically tell the Pilties: ‘I hope I confuse the hell out of you’.

That’s it for the first part of this analysis. Part 2 coming soon i guess. (Edit: Second paaaart here)

literally me writing this fucking dissertation:

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sephirthoughts · 1 year ago

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Vincent’s lingering obsession with Lucrecia is excellent drama, but their story is not a doomed romance.

This is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think Lucrecia deserves nearly as much pity and excusing of her actions as she gets. This is not character-hate post, it's an analysis of a character I think gets short shrift as a Mother-Mary in a bell jar, and deserves better.

Lucrecia is morally grey. Charcoal grey. I love complex, morally grey characters, particularly when they're women, since usually women are relegated to roles that infantilize and objectify them, particularly in video games, which have historically been a very backward, androcentric medium. I strongly dislike brainless victims, subject to the whims of the male characters, without much agency, and Lucrecia was not such a character.

Lucrecia was an adult with agency and brains. She was a grown ass adult. She was a brilliant scientist. She made decisions with her eyes open, and even sacrificed her unborn child to her work. She is a very interesting character. The fact that she didn't idolize motherhood as the end-all of female existence, and that her obsession with her work was stronger than her desire to be a 'good mother' makes her far more interesting than otherwise. The fact that she regretted it later and wanted him back doesn’t magically make her a good person, or change the choices she made. It demonstrates guilt and remorse, which are part of character development. The bottom line is that she committed atrocities in the name of science, then felt guilty about it later, once she realized how devastating the consequences were to her personally. To say she didn’t know what she was doing or Hojo manipulated or controlled her is to infantilize and disrespect her character. She’s not some sacrificial angel who was a victim of circumstances; she was a willing participant in her own downfall.

Lucrecia is a tragic character, but she's not a romantic lead. Except in Vincent's head. After all was said and done, she had one of those too-late changes of heart that make tragedy so emotionally impactful. She had a human reaction to Vincent's death and felt terribly guilty for her role in all of it, as she should. That doesn't mean she loved him, it means she wasn't a monster. She lost her son, and gradually, Hojo's callous inhumanity and her inability to escape the net she wove with her own hands closed in on her. Did she deserve to never hold her baby son and never see him even once? No. But she caused it, with her own actions. That's tragedy. She was miserable, bereft, and riddled with guilt, so she made a last-ditch effort to make something right...by doing more insane science shit that turned Vincent into a monster. Seeing that she'd only made everything worse, she tried to kill herself, but was unable to, and thus ran off to become a crystal statue in a cave (this is a trope that I dislike, but that's the story, so that's what we've got).

Vincent is a bad judge of the circumstances. Vincent persists in seeing her as a lost love, and someone from whom he was unjustly separated by circumstances. The fact that he is so blinded by his feelings for her that he places her on this pedestal and can't blame her for what she did is excellent characterization, and I love it, but it's because he’s wrong. He loved her. She didn’t love him (I think she was in love with his father, but that's just icing on the tragedy cake, at this point). His lingering attachment, not to the real Lucrecia, but to the idealized version of her he has in his mind, is a very sad reality that adds so much delicious pain to his character. In the end, he is unable to blame her, because he loved his image of her (and Hojo is a way easier target for anger, because he's literally the worst), which speaks far more to his personal bias in the situation than to her actual role in it. She’s not moustache-twirlingly evil like Hojo but she’s not Vincent's star cross'd soul mate tragically torn away by cruel fate. Lucrecia was her own person.

In summation. Their story is not a doomed romance, it's a complicated, messy, ugly tangle of thorns, and one of the best written tragedies in a game that literally bleeds tragedy from every orifice. It's got one-sided love, obsession, mad science, betrayal, jealousy, fetal experimentation, murder, corpse reanimation, and a guy who can't die, and is left to deal with the consequences of everyone else's actions by himself forever. No one is innocent and no one comes out unscathed…strike that. Vincent is innocent and Hojo comes out unscathed. But still. Lucrecia is not a holy mother, she's not a brainless victim, and she's not Vincent's lost love. She's a person he loved, and who didn't reciprocate. Most importantly, she's a person. A whole-ass, complex, morally grey, fully developed person, who made terrible choices, then made even worse choices, and in the end, couldn't escape the fate she wove for herself.

And then wound up encased in crystal so she could be a pretty statue forever cause the game devs just couldn't help themselves I guess.

#lucrecia crescent #vincent valentine #ff7 #final fantasy 7 #ff7 vincent #professor hojo #warning: hojo #science!#opinion #i wrote this without pre-planning sorry it's rough and scattered #don't burn me at the stake #my opinion may change

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aeternior · 2 months ago

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Anaxa, How the Self Transcends the Divine

An Anaxa analysis in relation to Nietzsche (cross posted from tiktok ; @aeternior)

(More of a summarized version of as much of a summary I can make out of somewhat surface level research and 1k+ wordcound ; I am not a Nietzsche Scholar, so apologies to any out there for any amateur misinterpretations or understanding.)

Anaxa & Nietzsche

Although Anaxa obviously implies to have inspiration and references to the Pre-Socratic Greek astronomer Anaxagorous, at the same time he has more glaring parallels to Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher of the late 19th century. Anaxa not only shares important philosophical aspects and characteristics with Nietzsche, but also quotes and references him numerous times, particularly in his CN ASMR where he reads aloud Dionysus Dithyrambs: a poem written by Nietzsche. He also takes inspiration from Nietzsche in his "Thus Spoke Anaxagoras", a reference to Nietzsche's own famous work, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

Even if Anaxa shares a majority of his philosophy with Nietzsche, that does not take away from philosophers such as Anaxagorous from playing a part- In fact, Nietzsche's own philosophical ideas which Anaxa shares are inspired by Anaxagorous in particular, more so through Nietzsche's unfinished work, "The Tragic Age of the Greeks", from which I believe Anaxa’s own philosophical foundation and character takes inspiration from.

"The Tragic Age of the Greeks" features five Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers Nietzsche discusses, ones that he admires. Among these include Anaxagoras, the last philosopher he left off in his piece. What's most intriguing of Anaxagoras though, is the rhetorics he features to Nietzsche-What is the substance of existence? Where do our existence and experiences originate?- What are we?

This very question is the one Anaxa himself builds his own hypothesis around.

For Anaxa, it is the Nousporists that provide this answer, that the soul holds the solution to his thesis in search of the truth of creation. "Nousporism"-Nous. Nous, to Nietzsche is where he abruptly left off in his work discussing Anaxagoras, in which Nous is the 'start' of the universe, the origin or motion which tapped on the cycle of existence so the universe can become and develop on its own.

Nous which represents the will of mind, is what goes against the mechanical fate of it's creation, the universe. This is what Anaxa seeks to prove against the fate of Amphoreus. That despite the prophecy, despite the fate of the Chryso Heirs, the existence of humanity itself opposes it, the creative power of Nous he uses to prove Titans are no better than mortals- That the will of self (the soul) transcends the divine.

Life as an Experiment

"Life could be an experiment of the seeker for knowledge - and not a duty, not a calamity, not trickery... Life as a means to knowledge - with this principle in one's heart can live not only boldly but even gaily, and laugh gaily too"

Nietzsche, [On the Genealogy of Morals]

"A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions--as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all." Nietzsche, [The Gay Science]

To Nietzsche, the experimental life is the experience of life itself: Life as a means to knowledge, not just as a resultive, scientific approach but as an active experience, a constant string of hypotheticals we observe in the discovery of how we live and what we live for. Does a scientist only test the same medium and hypothesis for the same if not similar results, or does the data lead to another hypothesis, another experiment to gather results as they gain another step in finding truth? A scientist adapts through the results and data they gather and share. Science is a community.

If we experience life as an experience made by our own perspectives, are the results and data we gather not also the various perspectives we gather in our environment as results, but also our experiences as a whole which lead us to adapt and change our hypothesis? The hypothesis of our beliefs, values, principles, and identity. A scientist gathers data and results not through the constraints of traditional morality, but because the results are simply results to another step closer to truth. Anaxa demonstrates this approach fully in his character by the determination of his own hypothesis he seeks to prove. Like Nietzsche, he is called a heretic, a fool, a blasphemer-And yet that does not stop his experiment, not just in what he proves as truth but also in his beliefs where he does not allow constraints such as morality to limit. Truth is beyond morality and tradition, beyond the societal and human constructs it outlies.

The Death of God-

"Only disciples of truth can continue on this path, and the authorities who proclaim themselves to be sages fear the fall of god."

Anaxa, [Character Story III]

"God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?"

Nietzsche, [Gay Science]

The criticism of nihilism and the fall of God is a subject most often associated with Nietzsche, first introduced in 'The Gay Science, and is the subject Anaxa conveys the most in his character. Now, the death, if not murder of God is not meant to be portrayed as the first step to nihilism as it is often misunderstood, but instead an approach against the very philosophy of nihilism as what Nietzsche means to offer. He critiques nihilism as a result of the fall of God and the lead to the collapse of Western society, the void of an inherently meaningless universe now clear due to the fall of faith. Anaxa claims the sages as fearing the fall of God, unable to bear the validation of their own authority and faith as a weak means to make up the weight of an inherently meaningless world. When in reality, the purpose and value God has left in his death is already there: Humanity.

The will and innovation of humanity, the creative human will and creations of the very men who murdered their own faith already creates and applies purpose in a world that deems meaningless, humanity the driving force of meaning itself. Humanity is what finds truth through the purpose they create in the void left by God, discovers truth in a universe left without any answers but their own. Anaxa, whose faith in the Titans has long already been buried in the black tide and the death of his sister— What better truth is there to find but himself?

What better faith is there than the faith in humanity itself, what stranger faith is there but the will and experiences of man? He loves, he creates, he suffers. Anaxa fully embraces and embodies humanity as a whole. He endures it.

He wills it, and he proves it. He does not transcend it, he uses it as a means of transcendence, a thesis in his own truth of Nousporism, and ultimately his own proof of the will of humanity itself. Anaxa's demonstration of Netzsche's experimental life further ties into this as well.

"I am incredibly happy now. I once smiled like this, when I first created a mechanical bird that could fly in the sky. My hands once trembled like this, when I developed a new life through incubation."

Anaxa, [Character Story IV]

Alternate Matyrdom

“I believe that he who has divined something of the most basic conditions for his growth in love will understand what Dante meant when he wrote over the gate of his inferno: I, too, was created by eternal love.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, [The Will to Power]

When living as a means to knowledge, he does not just mean academic knowledge, but the knowledge of our experiences. Every experience we have in life is an experimental discovery, each one an inquirement and discovery of the knowledge all around us. For Nietzsche, we are beings of knowledge, and through our knowledge we discover truth. But to be challenged, to suffer and love for our truth? To gather the failures first, before finding the results? What truth is more true than one you suffer for, what love is more powerful than one you fight for? How much greater is a scientist's theory the more failures it's tested, the more results its met with a single solution more towards the truth?

Irony & Sarcasm

Other than the main philosophies Anaxa shares with Nietzsche, he also possibly happens to share Nietzsche's known irony and sarcasm identified in his writing style too. Nietzsche himself commonly uses irony and sarcasm as a way to engage and expand on his own philosophical critiques, more so on tradtional structures of morality and religion. Anaxa also commonly uses both ironic and sarcastic language, and this style is also an engaging way to point out contradictions provocations in an argument, as well as critiques.

(-It is argued that Nietzsche uses this style of ironic language the most in one of his most famous works, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra")

Thank you for reading, this is all for now. Might look into Nietzsche more since I somewhat do admire the man and his works, although Anaxa also has noticable references to the Magnum Opus and Heraclitus too, which I might dig into.

#hsr #hsr lore #honkai star rail #hsr anaxa #anaxagoras #honkai star rail anaxa #anaxa #amphoreus #hsr anaxagoras #hsr theory #anaxa analysis #anaxa d1 nietzsche glazer #this took like 20 rereads of nietzsche and 10 different sources of professors on nietzsche articles

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bloodchapell · 7 days ago

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...IN HEAVEN... — senku i.

brief summary: the trials of being in love with your best friend

what to expect: WUHLUHWUH (wlw), genderbent senku, reader is a lolita n writer (self indulgent on this one, a lot of self indulging in this whole thing), reader being the ultimate yearner

your sword's note: this was inspired by @smokefilm's post on yuri senku, and the title is inspired by my glorious bucktick. if there is anything i love, i love women more, so girl senku is very dear to me. i fear this was ahh but whateva, leave a like and i will make a freaked out version, more on da mistresslist

You were her first friend in college. And she was your first friend in college and only friend in general. You shared a history class required for all majors and coincidentally sat beside each other in the strategically best seats in the classroom. As always, the professor made the awkward activities to get to know each other with the person besides, so there you were, telling each other your major, your favorite historical period and all that. While you told her that your major was going to be creative writing and that your favorite historical period was the medieval and victorian eras, she said that her major was aerospace engineering and that was enough to blow you away.

"That is genuinely amazing..." You said in awe. Senku was used to getting those reactions, but there was something in your expression that made her laugh.

"And, my favorite historical period is..."

"The scientific revolution." You pointed out trying to guess and she nodded somewhat surprised, though it was kind of obvious.

"I would have ten billion percent guessed yours too, just putting that out there for public knowledge." She said pointing at your outfit, a lolita coordinate.

For Mondays and Wednesdays that was the last class for both of you, so you decided to walk together to the dorm building. Senku shared that initially she was going to have a dorm for herself, but the administration messed up and put her in a double. It turned out that her dorm was the one next to yours.

In a twisted change of events, your roommate and her roommate were best friends and begged you both to change dorms, so after a quick analysis of what room was better, Senku found out that the ventilation system in your room was better plus there was some mysterious extra space so she chose to switch rooms after she successfully manipulated the administration to agree with the change because after all they had messed up originally.

Whenever Senku wasn't blowing up things in the lab or doing impossible science things, she was at the dorm, playing games or investigating stuff. And you were there most of your free time, reading 30 books for all your classes or writing your soul away.

"Braid my hair." She launched a hair tie to your forehead.

"Ow you can't braid your own hair because your dad would do it for you all the time." You teased her, she threw a pillow at you but you caught it and threw it back at her. Still, you got off your bed and sat in hers, grabbing a hairbrush and delicately brushing her hair to then braid it. "Done, but as payment, I am staying in your bed tonight."

"Alright." She nodded and got off the bed to walk to yours, but before she could take another step you grabbed her arm.

"Oh you are not leaving, C6H12O6."

"You decided to call me C six H twelve O six instead of saying honey? Sociopath." She complained caged in your arms, but she didn't move away.

Your closeness with each other often plagued Senku's mind. Whenever you stepped outside you would grab her hand, and she would not complain or take her hand away; you would sleep together when it was cold or when you were bored or when you ended up chatting so late at night that eventually you both simply fell asleep. It wasn't like she was completely inept either, she was well aware that regular friendships didn't roll like that, but she couldn't pinpoint it.

Senku thought of it again looking at you asleep in her bed, surprisingly having no answers this time around.

Things started to shake up when Senku became friends with Gen Asagiri, some psychology major who enjoyed creating chaos.

"We are often not as subtle as we think." The bastard would purr whenever you were around.

"I'll purge you like a demon." You threatened him, several times. "You are crazy and don't know what you're talking about."

"You like Senku, you can't lie to me." Gen affirmed with a shit-eating smile.

"Don't go around spreading that! What is wrong with you!?"

"Yet you didn't deny it." He shrugged and you shook him by the collar of his shirt. "She mentions it casually, that you are always attentive and teasy and dedicated, I think she appreciates it."

"Well what are you trying to do? Get rid of the competition?"

"No idiot, I am playing Cupid here. Appreciates as in loves it."

Though the beginning of the conversation had Senku, at the other side of the door, hold onto the screwdriver with hope, the last part made him want to drill a hole into Gen's skull. You were talking with Gen outside of the dorm unaware that Senku was inside. She didn't expect you to come in, but she heard you opening the door she dropped everything and pretended to be asleep on the floor.

"Lucky she is asleep." Gen pointed out with a smile while you signaled him to shut up.

"Senku." You leaned down and whispered, after a second, she mumbled like she knew she did when sleeping. "Lay down in the bed."

You helped her up and she got on her bed, pretending to be sleepy as she buried her face in the pillow.

The next days became a quiet hell for her, noticing every damn thing you did that came off as a gesture and which made her get oddly excited. It came to a point where she was unconsciously hanging around Gen to try and see if he would tease her about it and do his totally fake but efficient mind-reading bullshit.

Fortunately for her, Gen was already going to bother her about you before she even started looking forwards for it, so when he asked her to come to a party and bring you along she pretended to deny and accepted only after some time had passed.

"I can't believe you accepted to come to this, we could have been watching something cool in the dorm." You sighed as Gen dragged you to sit in a circle full of semi-inebriated college students where you were sure he was going to orchestrate some great scheme.

"I had a lapse in my normally composed reasoning." She sighed starting to wonder if it had been a good idea to go to the party. Maybe a more direct approach would have worked the same or better but she got carried away.

Out of his pocket, Gen took a plastic bag filled with little papers, and passed it around. The instructions were clear, take a paper, do the dare or drink a shot. For some reason that became clear later, he tossed the bag to the person in front of him and told them to go clockwise, him getting the bag before either you or Senku could get it. Some people carried out their ridiculous dares, some others decided to chug the alcohol. Coincidentally, you were too focused on the person before Gen carrying out their dare, and when you looked back he had a grin that made you feel concerned for your well being.

Gen then grabbed a paper, it was the stupidest dare and he did it giggly while everyone wondered why his dare was so tame compared to the rest. Then, he handed the bag to Senku.

"Why didn't we leave!" You whispered to her.

"I don't know, okay?" She whispered back, altered, reaching into the bag. She grabbed a paper and discretely read it, only to then dump it back and grab another one, but it was probably even worse.

Kiss the person beside you!

Confess to the person beside you!

Admit you have a crush on the person beside you!

"Gen, what the fuck!" Senku shrieked, maybe her own plan had backfired terribly.

"You have to do it." Gen shrugged.

"Let me see." You grabbed the bag trying to divert away the attention of the rest of the members of the circle, and grabbed some papers. "You snake! You changed the bag! This is outrageous!"

Making a scene you threw the bag at Gen and grabbed Senku's hand to leave, the rest of the people started boo-ing Gen for cheating but he smiled through it all.

You made it out of the party, and started walking back to the dorm building, still holding her hand like always. The beaming moon in the sky took your attention for a moment and you sighed.

You knew you liked Senku, from the moment you met her and were baffled at how cute she was, from the moment you first spoke to each other, every little interaction, every moment. You felt conflicted, having longed for a close friend for long but suddenly finding yourself enveloped by her charm. You promised yourself to cherish her as the most valuable thing ever, a type of devotion you reserved only for the things you'd write, wether you were to be her friend and stay by her side you would support her and help her and love her; it was odd, it felt like a romance out of one of the stories you would write, a love so pure that it defied even wanting to be with her, you were happy to simply relinquish your soul to her.

Senku didn't know that, nor she knew her own feelings like you did; she had come to the realization she liked you, the science was there after all, there was little to nothing to do, it wasn't like she could fight it.

"Did you read the papers?" Senku asked, also looking at the moon for solace.

"Yeah, I will skin Gen alive next time." You nodded.

"Why?"

"What do you mean why?" You laughed. "The papers."

"It's just Gen teasing." Senku said logically. "Though, I guess there is a reason."

You turned to see her, but she didn't look at you, she couldn't.

"Is that a sign for me to read between the lines?" You asked, squeezing her hand. "Or am I being corrupted by Gen?"

"Definitely not corrupted." She affirmed.

It wasn't like you were completely oblivious either, though Senku might as well never come straight forward about it, she had her ways of showing she cared for you and you noticed; she always tried her best to help you, to make your life easier, to make you happy in ways that were arguably just her coexisting with you —in her words— but that definitely were meaningful.

You stopped, and since you were still holding hands she stopped too.

"Am I misinterpreting anything?" You asked, she shook her head. "Are you sure?"

"10 billion percent."

"So hypothetically you would not dissolve me with chemicals if I... I don't know... gave you a totally platonic absolutely nothing else kiss...?"

She stayed quiet, looking at you and then rolling her eyes. Slowly, as if to test the waters you reached in, hesitating if to do it. Fed up with the backfiring of her plan she leaned in and pressed her lips against yours very softly.

"Agh you are insufferable!" You shook her and before she could complain you locked your lips around her's.

#senku x reader #ishigami senku #senku #senku ishigami #dr stone senku #dcst #dr stone #drst #x reader #dcst senku #senku x y/n #dr stone x reader #dr stone season 4 #yuri #yuri senku

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thesirencult · 2 years ago

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PAC : 2024. HOW WILL IT TRANSFORM YOU ?

This time of the year our spiritual senses are heightened. Possibilities, the past and the future, for a few nanoseconds we are in the in between. Throughout 2024 we will all be transformed. In this reading I will go over which parts of your psyche will be touched by the year that holds the meaning of number 8, transformative and abundant.

"New Year" readings ar available for 25€. If you are interested just shoot me a private message.

Hope you enjoy this general reading and may your soul find the guidance it has a thirst for... S

PILE 1

“The psyches and souls of women also have their own cycles and seasons of doing and solitude, running and staying, being involved and being removed, questing and resting, creating and incubating, being of the world and returning to the soul-place.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, quote from Women Who Run With the Wolves

Dear Pile 1,

2024 will transform the way you see change . Up until now you may have been resistant to changing certain aspects of your life. This could have something to do with your childhood and the way you, transforming and letting your emotions and intuitive sparks control, got you shamed and alienated.

This year you will learn the power rebranding has. It is never ever too late to change our direction and to let our instincts take the wheel for a change.

You will be transformed and blessed through the need for constant change and movement this next year and your ability to adapt will be sharpened.

At the end of the year, you will no longer see change as something that cause insecurity and fear. You will see it as the catalyst of the process of creating, YOU.

I know that right now you might be scoffing 1. Getting out of your safe zone is not easy for you. You may have prominent cancer on your chart, Saturn touching your moon or a strong moon placement.

Trust the process and let your soul go through the movements and cycles of transformation. Growing pains.

PILE 2

“Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation- in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation. The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, quote from Women Who Run With the Wolves

Pile 2, we are all in this together.

I picked this pile too and I want to tell you how this energy makes me feel. Everything is possible, until you ask the question you want to ask and make your choice. Let me break it down for you.

We are in need of a deep self-searching period. For the next few days, until December 31st take your time to ask the right questions. First and foremost ask yourself "What do I really want and need?"

2024 will transform us because it will make us ask questions. Question everything and everyone. Having questions is not bad. Be humble. We don't have to know it all. This makes me feel like we are going to be learning something new this year that will put us in the position of "the student".

This year you will come closer to your inner child because, guess what? Children ask a lot of questions and they are the OG philosophers.

This is how philosophy and science came to be in our world, per Plato and Aristotle. Because humans dared to ask questions.

This year will transform you to your core. Be delusional.

The key theme here : This year will transform the prism through which we look at life. We will realise that it is much better to guide ourselves as a student and look at life as a big wonderful world. Believe in the impossible. Curiosity killed the cat but WISDOM brought it back to life. Take good care fellow Plutonians 🫡.

PILE 3

“When a woman is frozen of feeling, when she can no longer feel herself, when her blood, her passion, no longer reach the extremities of her psyche, when she is desperate; then a fantasy life is far more pleasurable than anything else she can set her sights upon. Her little match lights, because they have no wood to burn, instead burn up the psyche as though it were a big dry log. The psyche begins to play tricks on itself; it lives now in the fantasy fire of all yearning fulfilled. This kind of fantasizing is like a lie: If you tell it often enough, you begin to believe it.”

― Clarissa Pinkola Estés, quote from Women Who Run With the Wolves

This is your fake it till you make it year. Big imposter syndrome vibes will follow you around like a rainy cloud.

"Do I deserve all the good things which are happening for me?", you ask. The question you should be asking yourself is "Should I read Pile 2, too?" 😂. All jokes aside learn to question that voice that says that you don't deserve as seat on the table.

You are a master at setting the table, now it is your time to sit on your lil chair and relax while others bring you the food.

2024 will put you in a position of authority. You hold the wheel now so do what you gotta do and don't blame your little self (are you a Virgo/Scorpio/Capricorn?) for not getting all the way there. Little by little the castle gets built 🏰.

Disclaimer :

Tarot readings are for entertainment purposes only.

Tarot readings are subject to interpretation and should not be taken as absolute. A tarot reading is never 100% accurate. All tarot readings given by me are for entertainment purposes only, and no guarantee can be given as to the accuracy of a reading. A tarot reading does not replace professional medical/legal/business opinion and advice. It will not force you to follow a particular course of action, or attempt to exert any form of control over your free-will and common sense. The contents of a tarot reading are not legally binding. Any decisions made, or actions taken by you as a result of your tarot reading are your sole responsibility and have not been forced upon you, by me, your tarot reader. I assume no legal liability for any damages, losses, or other consequences of any client decisions, subsequent to, or based on, my tarot readings. Please use your own common sense and judgment at all times. Tarot readings are also copyrighted and their creative content belongs to the creator.

As always, you CONTROL your life.

You have FREE WILL.

Freedom comes with RESPONSIBILITY.

Anyone that tells you otherwise doesn't have your best interest in mind.

Lots of love and kisses xoxo ❤️

TheSirenCult

#astrology #tarot reading #tarot #pick a card #pick a pile #level up journey #pac reading #pick a photo #pick a picture #soulmate #predictions #2024 predictions #psychic #intuitive messages #intuitive readings

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randomfoggytiger · 2 months ago

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Mulder's Alien Baby Baby Trauma In-Depth (Part XXIII): Alien Babies, Shared Fears, and Hoped-For Escapes

Essence is chaotic and messy; but it also raises one or two intriguing points, as well as continues to establish Mulder's evolving dynamics with each character. It's a shoddy craft you have to cut around in order to refurbish; but it's salvageable-- at least, for this analysis.

Disclaimer: if you, like me, enjoy Season 8 up to a point-- and that point is midway through Essence-- I suggest you consider this post the end of the Alien Baby Baby Trauma series. Or at least skip over the next part when it's posted; and come back for the third and final addition. That way, Mulder and Scully run off into the night, together, and don't reappear until Existence's final five minutes.

Regardless, this part of the analysis marks the beginning of the end. There are a few loose threads the series strives to conclude-- or elucidate, for future (non-) exploration: namely, the mystery behind Per Manum's there-and-gone alien fertility clinic, the intrigue behind the hybrid alien replacements, and-- most importantly-- the mystery and happy ending for the Mulder-Scully family.

Now: let's tackle Mulder's slow descent into chaos.

ESSENCE AND EXISTENCE'S MAIN THEME

Mulder's monologue sets the tone for the finale two-parter:

"We call it the miracle of life. Conception: A union of perfect opposites-- essence transforming into existence-- an act without which mankind would not exist and humanity cease to exist. Or is this just nostalgia now? An act of biology commandeered by modern science and technology? Godlike, we extract, implant, inseminate... and we clone.

"But has our ingenuity rendered the miracle into a simple trick? In the artifice of replicating life can we become the creator? Then what of the soul? Can it, too, be replicated? Does it live in this matter we call DNA? Or is its placement the opposite of artifice, capable only by God.

"How did this child come to be? What set its heart beating? Is it the product of a union? Or the work of a divine hand? An answered prayer? A true miracle? Or is it a wonder of technology-- the intervention of other hands? What do I tell this child about to be born? What do I tell Scully? And what do I tell myself?"

The last three lines are the cornerstones of this finale two-parter: "What do I tell this child... what do I tell Scully... what do I tell myself?" And the order is important, too: Mulder knows this child will have questions-- how does he answer them? One layer deeper: he knows Scully harbors questions and doubts-- what can he say to her to assure them both? And at the center of these ponderings are his own fears and doubts: what does he believe, truly; and can he hold to that belief indefinitely.

The monologue is also a logorrheic oration of Mulder's struggle with his identity post-abduction: reborn to a life he'd at first assumed moved on without him, one with more questions than answers, still. And with these swirling questions looms his old skepticism with too-neatly tied bows on top of too-neatly provided miracles; and his new dominating PTSD. The triple combination is over-powering, and leads him to believe then question, believe then question throughout the latter end of Season 8-- and not just him, but Scully, too (as Essence's script notated, post here.)

If Essence through Existence had been well-written, it would've effected a succinct one-two-three masterstroke of Mulder and Scully's seven-year arc: finding the truth in themselves, turning "I want to believe" into "The truth we both know."

That aside, the monologue steers the remainder of Season 8: Mulder's mission, Scully's reactions, Mulder's and Scully's and Doggett's and Skinner's cumulative irrational actions. The problem, of course, comes down to execution.

THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF A BEAUTIFUL FRIENDSHIP

We pick up from Mulder's perspective the day after Scully's baby shower. He arrives at Doggett's door on a Saturday, ignoring the charms of the man's porch trellis (post here) and NASCAR ritual to wheedle him onto an open investigation.

From his demeanor, Mulder appears more at ease, parrying Doggett's "Agent Mulder" with a muted, "You can drop the 'Agent', Agent Doggett. It's just plain Fox Mulder now." His voice is wistful when referring to his former status; but not disheartened, nor uneasy. He's made progress towards peace-- would probably be more at peace if he wasn't bearing bad tidings.

Doggett nods neutrally, figuring out how to navigate that landmine; and decides to face it head on, changing gears a little too familiarly with an inviting, "Right. You want to come in, Fox? I was just watching a race."

His guest accepts with a double entente. "That's what I was doing. Slightly different race, though." Walking in and switching the channel, he then hooks Doggett's interest with the suspicious, recent burning of a fertility clinic-- a link to Scully that Mulder doesn't spell out but anticipates the other agent will connect independently.

Doggett follows along, helping Mulder access the crime scene through his credentials and even skillfully avoiding a fight between on-site investigator Agent Crane. The patience for Mulder's antics begins to thin when nothing suspicious turns up; and he's about to call it quits when Agent Excommunicado-- who is having a good time with Agent Doggett in tow--

--uncovers a professional association between the deceased victim and Scully's former obstetrician, Dr. Parenti. Connection firmly established, both X-Files men sneak over to Parenti's clinic.

Mulder blatantly ignores proper procedure-- as usual-- but thoroughly enjoys roping Doggett in as an accomplice; and the latter rewards this inclusion by unquestioningly having Mulder's back.

During their snooping around, the two split up. Doggett finds the stash of preserved fetuses while Mulder comes face-to-face with an incensed, mid-procedure Dr. Parenti. Catching a glimpse of the vulnerable woman sitting just behind the doctor, Mulder's face changes, angry himself over what he suspects is diabolical predation.

The intruders leave after a fruitless altercation; and, back at the crime scene, Mulder overhears Agent Crane's remarks and triangulates a confrontation between the third man, himself, and Doggett. Why, you ask? Because the X-Files exists-- as he told Agent Doggett earlier-- to make people angry in its pursuit of the truth. This moment is a test, measuring his replacement's backbone against friendly but oppositional forces.

The entire scene of dialogue discusses unidentifiable biological material-- possibly alien in origin-- that neither files man shrinks from observing out loud; and Mulder, addressing Crane directly at the end of their exchange, knows that the FBI team is listening in. Doggett knows, too; and doesn't attempt to save face, either-- which is exactly what Mulder wanted to see.

The second trip to Parenti's is not as profitable-- their suspect is dead; and Billy Miles knocks Mulder through a glass wall, leaving him unconscious on the floor (and Doggett barricaded in another room.) Still, there are brief glimmers of success: (e.g. Mulder trusting his not-partner to simultaneously wander off and cover his back; and the substantial link between possible conspiratorial forces and Scully's pregnancy.)

OUR CONCERNS ARE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I

Back at Scully's apartment, Mulder submits to his partner's doctoring until she touches a particularly tender patch. Gently, he snatches her wrist away-- "Oh, Scully"-- acknowledging her quiet "Sorry" with a slightly lessened grimace.

Mulder being Mulder, he spots an opportunity for a quip. "I see why you gave up a career in medicine--"

"Mulder," Scully interjects, smiling disapprovingly: knowing, already, where this is going. (Perhaps an old joke between them?)

"--for the FBI, Scully. You've got manos de piedra."

She does not let this mischaracterization slide, picking up a cotton swab and unexpectedly booping his nose before returning to her work.

Mulder brushes at boffed dignity, had.

"Sorry," Scully adds, referring to her earlier mistake.

Off of a brewing thought, her partner mulls, "Imagine if he'd connected."

"Who?"

"Billy Miles."

"Billy Miles?" she repeats, straightening her spine to engage eye contact. "He did this?"

And out it comes: Mulder and Doggett's misadventures, Doggett's corroboration-- to a point-- and Mulder's theory: " Well, Billy Miles is a whole new deal. He's an alien abductee who was returned after hideous procedures were performed on him. And who miraculously returns to so-called perfect health when his body completely sheds its skin."

Scully presses her lips together ever so slightly; and Doggett voices what she and he are thinking: "Same thing happened to you."

"Same thing would've happened to me," Mulder insists, bluntly setting the record straight, " if I'd been left alone." Locking eyes with his partner, he spells out, " If Scully hadn't treated me."

Mulder, then, is laying the credit of his recovery completely at Scully's feet: not a surprise, but a sweet touch.

Scully turns the page away from unpleasant thoughts, piping up with an insistent, "And what were you doing there?" When he doesn't answer right away, her eyebrows shoot up momentarily, and she adds, "Mulder?"

And it all comes out.

"Listen, Scully, I'm sorry, but I just need to know that this baby of yours is going to be all right."

"My baby is fine, Mulder. I've had it checked over and over again with my new doctor that I trust implicitly."

Lizzie Gill momentarily interrupts their discussions-- "She's just helping me out here at my mother's insistence", Scully excuses, hiding the fact she'd warmed to the idea herself.

And Mulder-- never failing to grasp an opportunity-- uses the brief interlude to his benefit. "That's... that's all I'm trying to do. Just make sure nothing happens to you; that this baby you're carrying is born without any surprises."

A few noteworthy details here: Scully, as previously remarked, is not as sure about "her baby" as she pretends. The script mentions that she is "overcompensating" here; and that correlates with Scully's own confession in Existence's conclusion: ("From the moment I became pregnant, I feared the truth... about how... and why. And I know that you feared it, too.") Even though she works hard to be impenetrable, to embrace this chance with open arms, Mulder sees right through it-- said plainly that he's already seen through it in his opening monologue. "What do I tell Scully?" is answered in Existence's conclusion-- "I think what we feared were the possibilities. The truth we both know"-- but that's after the dust has settled and the day has been saved. What can he say now? That is why Mulder is running around: to give his family answers-- answers the Mulders never had (post here), if one wishes to extrapolate his motives farther.

(Side note: Is this the best writing? No. Is it the worst writing? Not yet. Is it, in its current form, serviceable. Yes-- if the "your baby" and "my baby" would be dropped, it would zip along rather nicely.

Why doesn't "your baby" and "my baby" work? Because Mulder and Scully have gone weeks now referring to their child indirectly or not at all; and, though that in and of itself was a tease, it was a tease in line with both characters' minimal communication. "When he's old enough, tell the kid I went down swinging" and "You gotta worry about the little boy" are cleverer ways to hedge around the baby-- adding on "your" and "my" only confusingly detaches and depersonalizes its connection from Mulder, or Mulder's consideration of that connection.)

THE KNOT BEGINS TO TIGHTEN

Another tie to Parenti's clinic is murdered that night-- Per Manum's Duffy Haskell-- and his death draws Doggett and Skinner and Mulder to the scene of the crime.

Skinner, fed up with improper answers, pulls Mulder aside and questions him about the baby: "Some business we need to clear up. Personal business. About Scully's baby, about who the father is." Blowing over his former agent's quip about the FBI betting pool, he continues, "I've had my suspicions. That is, until I found out that you had questions. Questions about Scully's pregnancy itself."

Mulder warms to the A.D.'s candid, no-nonsense consideration; and confesses, "You want to know who the father is, that's Scully's business. But if you're asking me how a woman who was diagnosed as barren and unable to conceive is about to give birth in a couple days, that's an answer I can't honestly give."

It's a tricky game of disclosing only so much to minutely advance the plot; and, considering the writers' later tactics, one of the more sophisticated methods. Mulder is questioning where the baby came from-- at the present, whether it's even human. He does not trust Scully's scans because Parenti referenced them earlier; and he does not trust in convenient miracles-- never has, never will. And because he cannot explain these considerations with a clear conscience, he cannot answer his, Scully's, and now Skinner's questions.

Unappeased, the A.D. reaches for his phone, ready to worm clarification out of Scully for once. Mulder intercepts this attempt, politely; and Skinner lets him, cognizant that both agents know how to handle each other best.

Scully ditches the shower to answer the phone, dashing (as much as she's able) to catch it before the line goes dead. Mulder, hearing her irregular breathing, immediately pivots from his rote "Hey, Scully, it's me" to an alert "Are you all right?"

"Yeah," she assures, "I just ran from the shower."

Mid-conversation, Scully realizes Lizzie Gill might be a spy; and the call cuts short when she catches the other woman swapping out the prenatal vitamins.

The scene changes to the hospital where she stands distraught-- barely holding onto her dignity until Dr. Speake walks over to reassure her. Mulder and Maggie wait in the hall until the doctor slips by; and he continues to stand guard as Mrs. Scully embraces her daughter comfortingly (and apologetically.)

Skinner joins Mulder in the hallway--

--and the latter follows him out to interrogate Lizzie Gill. (Though absent by necessity, his departure reinforces Scully's long-held worry that the X-Files will always dominate Mulder's attention-- a concern that will resolve itself in two scenes.)

The interrogation is conducted by Mulder, Doggett, and Skinner, who take turns grilling Lizzie on her involvement in the Parenti project. She is equally forthright with her answers, unabashedly laying out that her former boss and his associates were working under the orders of "government men"-- adjacent, then, to the Syndicate. And that part is important: Lizzie Gill's assignment was tangential to the Project's work on Emily Sim-- creating a child cloned from a human egg and alien DNA.

"Alien babies. Birthed by human mothers desperate to conceive. They didn't live more than a couple of days, but tissue and stem cells is what we were after for other experiments."

Mulder rubs his temples, disgusted by this revelation: and immediately launches into what is most important to him. "What did you do to Scully?"

When Lizzie's answer doesn't satisfy, he repeatedly yells, "What did you do to her! Tell me what's wrong with her! Tell me what's wrong with her baby!" It's not until Doggett intervenes with a gentle, "Listen to her-- what she's saying," that he calms long enough to hear the rest.

And, of course, the revelation is somehow worse than everyone assumed: "There's nothing wrong with her. That's what I'm trying to tell you. The child she is carrying is very special. One could only hope to create that in a lab. A perfect human child but with no human frailties."

This means one of two horrifying things:

The Parenti clinic did not create this child-- worse, they marvel at, and are invested in, its existence.

The baby-- normal or not-- is a wanted asset; and Scully a target by proxy.

This may act as confirmation that the child was most likely conceived by Scully under "human" conditions-- i.e. with Mulder's involvement-- but that merely allays one fear while breeding ten more. Scully previously had a child-- born-and-bred by the Project-- that she let go to protect. Now the Syndicate-- or their scattered allegiances--are restarting the cycle with this pregnancy. Her only hope is that this baby is not what anyone is expecting; and, luckily for Scully, that is what what the ending of Existence establishes (and the beginning of Nothing Important Happened Today throws away. But I digress.)

Mulder doesn't know what to do or who to turn to; so, he stands and runs back to Scully, ignoring Doggett's initial attempts to haphazardly trail behind.

THE GREAT ESCAPE

Arriving at his partner's apartment, he makes sure she's alone before insisting she start packing, immediately.

Scully, confused and frightened, becomes frustrated after he cryptically recounts, "No-- your, your baby is fine. It's you who's in danger now, Scully."

"From who? Mulder, from what?"

Part one of the truth reveals itself-- one that will guide his actions the rest of Essence and Existence: "I don't know, I'm not sure. I'm not sure about anything. I just know I've got to get you out of here."

Mulder is not thinking rationally anymore-- he is out of answers or solutions, and is now relying solely on adrenaline-fueled gut instinct. This leads him to a multitude of questionable choices (as will be explored in the next post) that no one bothers to checkmate or pump the breaks on. He is in panic mode-- one that rears its ugly head whenever aliens or Conspiracy are mentioned post-Deadalive (i.e. tearing up over continued abductions, post here; beating a black-oiled worker nearly to death, post here; and currently jumping to alien baby conclusions and continued catastrophic thinking.) He desperately needs someone to reason with him; but, alas, no one will because the writing says so.

Fed up with the overreach of evil in her life-- having lost her sister and her health and her fertility to the monster of the Conspiracy; and having left the files without plans to return-- Scully snaps, incensed. A limit has been reached, and a line in the sand drawn. "Look, Mulder, look, I can't take this! I can't live like this—as, as the object of some unending X-File."

And part two of the truth reveals itself-- one that has grown and taken root in Mulder's life over the past eight years: "This isn't about the X-Files, Scully. It is only about you."

He expands this truth to include the little Scully-- "Now, you are going to have this baby and I'm going to do everything I can to protect it. I just can't do that here"-- and waits for his partner to process his promise and trust it.

After a long, assessing pause-- weighing Mulder's transparency against other (or any) alternatives-- Scully acquiesces, gliding away to hastily pack her things.

But as fast as she is, Billy Miles is faster. While Mulder is on the phone with Doggett, Billy arrives, cutting the power lines as he works his way up to Scully's apartment.

Both former agents freeze, taking in the sudden darkness; and realize their chance at escape is fleeting. They make it down the hall and out the stairs mere seconds before their pursuer arrives, fleeing into the night towards her car.

Mulder outstrips Scully's pace effortlessly; and she passes over the keys so he can jump behind the wheel and unlock her passenger side door-- both fluidly in time with each other's movements.

Having escaped, all is well; and both speed off into the night.

...Right?

CONCLUSION

The next part will tackle the egregious errors of Essence and Existence-- the bits that can be (I posit: should be) tossed into the garbage truck that crushed Billy Miles.

In the meantime, we bask in the bare minimum: story beats that aren't egregiously expositional, with moments that navigate previous characterization through formulaic, tension-building Chris Carter rhythms. It's not a clean break, overall; but it's not too sloppy, either.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

#txf #xf meta #x files #the x files #Mulder #Scully #Doggett #Skinner #Mulder's Alien Baby Baby Trauma #x-files #xfiles #mine #thoughts #analysis #S8 #Essence #In-Depth

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literaryvein-reblogs · 11 months ago

Note

do you have any tips for writing speculative biology?

Speculative biology—(also referred to as "speculative zoology", though it is by no means limited to animals) is a sub-genre of science fiction which combines speculative fiction (i.e., Science Fiction, Fantasy, Alternate History and everything in between) with creature design, and deals with evolution in the future, on other worlds, or in alternate timelines, the same way that many other sci-fi works discuss technology.

This is one of the most fun sub-genres to explore. Here are just a few writing tips.

Read/watch a lot of media that plays with this sub-genre, and learn from them. Examples:

A Memoir by Lady Trent - Marie Brennan describes a low fantasy world with largely the same culture and animals as real life, but also home to very diverse dragons. The dragons are given extensive analysis through the character of Lady Trent, a naturalist dedicated to studying their taxonomy, anatomy, behaviors and ecology.

Dreamwork's How to Train Your Dragon - sometimes dabbles in this, displaying different types of Dragons as different species with a couple overlapping traits, implying that they evolved from a common ancestor. This is most prominently shown in Book of Dragons which describes at least 6 major taxonomic families of Dragons that most dragons in the franchise belong to.

Doctor Who: "The Lazarus Experiment" - has Richard Lazarus being mutated into a fearsome giant centipede/scorpion-like monster after an experiment with an anti-ageing machine goes wrong. The Doctor describes the monster as a creature of evolutionary potential — something that evolution could have turned humanity into if it hadn't gone the "two arms and legs, ten fingers and toes" route — lying dormant within Lazarus' genes.

Research a lot. Here are just a few resources that may help you in writing this sub-genre, particularly with creature design:

Here's a really good article that discusses some evolutionary rules

A brief resource on Evolution Rules

This article called, "Rules of evolution"

A Wildlife Fact Sheet

After doing all the research, and the devouring, and the hoarding of all the resources you can get your hands on, hoping they'll bleed into your story once you start writing, because admit it, you are procrastinating by asking this question—here is the writing tip that pervades all genre: let go. "Good writing is often about letting go of fear and affectation. Affectation itself, beginning with the need to define some sorts of writing as ‘good’ and other sorts as ‘bad,’ is fearful behavior." —Stephen King

So let your soul colour the pages. Particularly with this genre, allow your imagination to run free. Be as creative as you can. Because "when you write, you want to get rid of the world, don’t you? Of course you do. When you’re writing, you’re creating your own worlds." —Stephen King

Sources: 1 2

Hope this helps. Please tag me, or send me a link if it does. I would love to read your work!

More: Fantasy ⚜ Writing Notes & References

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hellyrossum · 4 months ago

Text

bits of r.u.r. that remind me of severance (or are otherwise interesting)

r.u.r., also known as rossum's universal robots, is a czech play from the early 1920s that i first heard of years ago. it's notable in the canon of science fiction for introducing the word "robot" to the english language, derived from the czech word "robota" meaning "servitude / forced labor". it's a play about artificial life made to be workers, and what happens when those workers rebel against their masters. and it features a woman named helena.

that's how the play was recently brought to the forefront of my mind. between the releases of s2 eps 2 and 3, i was looking up the meaning of the name helena and other people/characters who have been given that name, in search of any potential inspirations for severance's helena having been named as such. when i found this play's helena, helena glory, the bit of context i read seemed so insane a coincidence that i decided to read the full play (thank you project gutenberg), in case of any other connections. and, well.

(this is going to be less a proper analysis of the play than a summary that highlights particular sections/ideas. if you're a fan of severance's capitalism critique and philosophical exploration of what makes someone worthy of being considered a person, i highly recommend reading / listening to / watching r.u.r. for yourself!)

backstory for the play: the og mr. rossum invented a substance that could serve as the building blocks of artificial life. he wanted to pursue the further development of this artificial life for philosophical reasons, to see if humanity could effectively replace god, but his nephew took over and was only interested in using them to get rich. by the time of the play proper, robots are used all over the world as cheap labor.

in act 1, a young woman named helena glory goes to a factory that makes and "employs" robots. helena is the daughter of an industry titan, but she reveals that she's here as representative of the Humanity League, a group that wants to liberate the robots. (you see why reading just this on the wikipedia page caught my brain on fire, right. the double life of it all.)

at the factory, helena proves to be not actually that knowledgeable about the robots; her initial response to seeing one, a secretary named stella, is to insist she must be human because she's too lifelike, and then when the managers of the company come in she assumes that they must also be robots (and makes her case to them for their own liberation), only to learn they're not. harry domin, the chief manager, told her that the employees and officials are robots, but then (after they all have a laugh at her expense) he says of course the managers aren't; a robot could never. bosseshumans are still necessary, as the top of the hierarchy, telling the workersrobots what to do. (but isn't the fact that managers could be confused for robots telling in itself? looks at people's early theories about cobel and milchick. and miss huang.)

the six men all insist that the robots are simply tools/machines, but helena belives they have souls — or, if not, then they should get to have them. this is the philosophical conflict that essentially fuels the rest of the play, and so here is where i start posting screenshots.

guys. is this not. the literal philosophy behind creating innies (as workers, at least). you make a worker who only knows work, will forever only know work, and they will only think of work (right?).

there's something very lumon to me about this bit also:

(i'm not going to screenshot it but. would you believe me if i said shortly after this there's a reference to pineapples.)

and then. the bit where a certain someone's name started blaring in my head.

i don't even need to say it. you're thinking of her too, aren't you.

immediately after this we learn that the head scientist is currently working on developing pain nerves for the robots, which is. so normal. so normal to build the experience of pain into your artificial workers so they don't gum up your production line with their injuries. so they learn how to behave correctly. so normal.

in the interest of not including every moment of the play in this post, we'll skip ahead to when the act ends: dormin says he's fallen in love with helena and traps her into an engagement with him, saying that if she doesn't accept his proposal on the spot, one of the other five men will have her. yeah. as it turns out, this story is not only about how workers are treated like property/resources, but also how women are. another thing it has in common with severance :)

in fact, if that last plot point has you thinking about some disturbing implications that were brought to the forefront in the latest severance episode (s2ep9), you are not alone. neither are you alone if it has you thinking of s2ep7. put a pin in that.

now for act 2, we skip ahead 10 years and find ourselves in domin's home, on an island. the men are waiting for a certain ship to arrive at the harbor that will be their ticket to safety. see, after years of the robots becoming more and more central to the economy — and the military — the robots have, who could've guessed, started a world-wide revolution. the ship will be the men and helena's arc, so to speak; a safe place for them to wait out the violence.

(they plan to take control back from the robots, in the end, and part of those plans includes making them "national" robots instead of "universal" ones, essentially designing different races of them, for the sake of creating divisions between them. which is pretty on-the-nose social commentary... and also reminiscent of the way lumon seeded fear and resentment between the different severed departments.)

helena has not yet been informed of any of this. we see her have this very noteworthy (imo) exchange with her nurse nana:

but then she reads the news and learns not only of the uprisings and assassinations, but also that, in the past week, not a single human being has been born. importantly, even as some of the robots have somehow developed human emotions and the desire for self-determination, the one thing that has kept them distinguishable from humans is their inability to reproduce; they require the manuscript from the original rossum to be able to make more of themselves. the manuscript that helena, upon realizing that humans have stopped having kids precisely because the robots are making them superfluous, burns.

before that, though, she speaks with one of the in-house robots, radius, who's been having "episodes" of destroying things.

this convo, in addition to making me foam at the mouth, establishes something very important that we later learn is true of the robot revolution as a whole. the robots don't want to coexist as equals with humans; they want to conquer humanity. they carry the human's belief in domination and seek to pay back the cruelty that has been shown to them in kind.

("What I want is for her to wake up while the life drains out of her and to know it was me who did it.")

[screenshot from much later but to prove the point:]

speaking of that cruelty. some more lumon ass testing floor as shit:

DR. GALL: [...] do you know, I don’t believe the rascal is a Robot at all any longer. HELENA: Doctor, has Radius a soul? DR. GALL: (Over to couch) He’s got something nasty.

and it's after that that helena thinks to ask about dr. gall's other experiment, and i drop the bomb i've kept hidden from you all:

yup :) there's an innierobot helena too :) modeled after the real one :) "If you were to wake up only for a moment you would kill me for having made you.” yeah. yeah she would. yeah.

here is where i remind you of the pin we put in the men all treating human helena as property, no more a person than the robot workers. of the similarities to the subtext of jame and helena-helly's dynamic in s2ep9, and of dr. mauer and gemma in s2ep7. this man who (like every other guy in the play) is infatuated with helena made a version of her who's literally property. he experimented on her. he continues to monitor her. he sees her as braindead and useless, but lovely. she's a failure.

there's a lot of interesting stuff that happens / is discussed in the next act and a half but i'm going to try to stick to highlights. tl;dr the robots raid the island; domin laments that he was trying to create a world where man was free of labor with the robots (to which i say: there are plenty in history who've said they're acting to free all of mankind from drudgery by assigning that drudgery to a group they consider nonpersons); he has a vision of exactly how he and his friends are going to die(???); and then dr. gall confesses:

DR. GALL: I changed the character of the Robots. I changed the way of making them. Just a few details about their bodies. Chiefly—chiefly, their—their irritability. [...] I was transforming them into human beings.

(remember that helly r core line about the soul? does it first show itself with the gnashing of teeth?)

the thing is, he did not have this idea on his own. helena (human helena) asked him to do it.

perhaps it was a noble pursuit, from a certain point of view. but you could also argue that it wasn't, that she only wanted it for selfish reasons — for the robots to understand and accept humanity, out of fear of what they would do otherwise — not for the sake of broadening their own horizons and possibilities. (remember that it's been ten years since her activist days, and now she lives in a house where multiple robots are "employed" as servants.) i'd say it's reminiscent of milchick's attempted reforms in season 2, in a way.

it also makes me think about the end of s2ep9; how mark, devon and (presumably) cobel are betting on innie mark understanding and helping them with saving gemma without really taking his own wants and agency into account. same applies to reghabi; for all her talk in s1ep6 of mark having brought his innie into this world for his own convenience, she sure doesn't do anything in s2 to advocate for getting innie mark's consent for the reintegration procedure or just. considering what his perspective on this will be.

of course, since helena, human as she is, is still considered property by the men around her, they don't ask her perspective either when deciding how they'll deal with the robots at their door — and when she points it out, her husband calls her a child. and yet, the men go on to say this:

queen of the final human empire, eh. queen in name only, most likely, right. that doesn't sound familiar at all :)

we're basically at the end now, i promise. the act closes with the robots breaking in and all the humans getting killed — not just the ones we know, but all humans on earth. all minus one: alquist, formerly the rossum company's builder (the closest of all the men to a standard worker).

we see in the final act that he's been put by the robots to the task of recreating the formula for producing more robots, more artificial life, and has had no success. in desperation, the robots volunteer to let alquist dissect them to find the answers, but he recognizes their fear of death and can't bring himself to do it.

(compare this fear of death evident in the robot leader flinching away from alquist even after he volunteers himself for dissection to this bit from all the way in act 1 (which reminds me in an agonizing way of mark and ms. casey's convo in s1ep8):

DOMIN: You see, Miss Glory, the Robots have no interest in life. They have no enjoyments. They are less than so much grass.

one of the robots chastizes alquist for his failure, for not being as "strong" as them. he falls asleep. and then, two different robots enter the scene. one we know, one we don't. they speak of the beauty of the sunrise; and an abandoned cottage they found with two dogs who licked their hands; and each other. they laugh.

laughter makes you human, or is at least a sign of humanity. finding humor, joy in something other than your purpose. (thinks about helena laughing at helly's coupon-cutting joke. thinks about helena letting herself laugh out loud at the dieter story.)

now, here is where we return to that pinned point one final time.

thankfully, helena is spared. primus offers himself in her place, which moves helena to tears. she then offers to go instead of primus, threatening to kill herself otherwise. to which primus responds:

and that's the end.

... so. it's not like anyone at lumon (minus maybe possibly milchick?) is just going to let mark and [gemma] [helly-helena] leave together. certainly dr. mauer, or jame eagan, wouldn't be so magnanimous.

maybe this is more a vision of the end of the series as currently only exists in dan erikson's head than of the finale we're getting in a few days. or maybe it's nothing to severance at all.

but. i have heard what that final shot of ep10 is going to be. and for those who know... do you see it? how it's both an echo and the opposite?

that's going to be my final word on this play for now, because i spent nearly my full work shift on this and i suspect i'm nearing my word count. i hope you severance fans got something out of this*, even though it was more summarizing and pointing at things than active analysis. tl;dr you should read / watch / listen to rossum's universal robots

*specifically @kendrysaneela since you asked for this. hope you enjoyed :)

#severance #severance season 2 #severance spoilers #rossum's universal robots #r.u.r.#(when i read out r.u.r. in my head i often think of “the you you are”. just a little bonus probably not intentional allusion)#posts from the severed floor

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