regicidal-optimism - Tumblr blog

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we used to have normalized whump. remember what they took from you....

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"do you seriously think you're above the rules" the stupid ones yeah

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I guess the thing that makes me not so fond of Jon's addiction allegory is that it's only coherent to a certain extent? Like I think people sometimes forget that he's actively violating these people

anon, through no fault of your own you have accidentally hit upon my sleeper agent trigger phrase. I have layers of answers to this.

so first off, yeah, it's not a 1:1 direct metaphor, it's a soupy dream logic fantasy plot device with flavors of a lot of different things. there's quite a lot of addiction in there, there's some abuse of power, there's some cyclical nature of trauma, there's a dash of disability, there's a few notes of gendered violence, there's a good bit of just. violence violence and being kind of a motherfucker because goddammit it feels good to be an active agent about something in your life, even if it's just choosing to be a worse version of yourself than you strictly need to be. a lot of tma's worldbuilding is very allegorical, but apart from aspects of individual statements nothing really matches up quite 1:1 with a real world counterpart, and if more things did then it probably wouldn't be a fantasy show anymore.

secondly. okay to contextualize this answer a little bit I have a kind of hypothetical video essay project about vampirism and addiction that I like to spend a few hours thinking about every so often but am almost certainly never going to make because the full research burden required is a lot higher than I actually have the time to properly do. but because of that I've spent a lot of time sorting through why framing vampires as addicts really works for me in a way that it doesn't seem to for everyone, and I think a lot of my thoughts on that also apply to jon. there's going to be a bit of a detour here before we get back to talking about tma, but we'll get there, I prommy.

I've seen a lot of people take issue with various paranormal addiction allegories because, a lot of the time, the act that is meant to metaphorically represent the act of use itself is something that is directly and inherently harmful to others, e.g. drinking human blood, handing over power to your hedonistic Evil alter ego, holding the cursed amulet and going crazy going stupid, slurping trauma out of the head of some guy you ran into on a boat to norway, etc., and yeah, I do get that. substance use is not inherently harmful like that to anyone except sometimes the user themself, and addicts are not inherently fucked up and destructive people; those are dangerous stereotypes that often lead to the demonizing of a whole group of sick people.

here's the thing for me, though: those are definitely truths I want explored and represented when it comes to portrayals of non-allegorical actual addicts, but fantasy fiction isn't for showing the world as it is, it's for showing a subjective fun house mirror version of reality where certain aspects are minimized and magnified depending on how it feels to live through it. and yes, absolutely in real life drug use is not an inherently evil act and it does not make you an inherently evil person, but... doesn't it kind of feel like that? sort of? absolutely no one is living their best life nor on their best behavior while experiencing any kind of major mental illness episode, and when it comes to addiction you've got a very clear tangible symbol of when The Episode is happening that it feels like you have much more control over than when it comes to other illnesses. it's also a thing where people are a lot more likely to be openly angry and distrustful of you if they find out it's happening. so you mix together the ideas of "I know I get worse as a result of doing this one specific thing" + "I act less like myself when I'm using, it rearranges my priorities and I care less about hurting people because that's what happens when you're experiencing The Horrors" + "society at large/people directly around me are pretty quick to say that doing this is evil," and you get the subjective emotional result of "I hurt people by using and it makes me monstrous." I tend to respond to those kinds of paranormal allegories like they're just cutting out the middle man of those subjective fears. "using makes me monstrous" -> "using is monstrous."

anyway. jon archivist.

don't get me wrong, I totally understand if this aspect of metaphor doesn't gel for some people and they only like taking it exactly as far as the text explicitly makes them, but I really get a lot out of reading jon's connection to the fears as addiction precisely because he does genuinely awful things to people as a result of it. he's a person in a very bad physical and mental place with little to no support who is constantly being told by both allies and enemies that he's already a monster just by being alive, and he copes with that by secretly falling further and further into an compulsive act of consumption that skews his priorities and makes him care less about hurting people because at least sometimes getting to be the cause of pain makes him feel a little bit less powerless when he has to be the subject of pain the rest of the time. then he's found out and is made to stop, and he has to grapple not just with the physical toll of withdrawal but with knowing there is a not insignificant part of him that will excuse any act of malice if he knows he'll feel better afterwards.

the end of tma is very explicit in the fact that the rules of its world are shaped by the subjective worst fears of those who live in it, it's "an exercise in unreliably reality" as jonny sims put it once, and I think that principle extends backwards in some ways to apply to the rest of the show. I don't think the fact that there are only entities of fear and not hope or love is meant to be a full commentary on the total nature of the real world, it's a reflection of what fear and suffering can make the world feel like. eric and melanie both go to really harsh extremes to extricate themselves from the fears and live peaceful lives, and in both cases something happens that foils their plans (getting murdered + the apocalypse, respectively), but I don't think the intended message is to say that is definitively how real life works, they are metaphors for the limits of individual agency in larger systems and represent two types of worst-case-scenarios. similarly, I don't think reading jon as an addict implies that addiction inherently involves violence or that the reactions of those around him were unjustified, it's just a subjective exploration of the kinds of fears that can come with addiction dialed up to 100.

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you cant be talking like that white baby

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I know it's a decently well-known fact nowadays that pretty much every foundational aspect of metal aesthetics was introduced by Rob Halford, whose outfits were explicitly inspired by the leather scene of the gay bars he used to frequent, but still. Sometimes I have to stop and think about how funny it is. Like. This one gay guy got entire generations of straight metalheads to start dressing up like gay sex perverts.

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keep spinning

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you're fine alone

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Leon

……but jaguar matador.

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Our Lady of Death

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philza minecraft except i gave him a gun 

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Sometimes I'll see someone blorboposting on my dash with names I don't recognise, and I'll think "oh, it's probably some podcast I haven't heard of", but then my curiosity will get the better of me, and when I go to look it up the only piece of media I can find that matches all those names is, like, an Italian monarchist propaganda novel from 1871.

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birdkeeper jaiden :3

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We’re A Good Match

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As you know, you can make writers lives easier by doing unnecessary exposition scenes in real life, thereby making them realistic.

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marine biology is so scary because it’s such a small field. i was giving a talk on cetaceans and afterward a woman approached me with her husband and she said, “you did very well. [husband’s name] actually pioneered the research and published the first paper on that. We were very impressed by you.”

Which is such a scientific interpretation/public education win I will cherish forever but also for the rest of my life any time I give a talk I will be haunted by the knowledge that the world’s leading expert who literally discovered/invented the topic might be in the room,

which is like, the opposite of what you’re supposed to do for stage fright. In fact I never used to experience stage fright but now I will.

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— Ursula K. Le Guin, from “A Rant About ‘Technology’”