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everythingsinred · 3 years

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Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 1)

So I’ve already written a lengthy essay about Natsume and Mikan’s relationship in the anime. It had to be split into six parts so I could post it on Tumblr with images in tow. I was distressed about this because my Natsume analysis was already JUST as long, and I had only reached the Reo Arc. Yeah, so if you thought my anime essay was long, tedious, or annoying, this one will be a thousand times worse.

Possible trigger warning for this meta here (for the whole thing), because I'll be talking in depth about child abuse, bullying, depression, and suicidal ideation.

My Natsume NM analysis is LONG and ongoing (as in I'm still writing it) and it'll take me another month to finish it if I continue at the rate I'm doing it now, analyzing about a volume a day. I've asked a little and people seem to be okay with the idea of me posting in intervals, probably once a day. Thus, I'm going to be updating the tag on an almost daily basis, ideally.

As a result, I don't think I'll put a table of contents here. There will simply be too many parts and it would be way too long and annoying to put on one post. It would take forever to scroll past to get to the actual analysis parts, so I'll just include next and previous links at the bottom like last time and leave it at that. I will also have all of the parts under the tag "let's talk about natsumikan: natsume" on my blog if you want to find all these posts, and if you want to see the anime ones too it'll be all under "let's talk about natsumikan" or "ga meta: nm". Really, just check the tags under this post and you'll see plenty you can use to navigate for my annoying thoughts.

ANYWAY, I decided to divide my analysis into three parts, because they made the most sense to me that way: the anime, Natsume, and then Mikan. I split it this way because I always thought the manga and anime were quite different, with the anime doing very different things with their characters and their relationships as a whole, so it deserved an analysis independent of the manga, where I can discuss the changes and how they affected NatsuMikan in particular. I could do one huge essay for manga!NatsuMikan in the same vein as the anime one, where I discuss both perspectives and experiences interchangeably, but it would simply be too long and it would get rather messy. It’s easier and more cohesive to divide the manga analysis into two very important parts: discussing Natsume’s perspective first and then Mikan’s.

So why Natsume first? Mikan is the primary character in the story, and her point of view is the most instrumental. After all, it’s through her that we learn almost everything we do. We only learn Natsume’s backstory when Ruka tells it to Mikan; we learn Yuka’s backstory when Mikan does; we find out about Hotaru’s brother only when Mikan does. Mikan’s big grand discoveries are our own, and in that way she really is Alice in Wonderland, discovering everything around her for the first time.

That being said, there are plenty of things we don’t learn from Mikan. When we first find out for sure that Natsume has the life shortening alice, it’s almost a hundred chapters before Mikan gets confirmation, when Tsubasa and Natsume discuss it. We know that Natsume loves Mikan for a while before she gets any inkling about it. Why is this?

Because Natsume’s perspective, when we are lucky enough to get it, is much more straightforward. He doesn’t really discover or learn things, he simply copes with things that are already ruining his life. Especially when it comes to NatsuMikan, Natsume’s perspective is most reliable because we know everything from him already. We can tell when he falls in love with her, we can tell when he plans to give her his alice stone (almost a full year before they do the exchange), and we can tell which scenes are loaded with romantic intent even if Mikan can’t see it. Mikan’s role in the story is to discover, Natsume’s is to give us secrets that we have to keep from the rest of the cast.

And it’s because of this difference that Natsume is first. Because he’s much easier to analyze. He already knows he loves Mikan. We already know he loves Mikan. There’s no discovery. The only journey here is how his feelings get stronger and more intense. After all, most fanfiction keeps a pretty consistent view on Natsume’s feelings, even in AUs. It’s clear, even if most readers aren’t sitting around analyzing him. Mikan’s feelings are trickier, because she’s not really aware of them either. I save the hardest analysis for last, and even though Natsume acts mysterious, the real mystery here is Mikan.

Natsume

Natsume at the very start is so cold, it's surprising that he has the fire alice...

Sadly, we’ll have to put off the actual story analysis for a little, because before we can talk about Natsume and Mikan, we have to talk a little bit about Natsume.

Natsume is ten years old at his introduction. In my opinion, he is the most tragic character I’ve ever encountered in my twenty-some years of consuming media. (I cannot think hard about him for more than a minute without starting to cry and that’s not really an exaggeration.) Naturally, that isn’t an objective fact, and some might disagree with me, but one thing I can say for sure is that his tragedies have made him a very interesting character.

I say this because sometimes people see Natsume as nothing more than an asshole, and not as a deeply traumatized child who has been forced to act like an adult for most of his life. So many of the cruel things he does are things he is forced into doing, and understanding this, and why he distances himself from the people he loves the most, is crucial to understanding him and what exactly it is about Mikan that he is so drawn to.

From birth, Natsume was plagued with the knowledge that he would die earlier than his sister. It was never a secret for him that he had the life-shortening alice. His mother talked to him about it, but under no circumstances is that knowledge easy to deal with. It is always a struggle and a burden to know that your life has a time limit on it. He was also a bit older than his sister when his mother was murdered, and thus is a little better at comprehending the act for what it was. Even when his father discusses the event with Ruka, he downplays it as his wife dying in an accident. Natsume argues that it probably wasn’t an accident. Furthermore, he is very conscious about what his family is running away from, while Aoi is way more in the dark about their situation. They send Aoi away from the door when Alice scouts come by, while eight-year-old Natsume stays to confront them.

He is already acting like a mini-adult by the time Ruka meets him. He’s had very few friends, if any, and is just as lonely as Ruka, and his inherent differences from the kids around him play into that. Not only is he an Alice, but he has struggles in his life almost nobody could comprehend.

Yet despite his maturity for an eight-year-old, he still acts like a kid too. He teases his friend, argues with his sister, jumps from windows, plays, and even smiles sometimes. For all his maturity, he’s still a little boy. He has no choice but to have knowledge about his situation, about his alice and the school his family is desperately avoiding, but his dad isn’t forbidding him from fun and friendships. He’s encouraged to make friends and be as much of a kid as he can in his situation.

The trouble is when he’s forced to transfer to Alice Academy despite all his family’s efforts. He makes a selfless choice for his sister’s sake, a decision no child should be forced to make. All in the span of less than twenty-four hours, Natsume chooses to sacrifice himself for his sister, pushes his only friend away to protect him, and gets in the car to drive to what has for his whole life been the worst possible scenario. He knows his life will be hell there. He knows that the school has been eyeing him for his powerful alice his whole life. He knows he will suffer beyond imagination and comprehension and he chooses it anyway, because it will--in his mind--keep his sister safe.

How to make me start ugly sobbing without any words ^^^

He chooses not to say goodbye to his father, and Ruka doesn’t really understand why at first until he turns around and sees that Natsume is crying already. His father knows that his son is being sent to Hell, and for Natsume it’s the next adult thing he has to do to tell the driver to speed up so that he doesn’t see his father again and break down like a child would. Natsume thinks of himself as an adult now, in almost every way but bodily.

And then there is Ruka, who Natsume would never have anticipated would follow him to the ends of the earth and to the furthest reaches of hell. After all, Ruka has been avoiding the school his whole life too. He knows it’s no normal school, or fun sunshiney place. He knows that it will be horrible, but he decides to go anyway, because he doesn’t want to be alone anymore and because he doesn’t want Natsume to be alone anymore either. Ruka came along so that Natsume could have some semblance of happiness and joy despite all the abuse.

Then Ruka is turned into a weapon. Natsume does not blame Ruka for this, but there’s a new wall between them. Natsume cannot escape his hell, not even with Ruka, because Ruka is yet another thing Natsume would sacrifice himself for. The more I think about it the more I want to write an essay about Natsume and Ruka’s friendship, because they’re my second favorite relationship in the story and my favorite fictional friendship of all time, so I’ll save some analysis on them for the future.

By the time the first chapter happens, Natsume has been forcibly separated from his family, has had no choice but to act like an adult despite being only ten, has gone on life-or-death missions for his evil school, and has put his body through the wringer in the process. When he reveals to Tsubasa how sick he is, he says he’s been in that shape for a year. Natsume is already anticipating his death and is aware that he doesn’t have a chance of lasting even close to how long his mother did.

I bring all this up because what Natsume has been through and how miserable and hopeless he is when he first meets Mikan, even with his best friend by his side, is the foundation for how quickly and intensely he falls for her. Analyzing the hows and whys of their relationship would be incomplete if I didn’t mention who exactly he is by the time he meets her.

To be entirely honest, the essay I've written about the first few chapters might look like this too. They might seem unromantic, and that's okay. NatsuMikan need to be introduced as their own characters before and throughout being actually paired together. So if it seems like I'm focusing too much on Natsume on his own, or later Mikan on her own, it's because their individual struggles are crucial to understanding behaviors and attitudes.

Chapter One

Am I really doing this? Am I really going to go through this whole manga chapter by chapter? Am I really convinced that there’s enough NatsuMikan content in nearly every chapter to warrant this kind of behavior?

Yes, I am! When I said it would be long, I MEANT it! We are going oFF!

Natsume is awake and present for exactly five pages in this chapter and I’m gonna analyze all I can think of!

He first appears via melodramatic explosion, standing confidently on the gate, attempting escape.

This alone serves several purposes: one, so that we can see that this school has some potential darkness. Kids are trying to run away, after all, meaning they can’t just leave on their own and meaning there’s something to run away from. Mikan might not think too much of this at first, but it’s a warning to us. After all, despite all of Higuchi Tachibana’s talk of this originally being a school comedy, it never was one, not as long as Natsume was a character. Conversely, for Mikan, this meeting is yet another reason on a list of reasons that this school is a freakshow, playing more into the school comedy aspect. Alice Academy is nothing like a normal school. Here, students run away via explosions and teachers talk with hearts in their speech bubbles. Natsume is testament to the bizarre, just another quirk in a school with infinite quirks.

Another purpose is to introduce Natsume as dangerous. Even before Mikan formally meets him, he demonstrates that his alice is powerful and life-threatening, but the irony of it is that later his alice only really seems dangerous to him. But beyond that, right now all we know of Natsume is that he is--presumably--the “bad boy” of the school, even if it’s reductive to categorize him like that.

And the most important purpose for the sake of this analysis, and from the perspective of knowing the whole story already (because it’s more fun this way, adding context), is that Natsume is doing this all out of uncharacteristic naivete and childishness.

We later find out, despite Misaki-sensei’s explanations, that Natsume wasn’t trying to escape for good, just for a short time to prove that he could, so that he could get his hands on a letter from his father. He knows that he won’t get it, and that the middle schoolers are just bullying him, but he’s willing to risk it for even the smallest chance that he could hear from his father again. He is not planning on being gone for long, as his escape isn’t real.

Natsume is childish here, because he’s willing to get himself into trouble for the chance of something he knows he won’t get, and even more, because later we find out that Ruka proposed they escape for a little while anyway. They’re both in a morose, unrealistic mood at this point, willing to face potentially horrifying consequences for a few hours of being careless and not having to worry about the academy and its demands. I don’t mean childish as a bad thing, especially not when it’s about Natsume, who should be childish.

Tragically his and Ruka’s entire plan is in shambles immediately, because Narumi has been waiting for him outside. Natsume’s caught, whipped, and laying on the ground when he first sees Mikan. There’s a moment of uncertainty when we think maybe he’ll use his alice on her to make a run for it, but Narumi stomps on his hand to stop him.

The Honeysuckle scans are so pretty, clear, and nice. I'd like to use them as my pic sources and might change all of them in the future as new chapters come out.

He is then threatened to not use his alice or Narumi would use his own, and so Natsume doesn’t, but Narumi uses his anyway and Natsume passes out, as all people inexperienced with romance do (I wonder what effect his alice would have on Natsume later in the story, who is so deeply entrenched in romance that it becomes one of his key motivations).

In all this time, we only see Natsume say one thing, to call Narumi a pervert, and all the information we get about this kid is from Narumi, who calls him a genius and tells Mikan what his alice is. Despite the limited knowledge we have about him now, though, his purpose is served: Mikan is fully freaked out.

Chapter Two

Immediately, Narumi leaves Mikan alone with Natsume at the main headquarters and she’s finally given the chance to panic about her new situation and--to put it frankly--the violence she just witnessed.

My biggest issue with Gakuen Alice as a work in general and Natsume in particular is how cavalier it is with child abuse. I’m not trying to vilify Narumi, but Mikan was perfectly right to be put off by his treatment of Natsume, and I personally am not much reassured by Misaki’s explanations that it was in Natsume’s best interests to be hit. For any victim of child abuse, that line sounds familiar. Yes, Natsume would probably have faced worse if his plan went further, and, yes, Natsume’s berserk button is impossible to switch off, but it still rubs me the wrong way. After all, Narumi was quite cheerful about the whole thing, and maybe that’s what stands out to me more than anything. “Did I hurt your pretty face?” and similar comments said to the child who is frequently beaten by adults at the school don’t seem like good word choices, to put it mildly.

Of course, Narumi has been playing a part this whole time to win over the academy’s trust so that he can enact change from inside, but this has been done at the expense of the students’ trust, especially Natsume’s.

It’s understandable that Natsume has such severe distrust and disdain towards every adult at the school, because they are all either complicit or directly involved in physically abusing him.

Moving on, Misaki makes a bold claim about Natsume that is inconsistent with what we know, having finished the story. Natsume is actually not a repeat offender of trying to escape. Natsume is being held in place by threats against Ruka and his family. Despite his dalliance with naivete this one time, he knows better than to risk his loved one’s safety for irresponsible desires like running away. He has more reason than anyone to want to leave the school, but he knows he can’t and there’s no way he ever would, chronic martyr that he is.

Realistically, this was probably nothing more than just a dumb comment from before Higuchi Tachibana got all the characters fully shored up, just a tiny mistake or plot hole.

When it comes to inconsistencies in media, I like to either disregard them or try to explain them in-universe, and I think I can explain this one this time. Misaki-sensei does not seem like he is fully involved with the higher ups in the academy. He doesn’t seem to have the ESP’s ear, like Narumi does on many occasions. He is just the biology teacher, and doesn’t know the ins and outs of Natsume’s troublemaking. After all, Natsume seems to ditch more classes than he attends, so maybe in Misaki’s mind, the kid is off trying to run away when he should be in bio.

In fact, when he moves on to discuss Natsume’s cat mask, in the manga it is Misaki who tells Mikan to be wary of “black cats”, warning her to stay away. It’s established that the mask is supposed to tamper alices, to “punish” dangerous children by de-powering them for a time until the mask is removed. But Misaki clarifies that the mask is useless on Natsume, whose alice is so strong, he could overpower even the mask. The mask is yet another example of physical abuse, actually, because it’s later revealed that it sends electric shocks, giving Natsume a persistent headache and keeping him in pain and in line.

So instead of trying to guide potentially dangerous students into better controlling their powers and emotions, you ostracize them and use them as child soldiers? Yeah, that makes sense.

It’s also, as Misaki puts it, a “red flag” to denote a dangerous child. Stay away is the message you’re supposed to get from the mask, ostracizing “dangerous” children from their peers and essentially “othering” them. More maliciously is that the mask is Natsume’s mission uniform. That is the face that the academy’s enemies see, so much so that he is simply known as the “Black Cat” in those circles, and as Reo later says, a nickname spoken in fear and awe. After all, it’s supposed to be used for alice restriction and punishment, and that’s what he wears when he’s supposed to be at his most powerful. It’s almost as though the academy is extra cruel for no reason other than for the pizazz.

The chat Misaki has with Mikan is pretty informative, and she acts as discoverer for us, finding out all these facts about Natsume and the academy, much of which we’ll get into when we explore her perspective, but for now, one of the most important things to take away from the conversation is Misaki’s comment that once Natsume is set off, he is impossible to calm down. This is foreshadowing, as Natsume will be set off within the first volume, the first arc, and it’s a crucial part of Mikan’s full introduction to him.

It’s also an interesting and consistent part of his character, and throughout the story it’s established that there are buttons you simply don’t press unless you want to get barbecued. For a boy who’s been forced into early adulthood and employs way more restraint and responsibility than a child ever should, it’s interesting to see him shed all maturity and reason whenever he’s set off.

Misaki leaves to the greenhouse, urging Mikan to press the emergency button if Natsume were to wake up.

And now is perhaps as good a time as any to properly meet Natsume, who wakes up and flings Mikan on to the couch.

A meet-cute! Or... nevermind...

So, to be entirely honest this next scene is supposed to be funny. Mikan is flung onto the couch and under attack by this dangerous black cat boy and at first it’s kinda scary! Then Ruka comes and it just becomes a little bullying episode! He takes her underwear off, how hilarious! There’s honestly not much more substance to the scene than that, as disappointing as that might be. Higuchi Tachibana herself merely explains it by establishing that he’s a pervert, and that’s all we have to run with for analysis. All it’s for is to make Natsume and Mikan enemies.

All that needed to be done to establish that though is an unpleasant encounter, and it could've been replaced with any other action and resulted in the same animosity. It is what it is though, and I can't change it so...

Moving on, the threat of possible discipline for his escape is eliminated once an ally (Ruka, who brings him security), and more pressing threats than Mikan (teachers) arrive, so he is able to run away and seek refuge from Class B, where he and Ruka pretend like nothing happened. Their escape attempt did not pan out at all, Natsume is not getting that letter, not that he ever was, and all they can do now is sit in their chaotic classroom.

Chapter Three

We see Natsume again when Mikan makes her Class B debut, perhaps an hour or so later. Mikan reacts to their second meeting with anger and high emotion--as is to be expected--and is only made angrier by Natsume and Ruka’s complete apathy.

The next thing we learn about Natsume, sadly, is that Natsume is considered something like a boss in Class B, and Mikan shouldn’t be expecting any support from a group that idolizes Natsume so much.

The rest of Class B rallies to bully Mikan, while Natsume sits there expressionless. It’s interesting to imagine this scene through his perspective, tricky as it might be, to imagine that there is a divide he is constantly living, between life-or-death missions and the reliable chaos of his homeroom class. Despite being the boss, despite being “Natsume-san”, he is really not emotionally invested in any of these antics. If anything, it’s just a way to pass the time.

They stopped paying attention at some point.

He doesn’t even say much throughout the confrontations, choosing instead to watch his classmates torture her on his behalf. It really only gets interesting to him when he discovers that Mikan was given a condition for her entry: she has to be accepted by Class B in order to officially enroll.

In your first read-through, you might find such a clause to be ridiculous, but since there’s so many bizarre happenings at this school, you might take it in stride as just another weird thing in a weird place. Reading again, or being Natsume, you’d know better: there was never a clause to begin with. That was a lie from Narumi, just one in a series of manipulations he makes to stir trouble in the academy like he promised Yuka.

The truth is that Mikan has an alice, but Narumi wants to see one last exhibit of proof, and even more he wants to see what happens when hers comes head to head with Natsume’s alice. He makes it clear that he knew Natsume would challenge Mikan, which he does, and that the challenge would allow Mikan to discover her alice, which it does. Narumi immediately pairs them together, and narratively speaking they’re already set up together. He calls Mikan Natsume’s “key”, and the reader should file that information away and see what he means by that.

Natsume knows the condition is a ruse. You’re either an alice, or you’re not, and there’s no way the school would take the chance to miss capturing another magical child to keep. All these games for one girl stand out, and the fact that Natsume couldn’t use his alice on her is even more reason for these events to be out of the ordinary, so he has no choice but to pay attention and get involved.

With that, Natsume sends Mikan on a mission to the Northern Woods with her friends as guides, knowing full well that the forest is off limits to students and that it harbors some dangers that may help prompt Mikan into using her alice.

Even Ruka is confused by all the effort Natsume is going to for this new kid, and Natsume brushes the confusion off.

Natsume and Ruka like playing cards with Usagi-chan!

Chapter Four

Mikan, Hotaru and Iinchou have a conversation about Natsume while on their mission, and several things are brought up--namely that he has a grudge against the school, has only one friend, and that he is rumored to be a murderer.

This makes a few things clear for us, but prompts new questions as well.

First, we see more proof that Natsume hates the academy, but more than anything it’s a reiteration of what Misaki said: that he causes trouble and has an incredibly powerful alice. We still aren’t sure of what the reason for his hatred might be, but we can see it’s potent.

Secondly, he has only one friend. That calls to question the horde of apologists and fans he has in Class B, and what he would classify them as, if they’re not his friends. He doesn’t talk to them, or really hang out with them. They hang around him, and this seems to have been consistent throughout his childhood. Even back when he first met Ruka, he had developed a following at that school too, including boys trying to emulate him and girls with crushes on him. Natsume has a magnetic presence, boosted by his powerful alice and general disregard for rules. But despite always being surrounded by people, he only has one friend, Ruka, who truly understands him and that he views as trustworthy.

Third, he’s rumored to be a murderer. Narratively, we already know Natsume is dangerous, on account of his alice and his troublemaking, but to be a murderer is on a whole other level. What this sort of rumor means for Natsume, knowing the true story behind why he had to come to the academy and what that rumor is based on, is the question worth asking here. How does it feel giving up everything just to have people fear you and spread horrible gossip about you? And all the while, you’re just a child? People either entirely adore or abhor Natsume with very little room in between, and he’s well aware of the effect he has. It’s probably the reason he only has one friend despite all the admirers: Ruka is the only one who knows what Natsume really did, who understands Natsume the way nobody else does, and who doesn’t admire him without reason.

This is their wanted poster.

My point bringing all this up is that in Chapter Four we’re given the information that Natsume is absurdly lonely. He’s misunderstood by admirers and enemies alike and yet has very little chance to sit with his own thoughts because he’s always surrounded by people, or being sent on missions. The only thing Natsume can count on, and the only thing at this whole school that Natsume cares about is Ruka.

And then Natsume finds out that Ruka is heading in the direction of the Northern Woods.

Conclusion

Natsume is introduced as a character, but using Mikan's perspective for this analysis would be tricky and counter-productive. It's easier instead to use all the knowledge we have of him from the whole story so the meta can be more thorough. The first few chapters and his backstory help establish Natsume as a traumatized, miserable, and cold child with only friend he can trust. We learn why he hates the teachers and the academy. Overall, he seems like a tough egg to crack. He is only going to get tougher in the next few chapters, and that's not at all romantic but we're getting there. This is all a set up!

Stay tuned for the next segment (which I'll post soon) about the next couple chapters. I wanted to go volume by volume but I'm running out of room for pics and the next chapter is kinda heavy in content so unfortunately I don't get my way. Thanks for reading!

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evilvarric666-archive · 3 years

Note

This is gonna be long, so sorry in advance, but as someone who enjoys long fics here are my two cents:

I get why some ppl may not want 75 tags in fics, but this is gonna hurt long fic writers. On a long fic there are probably gonna be more relationships that are central to the plot that aren't the main ship. And side pairings that may be a squick to some ppl. Not to mention trigger warnings and tone tags.

For example: a long fic with the pairing Y x Z. Z had an abusive relationship, and that's gonna be explored. So the author tags abusive relationship, bc that's a trigger, but an explanation next tag saying "not current ship" or smth.

Then Y has very important friendships with some of the cast. These are central to the plot so they're tagged too.

Turns out, character W is controversial in the fandom, but they're central to the fic too. The author is gonna tag after the character tag W positive/negative; so ppl who don't wanna see positive/negative things about W can skip this.

And guess what? Ship A x B appears in this fic too. Maybe it's not that central, but this ship is also disliked by some people, so the author will tag it, so ppl can filter through.

Another problem is with media that has different mediums, like, the media Y, Z, etc are from has movies, and books, and games and a tv show. All these things actually have different stories, different enough at least that ppl may only want to see fics written for the movies! But the author wants to take plot from the movies and the books. So instead of just tagging the all media tag for that media, they also tag media (movies) and media (books)

These tags end up accumulating. And especially in long fics. The author could make the first chapter a list of tws and stuff that they keep updating, but that destroys the purpose of ao3 tags: you can't filter content like that, you can only filter tags.

I honestly think they should just find a way to delete the fics with the trolling tags, or make a readmore thing so it doesn't hurt the browsing. At the very least make the tag limit longer.

sorry in advance that this is going to be rambly and weird. I have a lot of thoughts.

I get where you're coming from but I also still disagree. Like it's definitely going to change the way longfic writers tag, but I really don't think it's going to hurt them. I think it's going to encourage more effective tagging and that that's going to be better for everybody in the long run. If anything, I think that overtagging is what's hurting longfic writers, it makes their works look unappealing, and actually important information gets buried in a wall of text.

i will admit though that I do understand better now why less room for trigger tagging is going to be an issue. My preferred tagging style is "General/umbrella warnings in the tags, with whatever elaboration/specifics the author deems necessary in an author's note/author's notes at the beginning of each chapter" (example: "animal death" in the tags, so that the filters catch it + people who can't handle the subject At All know to keep scrolling, and then the author's note specifying that its in the context of game hunting & not a pet death, so that people who were uncertain and needed more info could click in and get the specifics.) and I thought that preference was pretty universal? But apparently a lot of people use the tags as an exhaustive list of warnings, which I didn't know because when I see a work with more than, well with more than 75 tags, I just start scrolling until it's gone.

(this is a tangent and I get that my experiences are not universal. but I genuinely dislike full warning lists in the tags because, for me at least, it makes it harder for me to figure out if the story is something I can/want to read. The things I Really Do Not Want To Read about are rare, and rarely tagged the same way twice, so the exclusion filter isn't really helpful for me. I have to actually read the full list of warnings and if the things I'm looking for are sandwiched inbetween a bunch of trope/character tags in a big wall o text I am going to miss it. This has happened to me multiple times.)

I think that that's an ineffective tagging style, basically. Lots of tags is kind of the opposite of useful tags, imo. Short, to the point and consistently worded warnings are better and I think having less space will encourage people to do that. I understand why people do this other style, though, and also why it would frustrate them that they can no longer do that. I think it really sucks that ao3 let everyone wild west their website for so long that it managed to spawn like three distinct groups of people who all use the website in completely incompatible ways, and now it's at the point where any new rule implemented is going to screw a lot of people over no matter what. But I digress.

Anyways, as long as someone isn't putting Revolutionary Girl Utena levels of warnings in their tags (and if your fic needs that much... maybe you should just put yur top 10 biggest warnings on there and slap a Dead Dove Do Not Eat on the end there, yknow?), I think that 75 tags will fully accommodate them. I get that tags start adding up, but also I think a lot of people are underestimating how many tags 75 tags is.

Like to just add up how many tags are used in your example: three / pairing tags, lets go crazy and say three more & pairing tags, tag every character tag in those pairings that's twelve, #abusive relationship + #not main pairing tags, three fandom tags bc multiple source mediums, a #[controversial character] positive tag... that's 24 tags. Like all the necessary character & pairing tags are handled in less than a third of the space given (and personally I consider this slightly over tagged. I think the only character tags you should put on a fic are the very mainest/pov characters, but yknow) and honestly if you can't then figure out a way to communicate the rest of the necessary information about your fic in 51 tags and a 1250 character summary then I really don't know how to help you. I personally would have to really push myself to figure out how to put more than 75 tags on one fic, regardless of the length of the fic. And I can't help but notice that a lot of the fics I could find with over 75 tags while searching last night had a lot of... unnecessary duplicate tags, often for information that could've been easily otherwise intuited (tagging #mandolorian #mandolore #mandolorian character and #mandolorian culture on a Jango Fett pre-series fic, for example)

I do have some criticisms about the current change though. I think it would've been better to have individual tag number limits for each individual field (x number of fandom tags, x number of character tags, etc.) instead of a 75 tags over all limit (or make a "warning tags" field that's separate from "additional tags" but that's a separate essay and would... probably mean overhauling the whole site. so not very practical.) A readmore option would be good too, and I'm not sure why they didn't go for that? I also think that this change will be most effective if done in combination with other changes. Like posting very loosely or not at all enforced official tagging/style guides for the site. I really think that even a tepid attempt at standardization will increase the site's usability like, A Lot.

I'm not sure how cohesive that was. TL;DR I appreciate hearing your thoughts, mine are that I still think this is a step in the right direction. And that cutting back on overtagging will lead to more concise, effective tagging which will make browsing and filtering easier in the long run.

#ao3 tag

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thejudgingtrash · 4 years

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would you class percy as a morally grey character? i’m really interested to hear your input

Anon 2: Would u class percy as an Morally Gray character?

Hey there! Let me write that essay for you about morally gray Percy ^^

It’s not about whether Percy is a morally gray character or not, it’s about he has to be otherwise the story doesn’t make any sense. At least for me it wouldn’t.

Ashley (@gr33kg0ds) said in the tags of my dark!Percy post something along the line of people diminishing Percy’s character because they need him to be pure and fluffy and I wholeheartedly agree with that!

Just because Percy’s twelve doesn’t mean he’s pure and didn’t do unproblematic things. I’ll mostly refer to The Lightning Thief because that book is the Magnus Opus for Riordan and perfectly stands for Percy as a morally gray character from the very beginning of the saga. (Also the only book I’ve recently re-read)

As much as I love fanon with all the amazing artworks, debates, memes and jokes, analysis, cool edits and wonderful fanfics, projecting your version of Percy doesn’t make the image in your head real. Percy in canon is not the fun and fluffy boy you imagine him to be or which social media sites (Reddit, Twitter, Instagram and yes, also Tumblr) tend to make him to be. He’s a scrawny little sarcastic twerp that was the unpopular kid. He isn’t that cringy dude Tony Lopez doing that fucking weird TikTok dance (side note: I don’t even know who this person is and I don't care, I saw the video and immediately wanted to delete every social media app on my phone, so thanks Tony?), kissing his Yeezys goodnight, vibing to our lord and gay icon Taylord “T. Swizzle” Swift song and flexing them iPhone 11 Max Pros. Percy literally said that going to Burger King with his mother once in a while would be considered a luxury. He’s a poor bastard in literal sense.

Part of the problem with the distinction of Percy’s character and his motives stem from the fact that Percy is a sneaky unreliable narrator and we as the audience (especially if you’re younger) don’t question most of his behavior if you even question some (pretty sure that most of us only picked up weird stuff as adults). Everything seems plausible to you. But does it mean that his behavior is necessarily good? Something that would paint his character as good?

Like I’ve said, let’s take a look at TLT. The very beginning of everything and the wonderful line that gets quoted everywhere: “Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood”.

The very first line that quoted everywhere or used as in moodboard and edits but its meaning and significance get brushed off for the most part. It immediately sets the tone and the atmosphere for the book and for Percy as a character. A(n in my opinion) morally gray character. The very first thing we hear from Percy is that he doesn’t want to be in this world. He’s an involuntary participant who has been (upon further reading) blackmailed and forced into this world and is only cooperating to get his mother back and said in regards to his father (who also stands for the Greek pantheon) ”well yeah, would be nice to know about my dad but I’ve survived without him the past twelve years so I don’t know, he wouldn’t be missed necessarily I guess?“ That pretty much tells you, it foreshadows, that we will be dealing with someone with grit, someone that fights back, someone that went through shit, someone that isn’t a goody two-shoed character. Does it mean he’s a terrible (in the sense of evil or bad) character from the get go? Not really, but it tells you in nuances that he won’t be the white shining knight you might expect from a fairy tale.

There is so much that little Perseus Jackson has to offer you directly in the first book. So much that paints him as a morally gray character. From the illegal candy stash all the way to tricking Procrustes into his own trap. He knows right from wrong and isn’t innocent by any means. He wants you to think he’s innocent. Yes, he hunts monsters and the book also tells you that some adults (Gabe) can also be monsters, but Percy’s personality is so interesting and full of facets which I love! He’s misleading you on purpose. Deflects, plays events down. He lies in front of you to others but you don’t really doubt it. Instead of questioning it, you understand it.

What distinguishes Percy from other male protagonists in that notion that the author doesn’t try to paint him as particularly good (the reader connects the dots, in reality) is pretty much that. Percy is neither inherently good or bad. He’s in the middle. He does lots of questionable things and his personality adds to it. Something that immediately comes to my mind is his lack of fear of consequences. He thinks in the short term and not in the long term. Of course, he’s caring about those that are close and important to him (Grover, Annabeth and his mother of course. And well. The world not getting destroyed by his weird father and fucking crazy uncle would be a plus). But Percy isn’t really a strategist (yet). Look at the Medusa head thingy. Annabeth and Grover warn him, that he’s gonna get his ass beat and he doesn’t care. That these gods could squish him in the end didn’t matter to him.

The Olympian gods are painted as these unpenetrable huge mighty force and some fuzzy annoyed twelve year old dipshit sends them the severed head of a monster - but not any monster, the monster his father had a role in creating (well, Athena for the most part, but you know what I mean). (Also, I know this kinda reckless behavior gets sorta rewarded but at first, everyone was like ‘NO, NO, NO!’ before Percy was glorious with his attempt). Percy essentially tells these ancient forces that drive the way of his new cosmos how shit‘s gonna work from now on.

Percy isn’t fear riddled and doesn’t think about the possible outcome. He manipulates, he lies, he persuades and all of this as soon as he hits twelve. But probably earlier. Pretty sure he had to become a believable lier in order to trick (survive being around) Gabe. Perseus is angry, he’s agitated. Had Riordan written Percy as a soft spoken, frightened, goody two-shoed kid, almost nothing in TLT and the follow-ups would have made sense. He’s the outcast, but slowly blossoms into the strength and muscles of the group. Of the entire camp. Someone that outsmarts opponents and wins battles. But he didn’t do that by playing nice and being a bootlicker.

TLT would’ve been a perfect standalone book that would have emphasized that Percy is an involuntary person sive) if you skip Kronos, leave a little bit foreshadowing with the prophecy out, tweak the talks with the gods and Annabeth’s first meeting and skip Luke and the scorpion at the end. The ending would’ve been “and so Percy had a first awesome summer vacation and found a group of friends for life” or so (aka PJO movie 1 in less shitty and more cohesive).

The morally gray character shrinks a little bit in the SOM because there lie straighter dangers ahead which dive more into the bigger picture and Percy grows more into the character who takes care of friends and but he does come back with TTC, and definitely BOTL and the St. Helens explosion.

Consequences of Percy’s interactions had people partially dying. There is doubt, there is guilt. But the show must go on. There are battles that have to be won. There is no big giving up, no big overturn for the bad guys.

Also... isn’t it interesting that we start with Percy saying ”look, I don’t want to be in this world“ in TLT and it ends with TLO where he says ”for once I didn’t look back“? The full circle? The way that accepting his fate took five books? To change Percy from being an involuntary participant to becoming voluntary? He didn’t want to be a half-blood, he didn’t want to be the kid in the prophecy, but he actively chose to be in the end. He went from a darker shade of gray to a mayhaps lighter, if you want to say so.

To conclude, I repeat myself again: it’s not about whether Percy is a morally gray character or not, it’s that he has to be.

Thanks for asking me about some meta stuff I really do like diving into these things here and there. Tumblr’s sorta glitchy, I do get notifications but I really don’t see asks, so I’m sorry if my response is mad late ^^

#mel answers #pjo #Percy Jackson #percy jackson and the olympians #the lightning thief #rick riordan #the last olympian

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louandhazaf · 5 years

Text

Your Best Fake Smile -- author’s thoughts

(No one asked for this, but I wanted to write it all anyway! haaaaa here are my self indulgent thoughts if anyone read Your Best Fake Smile and wanted to know some random background stuff about me writing it.)

So, last year I really wanted to sign up for @larryabroad but I didn’t because a) I was knee deep in some other fics that I needed to write and also b) most of my fics don’t take place in the UK and setting is one of those super tricky things that I mostly handwave about and don’t take into a whole lot of consideration. But then I regretted it so I signed up this year and I made a promise to myself that the setting was going to be important, since to me that seems like part of the challenge--to have it set not only not in the UK but also to integrate the place into the fiber of the fic.

I picked Coney Island because it was a place I’ve been to a bunch of times and it felt like there was a lot of possibilities. There’s a beach and a boardwalk and an amusement park and a baseball stadium and an aquarium and it’s iconic and popular but also quaint and quiet at times and I was excited about all the places I could take it. And then I immediately panicked because there were too many options. So I reached out to GCs to see if they had any specific ideas of what I should do and while there were some great ones (namely, Louis as a IRL mermaid at the mermaid parade! SOMEONE PLEASE WRITE THIS!) none of them really spoke to me in the deep seeded way I love a fic to speak to me if I want to do it justice.

I thought a lot about my own trips to Coney Island. I have a lot of good memories from there, but also a lot that are tinged with sadness. I don’t think this will come as a surprise to anyone who doesn’t know this, but I’ve battled depression for a lot of my adult life, and there have been times when I’ve been In It that I’ve gone to Coney Island during the off-season and just... sat. (If you’d like to read about this small moment, I did write a kissing/grief fic that also takes place at CI.) I’ve gone there when I was sad and just wanted to GO and do something and be somewhere where I could disappear. I’ve taken rides on the ferris wheel--even though I’m scared of heights--when it was cold and I had a sweatshirt wrapped tightly around me. I’ve gone to the aquarium when my kid was still in a stroller and just wandered aimlessly as he slept because I needed to get out of the house but I didn’t want to put any effort in. But also, I’ve had summer days with friends, laughing with my sister as we watched my kiddo play in the surf, giggling as rides jerked us around tracks, going to the candy store and picking out self-indulgent, expensive treats, dripping with sweat and waiting in line for an iconic hot dog and lemonade. I’ve had so many wonderful times and then also so many pensive times and I really wanted to lean into combining them somehow.

I googled lyrics to see if anything would spark inspiration, and it turns out there’s a Fiona Apple song called “Jonathan” (about Jonathan Ames, if you care about that) and I was reading about it and how he takes all of his girlfriends to CI and that she was depressed and sort of being an asshole to him and was like ‘this is who I am.’ and it sort of all fell into place from there? I loved the idea of a first date, wandering around and getting to see all that Coney Island has to offer, and sort of doing nothing on a date. And that one of them was going to be depressed and Trying His Best (So many depressed fics are set in homes, because leaving the house can be so difficult! I’ve written that too! I get it! But I also wanted a fic to sort of explore the feeling of pushing yourself to be Social when you’re Not Feeling It?).

And somewhere along the line when googling ideas I read this article about summer essays and going/returning from an adventure. And I loved that idea too. The going and returning and the different moods and that there’s a history of documenting it in art that I could add to. So I thought I’d frame the story that way, start and end in the same place (the subway) and have them feeling very different after the day they had.

AND THEN! I sort of wanted to lean into that idea even more. So I set it up as a symmetric structure with a definitive middle. So I came up with this as my outline:

On subway to Coney Island (Harry super cranky)

Stop at Dunkin Donuts

Wander past the art billboards & chat

At Aquarium have convo about something! Hurricane?

Boardwalk/Stop in beach-y store to get something to sit on

Sit on Beach

Boardwalk/Stop in candy(?) store (or bathrooms to clean up?)

At Stadium have convo about something! Sports?

Wander past the arcade games & chat

Stop at Nathan’s

On subway to home (Harry feeling positive)

Then I started to write.

Then I panicked because it was so far from how I normally write a fic. And I was so scared it was going to Boring because Nothing Happens and it’s a pretty subtle shift in moods that happens and also it’s Depressed Harry on a first date that’s not going super well and I was like NO ONE IS GOING TO READ THIS EVERYONE IS GOING TO HATE IT. Which was fine, I wanted to challenge myself and write it anyway and just see if I could what I set out to do which was write a Cohesive Thing about using all these Parts. But then the forever lovely @disgruntledkittenface read my draft and reassured me that it wasn’t a total piece of garbage that I should trash and said some really really really kind things about it and made me feel like I should finish it. (She’s the best. Seriously.)

So I did.

And I’m so so so happy that the fic was posted anonymously at first. Because I was really happy with what I ended up with, and also because I am so so so super lucky to be an author in this fandom that people like what I write and I definitely feel like I have people who will read what I wrote just because I wrote it (which is wild and makes my heart SO FULL), but I was so curious to see if people would like it if they didn’t know I wrote it?

And then I got some really nice comments about it while it was on anon and it just settled me in a way. And now that it’s off anon I’m getting the kindest things being said about it in reblog tags and comments and every time I smile at my screen and kind of squeal because I really 100% had a fear that I was going to put it out there (this thing that felt SO personal to me) and no one was going to read or they would but no one would Get It and everyone would think it was just really boring and terrible.

Anyway, I think that’s really all I have to say about it other than if you’ve read it and you relate to the depression aspect in anyway please know that I’m sending you a huge huge huge hug and that everything will be okay and I know sometimes things suck but that also you’ll get through it. And I’m here anytime if you want to talk about Things or the fic or anything at all.

#your best fake smile #whinging on about my writing #My writing

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peperoprincess · 7 years

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Is the key to saving Jack from Anti saving Dr. Schneeplestein?

I forgot to take my phone to work with me last night, and business was absolutely dead. My boss left at 5:30 and I was alone until closing at 9:30 by myself, so for upwards of three hours I spent time ruminating on the whole Anti ordeal and thinking about some of the theories I’d seen. Personally, although I have my own theories and thoughts about what other people are posting, I never really took the time to sit down and actually think through what we already know on my own. But given that I had about four hours last night to do exactly that, and that I’ve been going back and watching old videos featuring the egos, I figured I’d present you guys with my thoughts!! Heads up that this post is going to be a VERY long one, I ended up writing a university-worthy five page essay on what I think is going on behind the scenes, so please stick with it until the end!! I think you might find it interesting if you’re a lore detective like me haha

And who knows, maybe @therealjacksepticeye could share his own thoughts on some of this stuff!

I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO POINT OUT: This theory hinges on the speculation that the good doctor didn’t die at the end of the August 3rd video. I strongly believe he wasn’t killed: there wasn’t any evidence of his dying at the end, and the footage just cuts out. There isn’t any struggle, no signs that there’s anything wrong with Schneeplestein other than losing his patient. So I operate under the assumption that he is still alive.

This whole brainstorm session of mine started with one question: what IS Anti? Some people seem to think he might be a demon, others a sort of computer virus. Considering the fact that, so the story goes, the more you talk about him the stronger he gets, I’d long considered him a sort of ghost/entity. There’s a sort of poltergeist or spirit that functions much the same way, and although the name escapes me, I’d associated him with that sort of thing. But then someone in the tag brought up the RGB lighting, and Anti himself seemed to think that was “clever” (link). I’d been scribbling notes into my sketchbook while writing all these thoughts down, which is what I’m typing up right now into something more cohesive. In my notes, though, I’d written things like “is Anti a separate entity with Jack’s face? Probably not,” or “a (computer) virus? Infection?” I left these thoughts to stew and moved on. Whatever you choose to believe Anti is, the important part is that he is able to do two things, or interact with the other egos (and Jack) in two stages: corruption/control, and possession. Of the two, corrupting or controlling another ego would take the lesser amount of effort. If he acts like a type of virus, for example, corrupting another ego allows him to influence them. However, they still remain in control of their own bodies for the most part. I would like to think that his sort of behaviour manifests in the way the screen glitches when Anti isn’t visible, or when one of the other egos says or does something slightly out of character, reminiscent of Anti (for example, in Dream Daddy when Brian mentions “anti-jokes” and Jack looks at the camera, and deadpan emphasizes Anti, or the recent set of Instagram photos in which Dr. Schneeplestein is featured with a bleeding eye). The second of the two takes significantly more manpower from Anti: possession. Once another ego is corrupted and can be influenced, Anti then shares a link with that ego. Over time, he is able to push his way into the other ego and take control (like we see happen in the August 3rd BIO INC REDEMPTION video, when Dr. Schneeplestein starts to wrap the cord around his own neck, etc. Anti begins taking possession of the Doctor at around 7:45, and becomes increasingly in control. In this case, he was able to fight Anti off temporarily, but in the end Anti pushed through successfully. And of course, the main and most important instance of this type of possession is the SAY GOODBYE video in which Anti makes Jack slit his own throat (and “kills” him).

Now that these main points are established, I’d like to jump a little to another point: Dr. Schneeplestein seems to be a very important lynchpin this time around. Up until this point in time, I never really took Dr. Schneeplestein seriously. Throughout the episodes of Surgeon Simulator, he’s careless and acts unlike any doctor I’ve ever encountered before in my life. His poor patients can’t possibly have ever survived a single one of his operations. Everything is sure to go awry when Schneeplestein enters the room. But then I thought to myself, what if Schneeplestein is, in actuality, much smarter than I’ve given him credit for? What if his interactions with Peter are just plain horsing around? Perhaps we’ve never really seen him take something seriously, which I believe is supported by the way he spoke about his friends in the BIO INC REDEMPTION video. He seemed genuinely distressed to see “Jack’s” systems failing. Seemed pretty serious to me. Now, let’s take for fact, just for the sake of argument, that Schneeplestein is truly a great doctor when it counts. He mentions saving Jack, and gets so incredibly distressed when the systems all start failing: “I will not have you die… not again! I will not lose you. I almost lost you once before” (6:46). We see that he truly cares about Jack and is trying everything in his power to help him, even though clearly we know that this isn’t the real Jack, Schneeplestein gets increasingly agitated and anxious (“Tell me what to do, my friend!” (7:00)). Once Anti starts to take control, it gets increasingly harder and harder for Schneeplestein to fight Anti off, and he goes on to make multiple references to Anti through medications such as antidepressants and anticoagulants as Jack’s systems begin to fail one after another (“Antidepressants… Anti-Anti… we have to get him out of there.” (8:04) and “Yes. ANTI-coagulants.” (8:24))

So, we know that Schneeplestein has saved Jack once before, presumably when Anti slit his throat in the SAY GOODBYE video. I’d like to call to attention the phrasing that Schneeplestein uses. It’s very interesting to note that he says not again, as if implying that Jack died at that time. I’ll address this again in a moment, but there is certainly some ambiguity here. Did Jack really die, or was Schneeplestein over exaggerating? What are the implications if this is true, that Jack was dead and brought back to life? Does he simply mean that Jack flat-lined on the table and that Schneeplestein was able to bring him back? Perhaps the ambiguity is designed to keep us guessing, but based on what I’ve gathered, I’d be more inclined to believe that Jack didn’t actually die after the encounter with Anti, but that he was close to death when Schneeplestein saved him (again, supported by the second half of that quote: “I almost lost you once before!” - Almost).

Next, we also know that Schneeplestein saved Chase. He says as much in BIO INC REDEMPTION: “I saved Peter from the brink. I saved my very good friend Chase, Chase Brody. He went back, saw his family. Did they take him back? We may never know” (4:16). However, I don’t think this is exactly what it seems. When I first heard him say he saved Chase, I immediately thought back to the insanely morbid last few seconds of the Bro Average video, in which Chase seems to shoot himself in the head. Now, I did a little research, and according to this article (link) surviving a bullet to the brain requires a lot of conditions to be met, and even then when the patient survives, it isn’t without a significant amount of damage. According to the article, “a person’s chances of surviving such a trauma to the brain depend on the areas of the brain that are struck, the velocity of the bullet and whether the bullet exits the brain.” Looking at the video, Chase shoots himself at the side of his head, above the ear. The bullet would have passed through both halves of the brain, which would have caused more damage than if the bullet had only affected one of the hemispheres. Not to mention that if the bullet had stayed inside the head, there would again, be a lot more damage done. If he’d hit the thalamus or brainstem, which according to the article “are crucial to consciousness and basic functions such as controlling breathing and the heartbeat,” then his chances of surviving would have been extremely low. So the moral of this little study is this: there is almost no way in hell Schneeplestein could have saved Chase if he’d really shot himself in the head, unless the Doctor was there immediately after the incident and was able to provide a Level 1 Trauma Center’s equipment to deal with the injury. And Schneeplestein isn’t even a neurosurgeon!! And even if we play devil’s advocate and say that Chase did indeed get shot, and Schneeplestein DID save him, then that leads me to question the part of the BIO INC REDEMPTION video in which the good doctor says “I saved Peter from the brink. I saved my very good friend Chase, Chase Brody. He went back, saw his family. Did they take him back? We may never know” (4:16). After a brain injury and subsequent surgery such as this, I’ll be damned if Chase actually went to see his family. We’re talking MAJOR recovery time. I’d also like to point out that just before this point in the video, we see the “Drive-By,” in which Chase seems to be shooting some folks. Are we meant to assume that he shoots at Stacy because she’s divorcing him and taking his kids? Is he shooting at random passers-by? Is it even a real gun? It clearly states “Nerf Edition” below. And if it WAS meant to be a real gun, he went back to see his family so clearly it wasn’t them he shot at, and clearly is wasn’t anyone else since the boy isn’t in jail. Y’know, where he WOULD BE if we took it to be a real drive-by. In either of these cases, his family sure as hell wouldn’t let him come back to see them. Also taking into account that Chase then uses the exact same gun in the “Stacy, I love you, please don’t go” shot. So if it isn’t meant to be a real gun, like I heavily suspect it isn’t, Schneeplestein wouldn’t have any cause to operate or to “save Chase” because nothing happened. So then why does he say he saved Chase? My guess is that something happened off-camera that we didn’t see. The most plausible idea would be that, considering his divorce and his inability to see his kids, Chase fell into a bout of situational depression, which may have hit him hard enough to cause suicidal tendencies. If he mimed killing himself once, he may have actually tried to do so off-camera. If this is where Schneeplestein actually saved him, then perhaps he got Chase the help he needed. Then again, Anti could very well have tried to get to Chase as well, prompting Schneeplestein to have to save him, but we haven’t seen anything like that on screen, or had hints about anything like this dropped. We’d need more video and/or textual proof to really understand why and how Schneeplestein saved Chase. The point of the matter is that, even if Schneeplestein DIDN’T bring the two of them back to life, he’s still a major contender in Anti’s way. The good doctor certain is as his name implies, a good doctor. Just shy of resurrecting egos, he provides them with life-saving medical attention.

Next on the agenda is an interesting little something: Anti needs Dr. Schneeplestein. We saw in Anti’s captions that he was “stitched together,” following a picture posted of the doctor. Clearly Schneeplestein was a necessity, a good choice given the aforementioned detail of administering life-saving medical attention to different egos, as well as the man in charge – Jack. He seems to be the only person who can properly treat Anti. And actually, interestingly, that same photo of the doctor is the one where we see him bleeding from the eye. He’s been corrupted by Anti, influenced by him perhaps, in order for Anti to get him to stitch his neck up. This would explain why Anti hasn’t simply killed the doctor, but instead corrupted him. Also taking into account that Schneeplestein calls Jack his friend on multiple occasions in the BIO INC REDEMPTION video, we know that he would never voluntarily betray Jack. Therefore the only way for Anti to get what he wanted would be to turn Schneeplestein to his side, however briefly. One might argue that this briefness is a result of Schneeplestein’s profession. If, like I mentioned earlier, Anti acts like a disease, an illness, or a virus – computer or otherwise – Schneeplestein has the upper hand. He’s a doctor, and doctors fight viruses and infections. Although Anti eventually manages to take control, Schneeplestein isn’t easily controlled. But then, we also have to take into account that Schneeplestein says “I have never seen something attack a system like this before” (7:30), which would account for how much he has to struggle to keep Anti out (and his subsequent loss of ability to keep Anti from possessing him).

But then it begs the question: why didn’t Anti simply kill the good doctor after having his neck stitched up? My guess is that Anti continuously needs the doctor’s support. If you look back to Anti’s appearance in BIO INC REDEMPTION, his neck is bleeding again. Why would Anti post a photo of a stitched up neck, only to then show up bleeding again? I think that Anti is in constant need of medical attention, and that Schneeplestein is the only one who can give it to him. Perhaps, no matter what he does, the neck wound keeps opening up again and again, time after time. Let’s think about it this way: why does Anti even have that neck wound to begin with? Wasn’t it Jack who slit his own throat? My theory is that any injuries he sustained while inside Jack’s body would remain with him when eventually he came back out of Jack’s body. He tells us in the BIO INC REDEMPTION video that he was in control this entire time, but I’d be willing to bet my left leg that he only said that to make himself sound more powerful than he really is. But in fact, he was not in control the whole time, and he wasn’t in Jack’s body at all. He was weak and suffering and in need of a doctor. Schneeplestein even boasts of his own medical prowess as Anti tries to possess him: “When something gets inside your body and it wants to destroy you from the inside out, there is only one way to deal with it. And that is SCHNEEPLESTEIN” (5:03). Given, he IS talking about expelling Anti from one’s system, and although that would prove to be detrimental to Anti who is trying to take Schneeplestein’s body, it is precisely his skill as a doctor that Anti is in need of.

So then, if Anti is in constant need of medical attention, and has been corrupting Schneeplestein in order to get that medical attention, would it not be detrimental to himself to kill the doctor? So then why would it be our job to save Schneeplestein, if Anti doesn’t even want to kill him? Simple. While it’s true that Anti needs the doctor’s attention to keep stitching up that neck wound of his, it is quite possible that if Jack dies, Anti can simply take over his body permanently and become strong enough to exist on his own without any medical assistance. If he can only corrupt Schneeplestein for short periods of time before the doctor starts to fight back, this means that eventually Schneeplestein will heal whatever harm Anti tries to inflict on Jack. So then, the only way to successfully make the transition from some sort of entity without a body of his own to fully taking over a host body (Jack’s) is to quickly kill the doctor so that he is unable to heal Jack again, and then to deal with Jack before time is up. In this scenario, KILLING THE DOCTOR IS THE CATALYST THAT WOULD LEAD, IN THE END, TO JACK’S (PERMANENT) DEATH.

Given the desperation to Anti’s most recent video appearance, I’d say he’s just desperate enough to go for it. When he first appeared in SAY GOODBYE, Anti was rather calm. Although aggressive with his insistence that we let this happen, he was cocky and self-assured. He was convincing and manipulative. He believed that he was in control, after what he assumed to be a successful attempt to put an end to Jack’s life. He tells us that “his body was weak,” which I could very easily be persuaded to take to mean that Jack was weak, and that with Anti now inhabiting the body, he will be strong. Inside Jack’s body, while possessing him, he forced Jack to slit his own throat (and thus retained the injury when he was pushed from Jack’s body when he was saved by Dr. Schneeplestein). In comparison, this most recent video appearance by Anti is erratic and agitated. Before, he was cocky and comfortable. He thought Jack was dead, defeated, and he was feeling triumphant. But then Schneeplestein fixed Jack and Anti wasn’t able to hold his place in Jack’s body, and was consequently expelled from the body once again. There is significantly more glitching going on, Anti paces back and forth constantly. He seems genuinely angry. He proclaims that we’ve been seeing him all along, that it’s been him in control, when frankly it’s all been a crock of shit. Anti isn’t stronger than ever, he isn’t even in control. He’s desperate, and he knows he’s being pushed aside. He knows we mock him with Glitch Bitch, and it makes him absolutely downright furious. And as a result, he makes bold claims and sweeping grandiose gestures, trying much too aggressively to convince us that he still has the upper hand, to compensate for his uncertainty, when in actuality he’s slipping from his hold more and more.

The long and the short of it is that Anti is weak. He’s getting cagey and we’ve got him on his toes. If we keep Schneeplestein alive, we keep the rest of them alive. It’s quite possible that he keep threatening the other egos, Chase and Marvin, so that the audience is continuously set ablaze. The more agitated we get, the more we talk about Anti, and the stronger he becomes again. Perhaps if we stop reacting, stop giving him the satisfaction, eventually he’ll simply become what he fears the most: nothing.

#antisepticeye #dr. schneeplestein #jacksepticeye #therealjacksepticeye #jacksepticeye theory

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