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unordinary-analysis · 5 years

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Episode 167

Honorable mentions:

Going to ignore Blyke for this week until we have some more development

My analysis of episode 161 is very closely related to this one (give or take a few statements), so I suggest going and reading that, though you don’t have to :)

^^^ like very closely related

If you do read it though, not all of what I said I would like to discuss again in this post because either I am unsure about it or I have better ideas now. I might say something in this post that contradicts what I said in my post about episode 161. Do not consider episode 161 equal to this episode. Everything I say in this post is what I am currently thinking and is more important at the moment. BASICALLY: RELEVANCE>

TLDR at the end

I tried to make the quotes I used in this analysis as easy to read as possible, but there were a lot of parentheses in the quotes I used so whenever I wanted to explain what something meant or clarify something, I completely closed and reopened my quote. Sorry if I made things more difficult to understand. It’s a struggle.

Anyway, this is wordy on purpose and meant to be formatted formally because I really like that style of analysis as compared to my looser commentary type.

Parallels:

Parallels are the best things. They’re phenomenal. And they create this easy way for readers to reflect on stories. And the one in this episode? Ooooooooo boy. I mean, it’s not exactly a new parallel, but it is the best and most important, recurring parallel in the entire plotline of UnOrdinary. And because of the way this parallel presents itself in this week’s episode, it will be discussed in the section below. This section just had to be included to acknowledge the great parallel work in this comic. Parallels are just such a great element and their use in UnOrdinary is extraordinary. Felt this needed to be said, repeatedly.

John:

This section will be the main, and only section for this episode analysis (discluding the small bit above) because it is extremely important and deserves your full attention. The episode this week was obviously very John centered and put heavy emphasis on his unhealthy relationships with Cecile, Seraphina, e.t.c., and though things similar have been touched on in the past, this episode has been the most obvious, the most telling, about this theme.

In this episode, we are reminded, again, of John’s obsession with Seraphina. And I said something similar in my post about episode 165, but, until recently, this hasn’t really stood out to the extent that it should. John has always seemed ‘obsessed’ with Seraphina, but there has never really been proper focus on that, as there is more and more of now. In episode 165, Arlo was explaining to Seraphina his history with John and kept saying that John would work himself up into a rage on her behalf, which, yeah we all knew, but it had never been pointed out as something as extreme as what Arlo described it as, which allowed us to view the whole situation in a whole new light. In this episode, John’s obsession with Seraphina is even more obvious, him growing so overwhelmed with anxiety at the thought of Seraphina not siding with him. He gets violent with Cecile, who really had nothing to do with Seraphina’s actions, and then right after hitting her to the ground, grabs her, and demands that she tell him what Sera said about him. The intensity of the way the panels read is hard to replicate in words. The comic really puts effort (the colors, blurs, etc) into stressing the feeling and passion behind John’s actions and words, multiplying the impact of what he is doing, what he’s saying. John’s anger is meant to be an intense thing and has always been meant to.

Now, the surface level objective of this episode is to stress John’s obsession with Seraphina, as the comic has been touching on and doing for the past couple of episodes. We are working towards a confrontation of some sorts, there is no doubt. But another very standout thing in this episode, and what I teased on in the introductory section, are the flashbacks from John to his past at New Bostin. The images of Adrion and Claire keep plaguing him. They always have. I said in the beginning of this post that they are “recurring”. In episode 161, there were similar flashbacks to this episode, and John kept seeing Claire. Anyways, these flashbacks, though they’ve always been recurring, have been becoming more and more common as of recently. And as I kept repeating in my analysis of episode 161, it’s hinting at how John’s past has slowly been catching up with him, overtaking him. John has been running from his past for so long, but now it’s leaking into his new created personality. This is very important to what my main idea of this post is.

The particular use of the parallels in this week’s episode is very interesting as a development from episode 161 because in ep 161, the images of Claire and New Bostin came in flashes as John’s subconscious saw similar images before him. In this episode, however, John doesn’t only get these split second flashbacks when he sees something that reminds him of his past, he is actively thinking about his past, which is such a huge leap. There is a major difference between being reminded of something because of a similar image and being reminded of something either because you experience a similar emotion (the beginning of this episode) or if you are seemingly unprompted by the current moment (the end of this episode). It is a sign that those images and thoughts are circulating around John’s head more and more (especially considering that there was a time when John would go months without experiencing a flashback). Again, this is teasing how John’s past is overwhelming him bit by bit. I keep repeating this and it’s for a reason. It. is. Important. John has been able to feel angry or passionate in the comic without reexperiencing his past before and the implication that that is no longer true is alarming.

I know I keep referring to the fact that John’s inner self, his past self, has been overwhelming and overtaking his new personality. I literally just said it. I’ve said it multiple times in both this post and in episode 161. And I’ve also just described the stark difference of John’s flashbacks in the earlier days of the comic until now. John rarely would get a flashback, only in nightmares or maybe an image every once in a while. Now, because the last few scenes where we got to see inside John’s head have included flashbacks, it’s safe to say that this is a very common occurrence now. This means that not only is the John of John’s past is overtaking him, but also that it has already made a huge amount of progress. I said in my analysis of episode 161, “His [John’s] evil half (symbolized by Joker) is interacting with, confronting, his better half (symbolized by Sera),” (referencing an earlier comment about how Sera represents the good in John), “. . . . -In both the image of Seraphina and the image of Claire, either John or Joker is standing above them, obviously a more powerful and evil force. And the fact that both are direct symbols of John implies that this [John’s evil side] is the side of John that is much more dominant.” The fact that there was sensible enough evidence in episode 161 that I felt I could tell that John’s dark side, his past self, was already greater than his better side means that currently, as we are now at episode 167, it is even greater. Assuming, of course, that the concept of it’s growth really is how I’ve described it to be.

All of these statements lead up to the same conclusion: John now isn’t the John he tried to be (the cripple, the dreamer, the passive). The fabricated John has been the lesser percentage of John for at least (and likely greater than if we look at the rate of growth) seven episodes now, using my evidence. This means:

John isn’t the John we know, isn’t the character we were introduced to in 2016. He has regressed back into the old John. The John of New Bostin who became king and went on a violent rampage, brutalizing, what was it, half of his class? We don’t know much about him other than that because John tried to hide from that side of himself for so long. And the idea of John not being who he tried to be is confusing as a concept when you realize that we don’t fully understand exactly who this ‘dark John’ or ‘past John’ is. And more importantly, we don’t know yet why he’s come back. I know that I’ve already said that the flashbacks to New Bostin have been evidence of the takeover, but why did they occur in the first place? Why couldn’t John maintain that illusion of the person he wanted to be?

I’m going to be straightforward with this part. First of all, Seraphina actually unknowingly played a huge part in John’s fantasy. We know that he relied on her. We know that he trusted her. But recently, Seraphina has been spending less and less time with John. Because: obviously, she knows now that he is Joker and wants nothing to do with him. Seraphina’s (who, again, for John represents his improved, fake self) absence has strongly affected John’s mind and rationality. The second reason as to why John wasn’t able to continue pretending to be who he wanted is a little more simple. It’s because John’s fabricated self was just that, fabricated. A fake was never going to hold up against John’s true nature or his true mind. And we know that John’s false personality was just him avoiding his old self, as John has canonically said multiple times. Due to the extreme lengths that John went to to delay his past self from overtaking him, old John is coming back strong.

Here’s where things get more interesting for me and more closely related to the concept of the recurring parallel that I was talking about earlier. John’s past self has been slowly manifesting itself into the fabricated John’s mind through flashbacks of their past. And because nothing else seems to get fake John as responsive, I’m going to assume that this is the only way that the true John has been able to make progress towards overtaking John’s body, through unwanted flashbacks reminding John of the reality of himself.

I’ve been very vague this whole analysis, not really using details from the actual episode (this episode: episode 167) to support anything that I’ve been saying, just using the general concepts, but here I want to talk about the flashbacks in particular and their contents. In this episode, the first flashback we get from John is after Cecile describes to him how Seraphina and Arlo have been meeting up and talking with each other. John instantly thinks of something that happened at New Bostin: his old errand boy, Adrion, is telling him that Claire has been meeting up with the jack. Not only that, but that Claire and the jack were gathering a crowd of students to attempt to take down John. Hold on to this because, obviously this mental association is going to impact John’s future actions.

The last flashback in this episode is when John is at home and rethinking his conversation with Cecile. We get the same images from John: his past self being warned that Claire and the jack were recruiting his enemies behind his back to take him down. But this time, after, we get the thought, “Sera… She wouldn’t… would she?” And the use of this particular scene in context of Seraphina and John’s relationship plus their current situation is very obvious about the message it is trying to convey.

The content of the flashbacks paired with John’s current situation suggests that John is relating what is happening to him now to his past, molding them together into this illusion. Because of the images of New Bostin appearing, John has convinced himself that he is in the same situations once again. This is big. This is huge. John’s flashbacks are making it so that John cannot separate the present from the past. He cannot exist at Wellston without his subconscious relating everything that is happening to what happened to John at New Bostin. He cannot tell the two apart, which is what I’ve been trying to express for this whole post and what I’d like to talk about. It caused the downfall of his attempt to reinvent himself and will cause the downfall of John in the future of the comic as both a leader, and as a friend.

But there is another flashback in this episode that I want to point your attention to. It does not appear in the same form as the others. It is not an image. It actually occurs in John’s outburst at Seraphina. It was obviously something so unexpected from John for him to blame Seraphina’s problems on her. Seraphina hasn’t done anything to wrong John, correct? In fact, she is (or was), in a way, acting as his emotional crutch, helping him in creating that illusion of his fake self. And yet, we see this fit from John at her expense, dragging her down, blaming her. I’m here to say that this. Is. A. Flashback. You will see why later, but honestly, because I’ve labeled this as a flashback for you, I’m sure it’s clear what I’m trying to get at and it’s been clear, but just in case you don’t understand my main point:

I keep saying that John cannot now separate his present from his past, but I haven’t exactly stressed what that means. This means that John also cannot separate people at Wellston from the people he knew at New Bostin. This episode’s flashbacks to Claire and situations revolving around her and the comparison to current events revolving around Seraphina, and especially the outburst by John at her; they all suggest that John doesn’t see Seraphina as her own person anymore, maybe that he never has (I’ll give John the benefit of the doubt though and say that for the majority of their friendship, he was able to view her in an unbiased and unaffected way).

It’s become clear that John is, currently at least, viewing Seraphina as another Claire. And I think that I’ve become numb to that after literally days of being obsessed with that fact and sorting through my thoughts to write it down here. But I first thought of this the night episode 167 came out and it completely blew my mind because everything lines up.

And obviously, the outburst in this episode towards Seraphina was formed from pent up anger towards Claire when she betrayed John. It’s pretty obvious now after I’ve told you what I think, but to John, because Claire’s betrayal started in the same way that it is presented that Arlo and Seraphina are talking, John is automatically assuming that it is the exact same situation. And he is channeling all of his anger at Claire for betraying him at Seraphina because he thinks that she’ll do the same thing Claire did because obviously, he has trouble distinguishing Claire from Serpahina, has trouble realizing that just because Claire would do one thing, Serpahina could do something completely different.

This statement helps to clarify all of my previous statements of, ‘the parallels in this comic, and especially this episode are amazing.’ Before now, there hasn’t technically been a clear parallel, but this parallel? It is no doubt the most important in UnOrdinary. So if the praise had seemed a little bit unwarranted until now, I apologize. I just really love parallels.

Anyways, the main idea of this whole post is that: John’s subconscious isn’t able to move past the events of New Boston, and while creating a whole new personality did help John pretend like he did for a while, it was only a temporary fix and is causing him to experience this fresh wave of trauma that wouldn’t have been as harsh if he didn’t run from it. John will never be free from the events of New Bostin and he will never be able to forget it. And: he will also never be able to move past being the person he was, the real him. Becoming his true self, the New Bostin John, is, and always was, unavoidable. And because his subconscious will never develop or evolve from New Bostin, because he can never move on, John is not able to completely distinguish between the past and the present, forever returning mentally to New Bostin. He is not able to fully view other people as separate from his past and automatically associates his friends and classmates with people he used to know, holding on to the biases from his past (ex. Hating on Seraphina because he associates her with Claire). John is also associating any current event with something that happened to him in the past, causing him to act disproportionately or irrationally when the situation does not call for it.

Even shorter: John thinks Sera is Claire and is hardcore relating the current storyline to his past at New Bostin. And parallels are literal works of art. Good day.

Bit of a choppy ending, but I was never good at those.

#unordinary #episode 167 #official #webtoon #unordinary webtoon #episode analysis

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