#hyperfixated on One Person's Life... knowing everything about him. it's alienating too. you can't talk to anyone else about it

[ranticore]

I really find the personal side of Qedivar's study of Ishmael and how he relates to him interesting. Are there any misconceptions that Qedivar is kind of projecting onto him because of this feeling of closeness and relatability?

oh GOD yes !!!!!!

i'm going to copy paste some stuff from my dms because i was talking about this exact thing with a friend recently too:

For background I'd not really thought much of the emotional bond between Qedivar and Ishmael until about this week aside from a few jokes about him developing a crush but when actually thinking about it, what stood out to me is the parasocial nature of the bond because of course one is dead and never could have imagined somebody like the other ever existing. There is a voyeuristic slant to it, it's almost similar to making up an oc who suffers continually for your entertainment/catharsis, but it gains this new dimension when the historical figure was real and not just someone you invented, an extension of the self. In this case he's almost turning Ishmael into that extension of himself, adopting him as part of his identity - his biographer.

Qedi lives in a repressive work-work-work environment and he is discriminated against for his characteristics, so he has a natural empathy for Ishmael, but he has these small freedoms that Ishmael couldn't hope for. He is aware of all of this - he's a good scholar and he knows perfectly well (again, more than anyone) what he has and what Ishmael lacked. Basic comforts, for instance

Ultimately the "next morning knowing he's wrong" part comes from some late night imaginings, he has this extreme almost x-ray view of Ishmael at this point, inside and out he has all this information from a 100 year lifespan accessible all at once, this insight which lets him know exactly when he could intervene to "save" Ishmael. If he had a time machine he would know when to appear in Ishmael's life and exactly what he could have said - he could have intervened, because nobody else did when the time was right - but it's a saviour mentality based on an empathetic response to tragedy. In the cold light of day he can go back to writing the paper with objective, detached language, knowing he could have done nothing even if he had been there at the time, because if they were both born in the same time period, he'd have no insight at all into that weird freak from lab block 1. He would behave exactly as everyone else had, with the information available to them.

Which is the big tragedy of being a historian I suppose

The culture Qedivar lives in is one of alienation where you can't even really be friends with anyone, so him thinking he and Ishmael could be friends isn't exactly the right language but an approximation - he'd think they could be close colleagues with an informal friendliness lol. But yes as a bit of an outcast himself the empathy has enough space to turn to this possessive attitude [towards Ishmael]. We're BOTH outcasts therefore I have some degree of authority over how YOU feel.

His own paper is objective and he does a bit of speculation with evidence but the fact of the matter is that outside of Ishmael's own journals (which are not at all exhaustive, he gave up journaling every few months), Qedi has no way of knowing how Ishmael actually felt. He's interpreting and he's fairly accurate but he cannot know the inner thoughts just from video footage and lab write-ups. And in looking at these write-ups, he's also aware that he's participating in the dehumanisation of their subject, hundreds of years later, because they were written by people with zero interest in Ishmael's mental state.

This frustrates Qedi which leads to all that wishful thinking and private speculation and saviour fantasies. But ultimately it does boil down to a kind of "wowww you're so interesting and weird and abused.. I bet I can fix you" arrogance. And, again, knowing from the evidence in front of his eyes, that this is not the case. But it would be nice if it was.