#pre meiosis thorburn

[f1rewalk3r]

okay so i was trying to do pact book club with my roommate b4 we had a falling out (unrelated) and i have cool Pact Motorcycle Analysis from rereading chapter one. (see below)

PMT “set [their bike] on the lawn, leaning against the inside of the fence.” leaning is the key word here. why are they leaning the bike on the fence? does it not have a kickstand? most street bikes have kickstands. the only ones that don’t are for extreme motorcross, not street legal, and built solely for dirt. So it would look something like this:

worth noting that this is a KTM 300 which is really nice and PMT's bike is "...about the shittiest, smallest, cheapest bike ever, and it’s used..." so assume much smaller and shittier then this one. But also, please note: No kick stand, and especially nothing that makes it street legal (plates, headlight, taillight, signals, mirrors) Okay, so what? Well, PMT then begins "...Unlocking and lifting the seat of the motorcycle, [to] retrieve the shirt [they] had stowed away..." These hardcore enduros, and even most sport, naked, and cruisers Do Not have under seat storage, especially locking under seat storage. The only thing that does? Scooters.

Eat your heart out, taylor hebert.

Brief Side Notes here: While our protaganist is referred to as Blake in this chapter, we can assume this is world-editing fuckery, given the snip doesn't happen until 4mo later with Molly's death. Also, we do see them mention a helmet. However, they are also wearing paint covered "...jeans, the lap striped with narrow streaks in various colors." This means that either PMT doesn't wear gear (squid status confirmed) or they wear armored jeans around regularly to the point of getting paint on them from the Toronto artists/dykes.

Later on in the chapter, though, the bike has been "Tipped over in a way that had scraped it hard against the stone wall. Headlight and taillight broken." So it does have lights, and is thus street legal. In conclusion: Given the text in this chapter, we can assume the PMT/Blake's bike is either 1) a plated, street-legal converted dirtbike with no kickstand (It is mentioned as leaning against the fence twice, proving "Leaning" is a deliberate choice) and the seat thing is a continuity error. or 2) the bike is a shitty scooter with no kickstand. or 3) the kickstand AND seat are both continuity errors and blake rides an older model cruiser (my personal HC given. Everything about PMT)

See the storage saddlebags BESIDES the seat, not below. So yeah. Either the bike is a magic fiction model macguffin that doesn't exist and just does whatever it needs for narrative purposes. OR (more likely) Wildbow just doesn't know how to write bikes.

Thanks for reading. Follow for more Pact Motorcycle Analysis.

[lakesbian]

here's every way wildbow accidentally made pre-meiosis "russel" thorburn transgender that i can remember. if you can think of any reasons i forgot please add on

his parents named his younger sister "ivy," as if the obvious grandmother-pandering name "rose" had already been used up. blake theorizes that they used a male version of "rose" for PMT, but this is nonsensical--there is no male form of the name rose, and everything he comes up with as a possible option (in other words, everything wildbow came up with as a possible option) is a major stretch. most don't sound even tangentially like the name "rose." it makes far more sense to assume that PMT was afab and had the deadname rose. (this also makes sense on a thematic level wrt how rose thorburn jr is supposed to be the Real heir that grandmother is forcing blake to die for, but that's getting besides the point)

rose has memories of being harassed over the inheritance by her female cousins, and the idea of these memories just being wholly pulled out of thin air when basically everything else involves memories either being split btwn blake and rose or erased altogether is weird

blake is friends with, like. a lot of gay people. textually runs in poor gay artist circles. the idea of them adopting this weirdly cool cis straight guy is funny but it makes a lot more sense if PMT was trans + gay and only got turned into a straight guy (and a straight girl) yesterday, due to the homophobia demon

PMT literally thinks "Besides, why devote any more attention to your son, when you could just start over?  Have that beautiful baby girl you wanted, right?" which is also like one of the only pieces of internal narration we get from PMT in the entire story. first girl they named rose ran away and did some shit with their gender so now they have a second girl they can't name rose but can still try to raise to go for the inheritance

in the same chapter as when pmt says that, callan is like ohhh you think youre going to worm your way in-, implied sentence ending being "-to the inheritance," which is, like. the family knows it's going To A Girl. so.

PMT was childhood friends with paige, who is The Gay Cousin. it is deeply sensible to imagine them bonding over this, regardless of whether or not PMT (or even paige) knew at the time

it is, like, fully possible for a cishet dude to get sick of living with his shitty toxic abusive family and abscond at the age of 17, but also homelessness is an extremely prevalent issue among transgender kids in abusive families. the narrative of a transmasc kid growing up in an abusive, catholic extended family where girls are pressured to compete for a very gendered inheritance + leaving at the age of 17 & finding a new home among a bunch of gay artists is Significantly more compelling than the cis dude alternative. it just is.

okay i think im running out of, like, logical errors that make sense only if pmt was trans prior to the Obliteration, so as for the thematic stuff. like i said, rose being the half grammy decided was supposed to be "real" and blake being the half that's supposed 2 die for her 2 exist, rose just being unhappy and disconnected by nature of existence while blake is the parts of pmt that escaped from the constraints of the family + found happiness, so on and so forth. "catholic grandmother literally obliterated her transmasc nonbinary grandchild by splitting them into two binary gendered halves & expecting that the man they could've been die to allow the acceptable woman--literally forced to dress in grandmother's clothes--live on and do as grandmother wished" is Everything, doing the same thing but to a cis man grandchild is significantly less compelling

Others who r very old/operating on what are explicitly stated to be oppressive and antiquated gender roles as per the book's themes about inherited/traditional forms of harm keep mistakenly calling blake she/her and rose lmao

??? probably some other thangs im forgetting

[f1rewalk3r]

i refuse to let this stay in the comments of my post because it’s gold and also i do want to make a Blake Bike Post

so for the eggheads again: squid is a colloquialism that has no definitive definition but generally refers to a young, cocky rider who overestimates his own skill, usually wearing less gear then necessary, often resulting in horrific injury when the inevitable crash comes. (when, not if.)

(more analysis below)

we know Pre-Meiosis Thorburn has both blake and rose’s traits, so thus we can reconstruct the type of rider they are.

given Blake is propositioned to a threesome with two of the extremely hot girls in his friend group, we know that PMT was embroiled in some serious hardcore dyke shit. (this is assuming PMT is some form of queer, because duh.)

now, ahem, i will draw on /personal anecdote/ to assert that what the queers like about motorcycle dyke is the heavy gear look. sidenote that brian got this right and tayor is insane for never conciously noticing noticing. so i’m definitely assuming PMT is a AGATT (all gear all the time) rider. this also depends in the type of bike PMT/Blake rides- given toronto we could assume sportbike but given PMT queerness and Blake’s general Blakeisms it’s possible that they would ride a cruiser. A Harley-Davidson, even. really reclaim that personal freedom post cult by buying into the HD cult. plus the tattoo style (which i would describe as vaguely neo-american traditional) also gives creedence to the cruiser styling.

Post-Meiosis tho?

Rose got the smarts. Which we can assume is also the part of the PMT that got the “mmm wearing gear is sexy and will prevent me from Dying Horrifically.” (this has many implications for her sex life with whatshisname.

Blake is Textually Suicidally Reckless and thus sees any form of protective equipment as a Barrier between Him and the Freedom that comes from flying down the road. He’s always boasting about his bike (valid) his skills (pop off) and how Amazing it is to ride (king). he also decides to take it out in the battle for toronto. in the snow. this is generally a Bad Fucking Idea. but as this genius comment says- he’s a squid and doesn’t fucking Care.

[f1rewalk3r]

pmt mspaint art coming soon

[lakesbian]

transmasc pre-meiosis thorburn is the most thematically resonant option but i don't think the "when a man is split in twain" thing is evidence for that because it's been established already that old-ass creatures and systems of magic do not actually care about your gender identity and transmasc pre-meiosis thorburn would not be seen as a man by mr cellar demon. you guys lied for understandable spoiler-avoidant reasons blake isn't a cis guy wildbow accidentally made thematically trans, pre-meiosis thorburn is a cis guy wildbow accidentally made thematically trans

[lakesbian]

the thing that really gets me about pact when i think about it is that everything about blake's life experiences, if you are tapping any of your little story puzzle blocks together at all, should lead you to assume that rose (old) made him like that on purpose because it perfectly crafts his personality 2 make him die badly. but no all of that shit just happened to pre-meiosis thorburn for real coincidentally in the first place. which is somehow even more comically miserable for blake than the alternative of it being crafted. yeah sorry man you were born to die badly but the life experiences which make you susceptible to dying badly as planned weren't even implanted in you those just happened for real. because your life sucks. yeah. sorry.anyawy why does wildbow have to lie to me in pact so much i can't even make good posts about the storys themes until im finished with it because he goes "well, Actually," about what you THOUGHT was the thematic point every other damn chapter.

[lakesbian]

now obviously i know nothing about pre-meiosis thorburn ancestor but what i can figure out by putting blake and rose's character traits together like a fun little puzzle. but i'm still doing 4000 calculations per second to determine how the original dude's music taste got divvied up. now personally i thus far have PMT pegged as the type of the person to make gear jammer by george thorogood about their cool motorcycle (it's not cool compared to other motorcycles at all it's lame as hell) but i'll refrain from more calculations regarding the matter of blake and rose until if i find out if i find out more about PMT as a person. I do only have to take one look at mr blake thorburn to know he likes the red hot chili peppers though. And also one million random local indie bands he goes to the shows for, or remembers going to the shows for, where he's the guy who drinks water all night and then chaperones. because he's afraid of altered mental states around people he doesn't know and also cares about his friends.

[lakesbian]

this isthe one post i have in my pre-meiosis thorburn tag where it's like. I cannot in any way shape or form prove it but i earnestly belielve that this is true and applicable to them as a child

[lakesbian]

fucked up and scary wildbow thinks pre-meiosis thorburn is cisgender. thats not how themes work :(

[lakesbian]

I hurdled the fence, using my empty hand on the top of the fence to make it possible, enjoying just how light my body was.

blake when he's the part of pre-meiosis thorburn that escaped. and the core essentials remain despite corrosion

[lakesbian]

they need to make more posts about being expunged out of existence due to demons and shit that i can tag as pre-meiosis thorburn. i'm trying to get a collection going here