#also like this kid self-harms in a variety of ways when he needs control and it's a pattern that starts from his very first scene

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

honestly like. the more i take it apart and examine it, while going into it entirely is going to be A Post or Three of Its Own and will probably get its own thread: i think one of the reasons nine in canon upsets me so much is that i genuinely related to the version of him that made sense to me, when i tried to apply some continuity to his character from before his imprisonment vs after. he's actually the muse i wrote for the most prose for in this fandom, even more than five--which is saying something!--and he came to me pretty easily.

[longpost and Decidedly Harsh toward canon's depiction of him, but less ARGFMSKDKDKFK HATE than usual so much as 'man the awful way these people handled him was a waste.' believe it or not i'm actually pretty attached to him, but as the secret Better Version that lives in my head lmao]

the arc of his character could have been such a good one about how men and boys and the people around them are harmed by toxic masculinity, and examining the ways in which that's held up by other cis men, every other configuration of gender and AGAB, and both. he came through loud and clear to me as an example of a poorly socialized, abused, isolated homeschooler with very little life experience, who is throwing bits and pieces at the wall that he's cobbled together from the outside without understanding the experiences behind that kind of thing, to see what sticks. all this while having suppressed and sublimated his emotions so much that he doesn't actually recognize what he's feeling, and goes 'well, i guess this trauma reaction to killing people means i like killing people. let's go then!'

like... in canon, you can kind of see how the seeds of his trauma, and baseline personality, from before his capture might have gone septic in the process the way it does in canon. if he was already the kind of person who would spit that result out on the other side. the writers used his Acute Trauma as an excuse to go 'anyway his cêpan was a sexist dickhead under the guise of ~respecting women,~ and he got captured by pursuing a normal teenage crush and blames himself for it, and then he went through solitary for a year. so now he's a gleeful sexual predator who harasses john and thinks women are meat!'

and this becomes even more glaringly obvious when you set it next to how the aftereffects of his trauma are (not) depicted. this kid spent a year in solitary confinement--broken up by the intermission of mercy-killing his adopted dad after watching his torture--while not being fed enough and hurting himself on the forcefield on the regular. he's not going to immediately come out of that Ripped and an Incredible Polished Fighter; he's not going to come out of that a ~charming edgy debonair lovable asshole.~ this kid knows what the fuckin hat man looks like, dude. that's shit you come out of an emotional, physical, and psychological wreck, and not in a 'haha look how rude and boundary-pushing and violent and sleazy i am uwu' way.

he is barely going to be able to walk out of there on his own two feet. he is going to be hallucinating and not remember how to tell faces apart. he is going to freak out at anything like an enclosed space. he is going to be food-insecure. he is going to be constantly finding ways to self-harm when he feels at all out of control, and once again not in a 'haha i'm so quirky and edgy' way. he is going to have obsessive rituals and get stuck on repetitive thought patterns because you run out of shit to think about after a year with nothing to do but pushups, even before you add in the shiny new PTSD events to obsess over. which tend to take up all of your brain space even when you aren't isolated with them for long periods. he is going to be doing weird fucking shit after he gets out, bizarre and frightening shit that's not just 'being violent and a dick,' and other people will probably notice.

and all of this is before you factor in his backstory! (which, by the way, is not conducive to him coming out of his imprisonment an Unstoppable Highly Trained Killing Machine. he was taught how to actually fight opponents for Three Whole Ass Weeks before he got captured, and none of that was training against human-shaped opponents. i don't care how many pushups he does over how long, he still has had zero practice fighting Other People and that's immediately going to fuck him over in a fight. it's one thing to have him be dangerous because he makes up for lack of skill with being completely fucking berserk with zero regard for his own safety or anyone else's, but he's not going to be an unstoppable whirlwind of death. and you're not going to build muscle while you're being starved.)

and like. i could go on for a long time about how they fucked up his character to the point where seeing him onscreen anywhere outside his novella makes me instantly want to flip a table. but i think so much of what it comes down to--and i don't say this casually, i mean after laying out and examining all his scenes in the first series--is that he doesn't actually have an arc. he doesn't grow. the entire point of his character's existence is to be an awful person and never be held accountable, self-examine, or allowed to face any kind of real consequences for it.

it's genuinely fascinating to examine all the different methods they use to do this (which is for a whole post of its own), but he's not an exploration of culpability or responsibility--for past, current, and future actions--the way five's arc is. he's just a parade of all the abuse tactics and rhetoric the authors could think of, both direct and via enablement by people around him, to pour into one guy. nine is literally The Missing Stair: The Character.

contrast this with five getting nailed to the fuckin wall for things that are often, arguably, much less horrific or unhinged than what nine does. he's treated like a ~broken, irreparably insane monster~ by characters and narrative both. he's punished brutally and endlessly over and over and over and over no matter how much he tries to grow, or make amends, or even lay down and take everything that might be done to him as punishment because he Deserves It for, [checks notes] repeatedly having been groomed and manipulated for years. If You Can't Tell I am a Little Bitter

and it's not just other characters who suffer for it. the creators are SO invested in nine never being accountable, by himself or anyone else, that he is PUNISHED FOR IT when he makes even the slightest effort to unpack. when he has a moment of vulnerability during a breakdown over fucking up, he is restrained in exactly the same way as when he had to watch eight die. this so that he can have his self-blame literally beaten out of him to make him 'stop moping.' the writers don't care about his trauma, or being compassionate or fair in their portrayal of it, or letting him heal. the only thing they care about here is getting to write a Missing Stair as a good thing, and trying to get you, the reader, in on it by forcing you to like him.

anyway just. man. they did nine so fuckin dirty and their version of him brings down every other narrative around it. i know i rant about nine a lot but justice for my boy

#lorien legacies #LL number nine #LL number five #LL crit tag #the crit files #nine is a platter of sushi the writers put in the microwave and [horse staring out over the ocean meme] man #also if you fix this SO MUCH about his parallels and foils with five snap right into place and it is CHEF'S KISS UGH #also lifts up john's arc in the process to 'kid with some pretty ugly qualities buried under Nice Guy surface; who has to grow past them' #'and does' #instead of 'oh gross wtf' #dyn: lost boys #like frankly i feel like it's pretty shitty to both neglected/abused homeschoolers and survivors of solitary confinement #to go 'ya that's what made this guy a sadistic bullying bigoted creep uwu' #instead of you know. establishing the traits of /his/ that would be brought out by that #there's also just. so much to be said here about how in the process of giving nine a pass for his cruelty and toxic masculinity #the writers also give a pass for perpetuating the cruelty of toxic masculinity toward men and boys against /him/ #also like this kid self-harms in a variety of ways when he needs control and it's a pattern that starts from his very first scene #Writers Address Literally Any of This Instead of Portraying Men Self-Harming as Quirky Badass Peak of Masculinity Shit Challenge #LL tag

[abandonedcyberpunkspidermech]

Character Bio: Peni Parker (SP//dr)

Name: Peni Parker

Hero Alias: SP//dr

Bio:

Let’s do this one last time.

Peni Parker was born on October 15th, 3132, to Richard Parker, the first SP//dr, and New York City chief of police Yuriko Watanabe, the latter of whom died shortly after giving birth. Being the daughter of SP//dr, and all that came with it, defines her life. From a young age, Peni had little opportunity to actually bond with her father. He made sure she was well-fed, had a roof over her head, and fixed her boo-boos, but he was always too busy defending the city to really BE with her. Part of why the kid got into robotics and science was to try to bond with her dad, to give them something to talk about. School has never been an issue for her, with her regularly acing her classes. As the daughter of a celebrity (most superheroes are idolized in this world, and SP//dr, New York City’s finest outside the police, is no exception), she always attended private schools with enough protection to make villains think twice about trying to attack her to get to SP//dr. There’s also the fact that most people only want to befriend her for the clout, but that’s a story for another day. She isn’t necessarily friendless, though. One of her closest friends is Harry Osborn, son of Norman Osborn, CEO of Oscorp and one of her father’s bosses in the SP//dr program. The two of them hung out a lot as kids due to their fathers’ setting them up on playdates while they were busy with Oscorp and SP//dr, and they have been friends ever since. All in all, Peni leads a fairly normal life. However, things change at the ripe age of 9 years old.

Richard Parker was a hero. The guy who was bit by a spider and became the one and only SP//dr. The hero who saved the city again and again. The man who, no matter how many times he got hit, always got back up. But after one too many battles with one Doctor Otto Octavius, he didn’t. Couldn’t. Just like that, the man she wanted so badly to be with was gone, and with him, her world shattered. To say she was heartbroken would be an understatement. The next morning, still raw with grieving, Peni moves in with her aunt and uncle, fellow SP//dr program employees May and Benjamin Parker, but not before they introduce her to a certain opportunity. As it turns out, Peni had the right genetic material to be able to pilot SP//dr, just like her father. And so, May and Ben inform Peni that she’s the only suitable replacement for her father as the pilot. Basically, they tell her “Let this spider bite you and get in the robot, Peni”. In spite of knowing how dangerous it is, how massive the responsibility is, and how great a legacy she’ll need to uphold, she accepts. She lets the spider bite her, forming a psychic link with it and gaining a supportive friend in the process. But there’s one problem: She is nine, and thus has no idea how to actually fight or be a hero. After a few months of training under the tutelage of SHIELD and Daredevil, a friend of her father, and connecting with the other heroes based in New York City, she finally takes the leap of faith and starts her life as SP//dr, the hero of New York City.

Abilities:

Psychic Link: The spider bite granted Peni a psychic link with her spider by essentially setting up a wireless connection between their brains. What this means is that the two have access to one another's brains, including senses, thoughts, memories, emotions, and instincts. However, this isn’t always a good thing. While it does allow the two to share experiences, it also has possible consequences such as sensory overload and mental contamination.

Psychically-Operated Mech: SP//dr, the mech, exists on the bleeding edge of mech control systems. How it works is that the spider is half of the mech’s CPU, and a human pilot can link with the spider and become the other half. For Peni, this means that she can control it in tandem with her spider like it was her own body, with all the relatively enhanced agility and dexterity that entails and few of the harmful side effects normally associated with using brain-computer interfacing to control extra body parts. However, like the psychic link, this comes with consequences, such as mental contamination, sensory overload, and the sensation of damage. With the ability to move the mech like a body comes the ability to use the mech’s senses like her own, which extends to feeling damage like physical injuries. The mech’s armor and coding reduce the sensory data her brain receives, but she still feels pain when hit.

Physical Strength: The mech is capable of lifting and moving approximately 45000 kilograms of mass without risk of critically damaging itself. However, both pilots hold back to preserve the mech’s internals and to avoid collateral damage, such as undue property destruction, injury, or death. Without restraint, the max lifting capacity of the mech has been measured between 60000 and 70000 kilograms.

Webs: SP//dr is capable of shooting webs composed of fluid that solidifies into an adhesive solid in the presence of atmospheric conditions. These webs serve a variety of functions, including but not limited to the mech’s famous web-swinging, incapacitating enemies, and grabbing objects from afar. SP//dr can utilize a variety of varieties of web fluid (with different chemical compositions) for a variety of functions, such as electrocution, bandaging, and temporary welding. However, most webbing breaks down within an hour, the only exceptions being designed to last longer.

Adhesive Limbs: The hands and feet of the SP//dr mech are designed with microscopic, artificial “hairs” that allow the mech to adhere to objects by use of van der Waals interactions.

Magnetic Suspension: SP//dr is equipped with a magnetic suspension system enabling it to manipulate its limbs (as many as eight limbs composed of two or three segments) in ways that would be impossible with a conventional articulation system. However, this does come at the cost of increased power consumption, and the limbs are paralyzed without power.

LCD Screen: SP//dr’s cockpit is headed by a screen with an LCD display allowing the mech to display emoticons to show emotions, messages, visual aids, or other images. However, the screen is more fragile than the rest of the hull.

Hull Durability and Armor: The chassis and limbs of SP//dr are durable and well-armored enough for the mech and pilot to be able to walk away from being struck with a bus without losing function.

Miscellaneous Gadgets: Depending on the need, SP//dr can be outfitted with a variety of tools, such as scanners, enhanced sensors, saws, welding torches, fire extinguishers, and weaponry.

Neurogenetic Technology Compatibility: Peni Parker has the correct set of genes to be able to interface with SP//dr (and other technology by proxy) given the proper apparatus. The effects, in addition to operating SP//dr, consist primarily of limited neural hacking ability and enhanced thinking speed (mostly subconscious), memory backup, as well as other general abilities usually granted by neural cybernetics. Oscorp scientists have noted a similarity to a cyberbrain, except entirely organic.

Spider-Sense: One of the few superpowers not entirely dependent on a giant robot, Peni Parker, the spider, and the robot all have a Spider-Sense. It functions as a general danger sense, allowing them to sense dangers other senses can’t detect and avoid them almost autonomically. It can also detect other Spider-People. However, scientists have noted that the sense sometimes acts in complete defiance of scientific possibility.

Intelligence: Even as a child, Peni Parker was a genius, having been one of the brightest kids in her school, a trait that will only grow with age. However, she isn’t a “Renaissance woman”. She specializes in STEM subjects, most specifically robotics and computers, but would be nowhere near as competent with Shakespeare (unfortunately, still taught in schools) or ancient history. She’s also trilingual, with fluency in English and Japanese and some knowledge of Braille.

Fighting Skills: As part of her training to pilot SP//dr, Peni learned fighting skills to enable her to better fight villains. This included boxing, self-defense, martial arts, firearms training, general combat skills, and enhanced physical condition. Aside from “anime moments”, she isn’t superhuman though, merely an athletic baseline human.

Emergency Response Skills: As another part of her training, Peni received training in responding to a general assortment of emergency situations she’d face during her career as SP//dr, including fire rescue, first aid, and water rescue.

Weaknesses:

Peppermint: Spiders hate peppermint, Peni’s spider is no exception, and the psychic link means that Peni shares that resentment. A sufficient dose of peppermint around an area will make SP//dr run from it, at least temporarily.

Vibrations: One of a spider’s most powerful senses is its ability to detect vibrations. This hypersensitivity can also serve as a weakness, as the psychic link means that if the spider senses a particularly strong vibration (or the mech does through onboard sensors), the feedback would be paralyzing. The effect is like a loud guitar riff being played on an amplifier turned to 11 directly attached to both of one’s ears.

Pesticides: Any pesticides that would affect an arachnid would affect SP//dr, so if the spider gets exposed to (or detects through onboard sensors) any of several pesticides, the mech will flee the area as soon as possible to allow itself to stave off the effects of the pesticide. Onboard filtration systems would and do nullify this weakness, however.

Power Grid:

Intelligence: 3 (Grows to 5)

Strength: 2 (5 in mech)

Speed: 2 (3 in mech)

Durability: 2 (5 in mech)

Energy Projection: 1 (2-3 with specific mech weapons)

Fighting Skills: 1 (Grows to 4)

Additional Trivia:

Ideal English VA: Kimiko Glenn

Ideal Japanese Seiyuu: Rie Takahashi

Peni Parker is a vegetarian (like in the comics). This is due to her finding it weird to eat other animals after psychically linking with SP//dr. Similarly, she has an aversion to any animal products requiring killing the animals. Except for insects for reasons most likely related to the psychic link.

As a consequence of being psychically linked to a spider, Peni is one of the more “spidery” Spider-Heros/Spider-Totems/Spider-People. This means that she has a few additional miscellaneous traits only actual spiders would have.

I’m aware of the Web of Life and Destiny and the supernatural aspect of Spider-Totem powers. Thus, I’m going to leave the balance of technological/scientific power origin versus mystical power origin for you to find out.

The SP//dr program has multiple mechs for various situations. The abilities above mostly refer to the primary mech (The same as ITSV), although some things could change with in-universe time and upgrades.

Peni and her spider use “SP//dr” to refer to the spider, the mech, their hero identity, and the program of which they are a part. Due to the psychic link, they always know what they mean.

I don’t have a section on her personality because that would change a LOT in-universe. She goes through a lot, both good and bad. SP//dr stays a supportive friend though.

The SP//dr program is run by Oscorp under the supervision and oversight of SHIELD and the Commission on Superhuman Activities.

In case you’re wondering, I use “neurogenetic” instead of “psychogenetic” because psychogenetics, the word her comic uses, is actually another world for behavioral genetics, the study of how genes influence behavior. Neurogenetics, however, is the study of how genes affect the function of the nervous system. Thus, considering SP//dr’s control mechanism, “neurogenetics” is a more accurate word.

Also, I apologize for any formatting flubs. I copy pasted this from a Google Doc.

#peni parker #sp//dr #marvel #marvel comics #spiderman itsv #spider man into the spider verse #into the spider verse #spider verse #spiderman #spider man #earth-14512 #world building #worldbuilding #cyberpunk #earth 14512

[redantsunderneath]

I’ve Never Seen David Lynch and George Lucas in the Same Room at the Same Time…

The thematic parallels between David Lynch and George Lucas are something I keep coming back to again and again, but their careers and evolution have a lot of overlap too.  They were born in the earliest Boomer cohort (George Lucas in May 1944, David Lynch January 1946) and had experiences growing up that were colored by the idyllic 1950s, but shifted into a distrust of authority structures that was common for many of their age cohort in the 1960s. They both came of age wanting to do something physical with her hands that felt creative to them in large grimy spaces - fixing cars for Lucas, and painting and installations with a fascination with organic materials, industrial metal, and rot for Lynch. They both fell into film because they were looking for something that satisfied their artistic bent (although film was never a primary aspect of her life to that point).  They wound up making a handful of short films over a 3 year period, culminating in a longer short-film that would eventually get them noticed at roughly the same age (Electric Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB [1967] and the Grandmother [1970] for Lynch).

These films netted both of them a patron (Francis Ford Coppola for Lucas, the American Film Institute for Lynch) and started filming their first feature-length film two years after those films.  They both got their biggest name recognition bump by films released in 1977 and pulled away from the power of the studio system in roughly 1984. Famously, Lucas offered Lynch a chance to direct what would become Return of the Jedi in about 1981 ( I prefer the story where Lucas does this by picking him up in a Lamborghini - I’ve heard a phone call version too, but it’s not as perfect) and Lynch answered something like “it’s your movie George, you direct it.” They both spent the mid 80s in movie jail, and although they took very different paths in general after (I’ve been emphasizing the similarities) there are still things that jibe in the history - they both reminded people of what they liked about them with a late 80s movie, spent a lot of the 90s on TV projects, did one project around classic radio, returned to theatrical notice around the millennium, all the while generally keeping their own council and disappointing a lot of fans.

There’s obviously a world of difference. Lucas is a left brained technologist who equated freedom with an owning of the means of production.  Lynch is it right brained impressionist seeing freedom-as no one ever being able to tell you what to do, acting as a solo artist with collaborators who merge with his sensibilities.  Lynch is a production lone wolf, depending mostly on people believing in him and funding him, and losing out in the popular consciousness by making uncompromising art that may not be what the audience wants, meaning funding is sometimes hard to come by. Lucas is like the Democratic party controlling the Congress and presidency - having total power but unable to turn that into what he really wants to make, somehow. The idea of Lynch selling his body of work to Disney is absurd.

But the correspondences in this are telling and help to explain the thematic similarities and divergences.  Plus, the differences often relate to the similarities - Lucas identifies with corrupted controlling paternalistic power as a horror of inevitable capture of the individual by larger structures, while Lynch sees the corrupted masculine influence as an archetype, the call coming from inside the house, agency coopted by a collective taint in the universal pattern .  But on some level these are the same thing - what is this person I am capable of becoming seeing as I am in control but yet not, doing horrific things?  Lucas’ constant commentary on slavery is about hegemony and a systemic oppression he is complicit in, while Lynch has whole pantheons of beings that turn people into vessels that oblate the self and make them act on subconscious programming.  Neither probably think the word neoliberalism too much but tend to communicate similar things about it is almost diametrically opposed ways.  

The thematic similarities are rooted in a few areas that unpack in to a variety of subspaces which overlap – patriarchal structures as psychoanalytic dynamics (more Freudian father fixation for Lucas, Jung for Lynch), boomer generational failure as socio-first-but-economics-ultimately, the artist as in struggle with larger forces (largely of the self), and an eastern religious metaphysics that is American Christian in flavor.   The major line of difference running through this is gender/sex/desire, Lynch being on main with a lot of spiritual overtones of sin, guilt, and “the fall” and Lucas finding this kind of guilt and sin as a secondary phenomenon that is mostly actively suppressed and unconvincing when it shows up; yet both wind up often finding physical consummation at direct odds with art in a gendered creation way (that also links Eraserhead to Age of Ultron and the original Frankenstein). Try doing a psychosexual reading of Howard the Duck sometime.  

Lucas’ developmental through line is this: dude in love with 50’s culture but informed by 60s counterculture makes a movie where the young granola-ish revolutionaries win against the fascists in an effort to rewrite society but, having secured rights for “independent spirit” reasons now finds himself in control of something huge and immediately starts making art about boomer men becoming their controlling fathers and then moves on to movies where powerless freaks are the real focus.  After a creatively fallow period, he comes back to make a sequel/prequel trilogy that is one of the most misunderstood complicated statements about people becoming what they hate as an eternal cycle at the level of the personal, the societal, the political, the spiritual, the artistic, you name it!

Lynch’s developmental through line is this: dude in love with 50’s culture but informed by 60s outsider/art counterculture makes a movie where the young artist struggles with the idea of a regular life, initiated by fatherhood, which attempts to destroy the artistic spark, after which he enters the Hollywood system and makes an artist as freak movie and a movie about plucky rebels conquering space authoritarianism (that the future of is books about that ending in messianic authoritarianism) and then disavows that system.  He then proceeds to make art about subject and object as a supremely gendered thing, in a land that has fallen from grace, moving inexorably towards the idea of eternal cycle at the level of the personal, the societal, the political, the spiritual, you name it!

They both have an idea of the father-artist identified with the abject oppressed, under siege as figure, resentful from being kept from creation, over a career realizing that their “self” is the horrific villain of their own story.  For Lynch, this is psychosexual, then spiritual, with a resisted toxic masculine urge to control and overwhelm, often in a violent way.  It is the artist’s own urges that get in the way of making art, of desiring in the universe that has an unbalanced power structure from some far off echoes of an original symmetry breaking inherent to the archetypal gender dynamic. For Lucas, it is the realization that the artist in control has a tendency to become the controlling dad and sexual relations are inherently problematic in a political and spiritual way.  Real art seems impossible if the artist has control, identifying with the downtrodden is a bit of a lie, happy endings can’t happen not because of the happiness bit because of the ending bit.  For both, there is a fundamental flaw in the cycle, which is patriarchal in nature, but Lynch just approaches this much hornier.

The boomer part probably requires the most discussion, but the TLDR is that they are both are crawling out, through Vietnam, from the 50s social order, and grappling with how badly the 60s idealism failed.  Lucas does this in the prequels as a big canvas critique of how the social revolution was co-opted by the generation not being able to see its own flaws, of not seeing the system taking over again, an Empire calling itself a Republic.  An inability to look in the mirror and really see.  The wisest oldest hippie is the only one who sees what’s happening, but is powerless as his apprentices are inevitably spit out, and the next generation has to be raised not by a skeptic but a true believer in “liberal” “democracy” (cynic quotes theirs).

Lynch is interesting here in that he most directly addresses this only in Twin Peaks, but we see more naked reflections, divorced of contemporary politics, in his other works. In Twin Peaks, Ben Horn is the Palpatine figure, who winds up a sweet old man buying off the harm his life’s work and progeny have produced while ignoring the poor and next generation personally. Jacoby the neutered, fried Yoda that eventually slides into Alex Jones territory (the canonical Boomer ethos in a nutshell – “what me” neoliberalism and change the world ideology going crackpot).  All of Twin Peaks except for Fire Walk with Me is directly socioeconomically generational (Bobby Briggs becomes a young Republican in season 2, the mill, the trailer park), but the other works are full of class issues informed by Lynch’s age.  From Blue Velvet’s suburban kid exploring his darker side by going to the poor part of town through a career of classist low-life encoding (Bob is a denim jacket wearing homeless person, all the covered in grime by the dumpster/trailer park characters, Ronette as the factory floor version of Laura, etc), culminating in Inland Empire and Twin Peaks the Return chronicling the fall of man as partially an (generationally specific in TP) economic fall into a unequal class defined world of needing an opening and leaving the house to labor as where evil is born. TP OS is about how boomers turned out just as bad, the Return is about how we inhabit the world of their ideological blindness.

All filmmakers seem to, at least to a certain degree, bring the question of creation of art directly into their work via distant or close metaphor. In Eraserhead and Elephant Man, Lynch values the spark of art which the downtrodden protagonist is trying not to lose. In Dune, the visionary with a big project that seeks to upend the system (but that we know eventually become something even worse) is a project that fell apart due to studio interference.  Blue velvet is about the act of watching awakening something uncomfortable in us that is incompatible with normie life (it wouldn’t be weird to say it was about porn). Twin Peaks is about television, FWWM about movies, and all at least partially about closure being a death act in art.  Lost Highway is about the artist tortured by desire, Mulholland Drive about desire being central to be eaten alive by the Hollywood system.  Inland Empire is about filmmaking as a way into understanding the world on a deeper level (as is its unofficial sequel Inception) to cure its ills.  All of this is art’s struggle against power, with an element of the major powers being subconscious forces that control us leading to desires that ablate the artistic impulse.

Lucas' projects have over time been about a young upstart independent filmmaker, losing his soul by becoming successful, and becoming the system, man.  He then tries desperately to identify as really not the one in charge, until he admits to what he has become.  He consistently dips back into filmmaking as an adventure or a good fight, but he has to set these in a time period before his birth.  As in Lynch, having a child is equated with not being able to fulfill the kind of artistic destiny, but Lucas goes further in equating it to an excuse for why the powerful artist goes bad and needs redemption.  He had a naïve or-is-it canny motif focused on the short inhuman outsider, often related to music or primitive settings (often with wooden cages) as a recurring thing for a while.  These characters are often wise, or at least no filter tell-it, and are similar to the Elephant Man.  This is a trope, sure, the wise different wavelength other, but there is also an identification of the artist at knowing and right yet impotent and a clue to the author’s metaphysical system.

Lynch is the mainline protestant in upbringing and very much influenced by a kind of proto-eastern religion (you can just say the Vedas for shorthand).  Lucas is not very religious, but was brought up Christian, influenced by Christian symbolism and became interested in world religion as narrative via figures like Joseph Campbell.  Hence, they both gravitate towards some kind of Gnostic Proto Christian, So-Cal zen, Thomas Aquinas “gets” Plato kind of amalgam, which informs their work.  Lynch has veered towards an eternal cycle framework, and the very physics compatible idea of something in the past breaking and causing consciousness/suffering, through which we can achieve joy as a counter only through letting go of the self, and the recurrence of ruptures on all scales demonstrating a fractal pattern of hurt and redemption.  Lucas also sees a big cycle, but it is one more of human existence as narrative that has a tendency to return, with a little bit of Nietzsche and movie eastern spirituality thrown in. Both believe in a recurring pattern that plays itself out in a way that is terrible, but hopeful, as the struggle is where hope derives from.  Both have inherently Christian ideas and symbols in their work but lean back on non-Christian ideas that the Christian ideas have a history with. Lynch has his virgin Mary as the real Christ figure female angels that show up, while Lucas has turnt space Jesus.

Suffice it to say that the tree trial scene in the Empire Strikes Back and the lodge sequences in Twin Peaks are a very good place to start looking for how the two auteurs meet.  Compare Anakin/Luke Skywalker to Mr C, look at the 90s turn they both made, register their seeing the “sleeper must awaken” of fiction being terribly fraught, compare the force vs. the universal field, the way their relationship status and partners carve their work into eras, and their continued existence as mainstream experimental filmmakers. 

#george lucas #david lynch

[some-jw-things]

if you dont mind explaining, what did the organisation do that it gives you such reaction? im not jw/exjw myself, im just following this blog because i wanna keep myself educated on all sorts of issues, but if you dont want to its absolutely fine

I mean Jehovahs Witnesses are blatantly a cult. That’s been explained pretty thoroughly by a lot of people.

I guess “this organization is a cult” can be hard to understand what that actually means. On a personal level, it defined my entire life. When I introduced myself to new people, the first thing I said was that I was one of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was my entire identity. I actually think of myself back when I still believed in it as a completely different person than who I am now. I consider my old self to be dead, and so does my family.

When I told them I wanted to leave the cult, they mourned me. They cried for months. They raged and got angry. My sister refused to even look at me for days. In the span of one sentence, I lost my whole family, all of my friends, and my entire community. I was shunned, and they blamed me for abandoning them.

And I knew that would happen. They had always made it perfectly clear that love was conditional. I was told flat out— multiple times— that I would get kicked out of the house if I got disfellowshipped. My dad told me as a child that he would stop supporting me if I ever went to college, because every Witness he knows who’s ever gone has left the Truth. He also told me that the day I turned eighteen he would make me pay rent to keep living in his house unless I was preaching full time. All of that later turned out to be empty threats and a doctor told me that last part was actually illegal, but my family made sure I grew up believing it.

I was only loved so long as I followed the rules. This is standard practice for Jehovah’s Witnesses. I am lucky I got off as light as I did and wasn’t kicked out on the street. Even that only happened due to a technicality and how obviously mentally ill I was at that point.

Jehovah’s Witnesses’ theology is the reason I started self-harming. I was afab and when I was fifteen I spent a month asking why God thought women were innately lesser than men. That culminated in a big family discussion where I got anxious enough to start scratching at my lip over and over until I had a massive gash. My family watched. My mother made a token protest that I listened to for about three seconds. I walked away from that conversation with the knowledge that I needed to keep my mouth shut because certain questions were actually not allowed and a brand new bad habit.

I created an entire system for myself based on rigid discipline and punishment and the idea that any mistake meant I didn’t deserve to feel un-miserable, which is exactly the sort of mentality that this all-or-nothing religious purism breeds.

I was institutionalized in hospital psychiatric wards four times in the year after I left, and one more time about a year after that. The high school attempted to put me in foster care then, out of concern for my safety if I continued living in that environment. My mother supported the idea

The first time I remember sincerely contemplating suicide was when I was thirteen. My thoughts then were just that I figured I would never be able to hold off killing myself long enough to live to be eighteen. I felt trapped. I was specifically thinking I would never have the guts to be able to pry myself out of the Org and so I would be stuck in it forever. The JW lifestyle is miserable in a way I can’t express

I have comforted my little sister while she’s had a break down crying in the bathroom during meeting because the talk was about Armageddon and she didn’t think our dad would make it into Paradise. She had to stop attending public school because of panic attacks. She was suicidal too at one point, but our mom thought she wasn’t as bad as me and therefore was making it up for attention

Jehovah’s Witnesses by and large treat mental illness with prayer and talking to the elders. The majority of teenage girls in my congregation had severe unaddressed issues. The Society has whole articles on how sometimes the answer IS demonic possession. Their version of Paradise is a eugenics fantasy

At one point an elder comforted my family by telling them that Jehovah likely didn’t view my choice to leave as legitimate due to my mental issues. They have official articles calling all apostates “mentally diseased,” and how am I supposed to argue why that’s wrong?

The majority of Jehovah’s Witnesses’ teachings are bigoted and hateful. They have a cute little kids cartoon that compares the evil gays to terrorists. I was taught the mark of Cain and curse of Esau were responsible for the existence of other races. JW women are required to submit to their husbands and fathers no matter what, and divorce is a sin that will get you shunned. Trans people are forced to live as their agab, gay people have to remain celibate and never date. The elders reserve the right to out you to whoever they want, whenever they want.

There have been so many talks that have sent me running off somewhere private to cry and panic

There’s this little girl in the hall who was friends with my sister. She had needed a blood transfusion when she was a baby. Her parents had been willing to let her die, but the courts stepped in and took her away for a few days. She was given the blood transfusion, lived, and at thirteen had a crying breakdown in the middle of the hall because the talk had just said she would never make it into Paradise now. Usually though, if you’re old enough to speak for yourself, they let you die

My parents have had three bankruptcies and they mock me for saving money. They live as if the world is going to end at any moment. There’s no such thing as a future

The world has been about to end since my grandma was little. That’s a running joke. She’s lived through more changes to the Org than I’ll ever know about. My family has been ruthlessly controlled by this organization for generations. My family aren’t allowed to accept me even if they wanted to. I’ve seen this Org ruin so many people’s lives in a whole variety of ways. Three other kids I grew up with have been disfellowshipped since becoming adults. There are others who I don’t think could leave unless they literally ran away in secret

JW ideology loans itself to a certain style of parenting and that has consequences. They control every aspect of members’ lives. Behavior, dress, speech, career, free time, friends, which family you’re allowed to see, what media you can consume. The thoughts you are allowed to have. I’ve been sent into a spiraling panic before over the idea that “I shouldn’t be thinking that”

The Org barred outside ideas and all criticism. They forcibly kept me in the dark. Members are intentionally isolated from not just all outsiders, but also all outside opinions. I was raised in a way intended to make me an outcast everywhere but within the Org. I was told never to read about Jehovah’s Witnesses from any writer other than the Society itself. I was told never to listen to its critics. I was told that reading forbidden books would get me possessed by demons

The Society controlled and defined my entire life and somehow still manages to do so even after I’ve left. Every member I know has been hurt by it. I’m just the one who won’t forgive

#i feel like this doesnt explain anytthing but whatever #tw #suicide ideation #self harm #ask #ex jw #ex cult #apostate #ex jehovah’s witness #christianity #religion #exjw

[adhdtoomanycommas]

Emotional Disregulation, Privilege, and White Girl Tears

Hello all, it has been a few months since my last ADHD essay, and what a few months it has been. In case you’re reading this in the future (since tumblr has no date stamps), I am writing this in June 2020 when in the midst of a global pandemic, police are responding to massive protests against police violence with even more police violence, and a lot of white people are thinking more than ever about the privilege we have experienced. I have been thinking about writing about my (cis white female) experience with privilege where neurodivergence, race, and gender intersect for a while, and have hit the point where these ideas have been bouncing around in my head long enough I need to write them down.

Small disclaimer: Right now I'm not sure if I should be writing anything about anything since we all ought to be listening and amplifying black voices --I'm there are much better resources out there about race and neurodivergance especially, and I have no intention of talking over anyone, especially given my limited experience. But given that the audience for my last essay here was in the single digits, I doubt I need to worry too much about talking over people at the moment. Please know that I am writing this now primarily for myself, and if it ever gets an audience later, forgive me for writing it now when there are so many more important things going on and more important people to listen to.

I will do my best to stay in my lane here, so I'm just going to talk about how my privilege has affected the perception of one of my ADHD symptoms If you don't want to read some rambling white/cis anecdotes about how white privilege and gender norms affect the perception of ADHD, by all means skip it. If you're still here, maybe it can be the start of a conversation as I would love to hear some other perspectives and experiences here. And maybe, just maybe by the end of it I will learn to spell privilege right on the first try (I really want there to be an A in there, or maybe a D. Privaledge? Sounds about right.)

As I mentioned in my previous ramble, I’m a cryer. I cry a lot, not just when I’m sad but sometimes when I’m happy, when I feel guilty or ashamed, and especially when I’m angry, or frustrated, or overwhelmed. I learned recently, as I was seeking my diagnosis, that emotional disregulation is a hallmark of ADHD. We feel things strongly, and uncontrollably and have trouble restraining ourselves from expressing those feelings. This is experienced by almost everyone, if not everyone, with ADHD and it’s only not part of the diagnostic criteria because it’s hard to quantify—there are a lot of good general resources out there to learn more about this, I’m not an expert, I’m just here to share my own experience.

Story time. When I was in fourth grade, I punched another girl in the stomach. For what felt like the millionth time, when the teacher told everyone to find a partner for some activity, everyone partnered up and I looked around to find that I was the left-over. I was an outcast for a lot of reasons at that age. I told myself for a long time it was solely because I was the lone atheist (actually agnostic but I didn’t know the term at the time) in a deep south bible-belt school, but with the benefit of hindsight I have also realized that (partially probably due to the ADHD) I was also pretty weird, and probably very annoying. But whatever the reason for my ostracism, it was already weighing heavily on me when the teacher assigned this girl to work with me, and she gave me the biggest exasperated sigh and eyeroll like she would rather do anything else. So I punched her.

I now realize that this is probably a pretty normal response for a kid with untreated ADHD—the combination of emotional disregulation and poor impulse control means we often lash out. But with none of the adults in my life knowing that at the time, surely I was disciplined for my seemingly-random violent action, yes? No. I cried, and I got away with it.

That’s not the whole story, I did get several weeks of sessions with the school counselor, and I was made to write a very thorough apology letter (and made to rewrite it repeatedly as the teacher thought of more things I should add and repeatedly declared my handwriting not good enough, to such an extent the exercise definitely felt more punitive than reconsiliatory), but I ultimately I didn’t get expelled, I didn’t get suspended, I didn’t even get detention.

The girl I punched was black. This wouldn’t be relevant to the story at all, except that in retrospect I have to wonder if the consequences would have been the same if our roles were reversed. If a black girl (even a neurodivergent, ostracized, and frequently bullied one) had lashed out the way I did and punched a white girl, I expect there would have been a lot more consequences for that, even if she cried afterwards. And if a black boy had done the same, he wouldn’t have been perceived as troubled and in need of help, he would have been perceived as dangerous. And as we all (hopefully) know by now, that perception can have life or death consequences.

I’m sure that was neither the first nor the last time that crying, and people’s perception of me crying (as a cute little white girl with freckles and big brown eyes) has gotten me out of trouble, or gotten me what I wanted one way or another, but it is the most dramatic example I can think of. I want to emphasize that I have never cried to get what I wanted on purpose—I have spent way more time trying not to cry than trying to cry, the only time I’ve ever cried on purpose has been in theater exercises. But I’m sure a lot of white girls in the same position I was in (with or without the undiagnosed ADHD and emotional disregulation) have realized the way they could use peoples responses to their tears to their advantage. They probably grow up to be Karens who use their tears to get out of traffic tickets, get free stuff from store managers, and to sic violent police on black people who inconvenience them. (Aside, the only time I have been pulled over as an adult, I was trying so hard not to cry that the cop thought I was acting suspicious and asked a bunch of extra questions. I still got the ticket.

I tell myself that those people use their emotions on purpose to manipulate people, that I'm different, I would never do that. But I have to wonder if some of those same women tell themselves the same thing after the fact. I don't think it's enough to avoid intentional manipulation and intentional harm-- not anymore. We as white women need to do be conscious enough of how our emotions are perceived and prioritized to act proactively to avoid unintentional harm as well. For those of us with ADHD, this may be harder than for neurotypicals, but that makes it all the more important for us to think actively about this. I'm not sure yet what this means for me personally, besides removing myself from a shared space if my emotions threaten to become the focus where they shouldn't be, but I would welcome input on this.

I want to talk about gender more generally here as well. ADHD is dramatically underdiagnosed in women, and I have to wonder if some part of this is because emotional disregulation lines up so nicely with the stereotypes of women’s emotions in the first place. Oh, you cry a lot? Of course you do, you’re a woman. One can only wonder how many oldey-timey diagnoses of “hysteria” were actually ADHD. Even now women with ADHD are usually misdiagnosed several times with things like depression or bipolar disorder before we are tested and diagnosed properly. This wasn’t my experience, but after basically doing a bunch of research and self-diagnosing I was able (thanks to a great deal of economic privilege) to pay to go directly to an ADHD specialist. I also walked into that office with an extremely thorough bullet-point list I had compiled of reasons I suspected I had ADHD—it was probably the easiest diagnosis the doctor ever did. So obviously having ADHD while female isn’t the best combination, but when it comes specifically to crying easily that being treated as relatively normal definitely meant I had an easier time with it than my brother did.

My brother (who is nonbinary and uses a variety of pronouns—I’ll probably alternate between they/them and he/him here because it is important to the story that they were perceived as male at the time) cries just as easily as I do, and just as often. When we were little kids, this didn’t make too much of a difference. They’re a couple years younger than me, and little kids are expected to cry more. They haven’t been diagnosed with ADHD, but they and I both strongly suspect for a variety of reasons, this included, that they have it too—I believe they were flagged for it in school, probably for frequently talking out of turn, but I don’t think they were ever tested formally. He got in trouble in school a lot more than I did, for similar outbursts, and while he got quite a few of those same counseling sessions (white privilege at work again), he got more actual discipline as well. But the perception of our tears landed differently, especially as we got older.

For the most part, the scorn leveled at my brother’s tears didn’t come from our parents. My mom, (who, while also not officially diagnosed, I can almost guarantee is where we got the ADHD genes from) cries as easily as they and I do, so she understands it. My dad would certainly prefer to think of himself as an enlightened modern man who would say it’s ok to cry, but he has his share of ingrained toxic masculinity despite himself. I don’t think I ever saw him tell my brother directly to “suck it up” or “act like a man,” but I do think after puberty or so he started responding to my brother’s tears with a sort of exasperation that he never directed at me.

The real difference was in how we were treated by our peers. By the time we got to high school, if I would cry at school, my peers (even ones who weren’t necessarily my friends) would probably ask what was wrong and try to help or provide comfort, or at least would leave me alone and give me time to pull myself together. When my brother cried at school, he was mocked. Relentlessly. Once bullies figured out that he cried easily, he was targeted and goaded specifically for it. They would find any little thing they could to get under his skin (right down to the most childish with rhyming nicknames) and troll him for fun. I wish I could say that I stood up for him, but I never did. I can tell myself this was because I didn’t see it happen in person, being two grades ahead, but I could have made an effort. Although, since he was almost certainly targeted at least in part for perceived failure to live up to masculine gender norms, I’m not sure if having an older sister try to come to the rescue would have helped or made things worse. At this point it’s years past, so I suppose speculation on what I could have or should have done is pretty moot at this point. Suffice it to say, this particular symptom which rarely did me any harm made my brother’s life a lot harder.

I may talk more about different perceptions of my brother’s and my ADHD symptoms in a later essay/ramble/entry/whatever, in particular how it affected out academic performances, but that’s for another time.

Again, I’m not sure if there are any greater conclusions here. There are a lot of ways emotional disregulation can present, and I really only addressed this one small aspect of excessive crying, but it is a good example of how even lesser-known ADHD symptoms can affect our lives in cascading ways, and the way people perceive those symptoms (due to various more visible identity factors) affects us as well. If you read all of this, thanks, and if you have any experiences you’d like to share with how your emotional disregulation has been perceived by others, I’d love to hear them. Until next time!

#actuallyadhd #adhd #actually adhd #emotional disregulation #privilege #white privilege #neurodivergence

[nbenrey-real]

hlvrai watsonian interpretation concepts

okay buckle in folks because my hyperfixating ass CANNOT let this go and it’s a REAL fuckin long one with a lot of metaphysics nonsense referencing cyberpunk terms, vaguely cthulhu-mythos style reality perception bullshit, and of course a bunch of player-interaction-horseshit thats blatantly the result of undertale and deltarune metaanalysis. Alright, so: 

HLVRAI is the result of three different realities on differing ‘Singularity Levels’- points of where an sapient entity reaches a threshold of awareness of levels ‘above’ them that their perception process becomes incomprehensible to their native zones levels- interacting in a domino effect thanks to one certain eldritch entities desire to give his Mixed-Singularity-Level kid a good 37th birthday party at chuck-e-cheese.

These are: Reality 6-3411, Reality P14Y3R, Reality 41VR41, and Proxy-Realities 814354. 

Reality 6-3411 is where the entity referred to as Gregory ‘G-Man’ Goodman’s Species resides- a race of enigmatic creatures who regularly interact with lower Singularity Levels in hopes of uplifting them to their level, often incubating their young in those realities in order to better communicate. 

G-Man is part of a team charged with interacting with Reality P14Y3R through pre-existing proxy realities, looking for promising candidates- during which he inadvertently began interacting with Reality 41VR41 to a startling degree. Details are fuzzy, but at some point he was graced with a child by a member of that Singularity Level, currently known as Tommy Coolatta. 

Tommy, being born into a lower singularity level with no guarantee of reaching one higher, is difficult to care for properly without harm- G-Man made the decision to leave him in an area so he’d be raised by members of that level while G-Man watched from the sidelines for potential Singularity Level Increase- however, time can be hard for ‘higher’- entities to understand, and he didn't realize how long it really had been. 

While his employers had a vested interest in Tommy’s case, by the time G-Man is made aware of the circumstances of Tommy’s increasing access to higher-levels of perception of time by his employer’s- beginning with ‘seeing fast’ when drinking soda five years before the Black Mesa Incident and slowly progressing from there- Tommy had been inadvertently trapped in one of those pre-existing Proxy-Realities and could not be extracted without assistance from an entity of Reality P14Y3R interacting with a ‘Player Avatar’ based on Proxy-Realities connected to Reality 41VR41.

Reality P14Y3R is one of many realities that commonly interact with a multitude of naturally-occuring Proxy-Realities, often being interpreted as works of fiction to entities from that said level or being created by those same entities themselves. Entities from this reality are capable of interacting with Proxy-Realities which are naturally occurring buffer-zones that separate this reality to those of it’s ‘fiction’ and vice-versa, making them ideal candidates for Reality 6-3411 to utilize in their machinations- detriments to those ‘Player Avatars’ that happen to be caught in the crossfire from lower Singularity Levels notwithstanding.

In terms familiar to those who played undertale? It’s you!

Proxy-Realities 814354 include a variety of shifting sub-realities, namely taking the form of Half-Life, a science fiction first-person shooter where an entity from Reality P14Y3R takes control of the Player Avatar Gordon Freeman, a scientist working at Black Mesa. Included in this reality are a variety of AI created by entities from Reality P14Y3R, of which a few begin to increase in Singularity Level.

The first to gain proper Singularity is an entity known as Benrey, who proceeds to gain awareness of Reality P14Y3R and subsequently reinterprets their world through that knowledge- they are in a game with a script, a world that is not real, death is meaningless and you will simply heal or respawn in time- the only point is to have fun and make it interesting for the Player. 

Benrey quickly removes themselves from the games code, becoming something of an anomaly on their native level and a Netrunner of sorts on the P14Y3R level- they also notice several other AI with increasing Singularity Levels, chiefly among them: 

Tommy Coolatta, an oddity that is almost entirely free of the script and has somehow imported a High-Singularity entity called Sunkist into their reality, acting as a companion.

Dr. Harold Pontiff Coomer, a hive-intelligence still deeply-entrenched in the script but with increasing awareness of the limits of their reality.

Bubby, a highly-divergent entity who largely lacks awareness but has almost entirely deviated from the script.

Darnold, an entity largely content with their role who nonetheless has some subconscious awareness of the nature of their reality & is highly deviated from the script.

Frozen, an entity who has knowledge of things from Reality P14Y3R but no self-awareness of such, apparently suffering some amount of confusion as a result but largely harmless.

Though somewhat limited in knowledge of other Reality Levels, Benrey’s observations of the behavior of their companions allows them to come to the conclusion that they need to continue the natural formula of their Proxy-Reality in order to keep their companions stable and potentially allow them to similarly break free of the games script and code.

Singularity Level changes tends to result in a certain amount of dissociation resulting from the sheer influx of information and perceptual changes, with young Singularities often becoming aggressive or depersonalized from emotions for a period- Benrey’s further reliance on the script as a guide while largely ignoring true interaction combined with interpretation of everything from a P14Y3R Level worsens this over time.

Combined with Sensory/Auditory Processing Issues and Aphasia, the resulting entity is confusing, eclectic, and esoteric at the best of times, with a habit of latching onto odd phrasing and obscure personal neologisms- making communication difficult to implausible for entities such as G-Man or Gordon who are unaware of Benrey’s intentions, habits, or goals.

Reality 41VR41 is a reality level that shares traits with a variety of media found in Reality P14Y3R, namely the presence of Black Mesa, Aperture Science, and various realities connected via proxy-node-networks. This is directly connected to Proxy-Realities 814354.

Included in this reality is one Gordon Freeman, an 41VR41 native, single father, and hard working scientist at Black Mesa that found himself mis-introduced to the Proxy Realities due to Metaphysical Similarity- the result of G-Man’s machinations to retrieve his son Tommy which simply caught him in the crossfire, a most unfortunate coincidence.

As a result of entering Proxy-Realities 814354, Gordon was transposed into the position of the Player Avatar that his unaware counterpart usually fulfilled, in essence becoming a semi-possessed puppet being influenced by entities native to the P14Y3R Level- a circumstance that Benrey was not fully aware and comprehending of initially.

Over the course of the events that followed, Gordon slowly became aware of the disparities between the knowledge of his perceived reality 41VR41, the Proxy-Reality he now resided in, and the increasing awareness of the P14Y3R Level which was influencing him. 

Benrey also began to become aware of the discrepancy between what they knew of their Proxy-Realities and the apparent origin of this new entity- which combined with increasing subconscious awareness of aspects of their Metaphysical Counterpart in Reality 41VR41- resulted in an increase in Singularity Level that caused increasing disorientation. 

Benrey simply fell back on following the script to compensate, resulting in Gordons own interpretations and increasing Singularity Level to create a feedback-loop of alterations to the Proxy-Reality and permutations of the Script- resulting in Benrey being defeated and subsequent disincorporation into the net for some time.  

Post-Incident, G-Man continues to Monitor the group, his employers having become highly interested in such a complicated case and he himself feeling some amount of guilt over how much his simple plan of ‘let me put my kid down for a second for the reality level natives to watch them’ managed to make Tommy an orphan and royally fuck up so many young Singularities, an entire Proxy-Reality, and a 41VR41 native who now has a significant amount of burden to bear about his role in all this.

Gordon, now an Ex-Player-Avatar with some buried knowledge of the nature of the realities he interacts with and an increased Singularity Level, has gained access to some of the same abilities Benrey utilized- namely Netrunning, which he utilizes to purposefully move his AI companions between Reality 41VR41 and various P14Y3R-Level-Connected Proxy-Realities in order to assist them in reaching the Singularity Level necessary to function safely and adequately in his native level. 

Essentially, Gordon purposefully puts himself in the position of being a continual Player-Avatar- in spite of the existential nightmare it is- because he wants to make sure his friends can go on to live lives outside of Game Scripts and Weird Transreality Horseshit. He just happens to choose to do so in a way that involves things like beating the shit out of cops and stealing money from banks, because fuck you i’ve earned this. I can have a little ultraviolence, as a treat. 

Benrey meanwhile has reincorporated, now entirely free to act as a Netrunner and game as they please- however, given the status of their native Proxy-Reality as ‘decommissioned’, they’ve instead been booted into Reality 41VR41 as their new native-zone with the other members of the Science Team. This poses a significant problem for them, as they have no context of how to live as a non-proxy entity beyond vague recollections gained from their Metaphysical Counterpart and has no actual presence in said reality- they’re still kind of expecting everything to just reset and put them back.

Tommy- having found out that Benrey had been largely staying in the stops for the bus-lines that used to go to the Black Mesa facility when they weren’t joining in on heists or hanging out with him- proceeded to immediately take to waking up Gordon at 3 am in the morning for two weeks in a row because ‘its storming really bad and they don't have anywhere else to sleep mr. freeman and he gets so worried its so cold they don't know how cold works-’, resulting in gordon just saying fuck it and making Benrey join the Science Team household.

So now Benrey lives in the house Gordon had to buy for the science team to move in with him since ‘you all keep crashing at my place anyways and god damn it i can't leave any of you alone for a minute, bubby has started so many fires-’ and now feels obligated to keep track of the jackass because fucking hell, they don't even know how to microwave things, they’re going to fucking die. Which then promptly turns into genuine concern because jesus christ their memory is complete garbage how are they functioning like this. 

Gordon largely splits his time between caring for Joshua, making everyone do things to encourage neuroplasticity like tangrams, dragging them into whatever Player Interactions G-Man says look promising, and trying to wrangle them so they stop utterly destroying the household minecraft server, come on guys, between benrey and bubby they’ve single handedly resulted in the banning of both tnt and all firespread, can you just chill- COOMER STOP PUNCHING THE GODDAMN HORSES.

Meanwhile Gordon's brother, John Freeman, laboratory office worker and part-time stunt-motorcyclist- who had been babysitting Joshua during all of this horseshit and was about ready to storm Black Mesa his damn self- has not a fucking clue what the hell is going on and why his brother is suddenly 200% more off the shits than normal, now in possession of a prosthetic hand, talking about video games controlling him or something, and in the company of an entire family of eldritch bullshit people who might be robots or something he’s not really sure???   

#hlvrai #hlvrai au #watsonian au #frenrey #sort of #hlvraiposting #hlvraitagging #hlvraificing #long post #in the watsonian vs. doylist interpretations of any given canon #i am a hardcore watsonian #and thus i must write out my wild ass ideas on how things work in the in-kayfabe universe #also since this involves so many headcanons reinterpretations and off-the-wall concepts it might as well be an au #so it gets an au tag #just a fair warning #this is 2000 words #ignore anything thats ooc im gay and cant read