one of my favorite things about pride and prejudice is that in the last third of the book Elizabeth’s internal monologue about Darcy is her admitting that she’s in love with him but also putting all sorts of qualifications around that statement that kind of ...tamp down the level of emotion (the “feelings, if not as tender as Jane’s for Bingley, at least as just” line, even the whole thing about her and Darcy being well-matched objectively speaking) and as soon as she’s engaged you get the unbridled joy in the narrative about her own joy, cc: “I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.”
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I think i finally understand how the Distortion works. I mean, i don’t think it’s possible to ever fully understand it, and i don’t know the whole picture yet because i don’t know what Helen will be like, but i feel like i’ve just been granted a glimpse at the lovecraftian (as in ineffable) thing that is this being.
It’s not a person and a creature fighting inside one mind. There’s no Michael clawing himself to the surface to express his emotions and get his revenge.
Michael Shelley is dead. The Distortion became Michael. It sounds so simple, yet a least in my opinion it’s hard to fully understand.
I think what provides the best metaphor is a small thing the Distortion says after becoming Helen: "without a proper mind." The Distortion does not have its own mind. It’s only a what, but in order to really exist in this reality, it needs a who. It needs a body, but also a mind.
So if i understand this right, it’s like this: Michael Shelley is dead. His conciousness is not there anymore. And the Distortion got forced into that mind, an empty mind of a dead person. This doesn’t make it human, it’s still able to understand the impossible, it’s still the thing that was created to scare and kill. But in the mind it’s living in… the previous owner’s furniture is still there. It gets the dead person’s memories. It becomes Michael, in the sense that it has to be someone. Its existence got tied to being Michael, although Michael Shelley is dead.
When Michael got "emotional", that wasn’t Michael Shelley coming through. It was the Distortion grappling with the side effects of being someone - of living in a mind with all the memories and the human emotions that a human mind can’t fully turn off, even when the thing inhabiting it isn’t human at all.
The Distortion was Michael in the sense that it was thinking with Michael Shelley’s mind. When it became Helen, its consciousness, its being stayed the same, but it needed to adapt to this new mind. It could see clearer now, realizing that the windows of the previous house had been dirty, realizing that the wirings of the previous mind had driven it to do something that it actually didn’t want to do. The throat of the Spiral itself getting caught in the spiralling of its own, borrowed mind.
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OKAY OKAY OKAY YOU GUYS BUT WHAT IF!!
What if, in the last few minutes of 7x10, we cut to Frank in his office. The camera is focused on him so we don’t know who’s on the couch across from him.
He’s mentioning the last time the person was there, that they were talking about intimacy & their partner and worries about the future (throwback to Athena on the first episode & Bobby in the cruise ship arc), and Frank asks the person how it’s going…
AND THEN IT PANS TO EDDIE IN THE ROOM LOOKING UNCOMFORTABLE AND UPSET AND KIND OF A MESS AND HE SAYS SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF: “I realized I couldn’t commit to Ana or Marisol in the way I thought I should because they’re not what I wanted. I don’t think I like women.” A pause. A breath. “And I think that’s because I’m in love with my best friend.”
END SEASON ROLL CREDITS YOU’LL HAVE TO COME BACK IN S8 TO SEE HOW IT PLAYS OUT.
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the way I've been raised has shown itself in a recent awful experience I had and the realization won't leave me because I'm not sure what to do about it.
I don't like feeling anger/upset and it's rare for me to feel it anyway but it's led to me being unable to tell what's worth getting upset over anymore. If my wants upset somebody, then, well, maybe I shouldn't have them? What is so serious that I need it to go completely my way...? What desires am I allowed to have. It's not that serious, it's okay if not, you can't always get what you want....
every time I feel Upset I am later wracked with guilt because it wasn't a big deal and I was just being selfish... What IS a big deal then? How can I tell? Its admittedly never a big deal... But I keep being upset. And stepped on....
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losers playing ttrpgs... losers playing ttrpgs save me...
mike is running a multi-year homebrew ttrpg campaign that is basically just a combination of any rulebook the losers can get their hands on + anything they come up with. i know it to be true. the campaign started as a call of cuthulu campaign but it is now a terrifying mix of call of cuthulu, dungeons & dragons, and cyberpunk with elements from a dozen other games including star wars: the roleplaying game, warhammer, harnmaster and somehow alma mater(??? idk how. but i know this happened). richie was like. "mike man, i love you forever, you're great at this. but why don't i have magic powers?" and he pointed at ben's collection of d&d rulebooks he'd been browsing through and he sounded so earnest and excited that mike knew in that moment he was going to sacrifice the integrity of his cool mystery campaign so richie could cast vicious mockery (99% sure vicious mockery didn't exist yet... don't quote me on that but it doesn't matter because the idea of richie using it constantly is hilarious)
they've all been playing the same characters for years and they keep convincing mike to add more stuff so they're all like super powerful and mike keeps having to come up with more and more powerful enemies.
mike's dice collection is so so so cool he has so many dice, and whenever he introduces a new important character he goes out and gets dice that fit their theme and it is such a moneysink but it's worth it because ooooh pretty dice
after four occasions where the losers decided to adopt a random npc mike hadn't planned anything for, mike has started planning every single npc out down to the specifics of their childhood education. he has endless character sheets hanging out in his room with characters he's created that populate his game world.
okay hanbrough agenda time: bill is the most oblivious guy in the entire world. i know this. (he is the guy who looks at brokeback mountain and goes "what do you mean it was gay? why can't men be friends anymore?" this is based on that one passage at the beginning of the book where he goes on one of those "why can't the curtains just be blue because they're fucking blue" rants lol. he does not know what media literacy is. to me) and mike is. increasingly frustrated and feels like he's losing his mind. he is like head in hands because he asked bill to go to prom with him and bill was like "yeah sure man! sounds great, you're my bestie forever!", and he has no idea what to do, because how is this man this dense, so he just starts having all of his NPCs fall head over heels for bill's character and flirt like madmen. it is painful for everyone involved. except bill. who still has no idea what is going on. that is a very unfortunate month.
mike and ben hang out a lot and ben helps mike brainstorm for the campaign so ben has all this insider knowledge and mike will just look at him before something insane happens in the campaign. they'll like make eye contact and ben will be like holy shit holy shit holy shit :0 and mike just drops some insane new lore. it's very special to me.
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