Free worms

Massive spoilers ahead btw. Pls play the game it's on sale on Steam rn. Massive discussion of dissociation and childhood trauma too in case you're not in the right headspace.

You can "kill" the other Freds but they're all Fred, and you can leave any one of them, or most of them, alive.

And even then when you defeat them, they go back into their canvases— they're just... dormant. There, yes, but not active. Not responsive, maybe sleeping mentally speaking. Their bodies remain but their image goes right back to the wall.

Ring any bells?

Because they're all Fred.

They all have the right to either not want to exist (Agony) or kill each other, maybe they don't know how to "act human" (Confusion), or are hurt or deformed in some way physically– all of them sort of... against each other. Or afraid of each other, of anyone. Don't want you to look at them (Shadow Fred, who is literally in the dark and hiding with various paintings of varying finished qualities I assume, almost like a fragment/not fully formed alter OR a split that doesn't want to be acknowledged or seen which is also very common), or want to help and seem eager to fawn and please you so you don't hurt them. Hurt themselves, don't want to exist in the state they're now living in (Agony) but don't want to die either (Toxic Fred, Bright Fred who helps and soothes, the Face Taker faking his role as the ""original"", etc).

Trauma and especially childhood trauma that causes Complex PTSD (CPTSD, very different from the standard PTSD most are familiar with) and constant dissociation at a young age can make you a lot more... fragmented. For lack of a better term.

I sure remember highschool being that way for me though. The internal fighting, the hurting the body and then making somebody else front to see it (very dangerous for me because any attention from the adults around us as a kid was dangerous where I grew up), doing something bad or hurtful and not understanding that it was wrong– or maybe somebody here did, they did it on purpose to self-sabotage and we don't really know how to explain, etc.

Much more of that obviously but anyways, the symbolism of feeling that way— of seeing another Fred be so scared or another telling you that you need to get away from him because he'll hurt you and doesn't know how to stop— physically biting himself to try and stop attacking your character but failing to— it felt so surreal. I started dissociating through that part of the game. Both because I was reminded so much that I have to live as a D.I.D system, and because it hit me, but I didn't want to rush to assumptions.

Then I saw the name of the Face Taker's OST.

From how most of them don't want to hurt you, to being helpful even, to trying to imitate the ""original"" (A.K.A host, or whoever frequently fronts, something not only common in most systems for alters to do for a multitude of reasons from them feeling unsafe revealing themselves to impersonating someone to hurt themselves or another person, both of which I've experienced a lot) to varying degrees of accuracy— it feels so subtle but so obvious.

Fred physically painted and expressed through his art how his mental state of being is, and how he "went through transformations that will change him forever" much like how repeated trauma effects your mind and the versions of your identity your brain tries to dissociate from because what happened to you was so horrific that you, as a person, become so much more abstract (both good and bad) and traumatized as a result of it, and how it effects every single layer of your reality and sense of self it just

Gets to me

I feel so seen

And yet I don't see a lot of people talk about it, at least nothing I can see right now.

Like come ON.

I see a lot of people in the comments of The Face Taker's Boss theme saying that it should've been called something like "Face Off" when they're missing the point— sure that would've been clever but then we wouldn't have this wonderful insight on how Fred, all of Fred, is a metaphor for being a system and what trauma does to a person

THE THEME SONG IS CALLED FUCKING DISSOCIATION

Sorry I'm just so excited about it

I wonder if anyone else picked up on it too

It's right there

I'm so overwhelmed, it's so brilliant and yet subtle enough that if you're not in the know, you might not pick up on it and it feels like if I don't ramble about this neither I nor my own headmates will shut tf up about it.

And the game explores trauma in so many different ways

Because trauma, whether complex (happening to you constantly over a long period of time, as in months of years) or just regular (happening only one to a few times that dramatically effect you as a person), comes in many flavors and that's especially true with how each and every system, from complex D.I.D (the most extreme kind where most alters have different aesthetics, genders, ideologies, fashion, etc. and want to, if not do show it off in extreme ways and are very distinctive identities to both the host and people outside the system) to partial D.I.D or DDNOS (Dissociative Disorder Non Otherwise Specified) forms and works to survive in their specific personal hell (extreme traumatic/abusive environments where a disorganized attachment between who's supposed to be your guardians and yourself/yourselves is made at a young age, as in only in childhood can a dissociative disorder resulting in alters form—)

You see it the most aside from Fred's apartment with Spine—

She almost "remakes" you when you don't want to be, without your consent at first, like she was

Hurt people hurt people, right?

To me, through all of this, Frederic's character takes the trope of what many old pieces of media used to do to real people and characters alike with D.I.D and turns it on it's head by mocking the demonization that systems are often subjected to [through things as little as wording ("it's not real", "they're not you", saying things like "I'll only talk to the "original"".) to as big as some Freds telling you to "kill" the others, which is a common distateful trope about ""evil"" alters which due to hollywood and the like is what most people associate with this very stigmatized disorder], and gives us a very abstract (what better way to depict an abstract disorder) but accurate dipiction of how it feels like to live with it. Did I mention it used the very same wording that used to negatively effect our communities and turns it into an abstract symbolic message/representation? Sorry again, excited.

Back to how the Freds are all kind of fighting because they can hear each other or hate themselves– the "others". This happens a LOT in my head ik that for sure, and talking to many other systems, happens with them or has happened in some capacity to them all before. Or at the very least are used to/experience a lot of internal fighting that can take on many forms, some even untraditional forms like hiding comfort/soothing coping mechanisims from one another or even doing things like breaking/wrecking personal items or ruining social relationships, the list is broad, frustrating, can be very little and petty or life-changing in a destructive way. The point is as a system I can heacily relate to that way of thinking when you 1. don't understand that you're a system or 2. Don't know how to manage being one (or BOTH! Or some other 3rd or 4th sort of inbetween the two states, or something entirely different BECAUSE THIS DISORDER IS FRUSTRATINGLY ABSTRACT, moreso than the average person's mind already is).

We've learned to help each other but it wasn't easy and we still end up fighting a lot or harming each other, it takes a LOT of work to try and not fight. And we still do. Sure, somebody here doesn't usually (key word, USUALLY) try to hurt the body anymore when they're upset with someone else in our system, or go to blow up our relationship with our boyfriend but sometimes I'll still wake up to find that 2 people fought and now I can't find half of my OWN art supplies because the alter who was fighting with the other alter earlier was using them and the other guy wanted to piss him off.

Anyways,

Notice too, how the Fred locked in a room by his other paintings (at least to my knowledge) never calls his creations "fake" or "not real"

Nor do any of the other Freds call each other fake to my knowledge, just try to or want to be "the original"

And I put that in quotations every time for a reason.

Back to it, yeah the "original" says he painted them but he never says anything mean about them, even the Face Taker for as much as he seemed to, SEEMED TO have the most "control" over speaking to you at first and getting you to do what he needs you to do which was to kill the other Freds before most of them would get to him, he just says something to the effect of "Oh thank God it's back on" when you return his face to him.

Or... how most of them are.only trying to kill each other to survive in the only way they know how to individually? That the others are paranoid of being killed so they want to kill them before they get killed? You see it when you battle Confusion, you see it when you defeat the Face Taker when he starts to...

Dissociate.

The visual imagery when you cause him to blurr, to melt— the multiple faces at one point— using an artist to convey such an abstract disorder fits so so so good and I cannot STOP pointing it out. Sorry.

Furthermore, see how the faceless Fred doesn't really (again, memory is foggy so I am not sure about the accuracy) ask you to help him take the others out. He explains what happened through charades when he cannot speak, but he is dissociating and can't really coherently tell you. And... notice how some Freds have conflicting memories? Or multiple memories? Or they blurr together? DO I NEED TO SHOUT IT LOUDER?

Okay okay.

In some spaces, especially in the past psychiatrically speaking, the term "original" or "core part" has been used to describe a host or a part that represents a core part of the body's childhood in some way, or your ""true self"" as my therapist in highschool once told me when I tried to convey what exactly was happening inside my head— it's only really fallen out of fashion because we learned that this way of analyzing yourself as a system is harmful, according to my psychologist in the present day as an adult, because we are all the same person, just very very dissociative in our identities as a way for our brain to cope with what was happening every single day.

Idk if that was intentional, but the "original" Fred seems... used to it almost. Hint hint.

Now. TW for talk of religious abuse in systems.

Don't think I missed how God Fred is a nod to all the systems and alters out there created through RAMCOA. Fun fact (IF I RECALL CORRECTLY, PLEASE CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG): the term Gatekeeper, as a term for the specific role alters can form/split with having (not the kind of alter themselves because regardless or religious background/trauma alters can form gatekeepers for many reasons like I keep saying NOTHING about this disorder is concrete but it's 'prerequisites' for lack of a better term) came from systems who've been abused by religious cults and/or abusers who have severe religious psychosis and know what they're doing to create these systems within their children. A lot of systems regardless of being raised in a cult/church might have alters who split from varying religious beliefs or religious abuse, from some of them having split to form traditional angels and demons seen in more common religions in the west to other spiritual entities/deities or figures of the sort— more often than not, formed due to demonization (a lot of systems I know including myself have alters who split as demons/have demonic looking forms because they were called Satan, or the devil/a demon or evil despite being the vicitms of horrific abuse beyond their control) for example but I can go on and on and on, and I still have so much more to say.

And how he, as in God Fred, admits he's not a God but merely a "freak", which is how a lot of inhuman alters or alters who aren't the host get treated more often than not by the people we want to trust, or it's been said so many times that's how everyone in the system feels for existing, both as an alter and system as a whole.

Much like the Fred in Agony, we didn't want to exist, and living in this state of mental (and for our disabled systems out there, physical too ranging from genetics to physical abuse in many ways) agony, anguish, confusion and fear is mental and physical torture (stress for long periods of time can physically cripple you, and most systems ourselves included are more often than not stressed so badly our bodies start to break early both during and after escape from the traumatic environments that cause us such mental distress in the first place).

Anyways, this game is so so beautiful, in all it's "wrongfully" contorted and symbolic ways.

These are just our perspectives though, of course.

The beauty of art afterall is perspective,

Much like how different alters in a system can (but don't always) have varying perspectives, both very different and very alike all at the same time.

Oh and for anyone who needs to hear it, no two systems are ever the same no matter how closely you can relate or operate