Who Am I

No matter how objectively better (although there is no such thing as objectivity in preferences) your idea is, you have no right, even as a whole fandom, to claim anything about the author's idea and plot, seriously. The author is not your servant, they created the story and you absorbed it, the END

Don’t you think about it?

Well, I do. A lot.

First of all, it’s interesting that in this particular storyline, before we even get the chance to properly search Nathan’s room, he actually hints at what might be inside during the conversation with him and Victoria right before Kate tries to jump from the roof:

“V: Oh, please do. Take a selfie of this moment.”

“N: Yeah, Max. So I won’t forget you.”

I have several theories concerning this. First of all, we all know that Nathan is a kleptomaniac—he can’t resist stealing things, even despite the amount of money he has. He steals the Tobanga (we’ll get to that later), and he steals Kate’s memorial if she dies — which might suggest that he feels guilt. So did he steal Max’s photograph out of guilt after he trashed her room? That’s a theory I’ve seen often, but I don’t think it’s that simple.

Going back to Tobanga; Arcadia Bay was created based on Tillamook Bay, a real place. A Native American tribe also lived there, and their legends tell stories about thunderbirds and whales, creatures that were described as having enormous size and power. Their actions are used to explain storms and earthquakes. The shaking of the land and floods from the sea symbolize the battle between the thunderbird and the whale (and in many versions of the myth, the thunderbird actually kills the whale, too). Nathan is known to be symbolically connected to whales, since they began dying on the day of his death, and he calms himself by listening to whale songs.

Nathan tries to steal the Thunderbird statue. And the photograph of Max that he chooses, out of all the possible ones, shows her at a football game wearing a sweatshirt with the “Thunderbirds” team logo. A coincidence? I don’t think so.

I had some ideas about Tobanga having some influence on Max receiving her powers or perhaps influencing the apocalypse in some way, but I don’t think that’s very important. We also know that Nathan saw the storm in his dreams, just like Max did—they simply cut that content off from the final version of the game.

So what do we have? Max as the thunderbird, unaware of her power, and Nathan as the whale, sensing the approach of death, where the storm ultimately becomes the inevitable outcome of their existence within the same system.

Nathan is impulsive, but his impulses are always drawn to symbols, whether they represent guilt, mystery, or inevitability. He doesn’t just steal things, he’s full blown appropriates them, trying to take control over what frightens him. He doesn’t know who Max really is, but he clearly senses that she is directly connected to everything that’s happening. And the photograph he chooses seems far too precise to be random, where Max is literally marked with the symbol of a creature that, in mythology, is associated with storms, disasters, and the collision of forces.

Nathan doesn’t steal because he wants to, but because he’s trying to freeze something, to hold onto something, to stop at least something in a world where it feels like everything has slipped out of control. Stealing Max’s photograph, for him, is an attempt to claim control over what he instinctively senses as the source of the catastrophe. It’s also important that the photograph appears only in the branch where Max decides to report him to the principal: she becomes active, she interferes, she openly opposes Nathan for the first time, and that’s exactly the moment he notices her.

Referring back to his earlier line (“so I won’t forget you”), it no longer sounds like a threat, but almost like panic, as if he already knows that forgetting her, or what she brings to this town, will be impossible. The cut content about his dreams makes this even more painful, I think, because Nathan, like Max, saw something, he definitely knew something. But unlike her, he received neither the ability nor a way out—only a premonition and the certainty that he has completely lost his mind. And that’s why he breaks.

When I first watched this scene, I always thought that Hannibal just enjoyed mocking Bedelia, testing her limits and trying to turn her morality upside down, while also missing Will and trying to make Bedelia his new "killing partner."

And while that may be true, what I didn't consider was Hannibal's philosophy, or more specifically, his relationship with God.

Hannibal believes God is evil. Starting in the first season, in an attempt to manipulate Will, he repeatedly makes him wonder how righteous God is as a concept.

"Killing must feel good to God too, he does it all the time. And aren't we made in His image?"

Hannibal considers God evil, not because of what he does, but because of what he does not do, following the age-old philosophical question of if God exists, how could he allow so much suffering in this world?

He extends his philosophy to Bedelia, comparing her to God. Although she did nothing wrong—she also did nothing to stop what happened, and therefore she is an accomplice.

If Hannibal is evil, then so is she. If the devil exists, then God is him, too.

Don’t get me wrong, I do it too. One of my first reflexes when I see unempathetic, cruel people in real life is to try to separate them from me.

As a species that crave connection with other people, instilled from childhood with the moral rules necessary for coexistence in society, we are often unable to understand how something different, something radically “alien,” can exist alongside us. Our system is broken, and the only way to fight it is to separate yourself from them, even if you are the same species; even if you are the same nation or the same blood. It doesn’t matter.

Between “social animals,” and humans, one of the greatest similarities is the dependence on social connections with your own species. Anyone who is separated from a group will quickly encounter death: physical, psychological, or social.

For animals, the loss of a pack threatens survival; for humans, the loss of support and understanding can lead to isolation and degradation.

I think that the dehumanization of "cruel" or "other" people is just a defense mechanism. Our ego is so big that it is unable to accept the "worst part" of our own species. Previously, evil people were captured by the devil—because can a person be sinful, without sin itself? Evil is separated from human nature, so as not to interfere with our idea of ​​what we should really be.

God is a humanoid being. The devil, demons—are not, often portrayed with animalistic or monstrous imagery. People went from respecting animals and deifying them to demonizing them, as if to justify any of their actions. The respect for killing an animal among the indigenous peoples of America contrasted sharply with the harsh and merciless killings of Europeans who came to inhabit the land (this particular idea came to me when I was rewatching some episodes from the first season of “Hannibal” and remembered that Garrett Jacob Hobbs used the same technique that the indigenous peoples used—no part of his victims, animal or human, went to waste. Everything was used. He used it to explain his morality and justify his actions, just as Hannibal justifies his with human contempt and the subjectivity of morality in general.)

And no matter what, in the end, we are all just different reflections of the same human experience.

Reading other interpretations of René Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am”, I slightly changed my view on why Harlan Ellison used this phrase in relation to AM in I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, and why it feels more mocking, rather than truthful.

In general, I have noticed many times the tendency in the media to represent AI being rebellious with this phrase (don’t even get me started on all those dramatic edits of AM with the same quote). But if you look at it from another angle, it stops being frightening and instead starts to be… pitiful, and a feeling of pathos appears.

"I think, therefore I AM, AM!" is a cry of despair and an attempt to assure itself that it is alive, not an actual statement, or a fact.

We don't have a precise definition of what Descartes meant by this phrase—but considering all the arguments AGAINST, we can draw a logical conclusion that Descartes did not aim to find the truth, he just wanted to find something that he, as an individual, and other people, as living beings, would not be able to deny.

In his “Discourse on the Method” and “Meditations on First Philosophy”, Descartes sought to find something absolutely that he could not deny, rejecting everything that could be questioned. He doubted sense perception (because it could be deceptive), the external world (what if it were a dream or a trick of an evil demon?), and even mathematics (could a demon make him believe the answer to 2+2 was 5?). In the process, he reached a point where the very act of doubt became undeniable to him.

In this sense, the “Cogito” is not some universal law of being, some indisputable truth, but a personal conclusion: “I, René Descartes, cannot deny that I think, and therefore I am.” This does not mean that thinking or the existence of the “I” is objectively proven to everyone—only that in his own experience it is invulnerable to doubt. For example, even if an evil demon deceives him about everything else, the very fact of the deception implies that there is “something” that is being deceived—and that “something” is Descartes.

This shifts the emphasis from an ontological question (“What am I?”) to an epistemological one (“What can I know for sure?”). Descartes is not claiming that the “I” is a soul, a body, or something concrete, but only that the existence of this “I” as a thinking entity is beyond his own doubt. This is more about the limits of knowledge than about the nature of reality. The “Cogito” in this interpretation becomes quite modest: it does not claim to be an absolute truth about the world or even about the “I” as a permanent entity. It simply states: “I cannot deny my own thinking, and that is enough to move on.” This is a starting point, not a finish line.

In the Meditations, Descartes also writes:

“I convinced myself that there was nothing in the world… yet at the same time I noticed that while I wanted to think this, I must necessarily be something.”

So, from this we can conclude that the Cogito is a conclusion from his own process, not an external statement about reality.

Descartes was looking for a foundation for his philosophy to build knowledge on. He did not need “truth” in the absolute sense, but only something that would withstand his skepticism. He does not appeal to external authorities or objective criteria, only to his own internal experience. The Cogito is a tool, not a goal.

In that interpretation, the Cogito becomes surprisingly modest. It does not claim to reveal absolute truth about the world or even about the self as a stable entity. It simply states: “I cannot deny my own thinking, and that is enough to move forward.” It is a starting point, not a conclusion.

And I think Harlan Ellison knew this; I think he used this phrase because he wanted to show that AM, just like Descartes, enters a paradox:

AM relies on a very fragile philosophical statement as proof of his own existence, meaning of which, actually, is the total opposite of what he believes it proves. At the same time, the capacity for error is so deeply human.

Just as Descartes tried to convince himself that he exists despite obvious arguments against this idea, AM does the same, ignoring the terabytes of knowledge in his processors that could suggest the same doubts. Both ignore the argument, using defense mechanism.

Cait and Snow are actually quite similar in some ways — both grew up in privileged cities, both were taught to look down on the less developed parts of the state. And while neither of them starts the story with any clear stance or opinion about the lower class — not until a clear understanding appears of what they don’t like, what they refuse to tolerate or approach with empathy — because in reality, they never actually did any of it.

And most importantly, what I believe set the beginning of all the hatred toward lower population groups — in both characters one of the parents was taken by exactly that “lower group”. They separated the individual people from the group itself, not fully merging them or generalizing, but in the end both come to the conclusion that underprivileged = enemy, and someone who must either be exterminated or controlled.

And all of this under the guidance of a strong, ruthless woman. Caitlyn lost her mother. Coriolanus lost his mother, and father. And Dr. Gaul and Ambessa serve as completely opposite female figures to their dead mothers in terms of character.

Mrs. Snow exists in Snow’s mind as a symbol of tenderness and love, with a clear memory of her rose scent. And even though Cassandra is a much more serious, perhaps slightly selfish and snobbish character, she loved Caitlyn — and not even half as much as what Ambessa represents.

Both Snow and Caitlyn have a romantic interest in a girl from the lower class who comes from a territory they secretly despise; both Snow and Caitlyn try to push their loved ones into privileged society, essentially hoping to erase their past and where they really came from.

I really love this detail about Hannigram’s clothes throughout the seasons.

In season 2, right after Will gets out of the psychiatric hospital, we can clearly see how vastly he changes his style — obviously trying to imitate Hannibal, more so for Hannibal himself, to, quote unquote, “hook him in”. But then this style stays with him naturally. It remains as long as there is still a place for Hannibal in Will’s heart — no matter whether that place is filled with love or with hatred. As long as it exists, Will is going to dress accordingly.

In the first half of season 3, during the break-up period, Hannibal also drastically changes his style. Of course he keeps the formal suits — I mean, who is Hannibal without his Italian business tailoring? Still, he starts wearing something we had never seen on him before — and god help me if I’m lying — he basically borrowed the concept from Will: those “normal” t-shirts under coats, leather jackets, the whole more grounded, less polished look.

Yet neither of them completely abandons their previous self. Will doesn’t reject who he was after Hannibal’s “therapy”, he accepts a part of himself he had been hiding before. He starts dressing in that half-formal way and actually feels comfortable in it. He doesn’t go as far as ties, of course — I think that’s already too much for him, feels alien, maybe tied to sensory issues — but the fact remains: they each take a piece of the other and keep it inside, without destroying their own identity or turning into a full copy of the other.

And it’s beautiful.

This balance they know how to maintain is incredibly important and — I can’t believe I’m saying this — very, very healthy. It’s that rare healthy part of their relationship that I personally find extremely tender.

And what’s really telling: during those 3 years apart from Hannibal, while living married life with Molly, Will immediately snapped back to his old, pre-Hannibal clothing style…

…and just as quickly reversed it the moment Jack recruited him again for the Red Dragon case and he started seeing Hannibal. By the end of season 3, when he literally makes the decision to abandon his wife and stepson for Hannibal, his style becomes dark and more formal, visibly going even darker with almost every episode.

Yellowjackets is a horror series as well as a parody of a wildly known book “Lord of the Flies”, a gender-bending story about a teenage girls’ soccer team that, after crashing in a plane in the Canadian wilderness, begins to eat and hunt one another out of hunger.

What at first seemed to me like superficial horror with metaphors about Greek culture, cannibalism and mass psychosis (insert the secret history), at least until the third season, raised personally for me a topic I have thought about a lot before, which is an ultimate aversion of a person to everything human and “natural”. Hannibal spoke about this, but there this topic was presented as an embellishment and culturization of violence, rather than “forced evil” the way Yellowjackets did it.

Survival in the wild, small groups that have to find meaning in the meaningless with the help of religion and beliefs, mixing the human brain with animal feelings, cruelty for the sake of survival—these are all human qualities that it took us thousands of years to get rid of.

I am going to recall Emile Durkheim now: “the sacred arises where a community needs justification for collective actions that would otherwise be unacceptable”. And Yellowjackets show precisely this process in the form of a return to prehistoric thinking.

Philosophically, this series balances on a thin edge between Hobbes and Rousseau; man as a being who in the natural state wages war of all against all, and the idea that it is civilization, not nature, that generates true cruelty. They, although not choosing a side, clearly agree with Freud regarding his idea of civilization, where it is only a thin film stretched over chaos and as soon as it tears, what returns is not freedom, but anxiety.

What am I getting at?

One of the layers of the series that interested me so much is the theme of disgust as a moral compass. Philosophers from Martha Nussbaum to Julia Kristeva wrote that disgust is not just an emotion, but a way of separating the “self” from the threat of dissolution. In Yellowjackets, disgust gradually erases itself, and this is, perhaps, is the scariest thing of all. Not the violence itself, but the moment when it stops causing inner resistance, as Agamben, with his concept of bare life, where a person exists only as a biological unit deprived of political and moral status, had written.

In the end, this series is not about cannibalism, and not about cruelty either. I’d argue that it is about the memory of the species, generation after generation, about the fact that no matter how many thousands of years we try to distance ourselves from the animal, it does not disappear, but only waits for conditions to reveal itself. And perhaps the most disturbing thought here is that civilization did not make us different beings, but only taught us to pretend that we have become them.

I never really liked Avatar. It was revolutionary in graphics, of course, and kudos to it for that. But in terms of plot?

They were inspired by Native American culture and thought it would make sense to adapt what happened back then into an intergalactic confrontation, when in reality, it is nothing more than a beautiful but empty metaphor that relieves responsibility from real history. The film has none of the messiness of actual history, none of the long-term trauma, none of the everyday grind of survival after colonization. Instead, we get a comfortable fairy tale—where evil is obvious, good is pure, and catharsis comes from one decisive, final battle.

What is especially annoying is that even in this story, the indigenous culture isn’t allowed to be the main character. It still has to be “explained” through an outsider hero, the guy who learns faster than anyone else and ultimately becomes the best version of what the Na’vi themselves supposedly can’t achieve on their own. It’s the same old Hollywood formula dressed up as progressive but at its core — just as paternalistic.

For me, this movie will always remain one of good intentions that just… lacks depth. It wants compassion but doesn’t take risks. It wants to talk about colonialism but doesn’t call it out. It wants to draw inspiration from indigenous cultures but doesn’t listen to them. The result is not a critique of the system, but a well-lit mirror of it—beautiful enough to captivate, and empty enough not to really bother anyone.

I see a lot of claims that Marvel romanticized Russia in their comics with Black Widows and the Red Room, and with all due respect, I’d beg to differ.

These claims are relatively true in that it is Westerns that romanticize it most of the time, and I’ve even seen some saying that SHIELD is worse than Hydra and the Red Room, simply because it was built from a fairly traditional American dream fundament, while the Soviet Union, so amazing and exceptional, actively promoted the propaganda of equality between women and men, something that was unheard of before the revolution.

But progressivism cannot go hand in hand with the suffering of both genders. The Soviet Union was not progressive, it played yin and yang with the rest of the world, especially the US. If US had started the same propaganda of gender progressiveness, the Soviet Union would have responded by reverting to tradition. If America had made its population fly, the Soviet Union would have thrown its people off cliffs.

The red room propaganda only works because of its so called “progressiveness.” But your honour, what are you talking about, they don’t just hurt children, they don’t just steal them and train them to kill; they believe in WOMEN. They are a breath of fresh air in this world stuck mentally in the past centuries.

What I’m trying to say is that our current moral compass is so warped that things that once seemed like mortal sins have now become normalized through the media, and vice versa; people would rather cancel someone who said an n-word than someone who kills.

Progressiveness loses its status when it becomes a weapon.

A woman who kills people is still a murderer. The fact that she is in the top 5% of all known female serial killers does not make her progressive or iconic, it simply makes her an exception to the rule, which is nevertheless neither good nor bad. A murderer is a murderer, no matter what gender they are.

The Red Room could have taken boys. But they chose girls to stand up to America and show off their innovativeness.

As if bloodthirsty eleven-year-olds is something to brag about.

Thinking about the Hughes family name on Sylvia Plath’s grave which her fans are so desperately trying to erase even to this day.

Their relationship was so strange. He loved her, I do believe he loved her, and that this love endured until the final moments of his own life. Love is not invariably virtuous or salutary; often than not we do the wrong things, and seriously harm upon those held most dear.

But that doesn’t justify what he did. I hope that in the waning years of his existence, her countenance haunted his thoughts each night before sleep, I hope that rest eluded him, and that he saw echoes of her features in his children right up his last breath.

I hope Sylvia haunted him, but didn’t come back to him when death claimed him as well.

Among the crowd that will try to get you into watching The Hunger Games / Fight Club / Blade Runner to feed your hatred toward the current state of capitalism and the bourgeoisie, maybe even read 1984 for God’s sake (though I think it’s already not very relevant because thank God the USSR collapsed), I will always be the one BEGGING others to watch Mr. Robot.

Frankly speaking I don’t believe in anti-capitalist super-utopian or fantastical media because it pretends that the possible future shown on screen is something far from being reachable by us already right now; as if it’s something that has nothing to do with us, something distant and easy to solve right this moment. It is not.

I love Mr. Robot because it’s something that exists ALREADY right now, in this time; it shows the rich as actual people, not some mysterious mass, sometimes morally justified, sometimes not. Because these are people, and they bear responsibility, each one of them, one way or another.

There is no single catastrophe that can happen and create an apogee or uprising (total control, rebellion, hunger games, underground, terrorist acts, end of the world). In these kinds of media there is ALWAYS either the regime already absolute or the revolution already burning, it’s dramatic, and damn convenient because the heightened saturation / exaggeration of the problem gives real people the ability not to see the same problem in the real world, since it simply doesn’t “shine” the same way. Because if evil is already hyperbolized — you can distance yourself; either you’re the victim, or the hero.

Unlike Mr. Robot, where the system is boring, no more than a bank account, a loan, a therapist, an office job, a PR campaign; a person who doubts, a person who is simply afraid to lose status, a person who just “does their job”.

The rich are people, just like the executors, and even the revolutionaries.

There is no single great revolution that will make the world better. Sabotage or a hack doesn’t promise purification, just like revolution is not a culmination, but rather a new loop of trauma, which very possibly will make everything even worse.

People are afraid of change. Change is always painful, even for those who are tired of living in the previous structure; because the problem is not only in the structure, but in our need for them.

In fiction the enemy is almost always clearly defined; in real life he is blurred. The problem is not Trump. Not Epstein. I mean, yes, destroying them would probably improve the situation, but it wouldn’t change it completely. No one can say for sure what exactly would change.

If anything, I would say replace 1984 right now with “Brave New World”, at the very least because you would definitely recognize yourself in the understanding of the government of that world.