⚠︎ VOLT ⚠︎

HAPPY 12TH FNAF!!!! 🎂🎂🎉🎉🎉🥳🥳

The "now your turn" prison scene was dreadful/captivating for several reasons, but after some unpacking, I realised that the aspect which really set my teeth on edge stemmed from Ruben's (possibly) disingenuous understanding of how and why language is so important.

The effect of Gadd's writing (on this viewer, at least) was that it was extremely difficult to tell if and when Ruben in particular attains self-awareness, and how deep it goes. Consequently, the certainty that their shared confessional was inherently doomed only increased as the revelations piled up. (For what it's worth, I don't think it would have mattered if Niall had never confessed about Mona and Baird. There's an implicit chasm that can never be crossed between Ruben and Niall regardless).

In one way, the scene seems like the high point of Ruben's ability to reflect and to understand himself. He makes it plain that he understands the connection between his childhood sexual abuse and the impact on his masculinity. He has been terrified his whole life that he has been rendered an incomplete man. But he refuses to see (or cannot see?) that years of verbal abuse, threats and non-contact bullying towards Niall has a comparable impact. (Let's set aside the variety of sexual/sexualised assaults for a moment). Words only having meanings "if you let them" is effectively saying, "get over it, it's just banter." (Every word has meaning, says Gadd the writer). Ruben's attitude shifts culpability: your pain is your own fault.

But Ruben does, on some level, understand the primacy of language when it comes to abuse, trauma and self-expression. It takes him at least two decades to find the words to communicate his experiences, and feels compelled to stop and ask permission to keep laying words down in front of Niall. ("Is this too much?") He does have an instinct that certain words in a certain configuration are simply too horrible to air, and the deflated look on his face when Niall tells him that he can't bear to hear anymore is appalling. (Niall being forced to listen to an echo of his own abuse being recounted to him by his sobbing abuser really is the icing on the cake).

The upshot of this for me was twofold.

1) I felt provoked as a viewer into quantifying and hierarchising forms of abuse (physical and specifically sexual abuse is apparently worse than verbal), by means of Ruben's pain tugging so forcefully on the heartstrings. (To be clear, I don't think Gadd is stating there is a hierarchy).

This has been going on for thousands of years! It doesn't change.

there are moments where unjustified violence repulses him (the circus children, the bizarre dolls), but also ones where he remains completely unmoved (when patrick dies, sebastian is next to him and only cares about the snake he hears in the walls; he watches siemens’ death like a theater performance; during the campania arc, he pays no attention to the hundreds dying around him).

when it comes to killing, i’d divide it into two categories — execution (quick, precise, emotionless — azzurro's guards, the cultists, kelvin’s estate, the wolves, doll) and cruelty (which really only applies to a few cases: azzurro’s death, sieglinde’s mother’s death, and the tank).

sebastian explains his aggression as fitting into the role imposed on him by ciel: “however, if you are particular to my being such a devil, i shall act accordingly.” yet the only times he truly behaves like a beast are motivated by prior harm done to ciel. azzurro held a gun to his head, and ciel had clearly been beaten by him earlier — as “payment” before killing him, sebastian broke his arm and showed him, at least partially, his demon form. sieglinde’s mother brought ciel to the brink of death with the gas, so sebastian repaid her with the same poison. the soldiers in the tank would have killed ciel if diedrich hadn’t intervened — and so the tank became their grave.

The best family friendly movie ever