lunamadeline

Brother I am going to put you on blast. If you like the direction that Amy’s character took in Ward, that’s your prerogative, there’s no arguing about taste, but Ward Amy is directly antithetical to her characterization in Worm.

In Worm, she regrets what she does to Victoria immediately; the moment that she changes Victoria’s brain her next action is offering to change it back, and the only reason she turns Victoria into the Wretch is that she was trying to fix her but was so wrought with grief and remorse and all the other complicated emotions that she got lost in what she was doing and made things worse. She didn’t willingly sit down and go “today I will turn my sister into a flesh beast” and do it with intention.

She chooses to put herself in the Birdcage due to her guilt over her actions, she takes time to atone for her sins, and her arc for the rest of the book is about trying to forgive herself and hoping that others can forgive her as well.

I think too, people, including myself, were a lot more sympathetic to Amy in Worm largely because we're primed to feel bad for Amy and to not like Victoria. so it's less 'oh my god this girl just turned her sister into a monster that poor girl', and more of a 'poor Amy to be pushed to do this'. and then because Vicky is a 1st pov character we get a LOT of her perspective on how fucked up that was for her and how Amy hasn't really shown any apologies for her actions save for fixing Vicky.

Even ignoring Ward contextualising Amy turning Victoria into the wretch as also raping her in the process, she still turned Victoria into a horrible creature who was mindraped into loving her, and left her like that for 2 years! that's still extremely fucked up.

I totally get that people don't like her characterisation in Ward as far more evil, as she is/was a fan favourite in Worm, but to paint her as a sympathetic character who wasn't that bad does read as a misunderstanding of her character in both Worm and Ward

Thanks! I work hard to keep my takes as good as I can.

I mean, to some extent I do perform a certain version of myself on Tumblr. I try to only share things that I think my followers will like, only post thoughts that I think are interesting and good. There is a certain level of artificial curation going on there.

But the same is true in meatspace! The way I act around my family is different than the way I act at work or the way I act while playing D&D or the way I act in a classroom, and none of those are really the one, true, authentic me. They're a curated version of me.

Even around my closest family, there are parts of me I try to keep quiet about, whether to avoid arguments about politics or because I think they wouldn't care about, like, the new Gundam anime or Wildbow fan drama. Most of the stuff I'd post on Tumblr is not stuff I'd talk about with my family. And of course the reverse is also true (though I'm obviously not giving examples), and there are things I'd talk about both on Tumblr and with family (some of my less niche interests, particularly superheroes and D&D).

Can I really say that the me that I show my family is less artificial than the one I show Tumblr? My family knows me better, of course, they know more context, but that doesn't mean the parts I don't show them are inauthentic.

Which does sound like more like an argument that I'm always wearing one mask or another, nobody knows the true me, possibly not even me...but that seems incredibly distressing, and as previously discussed, I'm good at reframing potential existential crises until they stop existing.

There definitely gets to be a performance feel to it, like if all you are is the projections of self you give out to others and yourself, what are you? If you were to strip away every act that was curated for a person, in interests or typing style or anything - what's left?

But then, i think people are kinda like mosaics? Like a person is all the people they are and ever have been - all the masks go together to make one larger mask which is oneself.

There's a great episode of BoJack Horseman, where a character begs another to tell him that he's a good person deep down, and she later says she doesn't believe in deep down morality, and that you're just the things you do.

I feel like that's maybe what I'm getting at, that there's no such thing as a true self beneath it all, and maybe people are just the people they put forward.

Thanks! I work hard to keep my takes as good as I can.

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Sounds like you're trying to make this post breach containment, condemning it to the same meta fate it has parodied. Consider doing the following to achieve your goal

theres 3 of us and 1 of england

lon a! sina toki e ona la ni li pona mute tawa mi