MISE EN ABYME

#𝐑𝐎𝐓𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐏𝐒𝐄 . . . ⅋  I ᵂᴵᴸᴸ 𝘧𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 ᴸᴵᴷᴱ I 𝗔𝗟𝗪𝗔𝗬𝗦 have, ﹕ (independent,) ˡᵒʷ activity blog for 𝗦𝗛𝗔𝗗𝗢𝗪 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗛𝗘𝗗𝗚𝗘𝗛𝗢𝗚. ⸻ divergent, timeline-flexible; principally GAMESVERSE, with tentative influence from the anime. expect slow replies; at the moment, I prioritize developing relationships ooc & lore-dumping about extremely niche subjects on this blog. do note that this blog is entirely divorced from Paramount's canon. furthermore, due to the content discussed, I am firm about my no minors policy. this blog is strictly 18+. found also at @767mphs.

𝚊 𝚜𝚝𝚞𝚍𝚢 𝚒𝚗 the art of the manmade machine, nihilism, repetition compulsion, todestrieb, suicidality externalized as saviorism, the past as a hothouse of ghosts, weaponhood vs. personhood, somatic backlogs, mythologization (& subsequent death) of Her, martyrdom in immortal flesh, & the bearing of prophecies. . . . pinboard.

𝚊𝚏𝚏𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚜 lightdash / hammeringheart.

love is something [Shadow] only felt - will only feel - with Maria. a little childhood fantasy that he once believed in & let go. Sonic feels like solidity, presence, reminds him of skin tougher after scarring & bodies resting beside each other on the battlefield, & that's a hell of a lot more real & more valuable than love.

there's a reason I changed this blog's bio when I made the move, & that's because I wanted to make more of a tangible effort at demonstrating how love is a core characteristic of Shadow's being. chiefly because he was conceived from it & is thus composed of it, the way we are composed of air & water - both an innocent, whimsical kind of love from an imprisoned, dreamy girl, & a manic, desperate kind from a scientist whose entire livelihood was dedicated to saving that very girl. though GUN's purpose for Shadow was less than noble, his conception was rather insulated from them, due to Gerald's interference (this is something I must explain at a later date - his descent into desperate, grief-stricken madness due to increasing pressure & interception from his superiors, which in turn caused his already frenetic mind to unravel). as the Project's timeline progressed, he was unable to protect Shadow from GUN's agenda after his birth, but his intentions during his creation were, surprisingly, rather noble.

Shadow's creation in the end is owed to a stroke of pure luck on Gerald's end. there is nothing scientific or exact about it. I say this because Shadow cannot be replicated, even if one followed the exact steps (after all, Gerald had documented his process meticulously as all scientists are wont to do); his creation is a unique intersection of two separate hearts & an alien's blood. there had been a bevy of failed experiments that preceded Shadow, & on the eve of failure Gerald encountered his grace from the gallows that singlehandedly rescued his project from obsolescence: the alien patriarch Black Doom, who provided the missing key. regardless, Black Doom's DNA is the smallest piece of Shadow's creation; what he provided was the adhesive to keep him together. what truly built Shadow was Maria & Gerald. their wills imposed on him, both Maria's pure heart & a dreamy love for the place she will never see, & Gerald's raw, ragged devotion; he still bears their fingerprints to this day. Black Doom's influence, while somewhat noticeable, is remarkably scant - most of what we see manifests within Shadow's biology. further, Gerald's study of the Angel Island mural is what unconsciously impacted Shadow's literal appearance & Black Doom's blood simply took that image & corrupted it. all of this is precisely why GUN puzzles over the intricacies of Shadow's existence to this very day, as Gerald did not understand how the emeralds worked & thus was unable to articulate it. it is not scientific or mathematical, just preternatural.

Birds don't sing The wind doesn't blow To the pure body To the perfect existence

the above lyrics inspire my thinking on Shadow's purity. I employ the word purity here solely in a chemical sense - that is to say undiluted, undistilled (as opposed to innocence). it is this feature of Shadow that makes him so dangerous, but it is also the very thing that makes his love so potent. Shadow's love language is one of pure devotion, its components dried blood under nails & burning, exhausted lungs (or his nails in your back - physical intimacy is primary in his romantic self-expression, & predictably he is just as intense in that as he is in all areas of life). this is why he commits himself to others so sparingly, why he lingers on the peripheries of society. he cannot do it without committing the entirety of himself, as he does nothing halfway, only to vascular extremes. that kind of commitment is painful, not just to himself but the other person - imagine witnessing the self-destruction of your beloved in your name; it is a kind of violation, a robbery. there are very few that wouldn't be put off by this biblical, self-apocalyptic level of devotion, I imagine, but if your muse is into that, great! I wrote something brief & underdeveloped touching on this a few months ago that I still feel is relevant & captures my sentiments well:

the essence of [my] Shadow is that he is emotional purity wrapped in a physical vessel of near infinite power. when I speak of the purity of Shadow's emotions, I don't mean in the sense of content (to be sure, Shadow is prone to bouts of paroxysmal rage that he tries very hard to contain; this very repression contributes to their intensity in the first place) but rather in a chemical sense: undiluted. love is at the core of Shadow's being. love facilitates every action. that may be difficult to see as an outsider when Shadow portrays himself as indurate, unapproachable, or generally apathetic, but trust that Shadow is, in every sense of the word, a feeling/hyperempathic creature. others will approach a line or boundary at some point that cannot be crossed - they have a limit to what they'll do in the expression of love, but the sheer purity of Shadow's emotions entails that he lacks such boundaries [...] he is not deterred (though is still deeply affected) by bloodshed, violence, or brutality, & will use all tools at his disposal to protect ones he loves. I would like to make the distinction clearly, here: Shadow does not enjoy violence, nor is it his first choice. rather, he acknowledges that he exists in a violent society, & that such a society enshrines (& pays attention to) violence - violence also happens to be the most surgical path from point A to B more often than not, depending on his motives. he is undeterred & is willing to endure such brutality (for love!) despite the ramifications of that choice on the constitution of his soul. that is the essence of Shadow's love (which some might call it obsession or even cannibalism): self-sacrifice, a treason of the self, self-annihilation … certainly, it is not something to be idealized nor is it even really realistic.

despite the enormity of Shadow's love, he is still very specific about his expression of it. he is a very private person & as such his acts of affection are subtle - he will make sure you're well fed, taken care of, provided for. he will put a hand behind your head when he kisses you, drape his jacket over your shoulders when you shudder, or mend your bruises & scrapes with a delicate but surgical touch. unsurprisingly, acts of affection in public render him rigid & uncomfortable. he values his privacy immensely, if only because he hates to think of his loved ones in the crossfire, as his undertakings are rather dangerous & usually end with him neck-deep in unsavory places full of unsavory people (another reason he is particular about who he keeps close - he needs someone who he can rely on to protect themselves in the event he can't, as much as he wishes he could be everywhere at once). you will rarely, if ever, find him giving words of affirmation. to name something is to give it power over you. if Shadow has given you everything else there is to offer, let him keep his autonomy; he's very territorial & vicious over it. the ability to make a promise is not something you will squeeze out of him or steal from him.

making Shadow feel loved is another matter. for the longest time, his perspective on love was quite dismal. as he is so full of it, it makes turning to a cruel & violent world all the more painful, especially when his very first experience with love was so markedly agonizing. I once wrote of it, "[every memory of Maria being draped in the iconography of her death] just reminds Shadow how meeting love is a little like meeting death, in hundreds of ways." as Shadow equates love with devotion, it is only natural that what follows is Shadow viewing the act of loving somewhat intrusive, as he feels that it demands a part of him he can never have back - love is tantamount to fealty in his mind. after all, he will never be able to recover what was stolen from him when Maria was killed; a version of him died that day, too, & thus every encounter with love after that feels more like bracing before a plane crash than any semblance of home or comfort. the only kind he ever knew was given to him by the person who bled & died so he may live. doesn't that explain, then, why you'd walk away with bruises & scratches after he lets you go? why he comes home to you beleaguered & exhausted, knowing the world may sleep peacefully another night?

... admittedly, he is curious. he wedges the toe of his shoe beneath the discarded board that made this capture so impossible, kicking it up into his hands in a rare indulgence of interest. it is deceptively lightweight when he turns it over (its exterior still belching smoke from Shadow's arrow), running his fingers over the ragtag seams with a surgeon's precision. homemade, but the hands that built this were skilled - highly skilled. valuable. he recalls the magnets that ferried precious freight across the ARK & the delicate mecca of reactive, microscopic circuits inside of his jet shoes, yet nothing compares to what he holds right now, which prompts him to think: what manner of technology is this ...? the introduction of yet another blindspot in his knowledge unnerves him.

no wonder they don't like you, @bashousen spits. & like striking a metal pole, / the insult reverberates until it spends itself like a bullet.

... so it would seem that the contagion of rumor had spread to this city as well, as he recalls no memory of ever being here before, nor seeing this person's face. the poison planted by Black Doom self-perpetuates, metastasizes as wayward glares & muttered curses, as if Shadow was a walking, eldritch malison dredged from oblivion, / damned to penance characterized by a kind of futility he could only call Sisyphean. his red gaze flits up sharply from the board in his hands, all manner of reaction occluded, remembering with sudden clarity the objective of this chase in the first place. the carious light of the alleyway slants against his shuttered expression, pinning the chased with a clinical, detached regard; his head swivels like a gun being aimed by its shooter. he's deliberating, or rather - (he's floating above it all suddenly, a diplopia of himself: the monstrous, distended sprawl of his own shadow, his fingers against the seam of this impossible technology, / the mountainous lodge in his throat & ... )

"who? you say that like it means anything," comes his glacial response, thinking not of the thousand invisible eyes turned toward him in renunciation but of a crude semblance of softness now fifty years forgotten. his mind at last slips back into itself with a heave, / but not without bleeding along the way. each day he thinks that tenderness becomes more & more indecipherable, / promises & lost radio transmissions - he has done nothing to you; he's just gotten in the way. thus, his resolve hardened again, Shadow closes the gap between himself & his objective with a deceptively easy stride, certain that if the thief managed a miraculous escape, his own perseverance would outlast even him, / who has proven himself to be remarkably slippery. after all, nothing escapes him for long, not when he wills its seizure. at last Shadow hovers over him, rainwater limning the sharpness of his whetted bones, angles cocked forward like a firearm. he pries open the thief's hand, finger by finger, until the prize is his; really, he finds Earthlings’ obsession with having so ridiculously superfluous, & he's certain his disgust shows. he supposes it's pretty for a moment, the golds & the jewels, its artistry resisting the corruption of Metal City's rancid sleaze. that's all pleasure ever is for him, though: / ephemeral, a lit match sputtering against his otherwise inert anhedonia. after his failure to catch flame, Shadow's shoe presses against the thief's chest & pushes him back onto the ground (using no more force than necessary), silently hoping he understands that resistance is purposeless. he pockets the necklace carelessly, idly wondering if Rouge will bemoan the deplorable state it's in - scuffed by his indelicate touch & caked in a fine layer of what he can only assume is sweat. there is never pleasing the insatiable, he thinks.

the blue isn't as blue as he remembers it. it seems Earth is full of these minute disappointments, & she hardly holds her own against the stark, prismatic make-belief that Shadow suspects is just another bitter alm imparted by vendetta. truthfully, half of his time here has been spent trying to exhaustively preserve what little purity remains - though there is very little, if anything, that can replicate the innocence that precedes all the violence. / there is something stolen in that, & that in of itself, he supposes, is the painful part of living: reconciling what is with what was, what is owed but never repaid.

so, he feels out of place here, legs crossed on the bank of a quiet lake, time ticking on his impatience. a weapon feels least at peace with no marching orders, & he feels more akin to a rusted piece of obsolete machinery than a creature dredged from the same heavenly place as the stars when he stands alone in untouched places of nature. his very existence within them feels like an aberration, / a sacrilege; Sonic alongside him at least abuts the perversity of it, & maybe that is simply because that shade of blue is the only one that puts his heart at ease. &, well, if he keeps a discomforted Shadow waiting again (the first time involving himself, a glamorous half-drunk Rouge, & a waiter sulking around his table like a silverfish - nigh unforgivable, he had thought), his principles on unnecessary violence be damned - the blood will flow.

replaying Heroes has highlighted this ... interesting bond that Rouge & Shadow share. Rouge's behavior here is what puts Shadow off from truly trusting her for so long, given that she knew who he was & deliberately withheld that information from him. to be sure, she couldn't have been sure if Shadow was real or not, but given what he knows of Rouge - her valuing of information as priceless currency, to be exact - he can't help but feel that her lies by omission were a form of manipulation. she was more than happy to follow in Shadow's wrathful, destructive stead if it meant she could fulfill her own goals; this, too, is true of SA2, given she is revealed as a spy. Rouge, however, is granted a special kind of clemency, since Shadow understands better than anyone the stark realities of the dog-eat-dog world of espionage (with a clearer mind, he chalks her behavior up to matters of survival - that is to say, mechanisms that have become so practiced they are integral to your being; Rouge's handling of the matter was merely one of those mechanisms.)

by no means is this a criticism of Rouge's character. there's no point in casting moral judgment on a fictional character first of all, & second of all, I don't blame Rouge for doing what she has to to survive. I just want to point out that Rouge's mercurial loyalty (or rather, consistent loyalty only to herself) is what renders the erasure of 06 all the more tragic; there is a world where she pledged her loyalty to Shadow, only for it to not matter in the end. I don't think Shadow ever heard these words. regardless, Rouge & Shadow are rarely seen together outside of "work," & even then, that's only when G.U.N deems it appropriate to pair them together; Shadow (& subsequently Omega) work quite efficiently as Rouge's vanguard. once in a blue moon does Shadow show up unannounced at her penthouse, & Rouge has learned that means one of two things: there is a good chance the world is ending/about to end, or Shadow is about to end up on the news.

I am not so much concerned with Freudian constructs as I am the effects of it on Shadow & the societal conditions that encouraged both its development & dissemination. I am no psychologist. what I learned about Freud was strictly within an anthropological context, so I'm sure a well-versed psychologist would probably give me a few weird glances here & there. alas, this is a silly blog about an alien hog, so I tend to give myself grace for gaps in my knowledge. it is more so the delineation/cleaving of "selves" that appeal to me & have the greatest influences on Shadow; the idea that there is a higher, more refined self (the ego) & a mediator (the superego) above a hedonistic nucleus (the id). in fact, the above doctrine kind of shapes Shadow's thinking about himself.

I believe that one reasoning that can account for psychoanalysis' popularity is the idea that there is a "primal" mind within all of us, one that steers us toward pleasure & away from destruction. in short, this is a very useful concept in a society that uses shame as a form of social control. an imperialistic society that, at its core, is two-faced: civilized & uncivilized. shame is a very powerful force within Shadow's character - in a sense, it is a kind of hauntological force, too. shame for the past, yes, but shame for the future that will never be; its ghosts are all around him.

Shadow, above all, values rationality (logos) above pleasure, hedonism. he is quite literally like that one post "diet until I am incapable of comprehending desire" as a person. in the narrative, this is not so subtly employed (by me) by Shadow's lack of tastebuds. in his inability to taste, he is deprived of a necessary component of human connection: breaking bread with others, the loving nature of sharing a meal, the sweetness of fruit between lovers. Shadow believes desire, especially needs of the sexual/erotic (or, more broadly, the Freudian Eros), are innate, impure impulses. he scoffs when he sees the way it governs other people. yet, this place is not just inhabited by the sensual, it is inhabited by the violent, too; I often say that Shadow detests unnecessary acts of brutality & decries them, at their core, as unnecessary energy expenditures. while that is true, it is a smaller part of a larger narrative he sells himself - Shadow is hyperempathetic & as such, existing in such a violent society (& employing such violence) is anathematic to his soul.

nevertheless, Shadow paradoxically employs violence at his whim. he is unafraid to use violence to achieve an end despite its toilings inside of him, but if he had the vocabulary to explain it: well, it's not violence that stems from impulsive pleasure, it is a utilitarian kind, the straightest & most energy-efficient path from point A to point B. his approach in these matters is quite surgical. "if there were a method other than violence," he'd argue, "I would use it, but this society has deemed it its primary language. violence is a last resort, but it is both preemptive & reactive." (this "purity" of Shadow's mind is its most lethal, its sharpest aspect.) to put it simply, he strikes down foes before they rise high enough for Sonic & his ilk to notice them, he dirties his hands so the people he loves don't have to, so they can live happy. that is his "job" at its most fundamental premise - hunting shadows. it is the most painful, hemorrhaging expression of love, yet one fitting for a weapon developed by neoimperialistic superpowers. I want to emphasize that, here: Shadow comes home covered in blood, both his & not his, smelling of gunpowder, because he loves & that is the only expression of love he can speak at its core. what does he love? the planet. a romanticized but lost conceptualization of humanity that exists just outside of his reach, instilled within him by someone who only exists as a half-baked memory & a lost radio transmission. he finds that again in Sonic which renews his efforts toward protecting the planet (& reconsidering his methods of protection, as well as challenging this idea of a rotten core) but I digress.

I'm realizing I should probably elaborate upon Shadow's relationship with G.U.N., given that I frequently reference it one way or another without ever really expanding upon what exactly is meant when I say "Shadow works for G.U.N." it is much more nebulous than simply employer & employee; arguably, the phrase "Shadow is indentured to G.U.N" would be more apt, & calling it "employment" feels both reductive & deceptive. the very nature of Shadow's relationship to G.U.N. concedes an inherent objectification of his being, & as such his "employment" with them requires a desertion of his personhood to some extent. this isn't surprising; as I've mentioned many times before, Shadow's willing to compromise himself to extreme degrees to achieve his goals. "once a weapon, always a weapon." as such, I would go as far as to say that his job is not just self-destructive but anathematic to the fiber of his being.

I think a common (albeit not unreasonable or offbeat) interpretation of Shadow's character is to envision the invocation of this title as an indicator of hubris, an arrogance that stemmed from being bestowed with this "Ultimate" power that no one else has, which entitles him to the right to the title. Shadow's sense of self-worth came first; the Ultimate Lifeform title followed, it was something tangibly & concretely achieved at some point in his life. personally, I see this facet of Shadow's character as an indication of his shame & his isolation [but I recognize my characterization of Shadow is rooted in a much more cynical perspective than fanon] for multiple reasons, which I'll elaborate on below ...