#necromes

The complex of Oedipus

Conceived in 1909 by the Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), the Complex of Oedipus is a section of the written paper "Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year-Old Boy" in which Freud outlined the fear of horses of a boy known as "Little Hans".

The psychoanalyst determined that the boy's terror was due to feelings of anger he had internalised. According to Freud, all small boys choose their mother as their primary object of desire. They subconsciously wish to usurp their father and become their mother's lover. These desires appear between the ages of 3 and 5, when a boy is in what Freud defines as the "phallic" stage of development.

This stage represents an important point in the formation of sexual identity. The analogous experience for girls is known as the Electra complex, in which girls feel a desire for their father and jealousy of their mother. The child, however, suspects that acting on these feelings would lead to danger, thus he/she represses his/her desires. This leads to anxiety.

In order to resolve the conflict, the boy then identifies with his father and the girl with her mother. It is at this point that a superego is formed; it becomes an internalisation of the parental figure that strives to suppress the ID's impulses and make the ego act upon these idealistic standards.

The ID, ego and superego are, as described by Freud, the three main parts of the human mind that develop our personality through their interactions.

The ID is the most primitive. Within the ID are all the inherited components of personality we are born with, including the sex instinct, the Eros and the instinct towards aggression. The ID operates entirely unconsciously; it does not change with time or experience, since it is not related to the external world.

The ego is the rational, pragmatic part of our personality. It's less primitive than the ID and is both conscious and unconscious; it represents what may be called reason and common sense. Freud used the word "ego" to mean a set of psychic functions such as judgment, tolerance, reality testing, control, planning, defense, synthesis of information, intellectual functioning and memory.

The superego is concerned with social rules and morals, and covers what many would refer to as "conscience". It develops around the age of 3-5 and it consists of two systems: the conscience and the ideal self. The conscience is a part that can punish the ego by making it feel guilty. The ideal self, on the other hand, creates an imaginary picture of how you ought to be, and deals with ambition and social behaviour, including how you treat others and how to be a useful member of society.

According to Freud, the ID, ego and superego, are in constant conflict so that adult personality and behaviour are directly from the results of these internal childhood struggles.

The parallels

So, now that we have established what the Complex of Oedipus is, it is time to see how it connects back to our deranged owl man and to the entire race of the Eliotropes.

At this point though, I have to make a brutal yet sad confession: I have not watched the fourth season of Wakfu nor the Oropo special with all of the new Eliotropes, so all I'm going to focus entirely on Oropo for this analysis and hope that somebody else who has watched season 4 can piece together what aspects of Freud research are present in which Eliotrope and how it all ties back to Yugo.

For now, we can see how the first four paragraphs of the document have unsettling similarities to the entire concept and actions of Oropo and the Eliotropes.

Now, we need to consider that Freud at the time probably didn't take bisexuality and other gender identities as things an individual was born with; because in the case of the Electra complex we need to remember that all female Eliotropes are canonically lesbians, as reiterated by @cocogum in this post , thus, the more modern (or at least the most Wakfu relevant) interpretation of the two complexes that we should consider is: "the child wish to usurp the parent whose at the recieving end of the kid's sexual attraction, and to overcome said urge, identifies with that parent". I could make a different case for bisexuality, but it's not relevant.

The important thing about these two complexes is explaining why Oropo feels so much attraction for Amalia to not be able to contain himself even with Lady Echo. The entire concept behind the Eliotropes is that they were incomplete parts of Yugo that came into existence by accident and couldn't survive nor have an identity of their own without Yugo.

For how much Oropo plays himself up as this secretive master planner, he's actually a mere sexually repressed clone-child that's unable to grow up due to the very nature of his existence.

Finally appreciating canon Oropo: the trilogy's finale.

I feel like, once I learned about the connection between Sigmund Freud and Oropo, I finally started to care a little bit about the guy and the entirety of the Eliotrope's race. Granted, this analysis does fix the many problems and qualms I have with the character; like, if his writing problems limited themselves to the season 3 finale then I could pass it off as just the sad, miserable conclusion of a doomed existence, but no. Unfortunately, Oropo has problems even in the manga and ova created solely to expand on his character, it's like Tot is completely unable to give his writing pet the necessary traits to make him an antagonist worthy of the Wakfu's standards, and instead just uses him for cool visuals and to fill in the untold parts of the lore.

He came up with a truly brilliant concept reminiscing the psychoanalysis of the 19th century, and couldn't find a way to explore said concept in a meaningful way because he had to turn it into a fight. Naturally, this isn't just a Wakfu problem, this is an anime and media problem at large, where we necessarily have to resolve conflicts into a battle because otherwise the audience could feel bored and disinterested in the final product.

This is a problem that carries over to the Avatar franchise, where the creators tried to have meaningful political commentary and couldn't find a meaningful way to have it that didn't involve a fight, because, if they don't turn it into a fight of good and evil, then the audience could feel scared at the prospect of such a challenging, morally compromising story.

To me, Oropo would have been a far more interesting character if he just wanted to overthrow the gods for their selfishness and wanted Yugo to approve his decisions because he was his creator and he loved him.

Could have made for a far more interesting story than just simply going back to the status quo and compromising it only through the inclusion of the Necromes, who pretty much just sought destruction and didn't really change the hierarchy in a meaningful manner.

<<<<Previous part

Nox analysis