Part 26 is stuck in my head, so I am going to talk about it.
Arthur’s breakdown of course starts off with the reveal that Larson sacrificed his daughter for power and money.
However, what really reinforces Arthur’s self-loathing are Yellow’s words;
Yellow has no qualms in throwing cruel accusations at Arthur. His intentions were clear and simple: to hurt him in the most devastating ways and where it hurts the most. However, Yellow does all that in a voice that Arthur recognises as John’s.
Ultimately, Arthur is forced to hear the voice of his only friend confirming all his worst fears and convictions. That’s what gets to him: his best friend seeing him as Arthur truly sees himself (irredeemable, rotten, a poor excuse of a human who should have died a long time ago. Someone who is trapping John, and who is forcing John to stay and put up with him).
Arthur is ao distraught that he is almost catatonic as he is carried to the mines. He is unresponsive to Yellow's insults, he has no strength to bite back to Larson's taunts. He just lets himself be dragged by Uncle.
When John finally, miraculously comes back, Arthur is quick to latch onto him. His attempts at interacting with John are however awkward and clumsy. I think that this inability to reconnect with John is because he still cannot distinguish John’s words from Yellow.
After all, if Yellow is John without his memories and without their shared experiences… doesn’t that just mean that deep down Yellow’s opinions reflect John’s in some way? Does John really think of Arthur as a self-centred person, a selfish man, a careless and cruel monster who hides behind fake acts of kindness?
To put these doubts to rest, Arthur decides to project onto John his issues. If he can prove that John is not like Yellow, he can prove to himself that he is not like Larson.
He therefore wastes no time in praising how John has improved… by cruelly comparing him to Yellow and demonising everything about Yellow… which is not right. The things he shows reluctance over were still part of who John was, those were still parts that John had to build upon to become who he is currently.
Ultimately, Arthur is involuntarily preventing John from further forming his own identity by explicitly telling him what he should and shouldn’t do, what he should and shouldn’t be. He is suddenly removing the safety and freedom that he granted John this far to figure his own identity out and is instead setting up arbitrary expectations and rules.
He is just doing to John what he did to Yellow.
These strong attempts in differentiating John and Yellow held a lot more weight, when we consider that he was projecting his own problems onto his friend. That's why he is so explosive and irritated whenever John doesn't agree with him.
He was just trying to grapple for any excuse, any proof that there is something concrete that he can use to define what makes a person good or bad. Because otherwise, there really is no difference between himself and Larson and he cannot bear to see himself in that light. He can’t accept that despite everything he did and tried to improve, deep down he’s still a cruel, heartless monster who killed his own child and went on to live.
When John didn’t give him what he wanted (instead going as far as agreeing with Yellow at one point), Arthur grew more and more anxious and restless. So, the only thing that he had left was to carve out and purge the rotten parts of himself. In any way he could.
Only then will he be a good person. Only then will the scales even. Only then he will stop seeing himself as a murderer and a poor excuse of a human.
He resolves that the only option for him is to kill the parts of himself that he doesn’t want. He decides to kill himself Uncle and make Larson pay.
Clearly these suicidal tendencies have been accompanying with him for a long time, as shown in his emotional reactions when his parents died, when Bella died and when Faroe died. His regret is also shown when he confesses he felt extreme guilt in enjoying the life he managed to build back for himself in Arkham as he was working as a PI with Parker.
Arthur just truly cannot forgive himself and his self-loathing runs so deep it’s almost a part of himself he cannot leave behind.
I like how the doubt Arthur feelings of inaptitude, guilt and self-loathing still linger even after being comforted by John at the end of Season 3:
He is unable to truly move on from his mistakes, he still feels the need to find a piece of irrefutable evidence proving he is a good person and that he can be forgiven. He needs his worries and anxieties to be put to rest.
John's forgiveness isn't enough to move on. Daniel's forgiveness was just enough to convince him he might be a good person who is truly trying to do good.
However, in Part 36, we can see that Arthur has not abandoned his self-loathing, as he still sees no wrong in wanting to kill himself killing Uncle. After Oscar reveals what happened at the orphanage he grew up in, Arthur and John have this exchange:
Arthur is tragically forever stuck waiting for Faroe's forgiveness, which he can never really obtain. She’s dead and there is nothing he can do to get her back…
John is a unique character experience because he goes through all the hard work of embracing and developing personhood and it turns out the person he uncovers by doing this is just kind of a dick. Wild
the insane psychological warfare of kayne repeatedly showing john other versions of arthur. as an infant, as a small child on the last (semi-)peaceful night of his life, and after the end, the whole orchestra to a man broken in like disobedient dogs for kayne's passing amusement. like choosing the most dramatized examples to show off the downward trajectory of his life. and usually right before trying to aggravate him into doing something stupid out of guilt. fucking brutal. do you think he did something similar before their deal post-part 20 or
ngl I kinda love it when john is stupid. like yeah you're the fracture of an ancient god, but you're a whole fool. an entire idiot. 100% stupid decision maker.
So uh... Arthur is never going to have his own body and Faroe is never coming back, right?
We all just collectively agree Kayne is a liar?
He proved as much time and time again. Especially now with the whole "making a deal with John thing and then immediately changing his mind" thing. And the promise of bringing John back with no memory and then in one of the biggest plot twists ever just,,, putting a wiped memory version of The King in Yellow AKA "Yellow" in Arthur instead. And promising that John would be let out of his deal once Arthur got to the stone but then saying to John this wasn't it anyway.
And not only that but we got proven that Kayne is obsessed with Arthur too much to let him go. Every universe where Our Kayne has visited, he has killed that world's Nyarlathotep and played with Arthur until he broke.
Kayne won't stop playing with Our Arthur until he breaks. And since Arthur doesn't break, he won't be free.
just remembered kayne said "i kill myself" in ep 28 and when i first heard that, i thought the phrase was a bit weird, but then i realized that it was probably a version of "i crack myself up" and i'm just a non-native english speaker, but like
knowing what we know post-intermezzo. the phrasing feels a bit too deliberate. do you kill yourself, kayne? how many times have you killed yourself, kayne.
and the thing is that kayne's obsession with arthur makes perfect fucking sense. like yeah of course you, an eldritch monster who willingly became the only existing version of yourself, would become obsessed with a mortal from the same universe as you, who was inherently special. you can see that there's something different about him, even though many different versions of him still exist.
i mean, hell, i'm just as obsessed with arthur lester as he is, and i'm just some guy!
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