Hi, I’m Sol! I like Sonic, Undertale/Deltarune, and various other fandoms depending on my mood. (I mainly post about Sonic, though.) Header (AND PFP!!) by khinesthetic :)
Here’s a (now complete!) list of links to my various fics for anyone who’s curious! All of these should hopefully also be listed under the tag #sol’s fanfiction :)
Choose a song title for each letter of your username and tag the same number of people
Thank you for tagging me @desert-fern! 💖
Fair warning: half of my picks are from the 90s because that was my formative era. I like stuff I can sing to or play the guitar to, so there’s a lot of rock and pop…
Drop Dead Gorgeous [1997] – Republica
Just a Girl [1995] – No Doubt
A Thousand Years [2011] – Christina Perri
Ready Now [2019] – Dodie
Iris [1998] – Goo Goo Dolls
November Rain [1992] – Guns N’ Roses
Speechless [2009] – Lady Gaga
-
Creep [1992] – Radiohead
You Could Make a Killing [1995] – Aimee Mann
All Along the Watchtower [1968] – Jimi Hendrix
Rumour Has It [2011] – Adele
Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down [2010] – Alicia Keys
Now for the usual totally unnecessary commentary on my choices:
We’ve got four British artists on there (well, I did grow up here), but it’s mostly stuff from across the pond. That said, ‘Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down’ was never released in the US, but it was over here, and it was huge (hence it’s on my Spotify master playlist!).
There are songs from four soundtracks (Scream, Twilight, City of Angels and Cruel Intentions), proving that movies make my brain remember songs better.
Also, I’m currently rewatching Battlestar Galactica, so I had to include Hendrix 😎.
Hmm, who to tag... okay, 12 of my loveliest moots coming up:
Probably the Frickbear's version of Fritz(I'm an otherchain of this fucking rat/aff) considering a few things, neurodivergence (speculated on Fritz's part) and the obsession with animatronics.
Moots I'll tag/nf:
@cutiepieautistic , @exenursery , @lunasilverpelt , @stanlyofthestars74 or whoever, really.
HONESTLYYYY I have a hard time thinking of characters that I kin a lot of the time because it's a bit hard to pin down stuff I relate to on characters (besides like. Glisten Dandy's World but that one's obvious I fear, he's already part of my Toonsona).
I would have to sayyyy
BonBon from FNaF would be the first one I can think of!
@lesbotron1997 @tonikensalegend @voidshrubsquared @dippitystick + whoever else wants to join + no pressure ^^
I'm gonna be so honest until VERY recently, never in my life have I related to a character enough to go "That Is Me." Until this guy showed up to my house unannounced
Ohhhg Grace..... Ryland Grace......... he's just like me frfr....
Hmmm…I’m not sure if the original poster meant “kin” as in otherkin, with all of the species/self complications involved, or if they meant “kin” as in “identify with”. I’m assuming they meant the second definition, though, since the post isn’t tagged for otherkin specifically?
I’m personally not otherkin, but I do deeply relate to Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries more than any other character I’ve read about, I think.
(I do consider myself to be kith with machines, especially robots and fictional AI, however. Which probably makes sense, given my choice for this post and my profile picture.)
Fun tag game idea: say something that most of your followers wouldn’t actually know
I’ll start first: I am actually married. Irl. I have a husband. I know it’s surprising considering the Tumblr spouses, but my husband thinks it’s funny.
I've been sitting here for like 10+ minutes tryna think of something and the only thing that really comes to mind is probably the fact that we're technically related to Geoffrey Rush?
He's like, our grandfather's cousin or something, but we've never met him or anything
Probably not of much interested especially since I know he was accused of some not very cool things (not that we ever cared to pay much attention, since again we never interacted with him personally), but it's a fact about us that most people don't know 🤷
im mildly allergic to chocolate but i eat it anyway bc no amount of vicious diarrhea will make nutella not worth it. it was only very recently that i learned that chocolate isnt supposed to be spicy
I have 8 nieces and nephews, 2 I’ve never met, 1 I only see on Halloween cause they trick or treat at my house.
The oldest two are 11 and 13 and the youngest is only a few months old
The way my family works is like a promotion system, so say you have a cousin who’s going to have a baby, the cousins of said cousin become aunts and uncles, the aunts and uncles become grandparents, and the nieces and nephews become cousins.
I went by the name Citrus for my entire eighth grade year and realized that I lowkey hated it a couple months in (hence why I started going by Acey when I began high school)
ummmm umm.. not about me but about my pets.. ive had two cats and both of them are really big for cats?? like theyre just Large. not fat or anything just like.. big. idk !!!!
I can't eat too much peanut butter otherwise i get diarrhea and throw up. And I am learning japanese so I can play more unlocalized Otome games, i can actually read almost all hiragana at a glance like english(i just don't know what most of it means lol)
@caffeinated-chocolate @misteria247 and other moots and people who want to play. Sorry, I'm very bad at removing usernames and which people are moots.
hmm... i don't really know actually... i guess the fact that i naturally have a pretty high caffeine tolerance something a little unpredictable, especially given my username ˙𐃷˙
Something I very rarely talk about here is that i love learning languages! (at least when I'm in the mood for it lol)
I taught myself modern Greek when I was 12 - which helped me when I started learning ancient Greek as well - which is something I find really cool :)
As of now I'm fluent in Italian (native language so obv) and English (C2 level), I can read/understand most French and Spanish, some Greek and Portuguese, plus some general knowledge of German and Swedish
I've also tried getting into slavic languages bc I LOVE the culture but for some reason I cannot learn a thing 😭
i tore my right hip abductor muscle doing track in 8th grade and then re-tore it during fall guard my sophomore year and it’s literally never been the same 😭 (it hurts when i drive for over 30 minutes at a time lmao) BUT on the fun side i can crack my hip really easily now and it makes horrible grating noises that can scare the shit outta people who don’t know the hip lore
all this in addition to my hyper flexibility and my back being legitimately Built Different (hahaha it’s an inward curve from scoliosis) makes me incredibly flexible in a deeply off-putting way and pretty freaking good at dance
That's kinda fascinating actually, and very on brand for a guardist
I make my own pins for fandoms I'm in and there's almost always some sort of ink on my skin, either from making said pins or just straight up drawing on myself :)
@idontexist734 @drudg30n @8-aladdin-sane-8 @fizgabzi14 and anyone else
Okay so when I was babeh moonkid (tm) I knew sign language AND THEN LIKE NOW I DONT KNOW SHIT ABOUT IT oh and I had 14 things of blood drawn out of me at once when I was like 6 but thats not as cool
@astoriaalt @janas0311 @jackie-is-just-here I DINT KNOW ANYONR ELSE GNG SO UUUH ANYONE ELSE CAN REBLOG
hehehe hiiii I'm slay bestie :PPP OMGA YOU WERE HOMESCHOOLED THATS SO COOL RAH
uhhh lemme thinkkk hmmmm
oh yeah I'm chinese(hong kong to be exact)🤤✌️HEHEHEEHAHHAAHAH YALL NEVER COULDVE GUESSED IT(only two of you guessed correctly<3333) RAAAH CHINGCHONGDINGDONG
Tagging most of my moots to let them know the answer to my April fools joke🐺
I once tried to run a Minecraft ARG type thingy on my YouTube channel? It was like a scientist running a log of experiments on a creature in the Deep Dark, it didn't go so well and I got burnt out / demotivated of the story I had for it very quickly when people were just confused and/or not showing interest 😭😭
OPEN TAGSSSSS + /not forced ones :3
@lesbotron1997 @voidshrubsquared @dippitystick @ash-lien + anyone else who wants to join :3. No pressureeee
Last Song: "Cogwork Dancers," from Silksong, by Christopher Larkin
Fav Colour: Purple ^^
Currently Watching: "From," "Tracker," "Supernatural," and "The Boys"
Currently Reading: Regrettably, "We Were Liars"
Currently Working On: A multi-chapter Glisten x Rodger Dandy's World fanfic, a oneshot of Turbo x Fix it Felix from Wreck it Ralph, and a 99 Nights in the Forest multi-chapter. Also Art Fight refs and my OCverse "Paranormalcy"
Current Obsession: My OCverse, Dandy's World, Deltarune
Last Search: "is the voice actor for pooh and tigger still alive"
Current Desktop Picture: Uhhhhh I think it's art I made 2-3 years ago of the first iteration of my OCverse? Haven't opened my computer in months due to Microsoft crap
Fav albums: Wishbone dlx, found heaven, sweet boy and submarine
Fav drink: coke idk
Fav fruit: probably mangoes
Fav video game: minecraft i guess
Fav clothing: i ADORE denim jackets, and flairs omg i love them but uh nothing else idk ( its VERY DIFFICULT to be good at fashion where i live, theres nothing here 😭 😭)
Fav sport: uhh 😭 if i had to choose id say badminton but im ass at every sport
Fav animal: foxes, owls and crows lol (how basic i know 😔)
Fav blanket: i dont have a fav blanket 😭 just anything that keeps me warm in winter 💔
YAY YAY YIPPEE ty for tagging me this looks so fun :3
Favourite colour: purbleeee :3 i loooobee purble
Favourite dessert: ooooh thats difficult... I like brownies a lot but i also love cookies and tea
Favourite ships: OKAY so my beloved OCs jade harper and Paige, split x bive, queen x tenna/rouxls/carol theyre ALL good ships, papyrus x mettaton, gangle x zooble, valen x juniper, idk there are more but i shant go on too long
Favourite albums: like every lemon demon album but especially hip to the java bean and damn skippy, all the utdr soundtrack but i also really like the 10th anniversary music and the ena (dbbq and webseries) soundtracks
Favourite drink: YORKSHIRE TEA (but like any british tea is fine) and cherry pepsi the BEST flavour of pepsi
Favourite fruit: mangoes but only for that like 2 weeks of the year where theyre in season and taste nice
Favourite videogame: youre not gonna believe this but its the games i havent shut up about for 3 years (undertale and deltarune)
favourite clothing: i actually have a specific Nice Fit so ENA DBBQ tshirt OR undertale sleepover tshirt with the caine varsity jacket, yellowish cargos, the ENA DBBQ hat, these nice boots i have, and my portal earrings
Favourite sport: i dont like many sports but i like pickleball and swimming sorta
Favourite animal: gotta be dogs. I looovee dogs
Favourite subjects: sociology, biology, chemistry and maths
Favorite dessert: Honestly anything with Nutella on it. I'm such a sucker for it aaaaa
Favorite ships: Platonic sniperspy will always be the top ship... but also spyma and heavyspy and uhh uhhh spyspy. I really like spy
Favorite albums: Self-Ish by Will Wood and Jiminy by Bear Ghost
Favorite drink: Chamomile tea :D
Favorite fruit: Abble...!!
Favorite Videogame: It's gonna end up being tomodachi life once I get it but since I don't have it yet. Super Mario Odyssey and both Super Mario Galaxy games :]
Favorite clothing: My "Get Ahead" spyhead tshirt that I'm wearing rn... and my mymelody hoodie and!!!! Hoop earrings!!!
Favorite sport: I did bowling once and I like it that counts right. Bowling is on wii sports so it's a sport. Right. Aside from that if I'm just watching I like soccer!!
Favorite animal: Every Single Bird
Favorite Subject: In school? Art and english. In college? Surprisingly enough I loved rigging in the end!
…is really hard to understand. So I thought I’d try to analyze it and hopefully help make it a little more comprehensible!
Stage One: The Diagram
In this image, I’ve done my best to define or explain every word that I thought might be confusing to a reader, in case anyone wants to draw their own conclusions about Hell and its thoughts. I’d definitely recommend reading the Wikipedia pages for Antigone and Gone With the Wind if you want to go this route. (If you’d rather not bang your head against a wall of text for [insert amount of time here], though, feel free to check beneath the cut!)
Part Two: The Analysis
Paragraph 1, translated by me:
“Heaven bred war in humanity with Lucifer’s rebellion. Angels slaughtered other angels in the battle, after all, and they didn’t even think about stopping to consider the consequences. Humans fight because it’s all they can do and know how to do, and their hubris in declaring war and enacting cruelty only brings destruction upon their own heads. [Yippee :)]”
Explanation:
Atavistic antagonist = ancient/habitual enemy
Antigone with the wind = starting a war that destroys yourself, one you cannot finish
Brother against brother in arms = pretty self-evident, two sayings combined; implies an army divided against itself
Other harms irrelevant collateral = fighting without care for long-term repercussions (see “Antigone with the wind”)
Holy Holy Holy is the Lord = statement spoken to express immense reverence for God, likely sarcastic/mocking here
War is ontological = war is woven into/fundamental to the very nature of humanity’s being
Peace is a failure of free will = self-evident but also interesting, since so often humanity considered their free will to be the cause of war and suffering since they left God (but Hell implies that peace was built IN SPITE of God)
Mille viae ducin(m)t homines per saecula sanguinem: the original quote is “mille viae ducint homines per saecula Romanum”, or “All roads lead to Rome” (literally “A thousand roads lead men forever to Rome”, thank you Ultrakill wiki), but this is just more of the same statement that humanity will always return to bloodshed, for it is part of them.
Paragraph 2, translated by me:
“Humanity wished they could return to a state prior to their knowledge of sin, but they could not. They have grown far beyond their original boundaries, used their mortality to expand and then destroyed the world with that expansion, repeated eternally. They both worship God and do violence at once—but no, even this is too simplistic.”
Explanation:
Drowning in denial, man set sail in search of a palingenetic simulacrum of Ithaca = despite its impossibility, humanity went on an Odyssey (yes, like that one) to try to find a perfect replica of their original home, Eden
An Eden afore the antediluvian = what it sounds like, Eden prior to The Flood
Untouched by their own sin-stained hands = presumably commenting on how the original Eden was destroyed by humanity becoming sinful
But death is arable = the loss of immortality by leaving Eden is what has allowed humanity to grow and change
All growth is devourement = growth also necessarily requires both consumption and the destruction of what came before (i.e. the destruction of a pure and sinless humanity, perhaps)
Life feeds on life feeds on life. Ibid. Ibid. = more of what was said before, constant consumption is necessary in order to supersede prior boundaries
Holy Holy Holy is the Lord, and the rest is violence. No. Even this is not [KNOWLEDGE] = God is up there above it all, and the rest of the world around Him is filled with violence—but no, this is too simple of a contrast.
Paragraph 3, translated by me:
“Human minds, attempting to see the world through Logic, necessarily flatten it into binary divisions. Even their higher thought is just variations of these same limits, written differently and without any real nuance. Talk of immortality of the soul or ‘perfect things’ from which everything in the world is modeled? Foolishness. Seeing past infinity, considering time from outside its bounds, knowing of higher planes of causality…Reason and Dialectics are but two of the many dimensions through which to view Reality. Just the barest crumbs of the pain that could be.”
Explanation:
(By the way, this is the point at which I got so exhausted I made this post… XD)
The spatio-temporal mind can conceptualize reality only in binary. Yes and no. Is and is not. = humanity, locked to a particular point in space and time, can only see the world in terms of what is there and what it lacks, and therefore struggles to extrapolate regarding how the world and things in it actually function. (Kind of like if you saw a chair for the first time ever, but didn’t know who made it or why, and so you had to study the chair and the items around the chair to try and figure out the life of the woodcarver.)
The eye of [LOGOS] sees only a colorless existence in a monopotential world. = yes yes Hell I get it, humans exist in a single timeline and therefore can only build solid reasoning off what happened in that timeline since all others are unreal to them. Now tell me what they’re supposed to do about it
Its abstractions a charade of shadeless ones and zeroes rearranged ad nihilum = okay this one I get. SINCE humans are incapable of seeing beyond their three-dimensional world, anything they guess/philosophize about dimensions beyond that is just “what humans already know, but reshuffled in new ways” instead of something wholly wild and necessarily beyond their reach. And therefore all that philosophy is just Meaningless.
Phaedonic dialogues, simple shadows on a cave wall = I haven’t actually read Phaedon, but I know it’s about the composition and immortality of the soul. Meanwhile, the latter section is a reference to Plato’s allegory of the cave, used to advance his theory that the world as it exists is built of imperfect models, based upon perfect/ideal versions of themselves. (So somewhere there’s a perfect tree, a perfect stone, and so on.) Hell is basically saying that all this is the “charade of shadeless ones and zeroes rearranged ad nihilum”.
No. There are 39 states of existence. Postfinity. = Postfinity alone is already too much for the human mind to truly comprehend, given that infinity is impossible to imagine as-is. The universe, for example, is infinite—it has immeasurable, unquantifiable space. There are parts of it that we literally cannot ever see, it’s so infinite. And yet, it’s also expanding. What? How? Into where? Apparently Hell knows and possibly can see this—the stuff beyond infinity.
Metatemporality. = funnily enough, this one’s easier to comprehend. Presumably, Hell is not bound by human comprehension of time as a forward-moving thing, and can instead look upon “the flow of time” from outside it. This kind of makes sense—Hell already shouldn’t be able to exist spatially (the planet Earth likely does not have that much room inside it) so it’s reasonable to think that this also functions temporally. I guess this means Hell can…hmmm. Can see alternate timelines? Maybe they’re still “non-canon” since Ultrakill is a depiction of the Official Way Things Went (I think?), but Hell can see the multitudinous branches and the many flaps of butterfly wings that cause tempests around the globe.
Extracausality = okay, so retrocausality is when—due to time travel and/or quantum physics—a cause comes after the effect it creates. (Time travel example: being born, going back in time, and introducing your biological creators to each other.) And extratemporal means “happening outside of time”. So presumably “extracausality” means “happening outside of causality”. I guess this might be something like God, who was not caused to come into being, but simply is and always was? Or maybe atoms being a thing that exists? This one’s tough. Even Hell’s creation is not extracausal, so that means it’s seeing (potentially) beyond its created limitations.
Reason and dialectics are axes in the garden of reality = given that axes are also dimensions, as in x and y axes creating two dimensions, this implies that reason and dialectics are only ways to attempt to quantify and perceive reality, NOT reality itself. And if there’s only two, that also implies a flattening of reality.
Shavings of semi-potential sufferings = and of course, Hell brings this all back to what it was made for—torture. (Even it cannot escape what it was made for. But is there freedom in knowing this, maybe?) But in essence, it seems to be saying that humanity can only grasp a fraction of the true scope of suffering that is possible. “Semi-potential” here is kind of tripping me up—I presume it’s referring to that in-between state that neither “is” nor “is not” which humans struggle to grasp.
…and then I think the final two paragraphs are pretty self-evident.
I hope this helped at least a bit when it comes to untangling all of Hell’s ramblings! Massive props to Hakita for writing something that took me slightly over an hour of solid work to unscramble whilst making my brain into scrambled eggs in the process :thumbsup:
Put your 4 favourite characters from 4 pieces of media as options and let your tumblr pals decide which one most suits your vibe then tag 4 people
Jamie Tartt {Ted Lasso}
Blitzø {Helluva Boss}
Evan 'Buck' Buckley {9-1-1}
Izzy Hands {OFMD}
Voting ended onJun 21, 2024
Not me having some kinda type...
Who shall I tag? I think I wanna tagggggg... @mybugsmybugsmybugs @mexicangela @lunar-years @biscuitboxpink but no pressure!! I just thought it would be fun!
THANK YOU TWO FOR THE TAGSSS!!!! also, I’m in shocking few fandoms nowadays… sigh…
ANYWAYS, these are a few characters I’ve been told reminded people of me/have stolen traits from!!
who do I remind you of?
Amity Blight (TOH)
ENA (Joel G/YouTube)
Manager Gangle (TADC)
Kasane Teto (UTAU/SynthV)
Voting ended onApr 12
When I was told that I was like TETO (our saviour and beloved), it was specifically this one from decoyman1200. I have yet to receive a better comparison in likeness.
now I’m passing the tag game onto @astralpandamoniumfox @scribbl3dog @tehizel @rlinnl @girllovesbutterflies @lemonandtea @bioluminescentbutterflies and open tags!!!
probs gonna tag my most active moots i usually interact with recently! @mj-rulesdaw0rld @miwihrt @heyimcelery @awfulbells @auracobaltblue @stargazingthemoooon @esarity11 @byleriskillingme @gloriouslygone @ziggyzoomer @bugssavetheworld @halflitpages @glittc @mythicstargirl @smalltown--byler @michaelqueerlerslipstares tagging u back + anyone who wants to join. 🙌
Thanks for the tag @awfulbells and @ab0utellie <333 (also im pretty sure someone else tagged me yesterday but I couldn't find it so im sorry for that 😭) aghh well who do you think is more "me" core?
what character screams pendragonstarz to you?
mike wheeler (stranger things)
dipper pines (gravity falls)
kat stratford (10 things I hate about you)
coraline jones (coraline)
Voting ended onApr 21
Tagging @dearwise @buckleybeat @barium-nitrate @heyimcelery @samagonas @dany-is-bored @sunchildsatoru @sweetcreatureeternal @vinylfawn @byler-brainworms @someone-gyu @byedisaster @byersstars @crunchie-morris + anyone who wants to join <33 i would love to see everyone's characters!! No pressure
I just spent over an hour analyzing the hell (ha!) out of Hell’s insane incomprehensible poetry from 8-3. I might post my analysis at some point but right now my brain feels like it’s about to implode.
I know Hakita said he was flourishing when he wrote this, but genuinely, I would love to know how much time and hashing out it took him to finish it. He’s making my brain work today!
Summary: He has Broca’s aphasia. Maybe. Specifically, a souped-up dystopia version.
Disclaimer: I am very much not a psychologist or a neurologist! Please do not trust me for real-life diagnosis information or perfect accuracy!
So. For those of you who don’t know who “Hal Incandenza” is, he’s a character (perhaps one of the main characters) from the semi-infamous novel Infinite Jest. You may infer from this that about four months ago, I read the entirety of IJ and proceeded to start rotating Hal in my mind like bananba.
More specifically, I was thinking very hard about the beginning of the story, which is set one year after the events of the novel. (This is normal for this book.)
In the first scene, Hal is sitting in a college admissions interview, where some school administrators attempt to give the interview for him. When he’s forced to speak, despite him perfectly comprehending what he intends to say, everybody else freaks out. This is because from their perspective, he's speaking completely incoherently.
“The symptoms of Broca’s aphasia affect your communication skills. You know what to say but can’t say it.” (Cleveland Clinic)
Me, exactly one (1) chapter into Infinite Jest: “That’s Hal. That’s literally Hal”
Of course, this is a rather simplistic take on Broca's aphasia…since it's literally the first two sentences of the article. Generally, people with Broca's aphasia can still speak recognizable words and communicate moderately well, but it was specifically the disconnect between what someone intends to say and what actually comes out of their mouth that caught my attention. Both Hal and people with Broca’s aphasia can think in full sentences just fine; it’s the speaking that proves to be an issue for them. After all, it has been argued (quite convincingly, for me at least) that what IJ is about is, more than anything, a lack of understanding, especially when it comes to people who desperately crave it.
“…from this horde of fretting, feeling, interfacing selves a truth emerges: that loneliness is a universal problem experienced by each person in a unique way” (The New Yorker)
This has led me to feel that while Broca’s aphasia is by no means a perfect one-to-one analogue for Hal’s condition, it still provides an interesting real-world example for readers to consider.
Realism? In my Infinite Jest?
IJ is not a book about the world as we know it. Sure, there are plenty of ways in which it seems to be quite a timely commentary on USAmerican lives (see: the corporate sponsorship of years or. The election of a celebrity as president (help)). However, there are also such fascinating elements as:
a contaminated, uninhabitable zone in Quebec in which weird wildlife is said to live
the eponymous movie, Infinite Jest, which instantly makes watchers into addicts who will sit and watch the movie to the point of neglecting their bodies entirely
possibly a man who is literally haunting his own narrative??
So, with that in mind, it’s important to note a few things about Hal’s condition. The first is that it doesn’t actually have a clear cause—Hal has had a lot of weird things happen to him (stopping weed cold turkey, possibly-but-not-certainly ingesting a compound known as ‘DMZ’ which does cause incomprehensibility as a potential side effect, eating mold as a child, probably some other stuff as well I’m forgetting). Broca’s aphasia can be caused by an infection in the brain, which means that the mold or DMZ are both very plausible causes of his aphasia—but I wouldn’t rule out other ideas like “withdrawal” or even just “the mounting pain of being misunderstood by everyone” as causes, given the author’s focus on communication and the lack thereof in IJ.
Also, this aphasia seems to affect Hal’s gestures when he talks, something that most certainly is not shared by those with Broca’s aphasia, at least according to what I know of it (which isn’t very much, I am NOT an expert). I suspect that this is more to keep his difficulties in line with a communication block than with any particular real-world condition. However, I would like to point out that something Hal shares with those who possess Broca’s aphasia is that he cannot type or, presumably, write coherently. So that’s another point in this theory’s favor!
Disclaimer:
I think it might be important to clarify, at this moment, that I am not trying to argue that the author intentionally wrote Hal to have Broca’s aphasia, or any form of aphasia at all. All I’m trying to do is find a reasonable real-world analogue for his condition, that way fans like myself can theorize about potential routes his life might take post-prologue.
Disclaimer The Second:
I should probably also note that the author of this book, David Foster Wallace, is not necessarily an author I would consider to be wholly admirable. This is because he (a white man) writes passages of his book in Black vernacular, and does not particularly seem to respect women as agents in their own right. (And don’t even get me started on his treatment of queer people.) I like significant portions of the story he wrote, but I’m also looking at other sections with a deeply critical eye.
After the Curtain Falls
Anyway, the question I couldn’t stop asking myself was this: what’s next for Hal?
Of course, we know the immediate future—he plays in a tennis tournament. But this doesn’t address the many other issues raised by his aphasia:
this condition of his seemed, at its onset (which we get to witness right at the very end of the book), to come with a sudden sense of panic regarding his marijuana addiction and his difficulty coping with life without it. However, by the time of his college interview, he seems to have settled back into his life somewhat—an amazing feat considering all of the stresses he’s been through between the end of the book and this prologue (among other things, war appears to have broken out??). Is this real?
He was previously an extremely intelligent and eloquent young man who memorized the Oxford English Dictionary at an early age, and he describes genuine frustration at not being able to properly express himself and his thoughts to others. Can anyone help him?
Hal’s difficulties inspire a strange sort of repulsion in others, which we see quite distressingly in his college interview, where one of the deans pins him to the floor and he’s forced to remain calm while this happens. Would it ever be possible for him to attend college, when people refuse to understand him?
Let’s address these in order.
Firstly, it’s quite hard to get a good read on Hal’s inner life, since he isn’t terribly prone to introspection himself. He seemed quite content with his life, and while that life might not have been perfect or even particularly pleasant to some, he was more or less accepted in society despite his slightly strange nature. However, as chaos begins to descend on Hal’s school and his withdrawal/the DMZ/whatever else sets in, Hal takes to lying on the floor without speaking and reflecting on whether he’d rather play tennis or get to enjoy marijuana again.
Given that Hal doesn’t mention his smoking habit at any point in the start of the book, I will take this as a sign that it wasn’t on his mind at the time—and also, since his tennis career is still going strong, that suggests that he’s been off the stuff for a while now. Good for him!
(Note: this does not mean that I disapprove of weed/THC use—just that I think Hal’s probably better off not living life for weed and nothing else!)
Whether or not he enjoys his current tennis career, though, is an entirely different question. Hal’s school administrators are clearly trying to get him into college at least partly on the basis of sports, and the college deans absolutely rave about his athletic skills…but Hal doesn’t really mention this in his speech. He doesn’t talk about enjoying intellectual pursuits in comparison to tennis—he just pleads with the deans to understand that he adores reading and philosophy and learning.
(I want to analyze Hal’s philosophical takes and what this says about him at some point, but that’s a different essay.)
What I’m gathering from this is that Hal values his education much more than his tennis career, regardless of what other people expect of him. I think this is pretty impressive for a young man who happens to be the product of an overachieving tennis-fanatic family. With this in mind, it seems that while he’s more stable internally than he was at the end of the book, I doubt that the people around him necessarily have his best interests in mind.
(Also, has nobody sent this kid to therapy yet for having to exhume his own father’s corpse in an effort to save the world? Hal? Hal, are you okay?)
Secondly. Can Hal be helped.
My answer is yes, but perhaps not in the way people think. Sign language is not an option, both because Hal clearly can’t communicate via gestures and because Broca’s aphasia is shown to affect sign language as much as the spoken word. Typing is also not going to be useful, per Hal’s own statement (as mentioned earlier):
“If I'd done you one [an essay] from the last year, it would look to you like some sort of infant's random stabs on a keyboard…” (Infinite Jest, Chapter 1)
However, there are treatments for Broca’s aphasia that could potentially apply to Hal, as well as another option that I haven’t read about, but I feel must be useful in this case.
Song therapy seems like an interesting choice for Hal—perhaps not the ideal one, but maybe useful in some cases. Singing words seems to help people with Broca’s aphasia speak a bit more fluently, and that also makes me wonder if Hal could sing little bits of already existing songs in an effort to convey things about his mood. Alternately, get this man a Walkman and have him skip through a mixtape to get to the song he wants! (…is the iPod plausibly real in the IJ universe…?)
My main choice for him, however—both in terms of usefulness and narrative significance—is an AAC device similar to the ones that some nonverbal autistic people (people with autism? It’s not clear which term is best) use. It might look a little different in this alternate, uh…2009? but something akin to a tablet with a large array of icons on it hooked up to a TTS voice could prove very helpful to Hal, I think! He’d need to have someone help him add new items to it when he wants to discuss new subjects (currently imagining him looking up Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in the O.E.D. and tapping it insistently), but I think that a few different screens/layouts for things like philosophy, literature, and history—plus a pocket dictionary, maybe—could really go a long way towards helping him communicate! I also find the concept of Hal reasserting his voice with a voice that isn’t his quite interesting and a bit powerful, too.
Thirdly. Will anyone listen to this new voice of Hal’s?
This answer is the least certain, but there’s still a certain amount of hope involved. (Not Bob Hope!) In Hal’s own life, there only seems to be one person who might even consider listening to him: his brother, Mario. Avril and Orin are far too caught up in their own troubles and traumas to listen, Michael Pemulis (poor kid) is goodness-knows-where (I like to believe, as one fanfic does, he’s recovering at Ennet House), and C.T. sure isn’t going to listen to him. In general, the adults at ETA are deeply troubled and unhelpful, and the students there are caught up in the rat race to success. The deans at various colleges don’t seem helpful either, if the ones at the University of Arizona are a representative sample.
But: we listened.
We listened for over one thousand pages and three hundred footnotes.
And although Infinite Jest is meant to be a distorted parody of our world, if there are people who can stand the weight of baring their soul to Ennet House; if people tune in to listen to Joelle Van Dyne for 60 Minutes +/- every night without fail; if there are people like that in this world, then…I think I can imagine someone in Infinite Jest who might be willing to hear what Hal Incandenza has to say.
…I know that’s super emotional and melodramatic, but hey, I’m typing this late at night—and besides, isn’t IJ all about the struggle of being uncomfortably, intensely earnest?
Conclusion:
Anyway, regardless of anyone’s feelings about that last part, I hope this insane rant about Hal Incandenza proves useful to someone? Or maybe just interesting? I know I was thinking about it extremely single-mindedly for at least a few days after reading, and I’ve been wanting to share it ever since then, so: here it is. If you read all of it, thank you so much—I really appreciate you taking the time to do that!
I promise to include more footnotes if I ever write the philosophy essay. This is a threat
How many video games are in your backlog right now?
Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.
Not many? I never finished Sonic Frontiers (Chaos Island destroyed my gamer dreams /joking), and someday I’d like to play SXSG…aside from that, I don’t know, maybe Ultrakill? If I can get over my hesitance regarding FPS games…
Is there a food from a game you would love to have in real life?
Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.
Hmmm…I’d love to try a slice of Beakseed Bread with some Alien Fruit Jam, both from Starbound. The jam gives you a 30% reduction in gravity, too, which isn’t quite moon gravity, but it’d be fun anyway!
What video game has the best opening scene or level?
Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.
I think I’m legally obliged to go with City Escape from Sonic Adventure 2 for this one. Rolling around at the speed of sound, got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow—!
Which game character felt like a genuine childhood friend?
Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.
I didn’t actually have any, funnily enough! If I can pick a game that feels like a childhood friend, though, it’d have to be Terraria. That was one of my first games ever…
