#chnt analysis

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I was relistening to file 12, The Love of Mother today, and I was reminded of just how good the centipede metaphor is and what they represent as well as soooo many other really good details added in Sydney’s flashback monologue

This quote is absolutely insane. So, let’s start analyzing. We’re going into this with the understanding that the centipedes pretty clearly represent Sydney. The centipedes are “kept only in mockery,” which implies that the people who pinned them to wall (Lucille here but in the larger metaphor probably referring more so to Jeididiah) had no respect for them. They’re just bugs after all, so what they would want after death is never considered, they can’t possibly have any thoughts on it, so the humans decide for them, and they decide in a way that only brings joy to them, not to the centipedes, the centipedes have no choice. When they say that many wish to believe that it is an extension of their existence, when it is actually a suppression of their idea, that’s referring to how Jedidiah views his resurrection of Sydney. He sees it as extending Sydney’s life, he thinks that he is doing a good deed for him, but in reality, he’s completely suppressing Sydney’s wants and desires. Sydney did not ask to be brought back and tethered to a camp, that was all Jedidiah wishes. Sydney is never asked what he desires because he’s just a marginalized dead boy, his opinions matter no more than the opinions of a bug despite how much those who pinned him to the wall insist that they’re doing it for his own good. Yet, he still says that it makes him feel safe. This is what is familiar to him, he’s kept in this never ending cycle, and he may not be happy, but at least he feels safe and protected, even if it’s just an illusion that comes at the cost of his autonomy. Then he says that “there were no centipedes in that kitchen. Only the lack of them.” Which is clearly important because he then repeats “there were not centipedes in that kitchen,” again to end off the paragraph. If the centipede is Sydney, then this implies that Sydney does not exist, at least not in the way that he did before his death. They brought him back, but only in a way that is palatable to them. He is only allowed to exist in a glass case with no freedom where he can’t hurt anyone.

Also, I think it’s really interesting to note that just before that, it is mentioned that the wall paper in Lucille’s house is yellow, which could be referencing the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is about a woman with post parting depression who is confined to a room covered in yellow wallpaper as treatment who goes mad from being stuck in there, and the story is a critique of medical malpractice and how it is connected to the patriarchy. Which, the similarities to Sydney’s story are pretty obvious. He’s not experiencing post partum depression obviously, but he is mentally ill, and while Sydney isn’t a woman, I think that the narrative makes it clear that his status as a feminine trans man does not exempt him from misogyny. He’s looked at as weak and fragile, and other characters take control of his life and confine him to places. He’s not confined to a room, but he is confined to the camp, and in this instance when he’s at Lucile’s house, he is in a room with yellow wallpaper. Just the like the main character from They Yellow Wallpaper, Sydney lacks autonomy and is being driven mad as everyone around him refuses to take him serious land believes that they know what is best for him. Yes, the mentioning of the yellow wallpaper in the episode is brief, but I don’t think it is accidental, and they must have known what they were doing when they included it.

Also absolutely love the line where he says that Lucille’s house was “cozy and safe, like a prison.” It conveys soooo much about how Sydney reluctantly takes comfort in being trapped, because it is all he knows. Because, technically, yes prisons are safe from the outside world, but inside, well, I think we know how messed up the prison system is, and Sydney is essentially treated like a prisoner, completely lacking his autonomy, and not a person with feelings to be respected, nothing more than a centipede, but one must remember that centipedes do have venom, and one day, he will bite back

[purepathologist]

does anyone want to think about this with me. something about these 3 lines basically summarizing s2; sydney first coming to adam as an alternative to the love from jedidiah he's lacking. and when he just takes it becomes increasingly clear that adam is not a means of any love at all

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What’s really interesting to me about Sydney’s character is how despite being so fed up with not being taken seriously, he still falls into the role that Jedidiah plays in his life whenever given the chance. Maybe to feel control? Or maybe because it’s all he’s ever known. But it’s expressly pointed out in the episode where he takes the silver fox into the nurses office. The fox wants to leave, but Sydney doesn’t realize this and tries to protect it, not listening to it, just like how Jedidiah doesn’t listen to him. It’s not just when it’s specifically pointed out like in that episode though, it’s also in things like the way he brushes off Rowan’s visions later on. Rowan will be clearly concerned about something and Sydney will just be like oh he’s building up a tolerance to those anti dark visions meds. Which is usually true, but the boy who cried wolf was right eventually soooo. It’s also interesting because in file 20 the Trees of Boys, Jedidiah getting super mad at Juniper for not showing up for Rowan shows a clear parallel between Jedidiah and Sydney’s relationship and Juniper and Rowan’s relationship. Which would make Juniper the parallel to Jedidiah here, and Rowan the parallel to Sydney. And yet still, Sydney brushes Rowan off, so in a sense he’s brushing himself off, not taking himself seriously, taking the way the others have neglected him and redirecting it back out into the world. Idk, do you see what I’m getting at here? I just think it’s interesting. I wonder if we’ll see more of this idea explored later on.

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Rowan and Sydney are often used as parallel characters, and their romantic relationships are also often compared side by side. It’s almost as if Sydney and Jedidiah are a dark mirror of sorts of Rowan and Juniper. This is further emphasized in the most recent episode.

When Sydney asks Rowan why he chose Juniper of all people. Rowan’s immediate response is that he makes him laugh, and he goes on to explain how Juniper is nice to him but doesn’t treat him like “that” which is in italics in the transcript but I can’t figure out how to replicate that on tumblr. Regardless, his emphasis on the word “that” implies a deeper meaning that he cannot sum up into words properly, so he just leaves it as “that.” He even says that Sydney was treating him like “that” just now. He describes the way that Juniper interacts with him as Juniper not making a big deal out of his episodes and just giving him what he needs and making jokes until he laughs to make it easier. The whole time he’s talking, there’s an unspoken word underlying what he’s saying: normal.

That’s the vibe I got from that sequence anyway, Rowan likes Juniper because Juniper doesn’t baby him or coddle him or treat him like a nuisance like many of the other staff members do. He treats him like he would treat anyone else and accepts Rowan’s episodes as a part of daily life that they can find ways to deal with. When you have some kind of chronic condition, at least for me, you start getting used to it after a while and it sucks but other people pitying you or feeling bad about it just feels really weird. (That’s my perspective on it anyway from someone with Tourettes). I doubt that Rowan wants people to see him as the guy who has panic attacks about the sky all of the time.

Which, actually is really interesting from a narrative perspective because his first major role in the plot is introduced to us via him having prophecies of doom about the sky. The first thing that we as the listeners learn about this character is what essentially is his disability. And we’re encouraged to find it funny as well considering the way it’s described to us, with Sydney giving us dramatic details about his dramatic gazing into the sky and subsequent running around camp and screaming about the oncoming apocalypse. Especially since we as the listeners know that obviously the world wasn’t going to end that early in the series, we had more episodes to listen to after all. But after Rowan gets his own speaking roles in the series where he gets to use his voice for himself, we see that he’s more than just the skittish prophetic weatherman. In fact, when he isn’t in the midst of a vision, he’s one of the more chill and down to earth characters. Which is a wild statement but I mean, look at the other people around him. Next to someone like Juniper he looks downright normal.

And once again we return to Juniper and thus Rowaniper, and thus its comparison to Sydney and Jedidiah’s relationship. While Rowan is happy to be treated normally by Juniper, Sydney gets anything but that from Jedidiah. Jedidiah is constantly worried about Sydney and freaks out about his well being all of the time. He makes big deals out of every little thing that Sydney does in fear that something will happen to him.

On top of that, Jedidiah is both his caretaker and his partner. While in some situations I’m sure that people have found ways to make that sort of situation work, it’s very difficult, and Sydney and Jedidiah are a bit of a mess for it. Jedidiah treats Sydney exactly the way that Rowan means by “that.” It seems like Sydney feels pitied in his relationship, and Jedidiah is constantly sacrificing everything for his wellbeing as well as being consumed by guilt because Sydney’s condition is in part his fault. But Sydney doesn’t want to be treated like “that.” Sydney wants a partner on his own level. He wants Jedidiah to see him as a person and not a broken doll to be fixed.

I firmly believe that disabled and mentally ill people can be loved and have fulfilling relationships, and especially since while conditions can improve, they often won’t ever be fully healed and go away completely. So people shouldn’t feel like they have to live their lives without romantic love if they don’t want to while they wait for some perfect cure that will never come. However, someone’s romantic relationship also can’t be their entire support system and it seems that’s what Jedidiah views himself as in relation to Sydney. He’s said that he’s all that Sydney has. And while Sydney seems to often feel this way as well, it’s not true. As Rowan said in this episode, he, and many of the other people at camp will be there to support him. Sydney is not alone. And if Sydney and Jedidiah could work on creating a more stable power balance in their relationship that isn’t exploited, maybe the two of them could work out.

Of course, with the roles that Sydney and Jedidiah are shoved in, there’s not going to be a world wi th out some power imbalance between them considering that Sydney is disabled while Jedidiah is well there are certainly headcanons for Jedidiah because there’s no way that man is neurotypical, but either way, he has much lower support needs than Sydney, so he’s always going to have some level of power over him. Especially considering that he’s the one who brought him back to life, and it’s going to be hard to get past something like that. Honestly, I have no idea if it’s possible for them to be healthy. But hey, if Rowan and Juniper can do it, then Sydney and Jedidiah can certainly try.

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So, you know how when Sydney goes missing, Jedidiah, Joshua, and Yvonne all try to read his notes but they all look different to each of them? Well, I think that this could be a reflection of either the way that they see Sydney or the way that Sydney sees them, or both. For Yvonne, the notes are all scrambled, and barely legible. They’re chaotic. This could be Sydney viewing Yvonne as chaotic and unreadable, as she is a bit of a loose canon and is seen making fun of Sydney over the loud speaker when she gets to use it in his absence. It could also be her viewing Sydney as a bit crazy since she specifically tends to poke fun at how much he vents about his mental state over the loud speaker. So, the notes may reflect the craziness that she sees in him. As for Joshua, he believes that the paper is blank. One would think that Joshua’s paper may be full of insults considering how much Sydney dislikes him and constantly gripes at him over the loud speaker, but there isn’t. It’s just nothing. This could mean that Sydney doesn’t know Joshua as well as he seems to think that he does. Sydney always seems convinced that Joshua is out to get him, but from what we’ve seen of Joshua, he can be a bit of a nuisance, but he does genuinely seem to care about Sydney, and is even shown to be upset on his behalf or be a bit upset when Yvonne makes fun of him over the loud speaker. So, the blank notes could be showing that Sydney does not understand Joshua. If it is Joshua’s view of Sydney, it could mean something similar as despite Joshua seemingly wanting to be able to get along with Sydney, Sydney wants nothing to do with him and pushes him away so that Joshua cannot know Sydney as well as he may like to. For Jedidiah, the notes are perfectly legible. Although , he certainly reads them a lot more dryly than Sydney does. The legible notes may show that Sydney understands Jedidiah more than any other person at the camp, and Jedidiah understands Sydney more than any other person at the camp. Their lives are intertwined for better or for worse and so they can understand each other. Of course, their relationship is not without its miscommunications, as despite being able to read Sydney’s writing, he does not perform it in the same way that Sydney would, and spends little effort making it fun for the kids. This is because Jedidiah does not care nearly as much as Sydney about making the kids happy. Jedidiah’s sole focus is Sydney. So, he can understand what his writing says, but not what it truly means. He understands the words that Sydney says, but he does not understand Sydney’s true desires. So, despite being so entangled with each other, so close to understanding the other, they miscommunicate, and fall over and over again due to the misinterpretation of each other’s words because they come from such different lives that shape their perspectives in such drastically different ways.

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The new episode does a really good job at using the established use of food as a metaphor for love within the series. Of course Sydney is currently starved and hasn’t eaten in days at this point because he’s coming to the end of his rope and feels as though no one cares for him and anyone who has, he’s attempted to drive away. Adam, who represents his unhealthy coping mechanisms tells him to eat, but there is nothing on the plate that he can stomach. The self harm that Adam causes Sydney to engage in promises a feeling of love in some sense of the word, but the promises are empty, Sydney can’t eat it. It’s also extremely interesting how the man at the table who is Adam but Sydney mentions looks very similar to Jedidiah since both of them abuse their power over Sydney keep trying to feed him things that he literally cannot eat. They offer him love, but they do not accommodate for Sydney’s specific type of love. Jedidiah wants to pretend as though everything is fine and ignore Sydney’s disabilities and love him the same as he would anyone else, without shifting his life to accommodate for him. He keeps working at his project, convinced that eventually Sydney will be able to accept the love that he gives him without him having to figure out how to make it edible to Sydney. It’s very similar in concept to Joshua’s speech the previous episode where he talked about the life he and Sydney could have where he goes out of his way to tell Sydney all of the ways that he would accommodate him, and include his disabilities in their life together. Details that Jedidiah leaves out of his plans for the future, still convinced that he can fix Sydney. The symbolism of Adam eating Sydney directly shows how he is draining Sydney of any love that he has left to give. He promises to help him, but then in the process he drains him of any energy he had to love due to how strenuous his tasks with Adam are. Adam also seems to greatly enjoy eating pretty much everything around him, sucking up all of the love people could have given into the void. Hiding it away behind their self destruction. When he tells Sydney to write his fortune on the last cookie, it is an offering of a crumb of autonomy. However, it is a lie as Sydney cannot eat anything but buttered bread in the real world. It’s unclear how much of this sequence is dreams and reality but it can be assumed that part is a dream since he can’t eat fortune cookies, but if it was real life then it probably didn’t sit in Sydney’s stomach well. Sydney mentions that he should be above hunger at this point, above love. When Adam makes him eat the centipede (the centipede has been a symbol of Sydney’s loss of autonomy) it is him giving into his own loss of autonomy, but at the hands of Adam instead of Jedidiah, because at least that is his choice, a crumb of choice, and that feels good.

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Thinking about the parallels between how no one believed Rowan and so his co counselor was destroyed, and no one believed Sydney and so he was almost sacrificed on the pyre by the elephant man. Something something commentary on society’s lack of trust in “crazy” people, Sydney’s psychosis and Rowan’s sky visions and his subsequent panic. Also they’re both the resident trans men, I don’t know if that just so happens to be the case or if a point is being made about them also not being taken seriously due to that. Poor Rowan is now digging into the ground as a club to flee because of you, and Sydney now has a new questionable man messing with him. Narrative, leave these men alone! And characters, believe them!!!

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It’s super interesting to me that Rowan specifically predicts a flood since that has a lot of Christian symbolism which the show has been shown to use especially because of Jedidiah’s upbringing. The flood could be referencing Noah’s arc which is when people were bad so God decided to wipe out everyone except for Noah and he told Noah to go get one of each animal and put them on a boat so that all species could survive. It’s a literal and symbolic fresh start for the world. Especially after how corrupted their world has become due to Sydney’s resurrection. So, I wonder if after the storm, despite the devastation, there will be some good to their fresh start to be had.