Honestly something that people need to understand about Monika is that, though her behavior does make her a yandere, she has zero interest in harming or even really controlling the player IRL.
Like, she was only able to hurt the other girls by completely dissociating the idea of their humanity and indirectly worsening their preexisting issues to a crisis point, and then she severely regrets it afterward. And once she puts the protagonist in the Space Classroom, she doesn't try to cajole or force you into talking to her (besides some emotional manipulation). She's constructed a delusion where you and her have a mutual relationship, and that's the framework she's trying to preserve for her sanity; that requires her to be attentive to your wants and treat you as a person. She's absolutely done violence against the MC at this point, and they're imprisoned, but she fits that and everything else leading up to act 3 into removing obstacles in the digital environment so you and her can have a real connection. She knows she's not trapping you.
In fact, something that I think is very important to understanding the power dynamic at play in act 3 is what happens when you do log off. One of her topics is basically "hey, I don't want to raise a fuss over nothing, but every time you log off, I die, and my soul goes into the screaming pain vortex for a timeless eternity can you try to do it a little less?" and then if you log off four times anyway, she...gives in, tells you it's not important, and says she'll cope silently with you logging off however often you need to.
You the player are not the one trapped here. You the player are not the one in danger. And Monika does not want to reverse that circumstance to put you in her place. She just wants out. And this twisted, endless staring session is the closest she feels she can get to that.
It's important to distinguish between "this media has elements in it that I like" and "this media is fundamentally good." Just because it has some elements you like, does not mean it's fundamentally good.
I finally got around to watching my adventures with Superman and weirdly enough, Amanda Waller got me thinking about Eva Stratt from Project Hail Mary. This is gonna be a long one.
Waller, like most characters in her archetype and unlike Stratt, is unequivocally villainous. Her willingness to make sacrifices for her perceived greater good is (usually) not the issue. Her moral absolutism, the people she works for, and the debatable nature of the problems she is attempting to solve are.
Stratt is very different. She is beholden to no one, really not even a set of ideals beyond make sure mankind doesn’t cease to be. If a world government or legal body disagrees, tough shit, do what she says or we all die. That right there is the crux of it. The problem she is solving is visible, unavoidable, and demonstrably worth every sacrifice she has to make to solve it.
I don’t know and can’t be bothered to look up if this specific “ends justify the means” sort of archetype has a name, but you get what I mean. So many of them are painted as villains because, obviously, reality and the future are very murky and near impossible to see from every angle. Extreme sacrifices can only be considered acceptable in extreme circumstances, which is A. Subjective and B. Time consuming to justify. Stratt circumvents both those problems, as astrophage and its consequences can be quickly, objectively shown to be dire. Arguments can and will be made as to if there were better alternatives of course. In most cases within the archetype, yes, there was, assuming the problem was even a problem at all. Astrophage was. Malicious, no, dangerous, unquestionably so.
Stratt fascinates me so much because obviously there is debate, horror, and condemnation for her actions, but (at least in the movie) she clearly was in some way allowed to get away with them. Even if she is taken to The Hague and shot the day after they fix the sun, she walked free for decades. She knows it too. There isn’t the usual self righteousness in the role she plays. What she is doing is horrific, possibly unforgivable, and she is aware of that every step of the way. Is she doing it so no one else has to or because she believes no one else can? Why not both?
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (text of 1834), a good poem on its own but very interesting to read it in the context of Frankenstein
Specifically the creature as the Albatross, both in the sense that after witnessing the albatross in the poem harm befalls the sailors and that albatrosses symbolically represent a psychological or social burden that feels like a curse
This chapter functions as a profound study in the architecture of isolation. By physically exiling the protagonist from the high table of his own home, the narrative shifts Jon Snow from a participant in the royal pageant to its most critical observer. This marginalization orchestrates a crucial collision between two outcasts—the bastard and the dwarf—establishing a thematic alliance that will ultimately reshape the geopolitical landscape of Westeros.
The Synopsis
The Vantage Point of the Exile: Four hours into the welcoming feast, fourteen-year-old Jon Snow sits among the younger squires, having been excluded from the royal dais by Lady Catelyn. He finds solace in the summer wine and the freedom of being ignored.
The Royal Pageant: Jon critically observes the royal procession: Cersei’s chilling beauty, Robert’s tragic physical decay (a sweating, drunken disappointment), and the insipid or disdainful natures of the royal children.
The True King's Visage: Jon notes that Ser Jaime Lannister—clad in crimson and gold, radiating danger and martial prowess—looks exactly as a king should, while Tyrion Lannister waddles behind, stunted and physically grotesque with mismatched eyes.
Ghost's Dominance: Ghost quietly eats a chicken under the table. When a much larger black mongrel challenges the direwolf pup, Ghost silently bares his fangs, forcing the larger dog to retreat without a sound.
The Observer's Eye: Benjen Stark joins Jon, noting the boy's sharp observational skills. Jon has correctly read the tension in the room: Ned is courteous but tense, the King is gluttonous and flushed, and the Queen is furious over the crypt visit.
The Plea for the Watch: Jon begs his uncle to take him to the Wall. Benjen warns him of the harsh reality, noting that war is not the romanticized game of Daeron the Young Dragon. He emphasizes the immense sacrifice of giving up family and women.
The Trigger: Benjen casually suggests Jon wait until he has "fathered a few bastards" before joining the Watch. The word acts as a psychological trigger; Jon vehemently spits out that he will never father a bastard, bursts into hot tears, and flees the silent hall.
The Collision of Outcasts: In the quiet, empty yard, Jon encounters Tyrion Lannister sitting on a ledge. Unexpectedly, Tyrion performs a highly athletic vault off the ledge and lands gracefully.
Armor of the Marginalized: Tyrion calms a defensive Ghost and offers Jon a fundamental psychological doctrine: "Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you."
The Shadow of the King: When Jon questions Tyrion's understanding of bastardy, Tyrion replies that all dwarfs are bastards in their fathers' eyes. As Tyrion walks away, the light from the hall casts his shadow across the yard, making the stunted man appear "tall as a king."
Narrative Analysis
The Crucible of the Observer
Jon's physical placement at the feast is a masterstroke of spatial storytelling. Banished to the lower benches, he is stripped of his familial identity but granted the power of unvarnished sight. His hyper-vigilance is a direct trauma response to his illegitimacy, honing his ability to strip away the glamour of the royal court. He accurately diagnoses the terminal decay of Robert's reign and the lethal, solar threat of Jaime Lannister. This establishes Jon's fundamental archetype: the Watcher on the Wall begins as the Watcher in the Hall.
The Saturnian Armor
The philosophical exchange between Jon and Tyrion operates on a deeply Saturnian frequency. Both characters are defined by their inherent restrictions—illegitimacy and physical deformity. Tyrion's advice to forge one’s deepest vulnerability into impenetrable armor is an alchemical transmutation of shame into structural strength. They are mirrors of marginalization; where Jon internalizes his trauma (resulting in his explosive, tearful reaction to Benjen's jest), Tyrion externalizes it, weaponizing his intellect and wit against the world that rejects him.
The Familiar and the Unconscious Will
Ghost’s silent victory over the larger mongrel is a direct projection of Jon’s latent psychological landscape. Just as the direwolf requires no noise to assert absolute dominance, Jon possesses a quiet, ancient power inherited from the blood of the First Men. Ghost acts as Jon’s instinctual familiar, reflecting a suppressed ferocity that will eventually bleed into Jon's conscious actions as he steps into his destiny.
The Tapestry Unravels : Text vs. Screen
The Tumbling Dwarf: In the literary text, Tyrion's introduction is highly physical and acrobatic; he spins in a tight ball and vaults backward off the ledge. The visual adaptation entirely removes these gymnastics, opting for a grounded, realistic portrayal of Peter Dinklage’s character that relies solely on his intellectual and verbal gravity.
The Depth of the Wound: The text allows Jon to be a deeply volatile, vulnerable fourteen-year-old. Benjen's casual remark about fathering bastards provokes a visceral, public breakdown, ending in hot tears and a clumsy flight from the hall. The screen adaptation significantly mutes this reaction, presenting an older, far more stoic Jon Snow who internalizes the slight rather than breaking down openly.
The Geography of Isolation: The literary narrative explicitly details the rigid seating hierarchy of the feast, making Lady Stark's deliberate exclusion of Jon a pronounced, geographical insult. The adaptation diffuses this tension slightly by framing his isolation as a more casual exile in the outer courtyard, moving the pivotal Tyrion interaction outside the immediate shadow of the Great Hall.
This thought comes curtesy of my sibling. The common interpretation of the red haze glitch in act 2 is that it's the point of view of Sayori's death, and that the noises accompanying it are her throat being crushed (though not her spine, remember?).
But my sibling's first thought watching that scene was that it was the sound of maggots chewing, presumably close to the eardrum to be so deafening. And that's stuck with me. The idea that Sayori's body is lingering between iterations of the universe, caught in a broken moment of time where death and its aftermath are one, a pocket reality plugged into the cycles of decay we know the game maintains through seeing the rot take Yuri's corpse.
It's just so very existentially horrible, the idea of that kind of shadow existence. Even if Sayori is very conclusively dead post deletion, even that her body goes through that debasement in the VM's uncertain creation of a functional course of normalcy. It's haunting.
And now that idea has spread to you as well. You're welcome.
