Oooh that's a nice catch re: BL and being perceived! (And thank you for the response!) Have you perchance read a short comic Morrison made (it's on their blog here I think, and called "Hometown") about the place they're from and how it and their memory thereof influenced Pnat? It's something I've been chewing on after the reveal of Xayview+TGU, this idea of a place or a thing feeding your imagination but becoming wild and strange in your memory (and this extending to childhood itself, a thing every adult's gone through but which becomes more symbolic and abstract with time). Something about actuality feeding possibility itself a la panels vs. gutters (another banger post of yours btw) and the Self being defined by the contrast with the Other. Thanks 4 coming to my ted talk and g'day
Sorry for answering this so late i was waiting to have some free time to answer it but i forgot 😭😭 [Cont to this post ]
And yes !! this one. I think what TGU is has a lot to do with it, or at least has changed from it's original idea, the same way pnat shifted it's way of percieving certain aspects pre and post when they moved out from there.
It's also interesting how the more time TGU passes in solitude, the more wild and strange the town seems to become, since it's not being built upon it's wishes or memories but from info it retrieves from others.
The town is on itself a memory, and like a memory, it can be changed and modified over time as long as you keep some core elements. I think with this idea you can look back to how a lot of adults seem to view it (or May View it, with the first iteration we saw already having a double meaning to the posibilities of the town) with a different light.
Spender has an idealized version of the town in his mind, a green natural paradise that doesn't tie back to how it actually was, nor is
The same way he had an idealized version of his childhood in said town, and wanted Isabel to relive that fake memory in a place that didn't existed.
Spender is an exception to the general rule but his idealization may probably comes from him being the one who's TGU wish "granted", the town became what he wished it was, the actuality feed the posibility
Peter would be the more general example, He moved out, the town became wild in his mind, an idealized memory more and more polished with time until he wished that for his kids too, like many parents from small towns do.
Then we have people like Baxter or Paige, who never moved out, and even if altered, their memories seem stuck in that desert isolated town where nothing moved nor changed, and those who stayed where conemned to stagnation.
Deep down it's the same town no matter how much it's upper layer changes or it's memory is altered, but depending on who remembers it there's a completely different view on what it is and COULD be, with those from outside having an easier time keeping that idealization
With TGU it's specially interesting, it can't have a vision on the town when it is the town itself, it has to feed off other's perception (the part that's always kept intact in the changes, the View), it wishes to be seen but those outside can only see the superficial layer ridden by nostalgia OR what it used to be
How can it define itself with the other when it's self can "be anything"? and if it can be anything how can anyone know what it could want to be? It having a child like mind is so interesting too, citing Scott McCloud like i did in the gutter post (thxs !!!)
Childrens have a hard time communicating, they're supposed to grow out of it and mature, but what if it couldn't and was eternally stuck, unable to express itself? what if their attempts at communicating were limited as it need a perception to do it that may not line up with what it actually wants?
TGU is such an interesting concept for what it represents, it's the town and it's memory and the nostalgia around it, but also it's nothing and may have never existed depending on who sees it. Is TGU the comic itself and it lives in our memory of it? and it's the version we have of it how it would actually want to be thought of as? idk. Aslo thxs!! I love this kind of asks they allow me to ramble about this kind of stuff lol
