breaking news, nerds: ya girl suma just figured something out
Alright, folks. we’ve all noticed that Virgil was off in the last video. I mean, “spectacular failure” is a far freaking cry from “no one hates you”, am I right? And I’ve heard various speculations as to why, from some new tension between Ro and Virge simmering up to that not actually having been Virgil at all.
However, I think I have my own theory as to why V was being so intentionally cruel – and yes, I do say intentionally – and this is why:
He wasn’t just being caustic, or out of character, or spiteful for no good reason. Virgil was playing Devil’s Advocate.
Okay, so for those who don’t already know, “playing Devil’s Advocate” is when someone argues for the side they don’t agree with, generally in order to prove some sort of point. When thought of the video in that sense, it quickly becomes apparent that Virgil didn’t believe the strongly worded anti-phases arguments he seemed to be pushing. He was just being a jerk so the others would come to the conclusion that he knew all along (that is, that phases are not things that should be dismissed, but rather important life milestones that should be acknowledged and looked back on without derision) on their own terms.
Okay, so sure, maybe he was playing DA in order to accomplish that. But why? Why didn’t he just straight-up tell the others “Hey, maybe you should rethink this ideology of yours”?
Well, he tried. At the beginning of the video, we can see the others dismissing Virgil when he talks about the time during which he used to be Anxiety – an important part of his life that the others seem to be (intentionally or not) dismissing. So, he has to think outside the box to get the others to see things his way.
Alright, fine, so his playing Devil’s Advocate was necessary for the others to learn the lesson of the video. But why the hell did he have to be so mean about it? I mean, when even Patton speaks up about your remarks, you know you’ve gone too far.
Well, the answer to this one isn’t quite as simple. See, Virgil already knew (at the point when he made the screen go dark) that the others didn’t find him intimidating – and that, to Anxiety, is a bad thing. If he can’t invoke the necessary fear in order to do his job, then he’s basically of as much use to Thomas as he would be if he were to simply duck out again. However, being scary isn’t just important to Anxiety. It’s also important to Virgil. See, fear has been a key part of V’s identity for a long time, now – and, arguably, still is. It’s the entire reason he asked Patton if they could establish different boundaries in the previous vid – to maintain “his edge”. And if denying or showing derision towards phases is bad, doing the same to key parts of someone’s current identity is a lot worse. Okay, so where am I going with this? Well, all this is to say that Virgil is feeling more than a bit hurt and pissed off at the way the others are treating him, and he knows that they won’t listen to Virgil on this one. But what part of him does he know that they will listen to?
You guessed it folks: Mr Nice Guy ducked out and now Anxiety is in the house.
If we assume that Virgil consciously reverted to his old persona (or façade, depending on how you want to look at it) over the course of the video, it’s pretty easy to see where a lot of his cruel comments stemmed from. Now, I’m not trying to excuse the stuff he said, especially to Roman. That wasn’t okay. However, I think that Virgil made a choice. Play the villain again now to give the group a common enemy – and to show them why their old way of thinking was harmful. And if you have to hurt anyone now, well, it’s better to do so in the short term than to let this mindset bleed into the long run, where it could potentially be more harmful.
Virgil is smart. He heard what the others were saying, and realized that he couldn’t be of the most help to the group as he was within the span of a few minutes. So he adjusted his actions to ones that the group would respond the most favorably to.
I’m not sure if what V did was morally the right thing to do. But I definitely think that this video was not as cut and dry as I believed it to be at first.
tl;dr Virgil reverted back to Anxiety in order to prove his point about phases not being things to be looked down upon, because nobody would have listened to him otherwise.
