Just wanna point out that this was a collaborative art and musical project between Xan Griffin and Peter Mohrbacher. You can listen to Xan Griffin’s full Zodiac album on his youtube page. It’s really good music.
According to Jim, the Great War was brought about by widespread hormonal change in the Austro-Germanic people of the 1880’s, which made them more aggressive and warlike.
I did finally finish the second season of Legion and … hoo boy
I was wondering where they were going the mental illness theme, and uh, they definitely went somewhere with it, that’s for sure! I kind of wish they hadn’t, now!
On the upside, the last few episodes were emotionally involving, had moments that felt real and raw, and made a (last-minute) attempt to move the show beyond mere stylish randomness. On the downside, they were a complete mess that felt like two or more distinct storylines jammed together inconsistently and executed too fast, and – more egregiously – contained the most weirdly, brazenly incoherent and unreal portrayal of mental illness I’ve seen in mainstream “serious” fiction in a long time.
Honestly, I’m less angry about it than just plain confused how this thing got into the world in the first place. Like, do the writers actually expect the audience to share their strange (and factually inaccurate) assumptions? Are they knowingly straying from reality in favor of a stereotypical cartoon notion of “insanity,” and if so, how (and why) do they expect this to sync up with all the parts of the show that appear to be about real (albeit stylized) things happening to real humans? (I am a bit angry that the social justiceflavored critiques of the ending have taken this stuff completely in stride, but I guess that’s par for the course)
Specifically, the ending involves a long, elaborate set of conflations/confusions between:
1. Common, if awful, personality flaws that people can have without being mentally ill (and many do)
2. Psychopathy
3. Schizophrenia
For every pair of these (1+2, 2+3, 3+1), there are one or more moments where the two are implied to be the same thing, or to be connected by some deep link too obvious to spell out, or the like. More on this under a cut because spoilers
By your description, this storyline sounds like something written by a person who was victimized by a (1) and then stewed about it for long time afterwards. Maybe someone who was in a relationship with a person with (1)-type problems who treated them badly.
While ruminating about it afterwards, they found it satisfying to imagine that the person who hurt them was also (2) and (3), that they were a truly twisted monster. (And thus also that there’s no doubt about who was in the right in their conflict.)
Then the person wants to share their thoughts about what a 1+2+3-monster the other person was. So they include such a character in a storyline of a script they’re writing. Then they fantasize about how the other person will watch the show and recognize that the insane, evil character is modeled after them, and be crushed as they realize what a bad person they are.
I doubt it’s that vindictive, as the show spent a lot of time (nearly 2 seasons over 2 years) treating the character as a sympathetic protagonist before this final “twist.” But it would make sense for it to be driven by bad experiences with David’s brand of (1), since the depiction of that is so convincing at the same time everything else pointedly isn’t.
Having read some interviews with Noah Hawley, I get the sense he really is very confused about how mental illness works IRL – in this interview he seems to think it can be treated by “love,” but in a deterministic way, so that the moment the relationship goes bad, you relapse. So he’s able to write a real and convincing story about a relationship going bad due to (1), but then he thinks that can cause (2) and (3), which he thinks are the same, and perhaps even the same as (1) in some sense. There’s probably a more charitable reading of all this, but I’m honestly not sure what it is.
What I’m really curious about, though, is whether Hawley realizes how the (fascinating) final scene actually looked. More spoilers
I did finally finish the second season of Legion and … hoo boy
I was wondering where they were going the mental illness theme, and uh, they definitely went somewhere with it, that’s for sure! I kind of wish they hadn’t, now!
On the upside, the last few episodes were emotionally involving, had moments that felt real and raw, and made a (last-minute) attempt to move the show beyond mere stylish randomness. On the downside, they were a complete mess that felt like two or more distinct storylines jammed together inconsistently and executed too fast, and – more egregiously – contained the most weirdly, brazenly incoherent and unreal portrayal of mental illness I’ve seen in mainstream “serious” fiction in a long time.
Honestly, I’m less angry about it than just plain confused how this thing got into the world in the first place. Like, do the writers actually expect the audience to share their strange (and factually inaccurate) assumptions? Are they knowingly straying from reality in favor of a stereotypical cartoon notion of “insanity,” and if so, how (and why) do they expect this to sync up with all the parts of the show that appear to be about real (albeit stylized) things happening to real humans? (I am a bit angry that the social justiceflavored critiques of the ending have taken this stuff completely in stride, but I guess that’s par for the course)
Specifically, the ending involves a long, elaborate set of conflations/confusions between:
1. Common, if awful, personality flaws that people can have without being mentally ill (and many do)
2. Psychopathy
3. Schizophrenia
For every pair of these (1+2, 2+3, 3+1), there are one or more moments where the two are implied to be the same thing, or to be connected by some deep link too obvious to spell out, or the like. More on this under a cut because spoilers
There are a number of good recent asks I haven’t had the time/energy to respond to yet — wanted to make a post so you guys don’t think they got lost or I ignore my asks or whatever
If I write a post like this, and decide to make a meme to illustrate it, as I often do, I just go to Google Images and type in lumbersexual. And do you know what? The algorithms know exactly what I am asking for, and give me hundreds of images to select from. I then take it to memedad.com, make it my own image, and post it.
