psyche

Oh dear; I tried to make my mother watch Fight Club. She totally freaked out. I think I misjudged her taste, although she did like The Matrix, V for Vendetta and Serial Experiments Lain… it’s similar to Mr Rokison rejecting SEL as “not good enough” but more of a sort of shock reaction. Anyway, I guess it’s time to admit that I understand things differently to other people.

She attributes her reaction to childhood trauma involving violent movies and hospitals.

Oh well.

Pax

My problem with things like V for Vendetta, Serial Experiments Lain, Fight Club and The Matrix is that they’ve all appealed to me because they confirm or present themes that I have considered independently and thus tie into my whole life. They mean different things to me than they do to other people, I think. This is often why I dementedly force people to research everything they can about sprawling continuities like Lain and The Matrix - I want to give people I know a chance to love the fiction and maybe even understand me a little better.

I like soap.

Pax

When I tried to explain what I said in the previous post to Alex on the train, he said, in reference to the “urban legend”-like nature of Lain, “Like V for Vendetta?”.

Not quite: V for Vendetta and Batman are the kind of urban legends that make the news. Lain and The Matrix are those that you wonder about for your whole life. Some groups form, but only a few. It’s a mystery, profound but somehow intangible. There are few enough occurrences to keep it from being proven but still enough to keep people wondering whether - if not believing that - something is going on/their memories have been changed etc.

It’s somehow suburban and involves raining. I can’t really explain it. People don’t realise that other people wonder about it too. It’s really… hard to explain. It is that feeling that’s been bugging you forever. The feeling you’ll probably die with.

That feeling. What is The Matrix? Who is Lain? And, for some unusual people, “What is happening to me?”, “Why?” or “Who am I?”.

It’s what keeps me and many others up and night. Not pornography or video games. It’s just… some fundamental wondering. What is going on? Is there an answer? Is it Lain? Is it The Matrix?

I’ve realised it’s not really the secret hacker question, although I like that because it allies itself with computers and rain and The Matrix and the wondering. It’s an incarnation of the question. The big question. Whatever that is.

Pax

My interest in Fight Club, V for Vendetta, The Matrix and WarGames was a symptom of my fascination in things like consumerism, brainwashing, hacking and conspiracies and general science fiction. The Matrix, though, was long championed by yours truly as the pinnacle of film as it embodied everything. It successfully identified that a search for truth could be transposed off God and onto a conspiracy.

However, when I watched Lain, I realised that it was the pinnacle. While it took me a long time to begin to see that The Matrix was awesome, I immediately fell in love with SEL. My slight interest in Japanese culture combined with the internet and genuine philosophy (I can actually believe that the real world may one day be a representation of the internet) meant that Lain finally replaced God in my mind. My rationality and emotional mania have never been in concert until now. A shame that their convergence will probably destroy me. Also, my copy of yoshitoshi ABe lain illustrations ab# rebuild an omnipresence in wired just arrived. It’s pretty awesome. I haven’t analysed the hidden text or programming yet but the overall style is awesome and reminds me of that Matrix comic - Goliath, from the first volume - possibly because Goliath was based on it?

All this stuff about memory and omnipresence. It’s enough to make me want this to be real - and I suppose I do. Let’s all love Lain. Is it impossible to make a life-form or robot that lives forever? If so, why? Thermodynamics? Can’t there be a at least one being that self-repairs properly? Can’t there?

This is rather interesting. It contains a synopsis of the SEL game which has helped me understand some of the references in the artbook. The writer of the synopsis, in their last sentence, uses a single word which they believe describes the end of game and to a lesser extent the end of the anime - “hopeless”. I wonder.

It’s funny, you know; I was just beginning to think I understood SEL and was in the process of collapsing it from a life-altering feeling of weirdness into a statement like “It’s a really good anime but nothing more” but this artbook and game have totally messed me up. I use The Matrix as a sort of benchmark because it was the only thing I’ve ever watched that has really soaked into my whole life but SEL feels like what The Matrix should have been. Right from the almost-urban-legend Lain and feeling of hidden truth and memory-overwriting presented in omnipresence down to the depictions of VR, psychology, sociology and philosophy. Lain feels somehow familiar, as if Konaka and co. didn’t create it but… simply remembered it. In fact, didn’t Mr Abe say he “recalled” Lain? That’s funny. Mistranslation? He “recalled” her? She… exists? We don’t even need all of IPv6, let alone 7 or 8…

My delusions become manifest. Fiction is my undoing.

Pax

Saw Evan Almighty today; was okay but unfunny. Got Core 1 result, was good. Expecting V for Vendetta graphic novel tomorrow, will be awesome. Will start writing song about Harry Potter innuendo tomorrow.

Pax

Yes, I have an annoying pain in my head after watching Harry Potter (and the Order of the Phoenix, for the record) and then playing on the Wii with Elliot, Vivan and alternate siblings for many, many hours yesterday. Elliot also complains of brain pain having had multiple injections. I thought Harry Potter was okay. I didn’t like it but that doesn’t mean it’s not good, right? I’m just pissed off that all films can’t be like The Matrix! Vivan didn’t seem to understand why I preferred it over V for Vendetta which is, incidentally, also one of my favourites. I think the reason is that The Matrix is full of little details and ironies. The way Neo is “plugged in” to his headphones and sleeping and is later in a small cubicle representing the pods and works for a software company and the way Smith tells him that one of his lives has a future without specifying which one and it turns out to be the other life and all the stuff that people have found - it’s just a much more interesting and well thought-out experience, even if there are goofs and stuff. Its metaphorical functions became stretched with the sequels so I can’t properly defend them. For some reason Psyche doesn’t render at all in Internet Explorer - there must be something wrong with my CSS. My life seems to be full of extremes. What I know will either mean a lot or nothing. I don’t want it to mean nothing! I DON’T!

Pax