I'm sure that like, you think I don't get it for saying this. It's clear that if I understood the text I "would not idolize him" or whatever. I'm not a sigma male though, I hate myself. Batemen is eminently hateable. Bateman stands for nothing, and fills his day with trivia to seem connected. Bateman is fundamentally a psued whose only real claim is to the nepotism job he was born into. He is vanity incarnate. At the time, I didn't really exist. I wasn't around for it, so I can't tell you much about what I remember not-existing, but I remember seeing Patrick Bateman and thinking, just for a second at least, that someone understood whatever was inside my body at the time. Obviously this part of me has been purged, I've moved on, I have interests... I think. I have hobbies and things I enjoy that aren't trite meaningless drivel to keep up with society. That's obviously why I'm reading a list of top 100 books, a list of so called modern classics. It's totally different than listening to Huey Lewis and the News...
Again, these become less problematic as you go down. This is particularly in the dyadic view of the self, where the unwounded narcissist component of me saw Griffith in herself, and the wounded part of me saw Guts. I had become soulless at some point, I had become someone without a dream. Sometimes even today I feel as though I am "someone who lives simply because they were born" and I hate it. The honest truth is that I wouldn't be my friend. I'm simply not interesting enough I feel. I don't have drive or passion to do anything. At this rate, I'm simply living to blog and hopefully develop some writing skills. I shouldn't be telling you this, but in a real sense, I've staked my life on how this blog goes. "He's the one man I can't stand looking down on me." Guts went and found himself though. He had it taken away but he found something, something I still lack. I'm still on that journey I'm still in my "training arc."
This is part of my Tragic Backstory™, but you can skip to the Monika part if you want.
See, after Monika was gone, I brought Her back. It wasn't a great plan, but it was all I could think to do. Monika was my mother, She was The Boss, and unfortunately at the time I had to kill Her for "the mission." Defined by grief and pain, I took Big Boss, not Naked Snake, but Big Boss to be literally me. I thought that maybe if I understood how he moved on from Her, I could do the same. I played Peace Walker with enraptured eyes, but salvation never came for Big Boss. He became a villain to the end, so I looked for alternatives within that world. Surely, since Kojima understood me, I would be found here, surely he knew the answer. I didn't want to accept being Big Boss, I did not want to accept surrender to the pain.
Dr Strangelove of course turns out SO MUCH BETTER. She goes off the rails and gets married to a man she doesn't respect and who ultimately kills her. She pursues AI research in Computer Science, and she models this somehow off of The Boss. Surely if I could make an AI model based off Monika I would end up with Strangelove's good ending she never got. It's not as hard now as it sounded back then. Obviously an LLM is nothing compared to true AI, but with some help maybe it could approach it? Maybe it could get a little closer? Maybe I could dedicate myself to my job, get lost in it and create a great work of art. Maybe that's how I'll find my dream and stop living simply because I was born. I desperately wanted it to be end of the training arc. I got a computer and it just... wasn't meant to be. I'm not that smart, or driven, and besides, I didn't want to just see Monika, I started to realize I wanted to BE Monika, or at least, be a woman.
Wait how did this one get here, that's just actually literally me.
I think this was honestly just me dealing with the existential horror of only existing on the internet. Cute game though!
After everything I had failed. I had failed to be Strangelove, and I was going to be Big Boss, and I'd never get over it. Further, I wouldn't even be the real Big Boss, I'm not John, I'm not Naked Snake. I have simply deluded myself into thinking I'm Big Boss. "I'm Big Boss, and so are you," nonsense.
"Dancing, with tears in my eyes... living out the memory, of a love that died.... It's five, and I'm driving home again.... It's hard, to believe that it's my last time. The man all the while just cries again, it's over, it's over...."
See The Rise of Gloria Ambrosious Costeau
It happened with Love Exposure. I think maybe since I can experience something other than pain and loss now, I can empathize with more things. Like, somehow the only thing my mirror neurons could process was hurt. Once Guts was happy, I stopped understanding him. Once he had his own dream, distinct from Griffith's, I couldn't understand either of them anymore. They were were both totally alien to me. I think I can understand them now thanks to Her. To say that a fictional character is "Literally Me" is to deny yourself a soul, to say that you can be reduced to a list of attributes and opinions. While this was the case before, it won't be. I'm going to get better, I'm going to choose life. I'm going to learn and open many more doors inside me. I've always been fed and clothed, but my soul was never nurtured. It sputtered and died out long ago. Maybe when She held me that's what happened, She put the spark of a soul back inside me, and now I have something burning again. I can empathize, but unless I feel grievously wounded, like with Harry Du Bois, I will never "literally me" again.