Here comes Napstablook. (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lookstabnap) wrote2002-04-10 12:22 pm
lookstabnap) wrote2002-04-10 12:22 pm
cr chart: that one guy
I believe most of you may not be familiar with just how long-winded I can be (and melodramatic, I make everything sound way too melodramatic). Now you will be! For your convenience, I've separated out one sentence from the following essay that sums everything up:
A lot of the reason this is so ungodly long is that I feel it best to go over the pre-canon and canon history to their relationship, since it was all so very offscreen. That calls for a lot of interpretation and headcanon, although I'm holding myself back from including close reading of canon quotes -- this is me actively trying to keep things short. I am sure that other people out there have very different views.
To start with... there's something a bit circumstantial about how Mettaton and Napstablook came together, you know. Other members of the family moved on one by one, and they were what was left. The guy who's written off finding a worthy body as a lost cause and the sack too sad to care about bettering their life. (Though I do regard Blooky as also feeling some genuine duty to the farm, which is apparently a feature freaking unique to them.) Neither of them seemed to really have anyone else. But it seems like there was a long stretch of time when it was just the two of them, and they definitely became close. Napstablook, I'm sure, was always a downer, but better in those days. Mettaton must have been a lot less happy, but he's a positive thinker and a denial artist. Perhaps he even thought to himself, sometime, that even if he'd never get to entertain the world, he could at least cheer one person up. Anyway they make pretty good foils to each other. The both of them caring about each other is beyond question.
(Sidenote: I really like how people talk about ghosts possessing things like it's a career move. Very cartoon-like. Other sidenote: I quietly like to headcanon that the dummy ghost in the RUINS is cousin to Napstablook and Mettaton, but the Mad Dummy is merely their cousin's cousin whom they don't really know. This is unlikely to ever come up and I don't know that anyone would appreciate me canonizing such a thing.)
Anyway... he shared his dreams with them, included them even. This is important because not only did Napstablook fully expect Mettaton to find a body and try to become corporeal eventually, they knew exactly why he would. And really, they're supportive of that, they want him to be happy. But including them in the fantasy and then ditching them as soon as it comes time to make it reality is pretty darn harsh. Napstablook's self-esteem being what it is, I think they would have internalized it, too. They figured he was right. He was better off without them, they would have only held him back, he couldn't do what makes him happy and also make them happy. They're not even good at being happy anyway, so that's fair. It's better that way.
...Which means that when he actually came back for them it was really confusing. It's wonderful, wonderful, but unbelievably terrifying. Mettaton coming back doesn't fit the worldview they'd gotten into, doesn't make sense, which means it can all come crashing back down just as arbitrarily. And if Blooky knows they never did anything to deserve such a good thing happening to them, and they can't quite understand why it did, then they can't possibly know how to avoid ruining everything again. Or maybe it'll just inevitably ruin itself as soon as their unusually good luck runs out. Who knows? TERRIFYING. It's actually kind of horrible, because I'm sure their general emotional state spiraled downwards after Mettaton left, but I feel like they were starting to get a bit better at coping and maybe lay the groundwork towards pulling out of it a little. Him coming back actually dredged some stuff up! Whoops.
Going back a bit, according to Me And Prince's FC Canon, when Mettaton left he just left, no fanfare, no discussion, not even a note. (Because the man is all about completely ignoring bad feelings-y things, and saying goodbye would require going out of his way to pay attention to something that would make him feel guilty, so nah.) One effect of this is that Napstablook never got any closure: when you don't know for sure that someone is really truly gone, when, no matter how much time passes, you don't know that they won't just show up tomorrow acting like nothing ever happened... it's very difficult to have a real reaction to that, and the hurt of it isn't going to get processed. Also according to MAPFCC, the two hadn't been reunited long at all before coming to FC, and they didn't really ever have... like, an emotional heart-to-heart. They didn't talk about it. It was "welp, sorry I did that, but I'm back now and everything's gonna be OK!" Mettaton may be shit at having feelings, but both parties are shit at handling feelings. So basically there's STILL no closure. Hence the dredging, there is a whole lot of unaddressed garbage that's now just clogging up the space between them.
(Additional sidenote: I'm actually the Mettaton apologist here. It's a difficult, complicated situation. You shouldn't have to be tied down to a life that you're not happy with, unable to be yourself, by expectations and tradition, and you shouldn't have to carry the responsibility for someone else's happiness either. He just, y'know, could've handled it way better.)
So the way I've been looking at it, Blooky started out repressing the fuck out of all that fear, tuning it down to sort of a numb dread. Because they don't believe that they even deserve that fear -- they don't get to have an opinion on what they would like to happen next -- and they're so scared that anything they do could ruin it, even feeling it is too dangerous. Expressing a feeling could certainly be enough, surely, so trying not to have any is simply the responsible thing to do. Obviously, a chunk of their development in FC has been about getting in touch with their hurt and fear and all that jazz. That's clearly what their Shadow was on about. The other side of that equation is figuring out what to actually do with those feelings once they're there and need an outlet, which...
...The other main component in developing this relationship, specifically, has been trying to get past the walls of baggage and expectations and past associations and such, and see Mettaton for the person he is. You know, just some guy. He's changed a lot since the old days, and in fact Blooky has too, in smaller, subtler, more tragic ways. Everything's changed. So expecting to just pick things up again the way they used to be doesn't work. Putting him on a pedestal, as the actual fan they are of the actual celebrity he is, doesn't work either, cause Mettaton's super damn flawed and Blooky's nonetheless too close to not see that. Anyway, like I said I make everything sound really melodramatic, especially since I talk so much, but really this is just about a pair of dorks hanging out with some common interests. Their different brands of dorkiness counterbalance and complement each other, it's very nice.
Oh, by the way, it's worth mentioning at some point that I think the jamjar situation is inherently somewhat stressful for Napstablook. A quiet background level of stress that they're gradually adapting to but they're not very adaptable so it takes a while. I was originally playing them heading into an overall slump a while after arriving, but Shadow stuff was a big shakeup, and since then they've sort of ended up getting strung from one weird situation to the next, and slowly getting used to the brave new stress world from that direction. As far as this relates to the ghostcousins relationship, it mainly underscores how different everything is: not only are both of them different, every little bit of circumstance is different from anything a pair of silly little farmghosts could have ever dreamed of. Blooky doesn't know how to handle anything anymore and that gets tiring.
What they're working on, anyway, is the idea that they can in fact have a reason for being in Mettaton's life again. Specifically it's that he's a moron in certain ways and maybe they can help mitigate that... you know, chime in when he's being particularly dumb or insensitive. That's a good thing to do. To go with that, they need to better develop their trust that they can say "hey, a thing you did made me/others feel bad" and he'll be okay with that (he will btw). At some point, they need to figure out that him abandoning them the way he did was actually maybe not the right thing to do after all, in fact possibly could be called a mistake, in fact it may simply be part of that moronitude. Eventually it would also be nice if they could have a little faith that their value as a person doesn't hinge on what they can do for Mettaton but like baby steps here, yikes.
I assume that the Mettaton counterpart to this essay is just ":)?"
Mettaton may be shit at having feelings, but both parties are shit at handling feelings.There. You can stop reading now.
A lot of the reason this is so ungodly long is that I feel it best to go over the pre-canon and canon history to their relationship, since it was all so very offscreen. That calls for a lot of interpretation and headcanon, although I'm holding myself back from including close reading of canon quotes -- this is me actively trying to keep things short. I am sure that other people out there have very different views.
To start with... there's something a bit circumstantial about how Mettaton and Napstablook came together, you know. Other members of the family moved on one by one, and they were what was left. The guy who's written off finding a worthy body as a lost cause and the sack too sad to care about bettering their life. (Though I do regard Blooky as also feeling some genuine duty to the farm, which is apparently a feature freaking unique to them.) Neither of them seemed to really have anyone else. But it seems like there was a long stretch of time when it was just the two of them, and they definitely became close. Napstablook, I'm sure, was always a downer, but better in those days. Mettaton must have been a lot less happy, but he's a positive thinker and a denial artist. Perhaps he even thought to himself, sometime, that even if he'd never get to entertain the world, he could at least cheer one person up. Anyway they make pretty good foils to each other. The both of them caring about each other is beyond question.
(Sidenote: I really like how people talk about ghosts possessing things like it's a career move. Very cartoon-like. Other sidenote: I quietly like to headcanon that the dummy ghost in the RUINS is cousin to Napstablook and Mettaton, but the Mad Dummy is merely their cousin's cousin whom they don't really know. This is unlikely to ever come up and I don't know that anyone would appreciate me canonizing such a thing.)
Anyway... he shared his dreams with them, included them even. This is important because not only did Napstablook fully expect Mettaton to find a body and try to become corporeal eventually, they knew exactly why he would. And really, they're supportive of that, they want him to be happy. But including them in the fantasy and then ditching them as soon as it comes time to make it reality is pretty darn harsh. Napstablook's self-esteem being what it is, I think they would have internalized it, too. They figured he was right. He was better off without them, they would have only held him back, he couldn't do what makes him happy and also make them happy. They're not even good at being happy anyway, so that's fair. It's better that way.
...Which means that when he actually came back for them it was really confusing. It's wonderful, wonderful, but unbelievably terrifying. Mettaton coming back doesn't fit the worldview they'd gotten into, doesn't make sense, which means it can all come crashing back down just as arbitrarily. And if Blooky knows they never did anything to deserve such a good thing happening to them, and they can't quite understand why it did, then they can't possibly know how to avoid ruining everything again. Or maybe it'll just inevitably ruin itself as soon as their unusually good luck runs out. Who knows? TERRIFYING. It's actually kind of horrible, because I'm sure their general emotional state spiraled downwards after Mettaton left, but I feel like they were starting to get a bit better at coping and maybe lay the groundwork towards pulling out of it a little. Him coming back actually dredged some stuff up! Whoops.
Going back a bit, according to Me And Prince's FC Canon, when Mettaton left he just left, no fanfare, no discussion, not even a note. (Because the man is all about completely ignoring bad feelings-y things, and saying goodbye would require going out of his way to pay attention to something that would make him feel guilty, so nah.) One effect of this is that Napstablook never got any closure: when you don't know for sure that someone is really truly gone, when, no matter how much time passes, you don't know that they won't just show up tomorrow acting like nothing ever happened... it's very difficult to have a real reaction to that, and the hurt of it isn't going to get processed. Also according to MAPFCC, the two hadn't been reunited long at all before coming to FC, and they didn't really ever have... like, an emotional heart-to-heart. They didn't talk about it. It was "welp, sorry I did that, but I'm back now and everything's gonna be OK!" Mettaton may be shit at having feelings, but both parties are shit at handling feelings. So basically there's STILL no closure. Hence the dredging, there is a whole lot of unaddressed garbage that's now just clogging up the space between them.
(Additional sidenote: I'm actually the Mettaton apologist here. It's a difficult, complicated situation. You shouldn't have to be tied down to a life that you're not happy with, unable to be yourself, by expectations and tradition, and you shouldn't have to carry the responsibility for someone else's happiness either. He just, y'know, could've handled it way better.)
So the way I've been looking at it, Blooky started out repressing the fuck out of all that fear, tuning it down to sort of a numb dread. Because they don't believe that they even deserve that fear -- they don't get to have an opinion on what they would like to happen next -- and they're so scared that anything they do could ruin it, even feeling it is too dangerous. Expressing a feeling could certainly be enough, surely, so trying not to have any is simply the responsible thing to do. Obviously, a chunk of their development in FC has been about getting in touch with their hurt and fear and all that jazz. That's clearly what their Shadow was on about. The other side of that equation is figuring out what to actually do with those feelings once they're there and need an outlet, which...
...The other main component in developing this relationship, specifically, has been trying to get past the walls of baggage and expectations and past associations and such, and see Mettaton for the person he is. You know, just some guy. He's changed a lot since the old days, and in fact Blooky has too, in smaller, subtler, more tragic ways. Everything's changed. So expecting to just pick things up again the way they used to be doesn't work. Putting him on a pedestal, as the actual fan they are of the actual celebrity he is, doesn't work either, cause Mettaton's super damn flawed and Blooky's nonetheless too close to not see that. Anyway, like I said I make everything sound really melodramatic, especially since I talk so much, but really this is just about a pair of dorks hanging out with some common interests. Their different brands of dorkiness counterbalance and complement each other, it's very nice.
Oh, by the way, it's worth mentioning at some point that I think the jamjar situation is inherently somewhat stressful for Napstablook. A quiet background level of stress that they're gradually adapting to but they're not very adaptable so it takes a while. I was originally playing them heading into an overall slump a while after arriving, but Shadow stuff was a big shakeup, and since then they've sort of ended up getting strung from one weird situation to the next, and slowly getting used to the brave new stress world from that direction. As far as this relates to the ghostcousins relationship, it mainly underscores how different everything is: not only are both of them different, every little bit of circumstance is different from anything a pair of silly little farmghosts could have ever dreamed of. Blooky doesn't know how to handle anything anymore and that gets tiring.
What they're working on, anyway, is the idea that they can in fact have a reason for being in Mettaton's life again. Specifically it's that he's a moron in certain ways and maybe they can help mitigate that... you know, chime in when he's being particularly dumb or insensitive. That's a good thing to do. To go with that, they need to better develop their trust that they can say "hey, a thing you did made me/others feel bad" and he'll be okay with that (he will btw). At some point, they need to figure out that him abandoning them the way he did was actually maybe not the right thing to do after all, in fact possibly could be called a mistake, in fact it may simply be part of that moronitude. Eventually it would also be nice if they could have a little faith that their value as a person doesn't hinge on what they can do for Mettaton but like baby steps here, yikes.
I assume that the Mettaton counterpart to this essay is just ":)?"