This is why you don't let me verbally essay at Cielo for four days GOD.
Oh look, finally I essay!
State of the Kuhn. OR, “why our grown-up shounen retard fails at life part 1”: Layers, masking and personality.
SO because of HORRIBLY DEPRESSING THREADS where Kuhn emo’d around a bit, one might be asking, “Dude, are you high? Why’s Kuhn a few notches away from blaring the linkin park and crying in his bed so hard that he smears his eyeliner?”
Firstly, he’s not quite that close yet, secondly he doesn’t have that bad a taste in music and/or makeup.
But to get what’s going on in our little retard’s head one has to get a few things about him first, from most obvious to possibly less obvious:
1. Kuhn doesn’t lie outright most of the time, but he beats around the bush a whole lot and leaves some information out of the conversation on a fairly regular basis.
2. Kuhn fakes being happier then he is also a whole lot. He can also do this in the middle of a fairly depressing conversation.
3. Kuhn until recently had a few good coping mechanisms that would keep him a fully-functioning human being AND in good spirits. These said mechanisms have been stripped away one by one as time’s gone on.
4. Kuhn is more dependent on his friends then people in cannon notice. And lastly…
5. In the deepest part of his mind, Kuhn really doesn’t think that much of himself.
“Now wait!” I can hear you say, “Where the fuck are you getting that?” (or alternatively, “no shit Sherlock”) but first things first! Let’s go to the magical chart of:
Like an onion, but with more fail
Kuhn’s basic reactions/emotions, how do I even start on this? Well, let’s check our handy chart here:
______________________________________________________________________
Everyday conversations/strangers (“surface” conversation, kept very light and generally very friendly. Very little chance of remembering the person afterwards unless female.)
______________________________________________________________________
More comfortable acquaintances (More likely to have a serious conversation, still will break into surface conversation if things get too bad though. Probably will remember the person)
______________________________________________________________________
Good friends/people he trusts (will often have a serious conversation with rarely going into putting on a false smile, but will do so for things like trying to steer the conversation away from things that upset the person or himself, will always remember the person)
______________________________________________________________________
Closest friends/people he trusts utterly (complete and total honesty, dropping of any sort of act about him being happy, willing to divulge information that drags up painful things for him. If there were people in this group, he would most certainly remember them)
______________________________________________________________________
Note there are no people in that last group. Admittedly I think few people have friends that painfully close anyway, but the gap between those last two categories is huge. If you know the G.U. system of affection level it would be a color beyond pink and virtually impossible to get to.
So what does that mean for most of the people Kuhn talks to? In short, the vast majority of people are in that first category, be it people he’s just met, or people that are nice, but don’t ping him, like Mikage or the Collector Manikin. The second category has people Like Argilla, Gale, Saku and Bo, Serph, Bat (strangely enough. I’ll get to him), people who he can relate to in some way.
The third category is much harder to get into, as it takes a lot for him to really let people get that close, people who have topped him in a good way, have morals and talk with him often, are horribly broken or he feels the need to protect, exc exc. Sera, Heat, Haseo, Pi, Cielo, Umeda, and Jinana are here. Which isn’t that bad for someone who has issues with letting people get too close.
Now why is Bat there? He’s sure as hell not a friend. Well no, he isn’t but he’s also what could be considered the nasty parts that Kuhn doesn’t want to exist but does in varying amounts. The only way he could and can understand Bat’s motives is to dig that part of him up and look at it. So he willingly or not admits more to the psycho then he’d to normal people. He also goes and finds something to remind himself that the world isn’t a horrible and ugly place after each conversation; it’s really his only way to stay sane.
Yes yes, I know I’m not citing references to the cannon here, but this is because I’m lazy and feel that it’s pretty obvious already. If you want to see them though, just ask and I’ll drag them up.
“You can get depressed later”
So knowing all this, how does the closest thing he has to a support group treat him? Not very well is the answer. What we see in cannon is Pi often ordering him around, verbally abusing him sometimes, and physically abusing him rarely. Haseo snarks at everybody, so that’s not a surprise. How about his other close friends? Umeda likes to abuse and then make up for the insult too quickly for Kuhn to react right, Cielo’s there to talk but it’s often not very deep, Sera and Jinana are nice, but often bring up things that hurt so he tries to avoid conversation like that, and Heat… Heat is often hard to understand, gruff, and very likely to rub salt in the wound if Kuhn ever came to him for help.
In short, Kuhn both in cannon and in camp has no support group really other then Umeda, and that can be dicey sometimes. It’s a good thing he has those defense mechanisms otherwise he’d be a wreck.
What are his defense mechanisms? Well the first is his constant flirting and harem of girls. Online he had a bunch of women willing to flirt, give him attention, make him feel wanted, and take his mind off of things to name a few. Now this wasn’t one-sided and even if he didn’t really love them, he did often get a good, hard crush on them and genuinely cared about them to boot.
The second is his friendly demeanor. If things get bad he can just smile and act like an idiot or take a few lumps and act cute about it. If the subject needs to get changed or gets too close he just finds something else to divert the person’s attention to. This also works in the way that the said abuse that he often gets from his friends gets quickly internalized and tamped down. It’s not like it doesn’t hurt, but he figures if he buries it quickly enough he can either try to forget about it or hope he can put it off until he can be alone. The more serious the thing he would have to deal with, the harder it gets shoved into a place where he doesn’t need to handle it.
The last one is also tied into the second. If one wants to be a critical person, Kuhn lies all the damn time. They’re half-truths, and are often associated with “soft language”. He doesn’t speak in absolutes, other then when he’s talking about his morals, and even then he might use words like “kind of”, “not exactly”, “a little”, “sometimes”, “mostly”, you get the picture. A lot of it is omission as well, like saying to someone that he’s an administrator without saying just how little power he has. There’s also the complete lies like agreeing with someone assumption even if they have it completely wrong, to get out of looking like he wasn’t about to throw his life away.
So what happens when you place him in a situation where he has no girls to fall back on, make him tell the truth, and them by extension make it impossible for him to agree and redirect the conversation to something lighter because that also would be lying in a way?
I think you can guess where this is starting to lead.
“She doesn't have time for some lowly worker monkey like me”
So why does Kuhn end up gravitating towards the type of people who aren’t the type who’d be likely to help him in a way he needed, and moreover would likely compound the issue? It all leads back to Minase, in my opinion.
That’s not to say that I think she’s to blame for this or as fandom likes to think about women, a skank ho. God if anything she’s made of pure fucking awesome without becoming a he-man in a woman’s body stereotype. She did trigger it all however, but if one looks at the evidence it’s likely that things were set up a long time ago.
Once upon a time, in the days of Liminality, there was a boy named Tomonari, who had a gay gay friend in a heterosexual way named Makino. Now Makino sort of fanboyed Tomonari, and was most likely also dragged into whatever the other guy wanted to do because his best buddy was kind of an idiot puppy like that. Now before we go on, look at that scene, does this really sound like someone who’s been told to pay attention to others and be respectful and polite? Nope! Hell one of the big things that Tomonari even admits himself back then is that he’s acting childish. For a point of reference, most people who’ve seen Liminality claim that Baby!Kuhn looks and acts around… oh say 14, not his real age of 17.
But back to our story! One day after kissing Minase without asking (poor impulse control much hon?) He gets himself and nearly Minase coma’d. This shouldn’t surprise anyone since it’s .hack. What is the shocker is that Minase either from the fact that she likes the guy or guilt, ends up going through a lot to save her boyfriend. He wakes up, yay! Makino still doesn’t end up with Minase after all. U-um, yay? EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL AND PUPPIES AND AWESOME.
And then Minase dumps his ass for being too immature. Think about that, your girlfriend for whatever reason went through a whole load of shit, and then dumps you within the year for being a jerk.
This is where Kuhn broke. I honestly believe up until then he managed not to get whacked upside the head by life saying, “grow the fuck up”, and also remember that lack-of-permission kiss I mentioned? He doesn’t really apologize sincerely; as a matter of fact he’s pulling the “cute” act on her and then thinks it’s awesome when he gets off scott free. So it’s pretty likely that he never had to deal with responsibility for his actions much until that point.
And Minase tells him that he was being immature. Not only does this say he was being an idiot, but also it’s his damn fault that the girlfriend who’d do more then oh say, any girlfriend one could think of for a guy she just started going out with was dumping him. This is bound to have an effect on someone. First loves are painful when they end, they hurt even more when it comes with an added insult like that.
So about there is when I think he started blaming not just that relationship ending on him, but every single one after that. Just look at the emails, if anything it’s him sad about those sorts of things, he’s never angry at the girl, always talks about them fondly. There’s no blame about who ended it first. He’s by now completely taken to heart the idea that he’s at fault for it.
He also uses self-depreciating phrases when referring to himself, indicating that it’s not just that he thinks he fails at relationships, but that deep down he’s not really worth that much as a person. He looks at his life and sees a bunch of mistakes and a handful of successes. He’s just glad that there’s people that like him still around, because frankly the thought of being as lonely as he was when Minase left him is the worst thing he can imagine. It’s bad enough if the people he’s dating leave him, his friends leaving him is a point he never wants to get to. And hey, if those said friends take it out of his hide when they think he messes up, at least it means they’d rather expend the energy on him instead of giving up an leaving right? And knowing them, they were probably right when they said he fucked up, he’d guess.
He is attracted to those type of people not only because he can relate to them, but also because they treat him the way he thinks he deserves to be treated.
Can take a bit of a beating
This is clearly not healthy.
It’s also a cycle. He’s attracted to people who end up doing things that hurt him and he shoves it down, leading to him holding other things in because he feels that he can’t talk to his friends about then without having the same reaction, all this often either leading to either him letting it out in a way that’s pretty fucking melodramatic, or doing something stupid and possibly self destructive to boot. After which he gets told to suck it up or gets whacked for doing said stupid thing. And he shoves that problem plus the other part down again. He really needs someone to catch this pattern and help him deal with things in a way that isn’t so horribly bad for him, and tell him that yes, he is worth something and that he does matter. But right now and for the foreseeable future both in and out of camp it’s not likely to happen. And one day he’s going to break again, quite possibly worse then seven years ago, and I have no idea whenever that’s going to be.
Now thankfully, there is a small release valve on that little pressure cooker. Taking walks, fighting, being reminded that people aren’t bad all the time, gaming, flirting, and in general happy things help take his mind off of his problems, and as a bonus despite all that dysfunction underneath he is a happy guy.
Just he really needs to be reminded of it. In retrospect it’s halfway an example of his skill keeping his emotions in check and halfway a miracle not only that he berserked just recently, but that he has the greatest control over his avatar.
State of the Kuhn. OR, “why our grown-up shounen retard fails at life part 1”: Layers, masking and personality.
SO because of HORRIBLY DEPRESSING THREADS where Kuhn emo’d around a bit, one might be asking, “Dude, are you high? Why’s Kuhn a few notches away from blaring the linkin park and crying in his bed so hard that he smears his eyeliner?”
Firstly, he’s not quite that close yet, secondly he doesn’t have that bad a taste in music and/or makeup.
But to get what’s going on in our little retard’s head one has to get a few things about him first, from most obvious to possibly less obvious:
1. Kuhn doesn’t lie outright most of the time, but he beats around the bush a whole lot and leaves some information out of the conversation on a fairly regular basis.
2. Kuhn fakes being happier then he is also a whole lot. He can also do this in the middle of a fairly depressing conversation.
3. Kuhn until recently had a few good coping mechanisms that would keep him a fully-functioning human being AND in good spirits. These said mechanisms have been stripped away one by one as time’s gone on.
4. Kuhn is more dependent on his friends then people in cannon notice. And lastly…
5. In the deepest part of his mind, Kuhn really doesn’t think that much of himself.
“Now wait!” I can hear you say, “Where the fuck are you getting that?” (or alternatively, “no shit Sherlock”) but first things first! Let’s go to the magical chart of:
Like an onion, but with more fail
Kuhn’s basic reactions/emotions, how do I even start on this? Well, let’s check our handy chart here:
______________________________________________________________________
Everyday conversations/strangers (“surface” conversation, kept very light and generally very friendly. Very little chance of remembering the person afterwards unless female.)
______________________________________________________________________
More comfortable acquaintances (More likely to have a serious conversation, still will break into surface conversation if things get too bad though. Probably will remember the person)
______________________________________________________________________
Good friends/people he trusts (will often have a serious conversation with rarely going into putting on a false smile, but will do so for things like trying to steer the conversation away from things that upset the person or himself, will always remember the person)
______________________________________________________________________
Closest friends/people he trusts utterly (complete and total honesty, dropping of any sort of act about him being happy, willing to divulge information that drags up painful things for him. If there were people in this group, he would most certainly remember them)
______________________________________________________________________
Note there are no people in that last group. Admittedly I think few people have friends that painfully close anyway, but the gap between those last two categories is huge. If you know the G.U. system of affection level it would be a color beyond pink and virtually impossible to get to.
So what does that mean for most of the people Kuhn talks to? In short, the vast majority of people are in that first category, be it people he’s just met, or people that are nice, but don’t ping him, like Mikage or the Collector Manikin. The second category has people Like Argilla, Gale, Saku and Bo, Serph, Bat (strangely enough. I’ll get to him), people who he can relate to in some way.
The third category is much harder to get into, as it takes a lot for him to really let people get that close, people who have topped him in a good way, have morals and talk with him often, are horribly broken or he feels the need to protect, exc exc. Sera, Heat, Haseo, Pi, Cielo, Umeda, and Jinana are here. Which isn’t that bad for someone who has issues with letting people get too close.
Now why is Bat there? He’s sure as hell not a friend. Well no, he isn’t but he’s also what could be considered the nasty parts that Kuhn doesn’t want to exist but does in varying amounts. The only way he could and can understand Bat’s motives is to dig that part of him up and look at it. So he willingly or not admits more to the psycho then he’d to normal people. He also goes and finds something to remind himself that the world isn’t a horrible and ugly place after each conversation; it’s really his only way to stay sane.
Yes yes, I know I’m not citing references to the cannon here, but this is because I’m lazy and feel that it’s pretty obvious already. If you want to see them though, just ask and I’ll drag them up.
“You can get depressed later”
So knowing all this, how does the closest thing he has to a support group treat him? Not very well is the answer. What we see in cannon is Pi often ordering him around, verbally abusing him sometimes, and physically abusing him rarely. Haseo snarks at everybody, so that’s not a surprise. How about his other close friends? Umeda likes to abuse and then make up for the insult too quickly for Kuhn to react right, Cielo’s there to talk but it’s often not very deep, Sera and Jinana are nice, but often bring up things that hurt so he tries to avoid conversation like that, and Heat… Heat is often hard to understand, gruff, and very likely to rub salt in the wound if Kuhn ever came to him for help.
In short, Kuhn both in cannon and in camp has no support group really other then Umeda, and that can be dicey sometimes. It’s a good thing he has those defense mechanisms otherwise he’d be a wreck.
What are his defense mechanisms? Well the first is his constant flirting and harem of girls. Online he had a bunch of women willing to flirt, give him attention, make him feel wanted, and take his mind off of things to name a few. Now this wasn’t one-sided and even if he didn’t really love them, he did often get a good, hard crush on them and genuinely cared about them to boot.
The second is his friendly demeanor. If things get bad he can just smile and act like an idiot or take a few lumps and act cute about it. If the subject needs to get changed or gets too close he just finds something else to divert the person’s attention to. This also works in the way that the said abuse that he often gets from his friends gets quickly internalized and tamped down. It’s not like it doesn’t hurt, but he figures if he buries it quickly enough he can either try to forget about it or hope he can put it off until he can be alone. The more serious the thing he would have to deal with, the harder it gets shoved into a place where he doesn’t need to handle it.
The last one is also tied into the second. If one wants to be a critical person, Kuhn lies all the damn time. They’re half-truths, and are often associated with “soft language”. He doesn’t speak in absolutes, other then when he’s talking about his morals, and even then he might use words like “kind of”, “not exactly”, “a little”, “sometimes”, “mostly”, you get the picture. A lot of it is omission as well, like saying to someone that he’s an administrator without saying just how little power he has. There’s also the complete lies like agreeing with someone assumption even if they have it completely wrong, to get out of looking like he wasn’t about to throw his life away.
So what happens when you place him in a situation where he has no girls to fall back on, make him tell the truth, and them by extension make it impossible for him to agree and redirect the conversation to something lighter because that also would be lying in a way?
I think you can guess where this is starting to lead.
“She doesn't have time for some lowly worker monkey like me”
So why does Kuhn end up gravitating towards the type of people who aren’t the type who’d be likely to help him in a way he needed, and moreover would likely compound the issue? It all leads back to Minase, in my opinion.
That’s not to say that I think she’s to blame for this or as fandom likes to think about women, a skank ho. God if anything she’s made of pure fucking awesome without becoming a he-man in a woman’s body stereotype. She did trigger it all however, but if one looks at the evidence it’s likely that things were set up a long time ago.
Once upon a time, in the days of Liminality, there was a boy named Tomonari, who had a gay gay friend in a heterosexual way named Makino. Now Makino sort of fanboyed Tomonari, and was most likely also dragged into whatever the other guy wanted to do because his best buddy was kind of an idiot puppy like that. Now before we go on, look at that scene, does this really sound like someone who’s been told to pay attention to others and be respectful and polite? Nope! Hell one of the big things that Tomonari even admits himself back then is that he’s acting childish. For a point of reference, most people who’ve seen Liminality claim that Baby!Kuhn looks and acts around… oh say 14, not his real age of 17.
But back to our story! One day after kissing Minase without asking (poor impulse control much hon?) He gets himself and nearly Minase coma’d. This shouldn’t surprise anyone since it’s .hack. What is the shocker is that Minase either from the fact that she likes the guy or guilt, ends up going through a lot to save her boyfriend. He wakes up, yay! Makino still doesn’t end up with Minase after all. U-um, yay? EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL AND PUPPIES AND AWESOME.
And then Minase dumps his ass for being too immature. Think about that, your girlfriend for whatever reason went through a whole load of shit, and then dumps you within the year for being a jerk.
This is where Kuhn broke. I honestly believe up until then he managed not to get whacked upside the head by life saying, “grow the fuck up”, and also remember that lack-of-permission kiss I mentioned? He doesn’t really apologize sincerely; as a matter of fact he’s pulling the “cute” act on her and then thinks it’s awesome when he gets off scott free. So it’s pretty likely that he never had to deal with responsibility for his actions much until that point.
And Minase tells him that he was being immature. Not only does this say he was being an idiot, but also it’s his damn fault that the girlfriend who’d do more then oh say, any girlfriend one could think of for a guy she just started going out with was dumping him. This is bound to have an effect on someone. First loves are painful when they end, they hurt even more when it comes with an added insult like that.
So about there is when I think he started blaming not just that relationship ending on him, but every single one after that. Just look at the emails, if anything it’s him sad about those sorts of things, he’s never angry at the girl, always talks about them fondly. There’s no blame about who ended it first. He’s by now completely taken to heart the idea that he’s at fault for it.
He also uses self-depreciating phrases when referring to himself, indicating that it’s not just that he thinks he fails at relationships, but that deep down he’s not really worth that much as a person. He looks at his life and sees a bunch of mistakes and a handful of successes. He’s just glad that there’s people that like him still around, because frankly the thought of being as lonely as he was when Minase left him is the worst thing he can imagine. It’s bad enough if the people he’s dating leave him, his friends leaving him is a point he never wants to get to. And hey, if those said friends take it out of his hide when they think he messes up, at least it means they’d rather expend the energy on him instead of giving up an leaving right? And knowing them, they were probably right when they said he fucked up, he’d guess.
He is attracted to those type of people not only because he can relate to them, but also because they treat him the way he thinks he deserves to be treated.
Can take a bit of a beating
This is clearly not healthy.
It’s also a cycle. He’s attracted to people who end up doing things that hurt him and he shoves it down, leading to him holding other things in because he feels that he can’t talk to his friends about then without having the same reaction, all this often either leading to either him letting it out in a way that’s pretty fucking melodramatic, or doing something stupid and possibly self destructive to boot. After which he gets told to suck it up or gets whacked for doing said stupid thing. And he shoves that problem plus the other part down again. He really needs someone to catch this pattern and help him deal with things in a way that isn’t so horribly bad for him, and tell him that yes, he is worth something and that he does matter. But right now and for the foreseeable future both in and out of camp it’s not likely to happen. And one day he’s going to break again, quite possibly worse then seven years ago, and I have no idea whenever that’s going to be.
Now thankfully, there is a small release valve on that little pressure cooker. Taking walks, fighting, being reminded that people aren’t bad all the time, gaming, flirting, and in general happy things help take his mind off of his problems, and as a bonus despite all that dysfunction underneath he is a happy guy.
Just he really needs to be reminded of it. In retrospect it’s halfway an example of his skill keeping his emotions in check and halfway a miracle not only that he berserked just recently, but that he has the greatest control over his avatar.