the depths of obsession

have you ever felt so drawn to something that you'd throw away the rest of your life just to have it the past the present and the future are like they were all dwarfed in comparison to this of course it didn't start that way but this idea rescued from the void the back of our minds began to grow and grow replacing so many others which never made it back out maybe it felt like it would make it all make sense like within that dense and confusing fog of Life there was a sudden break and right in the clearing right there it was the the reason for all the final piece of the puzzle the secret to success the way to keep going or finally just for once the excuse to keep going for the first time and that if you can get there if you can make it to this thing and then it's all worth it everything thrown away everything before it all of it at once this is where it's all been leading to make or break Do or Die it is finally it how far does this go is it all actually worth it do you think about this thing over every meal almost not eating because it's just consuming you instead does it keep you from sleeping keeping you up at night pondering this thing in your mind has become the only thing you can talk about to the people who care about you they just get tired of hearing about this one thing what do you lose for this and how soon will you regret those losses there is some truth to powerful moments or single things or experiences that make or break a life they become a part of us in ways that we can never help but we always hover some input over how much of us they are and this is a fine line when does inspiration or desire to enter something much more extreme and dark when are we consumed by a single part of who we are becoming almost inhuman today our story is Obsession a look at the times when I want to becomes I have to in all the danger within it the ivory it contains and how much it can damage Our Lives [Music] foreign [Music] of course to address Obsession we have to look at how it's formed we don't just wake up one day and decide that we're going to devote alive to something there have to be conditions in place which dictate that decision homura akemi from Monica Magica is of course a prime example of this and how it begins due to some time manipulation we see our earliest Point much later in the story she isn't the cold mysterious girl we see in episode 1 but rather a shy and unconfident one suffering from a condition that kept her out of school so she's well behind everyone else she hasn't been in class so she doesn't have any friends doesn't know how to make them and doesn't know the material so the classes only remind her of the fact she's so behind and her condition keeps her from being able to even keep up in something like gym we never see her family or where she lives so we don't know what's going on there either where everyone else is either going to the mall or home telling families or anything of the sort she walks Home Alone feeling worthless now in this world there are creatures known as witches they are unknown evils which shapira's natural disasters or accidents to the people who can't see them but are actually living beings who prey on the negative emotions in the hearts of people to end their lives they convince seemingly healthy individuals to jump off of roots or fill a room with poisonous gas as a group or in homera's case they find these feelings of worthlessness and take them to the extreme I'm behind I can't catch up I should just die while she's wandering alone she falls into a labyrinth which is the dwellings of one of these such witches and is certainly about to die if not for Monaco economy and Mommy tomaway to magical girls who save her magical girls are well girls with magic in exchange for one wish they gain these powers and have to fight witches to survive Monica is actually from homura's class and she's the one person who seemed to take a genuine interest in her saving her from being swarmed and overwhelmed by random questions for homura who feels unable to do anything herself this is critical she can't really make a friend but the friend can make her as Monica saves her this is what happens an excuse is made for them to spend time together and grow closer and this is where the obsession begins to form this is because Homer went from having nothing to live for stuck in a world where everything seemed dim and evil and then out of nowhere to literally save her is the kind and caring Monica the type of person who becomes your friend for you even in a design that is literally is spark shining through this Darkness through her good intent to save other people at her own toil she provides the platform for homura to become an obsessive person this one girl is her ticket to ever being anything this one girl who can do these kinds of things for her making her feel so loved and valuable suddenly Homer has something to be around for but because it is literally one thing it becomes all of her being she exists for Monica because without Monica she wouldn't exist obsession is when one thing consumes your being so what more effective way for to form than one thing providing value to someone with nothing what compounds us for homura is her lack of ability she has many genuine excuses for being unable to find something of value on her own she can't keep up at school so maybe she could take up some other Pursuit but school is required so this means all her extra effort and times to go into that and being physically held back as well as you can't find something in a physical route and all that effort but then just exhaust her even quicker and suddenly it forms this downward spiral we found her in she has nothing and believes she never will she was the perfect case for an obsession for the most part she just tags along with Monica and Mommy on their magical girl Adventures of course kubei the one who makes contracts with them Powers In which fighting in exchange for a wish would love to make one with Homer as well but what reason does homura have to make one everything she could have wished for was right here in Monica it's a fitting parallel which is in this world are a kind of obsession themselves from many circumstances they come to define the person who made it oftentimes corrupting their entire being into some sort of unforeseen result of their wish colliding with other people's desires Joko for example wishes for her family leading to it falling apart leading to her being alone and refusing to help others ever again the results of this wish Define her key trait and most of how she acts so in a sense homura really does already have the same thing with Monica there is no reason to wish at least for a while coming over the horizon of their world is volpurgisnacht a terrible and fearsome witch greater than any they've ever seen before it spells certain Destruction for the entire city including Monica and the other magical girls and this is what happens Monica dies fighting while pergas knocked and homura is left alone without the thing which gave her any value in facing a destroyed City this is somehow even less than what she had before but now she has a reason to wish so she makes a contract with Cuba I wish I can meet Miss kaname all over again instead of her protecting me am I strong enough to protect her now wishes define the powers a girl will receive as well for example sayaka who wishes to heal someone she loves becomes someone who can heal exceptionally quickly as such when homero wishes to meet Monica again she gains the ability to manipulate time either pausing it while she can still move around or traveling backwards the day she and Monica met while she was already defined by Modica this solidifies it she's given up even her Humanity to be with her who homura is doesn't matter to homura As Long As whatever it is is with Monica this forms a self-justifying cycle at each juncture Homer decides to give up more and more of herself for Monica there's no way to stop bull Purvis knocked which means homura ends up living the same few months again and again and again seeking for a way to save her love and each time trying harsher and harsher methods she goes from not knowing the first thing about combat to stealing guns from the mafia to using them like a pro attempting to blow her enemy out with endless Munitions giving up more and more of herself as we go around she has more and more Horizon to see it through because stopping means having sacrificed all of that for nothing and so one never reaches the point of wanting to stop to save himself because there is nothing left of himself an end to the obsession means death either way you can see how this makes them into nothing more by how simple the outcomes are there's no branching future for what their life could be it is simply one moment of success or death so what does it matter if success means changing or sacrificing the entirety of who you are because either way it's a better end result and this happens with homura she goes from a bright and happy person around Monica to a gloomy and angry one often outright confronting her love about how stupid or nonsensical her desires can be the only thing giving Monica from running away from someone so hateful to her is her Supreme ability to believe the best in everyone the goal keeps narrowing first it's to be happy with Monica then if it's just to be with Monica and then oh God please just survive Monica to avoid that inescapable option which arises from being defined by an obsession homura has to keep settling for less and less from an overall meaning she herself is less and less each time Homer's methods do eventually lead to a defeat of all purges knock though but in a way she couldn't handle since Monica was the center point of all of these timelines being created she becomes of immense weight to the composition of the universe which means if she did make a contract to become a magical girl in this main timeline she would be the most powerful one yet so she eventually makes her wish I wish I had the power to erase witches before they're born from the past present and future everywhere crucial to understanding this wish is that witches are magical girls who have fallen into Despair and become evil so what Monica is wishing for here is to prevent those girls from becoming monsters respecting that they made wishes and allowing that to remain but saving them from becoming ultimate Evil it's something she desires because she spent the entire series being helped by others feeling powerless and watching all her friends suffer to grow as a person she wants to help them all for a change this wish is her becoming the kind of person she wanted to be and that's something Homer can't handle obsession is just that is a self-justifying force around one point what Homer wished for was not to save Monica it was to meet her again she wished for the moment they met the moment which provided her value the moment where mataka was what she needed not what Monica herself wished to be the fact that Monica feels weak and useless itself is even a result of Homer's wish she was a strong magical girl when they met but in trying to protect her Homer leaves her feeling like a worthless parasite in this different timeline from the very first moments her wish was trying to keep Monica docile and contained with Monica becoming a part of the universe's rules to achieve her wish homura can no longer undo things with time travel and is forced to face a world without her Obsession unable to cope she becomes a witch herself with some assistance from Evil forces preventing Monica's Universal rule from saving her and creates a labyrinth which tricks even herself within it she meets mama again and they live a happy idea like life where even though they fight evil nothing really goes wrong it's a playground with his friends to live out the lives homework got a glimpse of when she was saved laughing and smiling as they swapped lunches on the roof from all around for the stunning parks but this can't last forever as the cracks begin to show when Homer realizes this place is a contradiction it's supposed to be for Monica as everything she does is but this is a place which disrespects Monica it's one where she never became the strong person she wished to instead saying she would never do anything like that to hurt her friends disappearing as she did in the real world that this version of her is unaware of and here homura is forced to realize it her desire is holding her desire back her Obsession made her blind as the cycle pressed more and more and more on her she wasn't acting for Monica she was acting for what Monica represented to her a value she couldn't find in herself but the problem with an idea of someone is that people change how do you countenance this fact that you love this person and they Define you but your love for them is holding them back well homera takes an interesting path Monica eventually does save her she's a positive force of the universe but when they meet in true homura rips Monika apart she creates two beings a Monika of the past and of the present the one who she originally met and the one who changed into the person she wanted to be and became a part of the universe's laws once again things have narrowed she confirmed her selfishness and made peace with it she'll just take what she wants to try and maintain herself which depends on a changing creature with their own thoughts and feelings Homer accepts that she can't have all of Monica so she'll just take a piece of her that's all for her things have fallen for what defines her what was once living happily with someone is now holding them hostage Obsession makes one blind to its very object of it begins to not matter if the object is healthy or not or truly found success what matters is just that we have something to Define ourselves around to obsess over one thing alone requires holding it forever For Better or For Worse because to let goal is to lose oneself and lose herself homura does these split pieces of Monica can't be kept apart as core to her is this desire to help other people I mean this is how she and homura met in the first place there's no way to have the Monika she met without her having this trait that would leave her to leave Homer up behind even though she couldn't remember the choice she made her being still feels drawn to that power she held in so Homer witnesses that her attempt has failed yet again and so she resolves herself to be the ultimate Evil to Monica's ultimate good this is a world which relies on balance every good has an equal bad every positive and negative every bit of love an ounce of hate so if Monica is good then homura can always exist with her if she is the balancing evil and this is what remains of her at the end who is she she is evil itself no longer even really a person defining oneself with one Obsession means never truly defining oneself at all it only means slowly losing any meaning there once was to avoid the ultimate end [Music] foreign [Music] set firmly in reality we also have 91 days it's a series I didn't like much at first but now I actually find a makeup somewhat overlooked it's a story of lifelong Revenge set in the prohibition era of America where crime bosses ruled large with moonshine Empires attended with one of these mafia families the venetes is the lagusa family there's test of the father and Elena the mother Angelo the elder brother and Luke the younger not that it really matters though a coup within the mafia family leads to test to being killed to wrap up loose ends and former loyalties and since the rest of the family witnessed that they can't be allowed to live either except for Angelo who was able to hide during the whole ordeal and narrowly escapes as one member of the veneti family hesitates to shoot him as he runs away he changes his name to avilio Bruno to hide and from here he lives out his days doing well nothing more than existing he pickpockets while to survive and brings them back to a rundown building devoid of anything with the bare necessities he takes the money from the wallets throws him onto the bed maybe eats just enough to live sleeps and that's it he has one bed one crate one cup and nothing which holds any value for him other than maintenance that's his life he's had nothing to live for ever since his family was taken away years ago that is until a letter arrives naming the members of the videndi family involved in killing his own in this he finds the one thing to Define his undefined being around his obsession Revenge he won't make the vanity family endure everything which he felt losing his family a total collapse of their empire this finally gives him a reason to act and he becomes a huge part of the mafia dealings of this city from this point on this desire is strong enough for him to arguably become the person who dictates the future here as his subtle manipulations Drive the decisions of every major family but who is actually deciding he's just a vessel for Revenge just making whatever Choice harms his family is he really doing anything at all is he anyone or has he just become their downfall embodied one of the obvious irony is about the whole situation is that in destroying them from the inside means becoming a trusted member of the vanities he has to do this in order to get close to the Dawn and so in going for total Annihilation means joining the very people he hates so by the turn of his plot he's one of their most trusted members and just about best friends with Nero the brother in line for succession and Dawn by the end of the series I mean at some point they go on a road trip and put on a silly act for some kids and share their secrets with each other around the fire and he basically makes a legitimate new family just to kill them all abusing the ideals of trust and loyalty to avenge the same things buried with his family he turns from a Sweet Child into a vicious killer harming guilty and innocent people alike part of his plot is forcing Nero to kill his own brother frate who in reality is just a kid trying to find his way amongst a toxic family putting a ton of pressure on him and the same plot beat leads to their sister Theo having to flee her life there with an unborn child to now care for on her own separated the people she did everything for these are the same kinds of people like his own family just caught up in the bad decisions of others they couldn't help an obsession like this could never lead anywhere but repeating the mistakes which caused it in the first place gave him a reason to be a reason to be the exact thing which robbed him of any value to begin with by the end he hates who he is a drunken murderer unable to sleep and haunted by all the people he's killed in the past recognizing that he is only part of a cycle but he can't stop because stopping is the same as dying finishing the plan is just one last Act of validation seeing it through because what else is there to do might as well end in the impactful way he planned right and there's something to note in being obsessed with an achievable goal he can and does bring down the entire finetti Empire entangling them in a losing War until they last member is wiped out through intense manipulation of tensions but now with this accomplished who actually is he he could have fled the city and lived on after he succeeded but he stays to be captured by Nero because this Obsession never actually gave him any value to act on so when it ends he's just further back than when he started success in his obsession is the thing that actually kills him as Nero tries to escape and brings avilio along to try and understand why he did all of this the latter remarks I thought if I saw it through to the end maybe to give me a reason to live but there ain't anything left all of it was for nothing Nero grows insanely angry and scolds him for this of course because all of those people he loved to hide in the man who did it says it was for nothing they don't even get to be worthwhile in giving him a new meaning through their deaths they just died to die a much worse insult than revenge there was nothing to be found in this because avilio never actually obsessed over Revenge he obsessed over loss he was so focused on what had been stolen from him that he could never even consider gaining something else including a new reason for being as long as he held that moment as the only thing which could Define his life it was as good as over that plot was just the best representation of his loss by making it real for someone else too it was a spark of validation to see if he could make someone who feels the same as him is of course justified in feeling so meaningless after witnessing such a horror and losing everything he loved so young but he never moved on from that loss and it made him blind to the fact that he had something to live for all along in those Happy Days with his family there was someone else corteo his best friend his father was killed in Mafia dealings leaving him and his mother somewhat struggling and the lagusa family helped him out where they could he was there the night of the murders but it left just before they began after they're finished this is where avilio runs to spend the night having nowhere else to go corteo offers all the support he can and makes a vow that they're brothers who will always help each other out he'll pay back the legus's kindness to avilio but avilio leaves the next morning and they don't meet again for many years when they do corteo has cooked up the best moonshine recipe anyone has seen an attempt to make the money his family never had as a child it's not his favorite profession but given the times it could provide what he needed but one thing holding him back is his refusal to work with the mafia having lost a family member to them he detests their business and recognizes the dangers of working with them you trade your freedom for that money so he tries to stick it out on his Zone an independent seller in a mafia Town often subject to their intimidation as they try to put him under their thumb for a profit saving him from one of these aggressive moments is sevillio swooping in and coming with a suggestion just work for the families and make all this money of course we know why he can say this so easily this moonshine the work of someone else is his excuse to get close to the families he gets close to them initially by selling them corteo's great product he abuses their genuine connection to make this false connection work both of them already know how dangerous these dealings can be and we're reminded of it every single turn with assassinations and backstabbings and shootouts and so much more The Straight Edge corteo wants nothing to do with this but there's something more important to him the vow of Brotherhood he made as kids he was someone who looked up to avilio's boldness seeking to overcome his own timidness and be more like his best friend he moves forward from this pact turning from the one scared to put out the flame with his hands to the one who can do so this trust and connection which drives him forward is what avilio abuses to get close to the family someone with the traits a family bond should have used as nothing more than a stepping stone to find a fake one to kill it's more than irony this is what avilio missed when he became obsessed with lost it made him blind to anything else he could have had the entire world faded away except for the fact that his family was taken from him despite like the fact that he had almost exactly what they were right here someone who thinks of him as a true brother who defends him as a true brother who trusts him as a true brother even when he feels his decisions are entirely wrong together without the mafia they could have been great we see this in the very first moment Emilio shows up to defend him that's what corteo was missing the straight smarts to move his product and the muscle to defend it and his brother solves both of these issues and being together would only Inspire him to be better again as he was in childhood when avilo says that the only thing his life is worth is Revenge he's disrespecting this fact because he can't recognize it his life isn't worthless it's one of the things that made Cortez possible and it could have done so even more right now can't because he's obsessed he misses it so much that he uses it as the stepping stone for something that in the end he admits was truly worthless he actively ruins kotero's life instead driving his only real family member left down the mafia path once a bright and aspiring young man one who never even got to really live life because he was so dedicated to creating a better future corteo never gets to see that future he worked towards because it's stolen away after a few months of the mafia life the recipes no longer his and neither is the production in the money he's making is worthless because he's not free to run away from the family he's been reduced down to the recipe for some booze not a man but ingredients for profit he turns to drinking heavily to cope but this doesn't change the fact that once the recipe isn't his he's worthless to anyone involved and he can never get away because they would never let the recipe get out to another family to cut into their profits and it happens the recipe does make its way to another family so when he betrays the vanities in an attempt to ruin avilio's Revenge plot and save his friend he ends up as the target instead because he's no good to anyone anymore it's directly stated to him he was only worth recipe forced to the brink he becomes a Madman brutally beating the head of another family to death unless he wants to be killed himself where avilio always had another option in corteo but instead chose this life corteo doesn't everything he did he was forced to do no choice no freedom and all his good qualities abused he's reduced to a very literal nothing it's the kind of thing avilio thought he was which corteo actually is he ends up as a captive of the venetes as they learn of his attempted betrayal seeing him at this low of a point of genuinely having no reason to live avilio recognizes his own mistakes with this perspective of someone who actually has nothing he realizes that he does have something in corteo and that his actions made someone else into what he thought he was and so he goes from telling him to get out of his life to freeing him from captivity and stealing him away from the family and from there things really do look up for a second they basically start a new life together coming home to a really this crappy house and turning it into a real home they buy actual food to cook actual meals they set up more than just a bear space and some Island laugh together they even go on a tour of the town and just live for once not driven by gold or Obsession but just by enjoying what those things LED them to miss for so long corteo dumped out all the boons they had left in remarks that they can start but Obsession doesn't end so easily avilio's got him in deep and the mafia would know what happened if he suddenly stopped doing business with them so he has to keep up his dealings or give away the entire game so he and corteo work out a plan to keep him hidden from the family but with underhanded dealings afoot of course something goes wrong navilio is questioned when he returns to the vanities heavily suspected of helping a traitor Escape it seems at this moment he almost accepts that if he dies he dies because he's learned that he fixed his former evils and allowed the good that always remained for him to live elsewhere in living that life he always could have for a moment he found something not to maintain a pointless existence but something even worth dying for but corteo is manipulated into returning to save avilio bursting in at the last moment to take the blame and this offers Nero a solution if avilio can kill corteo then he's still trustworthy and clearly couldn't have betrayed the family avilio and corteo then have their final Converse station where the abuse of the latter comes full circle by ending his friend's life right here avilio will become untouchably loved by the family by killing the only thing he's ever truly had but was blind to he gains the thing he thought he wanted but which leaves him with nothing valuable at all right here either a quartero dies or they both die for once avilio finally has no choice and he pulls the trigger it's here without any support or love except the false trust from the family he hates that avilio finally feels what it's truly like to have nothing but Obsession it's at that moment for the first time he actually had nothing to live for and it was done by his own hand and that's how he's able to see through his original plan that he knew was so worthless now because what else is there to do it's follow through or just die a bit earlier [Music] thank you so far we've seen two cases we've had obsession over something gained leading to a destruction of self an obsession over something lost preventing one from ever forming to begin with what about something else what about obsession over the impossible enter serial experiments Lane of course the anime is an abstract mess delving into conspiracy theory at its lowest points but overarching that mess are core ideas and one is the crisis of self the main character Lane is a timid school girl more content to do nothing while her friends are all out at clubs she's behind on technology Daydreams odd things through her classes and just kind of seems to be a bit of a blank slate that's planned and behind everyone else but suddenly her friends start looking at her in a different way one night out of the club they saw someone who looked exactly like her causing a ruckus telling people off and being all firm and commanding the exact opposite of who Lane is but this mystery as more and more people talk about another lane or other lanes as well as the invitation of recently deceased classmate Chiefs had to find a new life on the wired then becomes drawn to it the wired is their name for the connection of all devices used for anything from Communications games kind of like the internet since the other versions of her seem to spawn from the wired only by entering it can she discover the truth however as Lane is very behind on technology well her friends I'll talk about the importance of checking your email daily she has an unused kids model of a computer called a navi just sitting in her room doing nothing technology just isn't her thing even with a technophile father and it's maybe because of him I mean he often outright ignores his family to play with his Tech so why would she enjoy it but her Quest requires Ethan so she does it moving from a better model Navi to custom processor upgrades to a collection of a bunch of technology to this liquid cold tumor that emerges from the side of her house she becomes nothing but technology once not even really sure what eBay hell was in such a short span of time she ends up here it's an obsession no matter what anyone says or any warning from her father or whoever it may be It's never enough her crisis of self is expressed physically in this technology the means to uncover who she is this level of ability and skill plus the digging she does across the wire to try and find the truth makes her a bit of an online Legend a friend to some and an enemy to others even an angel or a god depending on who you ask she's in so deep that she's interacting with basically the Illuminati when she speaks with the Knights this Lane is clearly on another level from the one we saw at the start and it shows in her demeanor just as she's known as different people she kind of begins to feel like it too and what we truly witness of her sometimes she's home alone and sad as before other times she's forcing information out of a kid with threats or telling kidnapper businessman off for being weird or even laughing or joking with whoever's there just abstract forms and nothingness Lane doesn't even really seem like Lane anymore and so doesn't that defeat the very purpose of her Obsession in the first place and trying so hard to discover who she is she had to become someone different Obsession inherently produces this change accelerating the natural shifts in who we are over time as it limits our desires and inclinations down further and further we become more and more distinct from the being originally developing that first desire to begin with until we are nothing more than the obsession so the answer to the question who am I is who am I she's reduced herself down to nothing more than an expression of this question the ability to answer invalidates the reason for asking to begin with that impossible to understand human complexity we see this expressed in how many incongruent and seemingly random representations of Lane there are if you sum them all up you don't find an answer we don't even know where or when or why they came from or even if they're real or just another plot to manipulate her just something made up all you'd get from taking them all together is doubt on every single level and that's what Lane becomes akin to one word an idea a concept and nothing more she just is doubt as her friends have fun with her she's watching herself from the side because she has become the self-watching herself and judging it not actually herself living in the moment she's so far into her own head that her interactions feel like they're driven by someone else and she is just the Observer judging it all there was no answer to her question so by obsessing over it and slowly reducing her being down to answer it and nothing more she'll continually reach extremes that push her further and further past reality to prevent finding an end which invalidates what remains of her to begin with and she is well past reality she essentially ascends earning herself god-like powers to manipulate the world as she wishes and with that she seeks to create a solution to the problem which lacks one she creates a lane which replaces the one everyone knows she rewrites their memories her to be the same positive ones between everyone within the minds of others there are no longer separate and distinct Lanes there's only one image of herself placed in there as she command it but does this kind of prove that she's become more akin to a concept than a person anyway crucial to being a person is existing in separate states we can't control yes we are who we believe ourselves to be but that makes up an exceptionally small portion of how we're actually perceived overall because each person who perceives us has their own idea of who we are deep or shallow it exists in their mind we're so indifferent to our friends than our co-workers than our teachers and our acquaintances than the person who hands your coffee and the person who sees you take it in line and the person who holds the door open as you leave each one has a version of us that they control the ultimate outcome of in their head they can use an idea of us to just justify anything like holding a door open or not based on how we look this is what the multiple lanes are they act Beyond her control because they're all the picture of her and other people's minds by creating one which encompasses all of those behind she doesn't have the complexity of a human being anymore she's like a basic process of what it means to be human like breathing she's something that every human just does without consideration or question which is the same between his whole as a fact of life she's actually reduced herself even lower by consolidating herself like this I think this forces an answer out of the unanswerable question but only by effectively making her inhuman who am I I am nothing finding out still defeats the purpose of asking when it's obsessive so there's only one Natural end to request to embody that forced answer she removes all memories of her from the world overall creating a blank slate there are no other lanes there just is the one lane who exists everywhere and anywhere undefined in every way by being nothing the only way for one to ever fully answer the question who am I is to stop changing to stop interacting to stop existing to be nothing by obsessing over this question Lane LED herself to a lonely Oblivion although she does appear to re-enter the world at the end but all this pain came about from the obsession over something with no end if one becomes a question that can't be answered then one simply isn't to begin with [Music] as always I had an ulterior motivation in making this video when you see someone with a YouTube channel full low of half hour plus long video essays about themes and Anime you can probably Hazard a decent guest that I'm a fairly obsessive person I want to find something that scratches a deep itch find every ounce of Truth within it and only then move on to something new I know that we aren't creatures meant to be so deeply thoughtful about every single piece of entertainment we consume and of course I watch some mindless things or background noise as well but I guess I always feel like a good story deserves more than just a watch and a forget but I'm constantly in a circle of justifying my own work by justifying how impactful stories can be to our sense of self I have no regrets about what I do it's something that I want to keep doing for a long time but it is a bit of an odd state to be doing something like this almost professionally looking at stories and how they can change people especially myself and my most popular their videos in a way I've stumbled into monetizing my emotions the wheels of business and algorithms turned forward giving definitive metrics to measure what I should and shouldn't feel from my life experiences and how I should present it to other people a video talking about that exact feeling in a series or two or three and then my own experience with it you might notice a pattern in how this video is put together it's something I still enjoy doing I think this past year has been the best goddamn stage of my content for sure and if I didn't need the money to survive I wouldn't want it from doing this so I'll never call the state of business invalidating to what I create but I can't deny that sometimes it worsens that Obsession when I feel something my first thoughts are how to package and express that emotion in an entertaining way that other people can learn from and the more intense the experience the more obsessive the writing a few weeks ago I had a moment that changed me the moment itself isn't really our focus and to tell the whole thing would be a script all of its own and I know I started writing it and basically wrote a whole different thing and realized it didn't fit in this one at all all I needed to explain is that it was almost inexplicable I went from the depths of depression and self-doubt to one of the happiest experiences of my life in the span of maybe 30 minutes in a situation that validated both my change in the past year the work I do here on the channel and my sense of identity all in one I'm not exaggerating at all when I say it feels like the stars line just right every dot which was swirling around in my head for months had finally connected and I wanted to untangle that web and present it here in my usual format both for you all and for myself I started with a few notes on my phone the next day and of course a few series that would fit the principle I was covering it was nothing major yet I just jotted down my super rough outline of what I could cover from each story and relate to my own and it seemed like a great basis and it had a lot of emotion behind it but re-watching just one of the series I noticed it really fit the bill more than the rest so I started to focus on just that one and once I'd written the bit on that if there was still time left in the script then I could write the other two and at the same time I'm still processing this emotion as it was evolving I mean I would kind of describe it as coming back from a different world you love to one you hated and that generally puts your mind through grief so this wasn't one single realization to cover but rather a slow evolution of feelings from the immediate depression afterwards to the way it fades to the depression about the fact the experience was fading and it was a very complex thing and to explain my story I had to really explain the entire year before it which was hard to manage in a video where the series I was still covering was also itself ballooning I was re-watching it and noticing a lot more than I'd expected each character had their own little evolutions and inputs building off of a previous video where I'd covered the anime in the same way my story was built off of previous times where I talked about it before in fact a story I told before about myself was crucial to how I had this moment to begin with so that that needed to be addressed too this was starting to really get bigger than I thought and that meant I was doing a couple rewatches of this series as well yes a couple none of my notes really seem to cover everything I hit a certain train of thought and that felt amazing but then three-fourths of the way through it would fall off and suddenly it seemed worthless without a weighty conclusion so I had to keep going back in and trying to find something to make it make sense and then I'd find something else that needed covering to cover that to make a new more complex conclusion make sense with all the stuff that was there before it and it was like each line was was branching into three more which then did the same themselves and then did the same themselves again every script came from what felt like a good outline like I'd finally got it it was perfect it was down just need to write it but then I would and it would read as a complete disjointed awful mass that no one would like I reordered and rewrote and expanded and contracted certain sections but nothing fit nothing seemed to fix this I had outline outline take two outline take 3 outline for real outline again and outline again again each with their own script that fit with that outline and it just began to feel overdone and pointless I filled the notes app on my phone too so I was now digging through multiple Pages within multiple apps to try and compose these thoughts into what it felt like they needed to be and suddenly I'd be searching across all these different spaces I'd lose the train of thought I'd pick up another one they'd mix together in my head so I'd write them the same even though they weren't the same it became a complete mess and so trying to figure this all out especially having it on my phone I wasn't messaging anyone or opening any social media or anything because each time I went on my phone I was jotting down more and more and more from the threads that I was constantly running about my head all this garbage from the series and at the same time I began to wonder how I did this before feeling so incapable of doing it now each thing I wrote felt like some worthless recap of plot and nothing more and my writing really changed that much since a year ago this was really getting to me it was a doubt I already had before this that was now seeing its prime and so I started to do something I never did before I re-watched my old videos I never do that because I don't want to make what I did before I'd want to make when I evolve into now but this time I couldn't help it there must have been something something that I was missing from that time that made it all work because I couldn't get it to work right now so I did it while I was working my day job I would put my own videos on trying to uncover some pattern and how I dress things the depth of each topic how much recap there was everything that felt like it could be a factor well I was still trying to analyze the topic I was now analyzing my own videos in between failed scripts to see what the problem was while also analyzing other people's video essays to see if that could give me anything and what I found in my own I didn't like I started to lose confidence in my own prior work none of them felt worthwhile for this kind of topic either and I was looking at my most popular videos thinking about how they were just crappy Recaps of anime safe to say I was a bit distraught at the same time as trying to do way too much in each day I was already running light on sleep to try and get this done but now when I finally did turn in I wasn't sleeping much every thought I had lying there in bed it somehow trailed back into these topics in myself and it was impossible to sleep with that running in my head I kept not really communicating with anyone either because again I was on that phone I was doing this and also because well I couldn't find an interest in what they said or find anything else to say myself aside from what was on my mind this topic and myself meals were secondary I'd eat but I didn't care what it was as long as it was quick if I could get it done in five minutes of my lunch break then spend 25 minutes writing that was the best and if I was driving which is a lot more time than I'd like each day you best believe I had something on to try and dig deeper into it because that's a lot of time going to waste I was starting scripts by saying I didn't want to make this video anymore but I had to make this video I had to make all this toil feel worthwhile I had to understand what had happened and how it connected all these dots I had to understand this story that I loved so much and how it fit I had to figure out my own conflict with it in its own internal conflict I was starting to notice when I looked deeper in it because then I could understand this feeling I had and what it meant and it was going to be the greatest video yet from all this the deepest topic I'd ever had it would validate everything before and everything after it and live up to that standard I said a year ago would actually be a lot better than that when I was talking about understanding these harsh truths and I don't know how anything else could matter when this needed done first because this was the platform from which everything was built this was not the meaning of the story this was the meaning of meaning itself that would validate what I do for me and why I existed at all in the [ __ ] first place after three weeks of that going in my head constantly I started to think that maybe it could never happen I tried to stay positive but I wrote down for myself a few times that I wasn't sure if it ever could this topic was everything everything and I was failing I wondered if this was it if I was done I knew every star Faded and I'd gotten a lot farther than a lot of other people had and I'm grateful every day that I got to do that but I guess finally staring down what felt like the end for the first time like the true end like this is it I would give up and do something else I just always figured I'd go a little bit further first now I was wondering who I would be without the channel would I be happier or even could I be happy when I wasn't thinking about the video now I was thinking about this I'd have to finally make those stressful career moves of moving up I didn't want to but I'd always put them off because I was sure of a future doing this and now while I wasn't just unsure if I could do it I was unsure if I wanted to do it my brain felt broken by all this maybe it was time to give in to everything I hated and just distract myself from meaninglessness with possessions and relationships and one day I'd forget the eight year request I'd been on to chase this dream this was a span of three weeks that had me questioning eight whole years it had me questioning not just who I was but who I wanted to be I picked an unanswerable question through an extremely complex topic and then tried to explain that complex topic with a complex story that's famous for being complex I told myself it was everything that it wasn't something I wanted to do but something I had to do I I actually wrote that in script I was going to say that on the internet in a video essay and it feels like the cheesiest character in the worst movie and in that actual inspiration struck after thousands of words across how many pages I started to see who I was acting like some obsessive character in any number of shows I'd analyzed before all those characters I'd witnessed over time who were destroyed by their obsession and I learned nothing from everything I talked about before the most invalidating thing to my work wasn't failing at one topic after succeeding at 100 plus it was ignoring what all of the previous ones had taught me to try and make one stupid topic maybe if I just moved on it would work I was desperate enough to consider finally giving this topic up one last guess but could I do anything so I I took this new feeling I sat down scribbled out a few rough ideas for this video and two days later when I could work again I sat down for eight hours and wrote it all the way through from ideas to outline to script it wasn't at all that I had lost my touch it was that I got into my own head becoming the me analyzing my own analysis as it was happening obsessing over something that couldn't be solved you know why I couldn't make anything from this topic because it made no sense because at the end of the day nothing makes sense there is no string through life connecting the dots there is no one sentence that makes it make sense things happen and we feel a certain way about them and then they go away with no closure because normality is this force that pushes everything back to this this mundane level this is part of what was being said but it wasn't satisfying and all that work I'd done wasn't to hear that I need something more some life-changing statement because I wanted my life to change I was a terrified kid screaming for a more enjoyable world they'd gotten a taste of and now didn't want to live without and that desire grew and grew and it darkened and consumed a lot of my life ever so slowly and it turned into obsession I tackled something much too big for some mid-20s anime fan to try and Tackle but then I said I had to do it I was attempting to solve the point of my life when I'd only lived some third of it so far what a disrespect to the rest of anything I'd ever experienced to try and solve it right now and in that I was invalidating the entire path that brought me here and questioning if I wanted the future at all try and make sense of this life I was committing to giving up everything which had defined it before in which I thought would Define it after to throwing away everything to understand it's only really hitting as I recorded these words with my own voice I I'd love every bit of what I get to do here this is who I am and who I want to be here on this channel that annoying person who looks into stories a little too deeply and doesn't shut up about them this is the most validating thing in my life and what it's all been built around that's it's a rock that got me through a goddamn pandemic for [ __ ] sake I cut my teeth building this channel from the ground up alone after my best friend who I started with decided I wasn't worth [ __ ] it's everything I'm proud of in a world where I'm forced to do so many things I am not of and hating all of that and one little topic had me ready to throw that all way to give up who I was without even realizing it thinking I was doing the opposite obsession is a terrible thing we all experience it in some amounts it's just a stronger form of Desire at the end of the day and we all need desires Obsession can occur for anything for gains or losses for ideas or concepts from people or places for anything and everything and it is a self-justifying cycle like narrowing path that only ever leads to One Singular point and we don't want to reach that point it can pop up at any time from anywhere and even if we learn about it it might still happen and we'll completely miss it over the course of three weeks it almost destroyed a dream I've held seriously for at the time of this video going up eight years now the channel just turned eight to two days before this released and the very moment that I'm recording all of this how [ __ ] up is that three weeks could destroy eight years of my life and not from a cataclysmic event not from some chance of Faith or the world or something horrible happening just for my own mind getting to within itself obsession is a terrible Beast eventually it becomes us so we have to end it before that spells an end to us so that's what I'm going to do here now thousands of words some 70 Pages ideas that almost came to Define every single aspect of my being it is sitting in the trash right now on Drive ready to be deleted not not sitting there ready to go to the trash right in the trash ready to be deleted for after one click and that's it it's gone and you know what I've never been so happy to lose three weeks of work in my entire life goodbye obsession knowing you [ __ ] sucked

Channel: ProfessorViral

Views: 305,007

Keywords: anime, manga, professorviral, serial experiments lain, sel, madoka magica, pmmm, 91 days, homura, avillio, lain, obsession, video essay

Id: z8-45FszUeI

Length: 54min 27sec (3267 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 17 2023