02/08/2023 - Test Post But With Content? Crazy.

or, 'Chonny's Charming Chaos Compendium Viewed Through Psychoanalytical Literary Theory'

CONTENT WARNINGS

The content discussed in this post references/depicts the following:

  • Suicide ideation
  • Violence (not shown, but a major event involves a gun)

Reader discretion is advised

Or, "Addragh Likes to LARP as a Person That Passed English Lit With Flying Colours"
In all seriousness, this likely won't be a long post. I'm mostly making this for format testing purposes, but I wanted to at least give y'all something.

If you haven't heard of Chonny's Charming Chaos Compendium (or CCCC), you can listen to it on YouTube at this link.
The gist is that it's a Tally Hall cover album done by Chonny Jash (hence the name). It covers all of the songs from Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum (yes, including the bonus tracks), alongside some from later projects such as Miracle Musical. The twist is that Jash added a plot to the songs, centering around a technically-unnamed protagnoist's internal feud with himself.

For the purposes of this post, I will be using the community-standard name for the protagonist (Whole). However, my personal notes use a different name, so in case I copy-paste anything and forget to check, 'Something' refers to the same character. Feel free to yell at me on the CJFS and/or my e-mail in the 'About' section if I made this error.

Now, let's begin!

Let's define what psychoanalytical literary theory is. It is defined as a lens for analysis based primarily on the work of quack Sigmund Freud. The points most relevent for this discussion are the concepts of the id, ego, and superego. These will be introduced as they come up.
My application of this theory will perhaps be slightly unconventional, but convention is really the opposite of what all parties involved are trying to achieve. If you have a problem with it, may I advise that you cope and seethe?

The Superego is the system formed by the expectations of a society. Its function is to restrict the Id and Ego from doing things that a society deems unacceptable. Mind is very concerned with reputation. His primary point in Be Born, Storm and a Spring, The Mind Electric is that Heart (the emotional side) "...harm [Whole's] chances at an apt repute...". Genuine emotional expression is something discouraged by the culture of many developed countries (for further reading, see the concepts of 'cringe culture' and 'toxic positivity', as well as reasons given in decades previous by western nations as to why women in power would be bad). It would, therefore, make sense why Mind is so adamant that Heart is useless to Whole's continued survival: based on the dominant culture, Mind's function is not merely the opposite of Heart's, it's antithetical.

The Id is the system formed at birth. It is the basic instincts of a human, and does not change throughout a person's life. It thinks that every impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of consequences. It is effectively blind to reality. This fits Heart well. He is very reactive, not seeming to entirely think things through (e.g. shooting Mind, which he seems to come to regret based on his words in Mucka Blucka). He also wears a blindfold because of a light that "...tore [him] at the seams", perhaps representative of reality. This would be futher supported by Mind's frequent association with the sun.

The Ego is essentially the mediator between the two. It tries to satisfy the demands of the Id in a way that the Superego approves. I interperate the "Can't you see" line in Just Apathy as being said by Soul, who gets talked over by Heart and Mind. This seems generally indicitive of what happens every time Soul attempts to interject. This has led to him using threats of violence and even suicide in an attempt to get them to listen to him (which still doesn't work, shown by The Soul Eclectic and The Bidding).

Look, man (gender non-specific), I'm not writing out a proper conclusion for this shit, this ain't a formal essay. I have enough of those to write already.