ive never understood or really empathized with lain which is funny because ive always been a confused, isolated, mentally dysfunctional child/teenager burying herself entirely in the internet only to discover conspiracy theories and become darkly miraculously enlightened

i understand serial experiments lain, i understand its impact, and i understand the values it serves but i just dont feel like lain. maybe im her at the beginning, just phasing out of reality all the time, but im not a messiah. i feel way more like eureka from eureka seven

if anything ive felt like eureka for a long while. a "blank page of sorts, an empty imitation of a human", created by a space military to kill and do nothing but kill, without any form of empathy or conscience assigned to her, who now has to try and become a human being on earth

i guess what creates the drive to absorb all of lain and feel more like her is the fact that the entire show is built on a palindromic universe with different paths attached to its ends. it starts out with her revered on the internet but unknown in real life, contrary by the end.

with eureka she's given this earth redemption narrative where by the end she's a loving wife. but i like seeing her as who i have been for the past five years; a person who grew up hardcoded to follow hardcore niches who is now trying to live outside the norms that have been set

there were two hardcore niches i lived inside when i was 11 years old. one involved mercilessly harassing and attacking vulnerable people based on certain traits that they had who were thrown around on forums, the other involved being sexually abused and told not to talk about it

i feel like eureka in terms of being hardcoded to obey incredibly insular obscure constraints, norms, niches and ideas of how to spend time 24/7, only to suddenly be separated from them, not knowing what to do in a world of rational, caring and fragile people.

by the way this thread isn’t against lain. let’s all love lain.