Why the Long Face? (Bojack Horseman)

Commissioned by Aleph Null

TW: Suicide

I told you about my cat Jamara. I took her to the vet every Tuesday and Thursday, I liquidized her food and fed her with a dropper, I prayed for her to get better... I'd have done anything to save her, really. And yet there was a part of me-- the part that observes and writes-- rubbing its hands and saying, "Well, at least if she dies, I'll be able to use it in Animal Man. It'll add a nice touch of poignancy."
-Grant Morrison

I have a tendency to fetishize my depression. Maybe that’s not the right word in this context, but it’s right for this article. I sometimes joke to myself that my critical approach can be best summed up as “I get depressed at art for a couple thousand words.” Not all of my work falls into this mold, but a lot of it does. My initial blog project ultimately revealed itself to be a coping mechanism for my grandfather’s death. My next project was a series of reviews with the arc words “Why shouldn’t I commit suicide” that, in its book form, talks frankly about my desires to end it all. And my most recent project, a series of short stories based on episodes of Cowboy Bebop, perhaps my first non-I’m Depressed project, has largely been a wet fart both in my opinions of many of the posts and in readership. My brand, as is want to be called, is being miserable. It’s not all I am as a writer, but it’s a large part of it.

Furthermore, I’m also very self-deprecating, such that I will frequently talk about the ways in which I screwed up, sometimes without any care for the people who I screwed. Indeed, the original version of this article was another piece where the message is “Sean is rubbish.” But I came up with way too many examples of me being rubbish that I essentially hit a wall of existential dread over whether or not we can actually stop being the person we were yesterday or if the potential to repeat cruel acts makes us… I don’t know how to finish that sentence. I stared at it for a good minute trying to find the right word, but none came out.

When I try to watch Bojack Horseman, I feel like it’s hitting way too many seared wounds. It’s not a one to one connection between the two of us. Beyond species and profession, I’m not an addict to either drugs or alcohol. I’m too introverted to be the kind of toxicity that Bojack is. And mine wasn’t as broken a home as his. But… I feel a sense of kinship to the life and tragedy Bojack lived. The desire to end it all. The feeling that every action I take only makes things worse. The urge to be the center of attention, even when it’s time to let someone else talk. The lack and desire to have closure. But closure isn’t something you deserve. It’s something other people give to you. Sometimes, that means being told to go fuck yourself while others it means just sitting on a roof, silently looking at the stars.

And here again, I write autobiographically. I sometimes wonder if this approach is solipsistic, if I’m just writing to fellate my own ego for the sake of making myself feel better over the cruel things I’ve done. That I’m not really sorry for my actions, just going through the motions of “Cruelty, Guilt, Confrontation, Apology.” Not necessarily in that order. I haven’t seen a therapist in years. A lot of other stuff took priority. I could talk about those things, but those aren’t my stories to tell. At most, I was a supporting player to those events, some I’ve discussed at length. Others are best not expressed publicly for many years.

Oddly enough, one of the many reasons why I argue I should kill myself is that I’m just a space filler. I don’t add anything to the conversation and what I do add is, at best, superfluous and, at worst, inaccurate. Anyone could do what I do and many do it better. I add personal value to the people who know me, but that’s basically it. And that loss could heal in time. Hell, I set up the blog so that, if I were to kill myself after writing this entry, you wouldn’t notice until December. (I’m not going to for a variety of reasons, the least of which being I preordered tickets to Gothic on Wednesday, I’m planning on seeing Sweet Movie a week from Saturday, and I’ve got a Sherlock retrospective essay planned I’m hoping to get onto Graphic Policy. Fittingly, the title structure for each part is based around the song “Don’t Stop Dancing ‘til the Curtain Call” as a metatextual joke about where Steven Moffat’s career would’ve gone were he to stick with sitcoms. Oh, and I’m also going to Grad School in June.)

But then… I want to put a “but then” sentence here, but I don’t really know what would be right. Whenever I write about reasons not to do it, it always feels a bit too cliched, too obvious and straightforward. You are not alone, It won’t hurt forever, I’m willing to listen, and all that. But it feels… not enough. Like I don’t fully believe the words. There are times when rock bottom turns out to be a ledge you hit that crumples as easily as paper. I want to conclude on an optimistic note because, for all my self-loathing, I believe things can get better. I believe I can be a better person than I was yesterday, even though I am still capable of doing what I did and may even repeat my cruelty in the future, intentionally or not. But I am capable of stopping myself. I am capable of doing the right thing. And sometimes that means shutting the hell up. Sometimes that means not begging for closure from those you’ve hurt. And sometimes… it means reaching out to help someone who’s only halfway down.

(Shit, I need another 50 words to accurately call this “being depressed at art for thousands of words.” …Quotes have worked out for me in the past, why not?)

I know that you're tired
I know that you're sour and sick and sad
For some reason
 So I'll leave you with a smile
Kiss you on the cheek
And you will call it treason
 That's the way it goes
Some days a fever comes at you
Without a warning
 And I can see it in your face
You've been waiting to break
Since you woke up this morning
-Catherine Feeny, Mr. Blue Sky

Everybody’s dead, Dave. (Toys in the Attic)

Lesson 1. Always eat your vegetables.

The frozen sarcophagus danced in the eternally midnight sky like a ballerina falling to her untimely death. The deadly contents that lurked within, still breathing, still unalive, lacked what one might refer to as consciousness. Once, it was food. Once it was predator. Never was it conscious. To be conscious is to be alive. It was never alive. It laughs at those who thought being alive was alright with the gurgle of the incomprehensible. All meaning from its actions is derived from those who bear witness to its majesty.

It festered in its sarcophagus for over a year before it became aware. Awareness and consciousness are not the same thing. To be conscious is to think two things. It thought only one. It could see the others, prattling away in their nothing forms believing that things like money or bickering or anything other than eating was worthwhile. Contempt could be read into those words just as curiosity, confusion, and envy. Words are the tools of the conscious mind, after all. (An unconscious too, but their words and the meanings that tag along like an unwanted child in a glue factory are incomprehensible to the conscious mind.) The non-conscious has no use for words.

Witnessing its magnificence conjures dreams alien to the human mind. Ideas implanted by it. By something connected to it. The shape of its absence makes a void called the universe. It fills the void with a fungi of mutated life corrupted by being consumed by it. It infects like a virus dancing outside the human form. It smiles as those who think they can catch it the way a cracked brick smiles. It is entropy. It is death. It is eternal. The cosmos is its mother. Man is its father. It has no name. It has no purpose. It only eats and eats and eats. It will not stop. It does not know why. It does not care. To care is to have a conscious. To care is to be alive. To be unalive is to not even notice that you don’t care, let alone notice that you haven’t noticed. To be unalive is to be an “it” and not a person. Not a person at all.

The frozen sarcophagus floats in the eternal night like a child drowning in the middle of the ocean where not even the most carnivorous of sharks or the most vengeful of dolphins could find him. The remains within splurge out of the metallic casket like blood from a stuck pig. It glistens in the night sky with an air of magic and wonder that could only come from a fishing lure. It will be free one day. It will consume. It will survive. It always does. Its children will die, consumed by those who are stronger than them. But it will consume them in turn. All things return to the refrigerator.

Lesson 2. Don’t blame yourself for the failings of other people.

Margaret Janeway found herself floating in the vacuum of space. Again. She had a knack for getting herself into situations like this. Her and her big mouth. She wouldn’t blame other people. Sure, the guard could have refused the bribe instead of taking it and throwing her into the airlock, Mark could have been more honest in his intentions to double cross her, and the gun manufactures could have designed a better gun for people escaping from angry mobsters. But, at the end of the day, she should have known that the gun was busted. It was a 300 woolong gun for crying out loud. Of course something that cheap was going to fail on her. Just like she should have known that a weasel like Mark Waltsman would double cross her. He practically screams “I’m an untrustworthy bastard who wants to watch you be miserable for the rest of your life because I’m just that kind of shit” with the way he talks. Not what he talks about, he could talk about how the sky is blue and you’d still think he was plotting to drown you in it. Of course that asshole was going to double cross her. And the guard… well, she should have known not to trust a bastard with a 1488 tattoo on his knuckles. (In her defense, she didn’t see the tattoo until after she was in the airlock.) Regardless of whose fault it was, Margaret thought, it didn’t change the fact that she was stuck floating in the void of space without any hope of surviving, be it through a lucky spacecraft passing by willing to take aboard an adrift con artist who burnt one bridge too many or the people she had fucked over returning once they realized she actually stole something important from them. But she was in the middle of fuck all nowhere where not even the light of the stars shown (bar one that was just far enough away to allow her to see what she looked like but too far away to attract any daredevils dumb enough to fly into it because they want to be seen as cooler than they actually are) and Mark knew her well enough to have the guards she didn’t bribe check her body for stolen property in the way most slimy men search a woman’s body. In short, she was trapped, destined to live the rest of her life adrift in space until there was nothing left of her but the spacesuit Mark graciously lent her. And then, inexplicably, Margaret Janeway saw a refrigerator floating in the depths of space with the grace of a bowling ball crashing through four floors of an apartment complex and the subtlety of a snake in the garden of Eden asking Eve if she would like something to eat. Crazy universe, thought Margaret. Might be a crashed ship nearby. Maybe even an escape pod. So she floated right atop the refrigerator and towards her end.

Lesson 3. Always help those in need.

Jane Doe, as Dr. Grant Marston was forced to call his patient, was found floating in the depths of space inside a refrigerator. It was a miracle she was alive for as long as she was. Grant did not know how long she was inside that refrigerator, though her body was noticeably warmer than it should have been. It was covered in a black, almost mold like sore. Her teeth were nearly rotten and decayed. They looked like the mouth of someone who had smoked for fifty years even though she was clearly a woman in her mid to late twenties. Her eyes were bloodshot, almost completely red.

Jane Doe did not survive the night. Grant tried to tell himself there was nothing he could do. Indeed, he knew there was nothing he could do. The woman should not have been alive for as long as she was. And yet, he couldn’t help but think of what he could have done to, if not save her, at the very least ease her pain. Which is why he was in the morgue examining her body. The following notes were what he found:

-Left hand broken in seven different places (space suit intact)

            -Blood found underneath fingernails. Run search upon return to Mars.

-Right hand perfectly fine (space suit rupture in index finger)

-Left eye blue, right eye green.

            -Left eye cut (external)

            -Right eye fractured (internal (???))

-Source of sore: center of right hand. Reverberated throughout the body like the insides of a tree.

            -Source unknown

-Teeth crooked, surgery performed on seven/ten occasions.

            -Top center teeth chipped

            -Three teeth missing

            -Wisdom teeth still within mouth; no abnormal growth (???)

-Jane Doe has red hair, cut to nearly a bob.

            -Red hair found inside refrigerator (Ask Proper Martin)

-Bullet wound in left shoulder.

-Bullet wound in right shoulder.

-Bullet wound in right leg. (4)

-Black sore (mold?) found all over body.

            -Not contagious by touch, inhalation, or consumption (I’m looking at you, Ryan)

Martin Smiths was examining the refrigerator Jane Doe had been found inside of. When Grant asked him about the contents of the fridge, he started to laugh while bashing his head into the steel wall. He did not die from this. Grant requested permission to look at the refrigerator for medical purposes, but “Captain” Martin Wilcox denied his request, citing that the psychological effect it had on Smiths was too much for him. In reality, Wilcox also saw what was inside the fridge. If Marston saw its contents, he would be driven mad by the horrors within. At least, that’s what he claimed in his suicide note.

Grant was a bit peeved to be certain. There was so much about this woman he didn’t know. Why did she have a tattoo of a monkey on the bottom of her left foot? Why was she in a refrigerator even though she was wearing a space suit? How did she die? And what bit her? He would only find the answer to two of these questions. The first answer came in the form of a feeling in his left palm that was akin to what an apple must feel when a naked woman eats it upon the request of a snake. When Grant lifted his hand to see what bit him, all that was there was a black mark. The full extent of what had happened to Grant wouldn’t become apparent to him for another three hours. In a way, he was one of the lucky ones.

Lesson 4. Do not open things that say “DO NOT OPEN!!!!!!!!!”

FAMED “GHOST SHIP” FOUND FLOATING DEAD STAR AFTER THIRTY SEVEN YEARS.

The starship Nausicaä, missing for thirty seven years, was found yesterday orbiting a dead sun. The crew within long dead.

The Nausicaä was a medical ship owned by noted billionaire and heir to the Wilcox Corporation, Martin Wilcox the Fourth. It disappeared on Nov. 20, 2071 after a humanitarian aid mission on Titan and did not return to Mars for repairs. The decades long mystery was resolved, however, when a freight ship had discovered the remains after a computer glitch forced them off course.

The Inter-Solar System Police confirmed Sunday that the ship, which had several internal failures but no breaches in the ship’s hull, was the Nausicaä.

Among the crew of the Nausicaä was noted movie star, Martin Smiths. Smiths’s career was notable for his starring roles in such classics as “Revenge of the Deadly Assassin,” “Marco Pollo,” and his award winning directorial debut, “The Man Who Knew Me.” Smiths was a hero to the burgeoning Mars cinema, producing several acclaimed films, including “Blake.” His career was cut to an end when he disappeared along with the rest of the crew.

The Nausicaä’s unsolved case has been the fodder of many a true crime podcast and work of fiction, including Walter Graham’s seminal The Ghost Ship and the fourth season of the Wilcox produced Dark Space series. Upon being asked about the discovery of the ship, head writer Marcus T. Ling was quoted as saying, “I’m excited… to see [the Nausicaä] discovered is perhaps one of my childhood dreams. I can’t wait to walk its hallways.”

Sources within the ISSP indicate that that dream may not come true, as there is a high level of toxicity within the ship that seems to have been the cause of death for the Naussicaän crew. Rumors of a bioweapon secretly implemented on the Naussicaä crew have surfaced, though the ISSP has not made a comment. More as the story develops.

[Update: 12/01/08]

The ISSP has released an official statement:

THE STARSHIP DESIGNATED “NAUSSICAÄ” WAS FOUND FOUR DAYS AGO ORBITING THE DEAD SUN, SOLARIS. THE ENTIRE CREW WAS FOUND DEAD. THE CAUSE OF DEATH HAS BEEN DETERMINED TO BE SUFFOCATION. IT IS BELIEVED BY THE INTER-SOLAR SYSTEM POLICE THAT THE CAUSE OF DEATH WAS A COMPUTER MALFUNCTION, WHICH SHUT DOWN THE LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEMS. THE FAMILIES OF THE DECEASED WILL BE INFORMED OF THEIR DEATH.

Class Dismissed

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She may be in the here and now, but it’s the ghost he sees. (Ganymede Elegy)

Jane Morrison would spend her nights swimming in the river. On some nights, the moon would glisten like satin on her naked form as if she was one with the water. Her green eyes were globes of wonder and alien beauty. They felt at home in this ocean of angel fish and lost dreams.

Jane had a long history with the river. At five, she kissed her first boy. At thirteen, her first girl. Her mother would take Jane to the river every summer to skip stones, fish, and just watch the industrial world around it. It wasn’t like the rivers on Mars or even the historical Earth. Those were outgrowths of nature whereas this river was more man made than anything else. The satellite of Ganymede was founded twenty five years before Jane was born. Initially, the world was an endless sea. Or, at least as endless as any world can be. When man entered the frame, they made settlements over the ocean world. Some were more traditional cityscapes while others were teaming with canals.

Jane swam in one such canal. She called it a river because she preferred the sound of that word. There was a softness to the word that she couldn’t quite place why she found so beautiful. She would talk to Scout Lucas, her recently ex-boyfriend, about it. He would say some rather pretentious thing about the nature of language being inherently sexual and the fluid nature of “rivers” hits a dopamine gland that arouses certain people. Jane didn’t care though. She was too busy looking at him as he talked.

Scout, for all his pretension, had a wry nature to himself. He wasn’t the kind of person to necessarily stand out in a crowd, but one could easily say a pithy remark that would make everyone turn their heads. He was a lean fellow with blue eyes and a depressive disposition. Jane liked that his smile could warm even the cloudiest of days. Lisa Williams, their girlfriend, liked the way his hair would blow through the wind like a bushel of leaves on a cool fall afternoon cascading off a dying tree.

They had met at the river, just three years ago. Jane had just come out of college no better or worse than when she went in. Scout had recently finished a fishing commission with a friend of a friend, and was now waiting for the next gig. Lisa, meanwhile, was drowning. It’s not that she didn’t know how to swim. She knew quite well how to do that. Rather, it was the fact that she was having an allergic reaction to the angel fish that, while not deadly, made it hard for her to stay awake. Jane was the first one of them to see her, though Scout was close behind. By fortune and chance, they swam in an almost synchronistic formation towards the drowning Lisa.

It wasn’t completely easy for them to get Lisa out of the water. As they would later discover, she had a tendency to kick uncontrollably while asleep, which made keeping the covers on a difficult task. But they were able to get Lisa out of the river without too much difficulty. At most, they received bruises that would heal within a day or two. They considered calling an ambulance, though they soon realized that neither one of them had the funds to actually afford the ambulance, let alone a full trip to the hospital. While they were panicking over potentially losing everything they had over someone they’d never met, Jane noticed an odd bruise on Lisa’s thigh. Scout recognized it instantly.

“That’s an Angelfish hug. Happens all the time out in sea, though I’ve never seen one cause someone to react like that. Though, maybe she was allergic…“ Jane suddenly began to look worried. “It’s not deadly,” Scout reassured her, “At most, she’ll be asleep for another hour or so.”

“In that case,” Jane sighed with relief, “maybe we should get her out of here. My place isn’t too far, only a block or so.” Or so, it turns out, was five blocks, the exact distance away from Jane’s small, damp little apartment. It didn’t have much room. At most, one person, maybe two, could live there. The couch was broken with one of its legs missing. The bed was slightly too uncomfortable to get a good night’s sleep. And the window was basically just a hole in the wall. Not that Scout could complain. Life on the sea doesn’t pay much unless you own a ship or catch a monster of a fish, of which he did neither. As such, he lived on the streets like many a person on Ganymede. They laid Lisa on the bed and waited for her to awaken.

Lisa awoke with the groggy speed of an alcoholic. It took her a bit to remember how to speak coherently, and so her attempts at saying “Who are you” or “What happened” sounded more like “Horu” or “Hath pend.” The two were patient with her, having spent the past 25 minutes or so in petrified silence. It took Lisa another five to teach her mouth to speak coherently through saying wrongly right sentences such as “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

“Spam,” was the first word Lisa said coherently. She didn’t notice until five words later, after which she said, “That is to say… where am I?”

“You’re in my apartment,” said Jane “Not much, I know. But… it’s home.”

“And you are?”

“Jane. Jane Morrison.”

“Scout Lucas,” he said while reaching out his hand to shake Lisa’s.

“Lisa Williams. What happened?”

“You were hugged by an Angel Fish-“

“Angelfish.”

“Whatever, and you had some kind of allergic reaction to it.” Lisa looked at her thigh to see the still lingering bruise of the Angel Fish’s hug. It was asymmetrical in its attempt to be symmetrical. It was like a child’s drawing of a symmetrical figure. Sure, the basic shape had the air of symmetricallity to it, but the details within the sides shifted radically in unique and beautiful ways. “You almost drowned.”

“And you saved me,” said Lisa looking quite fondly at Jane.

“Well, we both did,” she noted quite sheepishly. A small laugh came out of Lisa’s mouth. More a nervous reaction to beauty and confused feelings of attraction than anything else. She looked at Scout in all his lean majesty.

“So what were you doing out in the canal,” Scout asked without a hint of snideness. “That place is full of Angelfish.”

“Well… I like swimming. Haven’t been on Ganymede for too long, and I didn’t know there were Angel-Fish on this world. Always thought they came from Mars. How far are we from the dam anyways?”

“About five blocks.”

“And you carried me all the way here?”

“Well, we took turns. I carried you half the way and Jane carried you the other half.”

“So why didn’t you take me to a hospital?” Jane awkwardly grunted to that question while gesturing to the cramped nature of her room. Lisa noticed a stain of water damage above Jane’s head as well as the cracked, downright chipped, stone floor beneath Scout’s bare and soot covered feet. “Ah. Well, I’m kinda loaded, so you probably would’ve been fine. Then again, I guess I was too asleep to actually ask.” Oddly enough, an air of levity came out of that revelation. Especially when Lisa elaborated on the nature of being loaded as less to do with being a multibillionaire and more to do with her connections throughout Ganymede and the other Jupiter satellites.

Lisa had been spending the past three years working the streets as a courier for various syndicates. She had recently done work for Law Rentzuo picking up his “rent” from the various people who owe him. The work dried up roughly around the time one of his “tenants” shot him in the face in what was deemed self-defense. She had for the guy who did him in. Law was many things, among them the kind of asshole who would mockingly eat an apple while his men did horrible things to those who couldn’t pay their rent.

But one of the benefits of working for Law Rentzuo as a courier is that you come into contact with various levels of society, among them the well-connected as well as the willing to help. As such, people looked a blind eye to a worker willing to help at a moment’s notice. Some even paid a nice tip for such help. Not enough to sustain a life outside of being a courier used between the various syndicates, but enough to afford a house that can fit more than four people.

Scout and Jane moved in after their third date. The first date was because Lisa felt she owed them for saving her life. The second was because the first date went somewhat poorly due to a fire at the restaurant caused by some kids playing with fireworks. The third came about because they realized at the end of the second date that they wanted more and more dates. Officially, they aren’t a couple. Polyamory is typically looked down upon, even on more liberal worlds like Ganymede.

For those three years, they were seemingly happy. They loved each other, to be sure. But, as Jane sawm in the river, she couldn’t help but think about their relative happiness. Could she have noticed if she wasn’t so busy being happy? Could she have seen what he was going through? Could she have prevented Scout Lucas from killing himself?

Lisa was the one to find the body. He was lying in the bathtub for about an hour. Lisa and Jane were out for work, delivering a package and stealing it respectively. He left a note by his body. It only had one word on it. Lisa screamed when she saw the body. Jane ran to her and could only feel numb. Not even tears could come out of her eyes. The funeral will be in a few days, Jane thought in the river. She hadn’t seen Lisa since that night. She bolted from the apartment while Jane blacked out of conscious movement.

She found herself at the river, completely naked. It was a warm river with the moonlight shining perfectly in the water. There was a serenity and softness to being in the river. It was a still river that only moved when the wind moved. At the right time, it could look almost like a mirror of the sky. Her clothes where right next to her feet and she wanted to fly. So she took a dive into that dark abyss. She would return for a few more nights, intentionally this time. It felt right, swimming naked in the river. She couldn’t put a name on why, but it felt right.

On that night, three before the funeral, she saw something at the bottom of the river. The moon glistened on the glass with an intensity of a spotlight. Out of curiosity, she dove down to the bottom where all the strange, wonderful creatures, swim to their heart’s content. When she broke the surface of the river and returned to dry land, she looked at the artifact she had unearthed. It was a pocket watch. It was circular in shape, almost like an anchor. It was a fifteen hour watch, the clock itself shaped like a diamond with curved corners to the point of almost being octagonal. It was old and rusted, probably down at the bottom for years. She could barely see the greyness of through the rust. The more she thought about it, the more it looked like a lock. Something to keep secrets locked within. To keep the past frozen in a moment of melancholy and longing that not even death could end.

Jane looked at the pocket watch and thought to herself, ‘Scout would really like this.’ Then she began to cry.

Farewell…

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