fresh meat, page 55

for this page, i was going to type some stuff about whittacker's dialogue in this page, but i feel like i should wait for her arc to wrap up.

 this is mainly setting up that whittacker is leaving soon, also establishing the idea that you don't really need to be nice to be free (kind of established to bat away the idea that the characters deserve to be here even if they aren't exactly acting pleasant), introducing the concept of early self-initiated meds (some level of control in how you interact with the schedule), and most ideologically building up to a later discussion about the idea that mentally ill people perform self-harm as a form of control, which will be one of the first discussions we really get some direct insight into kim's mental health aside from the evaluations (which are kind of prodded out of her and biased).
i will say i guess that i've definitely met a lot of people who just LOVE the idea that everything is about control, that it's kind of people's raison d'etre. it's definitely extremely common half-baked pop psych, usually served to more self-destructive clients who feel very seen for the first time, so several of the characters here are going to demonstrate their interactions with this idea before the story wraps up.
i personally think that yeah, people do definitely do a lot of things for control, but they definitely don't do everything. it can be such a broad and vague idea that i think it's possible to twist anything into being "for control," just like you can find something wrong with anything if you're approaching it with the desire to prove that initially. i don't like the concept that a desire for autonomy is on some level functionally analogous to wanting to control others or dominate their autonomy through the rhetoric's ambiguous use of the word "control" -- which ultimately generally means consensual, influential participation or relation to a person, thing, action, idea, etc. i also think equivocating autonomy and self-control is fallacious on a literal level because self-control is more often than not a social function of restraint, not self-motivated, self-interested decision-making...
it also really just messes with your head and how you perceive interactions with others when you overstate the relevance of control, in my opinion! playfulness, curiosity, peer-to-peer debates, etc. kind of require a willingness or even desire to not be in control inherently, and they're completely normal emotions, so it's not always about control. i pointed it out while working on this on-stream, but i think it's kind of plain here how it can warp your view with how whittacker assumes sugar walks in upset for control of the TV immediately. her mindset isn't exactly unwarranted in this setting, though.

anyway, anybody notice she's holding a controller while talking about control!??!? wow it's so clever and subtle