i have been watching the same 1:37 clip from rick and morty (true level) for the last year. nearly every day, multiple times a day. there've been several days where i watched it for hours on end. my average is probably around 20 times a day.

i'm autistically interested in story-telling/memetics/etc, and that clip is so fucking funny to me I think it literally broke my brain. the pacing, the way it lets the audience interpret so much, the boarding, it all allows for a really fascinating short clip that can mean so many different things. its incredibly entertaining for me at least, but i suspect malicious intent somehow.

although i love it, I'm suspicious about the way the entire scene is written. the dialogue is actually very stilted and awkward, although it flows alright in the show. it's intentionally very vague while still using very direct language. hell, just the concept of "true level" is enough to keep me tickled pink for years.

just thought i'd share my anecdote. i've never experienced this kind of obsession for so long, nor have I ever read/heard dialogue that even comes close to the brilliance i see in it. i think its very likely that it was written specifically to fuck with people like me (hyper-interested in language/art/memes, or a certain kind of weak mind, i'm not sure). idfk.

just got off work an hour ago and i've already watched it 3 times. it is INCREDIBLY fun to smoke weed to. but i think the clip is actually trying to intentionally bait people into thinking 'crazy'. to get ungrounded or something. don't know. maybe someone out there can get something out of this post

>>10120

i like how you point out chaos v order (hadn't thought of it like that). the basic setup for the skit is enough to amaze me. it's an unexpectedly good metaphor for drug addiction (i imagine meth users can relate), but ofc touches on things like loss of innocence, god, and responsibility.

even meta/fanficy stuff is fun, though often makes less sense. for example, the platform could represent ultimate falsehood as well. an artificial construction that brings the physical body unnaturally close to Nature/truth. like Icarus.

if you consider the context of the entire clip, things get even more bizarre. Eg, Rick says "If I say Yes, you're going to provide me with that?" it can read as an order (which morty obliges) as much as a question. The clip also touches on the question of what it means to remember, how so much our identity is tied to our memories, etc. the dynamic between these two is already layered with creator/teacher vs creation/student, and the clip REALLY plays on that. all while playing out a situation where rick, creator/teacher, is entirely depersoned (canonly only knowing about men in black 2) and dependent on morty for any information.

boy don't get me started on the MIB2/youtube references. white flash=memory wipe, used to conceal truth, and we also get white-flashes for the transitions, fantastic. you can even ignore the movie-reference, and just focus on 'men in black'. cops, Death, enemies, suits, blackness (yin/void/etc), so many ways to unpack and interpret (esp if you consider it ritualistic for them, like they're communicating in code). and why does morty remember youtube LOL

it's especially fun to take r&m out of their cultural context. the funniest thing to me is that in the show's canon, this moment happened only once, and likely never happened again. but in its entirety, it's written like it functions as a hyper-meta tool that 'the real rick and morty' could use repeatedly to ground, contextualize, and cope with the whacky shit they get into. in the past, i wrote stories about the problems with dimension-hopping, and one of the best ways to counteract those problems is to have a very firm, simple system, a ritual that helps ground the mind and helps you process more info more quickly. depersonalization would be a HUGE problem for these two, and the entire clip reads a LOT like the kind of grounding ritual those two would need, but its focused around pretty dark concepts (begging the question, why, and what morty's meta role really is, aka what the role of the student, the role of the human).

as i said, i'm a bit autistic about narratives. they balance many half-truths with framing techniques that paint very simple messages. it makes their messaging very effective, which is concerning, esp seeing how much of a hack hammond is. idk, but it's pretty clear i think too much lol it's really grabbed me.