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A step far outside my usual haunts, but 3x19 Out of the Blue got me thinking ...
Okay. A while ago,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
penknife posted about Will, wondering what his motivations for staying with the Sanctuary were. That sort of got me thinking, and the last episode, Out of the Blue, added a bit to that. So. Some thinky thoughts on Will Zimmerman, and what motivates him to stay in a world of monsters:
Okay. A while ago,
penknife posted about Will, wondering what his motivations for staying with the Sanctuary were. That sort of got me thinking, and the last episode, Out of the Blue, added a bit to that. So. Some thinky thoughts on Will Zimmerman, and what motivates him to stay in a world of monsters:First, and at its most basic, I think it's because Will believes in monsters. Not just the abnormals and cryptids of his childhood nightmares and the world Helen Magnus showed him. Will believed in monsters long before his nightmares were confirmed as real. Because Will was a forensic pyschiatrist. Will's job was to look at the physical world, sift out the patterns of force, and let them tell him about monsters. Human ones, but monsters nonetheless. His job was to walk through the blood, and see what kind of mind would make it. His entire life, his world has been about chasing monsters, even if he never quite knew why, or didn't believe it.
The second thing that's important to remember about Will, is that he's never been quite right, never quite on an even keel. And he's known it, all along. Considering that his colleagues apparently didn't so much whisper it behind his back as say it to his face. But even more than that. Will dreamed of monsters, monsters that he thought couldn't exist. He turned to psychology to help himself explain it away, to help himself understand why he saw visions of teeth and swore that monsters killed his mother. He analysed himself into a corner, put pretty terms over what he remembered, but all the while, what he knew was that he believed in monsters, and monsters didn't exist.
Imagine that from a psychiatrist's perspective. Physician, heal thyself. And Will walked through blood every day, and saw what other men did when they saw monsters that weren't there, and tried to stop them. And Will's observant. He kept seeing them. In the pilot episode, he was seeing things only an abnormal could have done. Sifting the patterns of the physical world, and seeing monsters in them. How many times did he see that? How many times did he catch himself thinking 'only a monster could have done this', and wondering how long he had to go before he was as bad as his patients, how long before he actually started seeing them, before he was the one other men were hunting.
And then Helen Magnus shows up, and she shows them to him. Makes it irrefutable, makes it real. Not just the human monsters, but the ones from his childhood nightmares. She tells him that it was real all along, that he was wrong all along, but he was right, too. The monsters were real. And he could fight them.
Why does he stay? I think the reasons are twofold. The first is so he can learn the names of the things that the evidence has been showing him all his life, learn how to interpret the forensics so that he can see what's really there, and do so in a world where people will listen to him when he says it shows him monsters. It's so he can live in a world where the monsters are real, but he can know about them, and deal with them, and deal with people who know what he knows. If he walked away, if he walked back out into the real world ... he could never unsee what he's seen. He could never look at a pattern that says 'abnormal' and not know it, never again look at a crimescene and not know exactly what kind of monster made it. And in the real world, every time he saw it, he couldn't explain it. What could he say? "I believe in monsters"?
He could, of course, always just not go back to forensic psychiatry. Or not go into fieldwork. But the problem's still the same. He can't unsee it. Out of the Blue shows that, by this stage, the 'ordinary' world is one that no longer feels remotely right to him. He's always felt that little bit wrong, that little bit outside, and the past few years have only exaccerbated that. At least with the Sanctuary, the things that have haunted him all his life, the nightmares of his mother's death and the shadows in his job, are things he can deal with, professionally and as part of a team that knows. The Sanctuary gives him a purpose and a job that's real, where, even if he doesn't always fit, at least he's reasonably sure that he's still sane. If only by comparison.
The second reason is ... more complex. And one, I think, that the show itself has picked up a lot, given the Will episodes. That is, of course, Will's fear that he might be becoming a monster himself. More, that he is afraid, as he has been all his life, that he isn't sane. As I said above, how many times, as a forensic psychiatrist, has he seen the blood left behind by men who were fighting monsters that weren't real? How many times has he wondered, really wondered, how close he's coming to being one of them?
What if it's not real? What if the Sanctuary's not real? What if the monsters aren't real? What if he steps outside it, goes away from it, lets the illusion go, and has to realise that it's not real. What if he's become a monster, slipped into insanity, and just never realised it? He spent his whole life convincing himself that the monsters he saw in his dreams weren't real, that they were the imaginings a childish mind put over a traumatic event. Well then. What kind of traumatic event would be bad enough to make him create an illusion like the Sanctuary? Make up a whole world, and fill it with people who understood him. Filled it with creatures that he's spent all his life telling himself cannot, cannot exist.
In Out of the Blue, he is willing, perfectly willing, to commit suicide with Magnus to prove the 'ordinary' world false, and the world of his dreams reality. He is willing to die to prove to himself that the monsters are real. Because at this stage, three years in, Will has to believe that. He has to believe that he hasn't gone insane, has to believe in the Sanctuary, has to believe in the life he's made there. Otherwise ... what is he? What has he become?
That one, the show does pick up. How many times has Will be turned into a monster, or given an abnormality, or brought to a world that is not, strictly speaking, real? It's almost as if the world itself is conspiring to keep him doubting himself, doubting his reality, doubting his own nature. What's real and what isn't. Who's the real monster.
But as long as he stays with the Sanctuary, as long as he stays with Magnus, there's a way back from that. There's someone to turn him back when someone makes him a monster, someone to drive off a cliff with him to prove the world is real, someone to take the impossibilities he sees every day, and tell him that, yes, they are real, and he's not insane, and here's what we do about them.
Why does he stay? I think, mostly, because he cannot afford to leave. Because, whether it turns out to have real or not, the Sanctuary was an irrevocable step for Will, the point at which he gave up a lifetime's belief in what was real and what wasn't, and brought himself down on the side of monsters and insanity. He cannot go back from that. He can't allow himself to go back from that, to even look back from that. He put his faith in something he has believed all his life wasn't real, and now he can't go back, in case it turns out he was right. For better or for worse, even if it means he falls farther and farther into insanity, even if it kills him, he has given himself to the Sanctuary. It's more than a job. It was a choice that changed his entire life, his entire view of himself, a choice that retroactively changed every decision he ever made in his life, every clue he read, every monster someone saw and he said didn't exist.
The Sanctuary, and Helen Magnus, were an unparalleled event in Will's life, in ways that have nothing to do with saving the world and getting shot at and meeting Jack the Ripper. Every subsequent insanity he's met, every subsequent shaking of his world, it's nothing to the choice he made then. Will is at the point where he will literally drive off a cliff to prove his faith in the life he's leading now. Not for friends, not for family, not because he wants to be part of a team. But because it has to be real, and he has to keep it real, and he has to keep it as something he can and will deal with, or he might as well surrender the last of his sanity, and become the monster he has lived his life afraid of becoming.
I'm not sure, if Will is conscious that this is part of why he stays. Though Will, like James, has always been very painfully self-aware, and as a psychiatrist, I think he knows enough about himself, and the danger he's in, to acknowledge it to himself.
Why does Will stay? Because Will believes in monsters, and is afraid he shouldn't, and more afraid that he is one. Because the Sanctuary offers him a world that makes sense of what he spent his life thinking was his insanity. Because with the Sanctuary, Will gets to make the world he has always been afraid of into something he can deal with, and work in, and fight against, and be part of.
Because the Sanctuary makes it real. And Will needs to believe in that. Even more than he needs to believe in Magnus.
The second thing that's important to remember about Will, is that he's never been quite right, never quite on an even keel. And he's known it, all along. Considering that his colleagues apparently didn't so much whisper it behind his back as say it to his face. But even more than that. Will dreamed of monsters, monsters that he thought couldn't exist. He turned to psychology to help himself explain it away, to help himself understand why he saw visions of teeth and swore that monsters killed his mother. He analysed himself into a corner, put pretty terms over what he remembered, but all the while, what he knew was that he believed in monsters, and monsters didn't exist.
Imagine that from a psychiatrist's perspective. Physician, heal thyself. And Will walked through blood every day, and saw what other men did when they saw monsters that weren't there, and tried to stop them. And Will's observant. He kept seeing them. In the pilot episode, he was seeing things only an abnormal could have done. Sifting the patterns of the physical world, and seeing monsters in them. How many times did he see that? How many times did he catch himself thinking 'only a monster could have done this', and wondering how long he had to go before he was as bad as his patients, how long before he actually started seeing them, before he was the one other men were hunting.
And then Helen Magnus shows up, and she shows them to him. Makes it irrefutable, makes it real. Not just the human monsters, but the ones from his childhood nightmares. She tells him that it was real all along, that he was wrong all along, but he was right, too. The monsters were real. And he could fight them.
Why does he stay? I think the reasons are twofold. The first is so he can learn the names of the things that the evidence has been showing him all his life, learn how to interpret the forensics so that he can see what's really there, and do so in a world where people will listen to him when he says it shows him monsters. It's so he can live in a world where the monsters are real, but he can know about them, and deal with them, and deal with people who know what he knows. If he walked away, if he walked back out into the real world ... he could never unsee what he's seen. He could never look at a pattern that says 'abnormal' and not know it, never again look at a crimescene and not know exactly what kind of monster made it. And in the real world, every time he saw it, he couldn't explain it. What could he say? "I believe in monsters"?
He could, of course, always just not go back to forensic psychiatry. Or not go into fieldwork. But the problem's still the same. He can't unsee it. Out of the Blue shows that, by this stage, the 'ordinary' world is one that no longer feels remotely right to him. He's always felt that little bit wrong, that little bit outside, and the past few years have only exaccerbated that. At least with the Sanctuary, the things that have haunted him all his life, the nightmares of his mother's death and the shadows in his job, are things he can deal with, professionally and as part of a team that knows. The Sanctuary gives him a purpose and a job that's real, where, even if he doesn't always fit, at least he's reasonably sure that he's still sane. If only by comparison.
The second reason is ... more complex. And one, I think, that the show itself has picked up a lot, given the Will episodes. That is, of course, Will's fear that he might be becoming a monster himself. More, that he is afraid, as he has been all his life, that he isn't sane. As I said above, how many times, as a forensic psychiatrist, has he seen the blood left behind by men who were fighting monsters that weren't real? How many times has he wondered, really wondered, how close he's coming to being one of them?
What if it's not real? What if the Sanctuary's not real? What if the monsters aren't real? What if he steps outside it, goes away from it, lets the illusion go, and has to realise that it's not real. What if he's become a monster, slipped into insanity, and just never realised it? He spent his whole life convincing himself that the monsters he saw in his dreams weren't real, that they were the imaginings a childish mind put over a traumatic event. Well then. What kind of traumatic event would be bad enough to make him create an illusion like the Sanctuary? Make up a whole world, and fill it with people who understood him. Filled it with creatures that he's spent all his life telling himself cannot, cannot exist.
In Out of the Blue, he is willing, perfectly willing, to commit suicide with Magnus to prove the 'ordinary' world false, and the world of his dreams reality. He is willing to die to prove to himself that the monsters are real. Because at this stage, three years in, Will has to believe that. He has to believe that he hasn't gone insane, has to believe in the Sanctuary, has to believe in the life he's made there. Otherwise ... what is he? What has he become?
That one, the show does pick up. How many times has Will be turned into a monster, or given an abnormality, or brought to a world that is not, strictly speaking, real? It's almost as if the world itself is conspiring to keep him doubting himself, doubting his reality, doubting his own nature. What's real and what isn't. Who's the real monster.
But as long as he stays with the Sanctuary, as long as he stays with Magnus, there's a way back from that. There's someone to turn him back when someone makes him a monster, someone to drive off a cliff with him to prove the world is real, someone to take the impossibilities he sees every day, and tell him that, yes, they are real, and he's not insane, and here's what we do about them.
Why does he stay? I think, mostly, because he cannot afford to leave. Because, whether it turns out to have real or not, the Sanctuary was an irrevocable step for Will, the point at which he gave up a lifetime's belief in what was real and what wasn't, and brought himself down on the side of monsters and insanity. He cannot go back from that. He can't allow himself to go back from that, to even look back from that. He put his faith in something he has believed all his life wasn't real, and now he can't go back, in case it turns out he was right. For better or for worse, even if it means he falls farther and farther into insanity, even if it kills him, he has given himself to the Sanctuary. It's more than a job. It was a choice that changed his entire life, his entire view of himself, a choice that retroactively changed every decision he ever made in his life, every clue he read, every monster someone saw and he said didn't exist.
The Sanctuary, and Helen Magnus, were an unparalleled event in Will's life, in ways that have nothing to do with saving the world and getting shot at and meeting Jack the Ripper. Every subsequent insanity he's met, every subsequent shaking of his world, it's nothing to the choice he made then. Will is at the point where he will literally drive off a cliff to prove his faith in the life he's leading now. Not for friends, not for family, not because he wants to be part of a team. But because it has to be real, and he has to keep it real, and he has to keep it as something he can and will deal with, or he might as well surrender the last of his sanity, and become the monster he has lived his life afraid of becoming.
I'm not sure, if Will is conscious that this is part of why he stays. Though Will, like James, has always been very painfully self-aware, and as a psychiatrist, I think he knows enough about himself, and the danger he's in, to acknowledge it to himself.
Why does Will stay? Because Will believes in monsters, and is afraid he shouldn't, and more afraid that he is one. Because the Sanctuary offers him a world that makes sense of what he spent his life thinking was his insanity. Because with the Sanctuary, Will gets to make the world he has always been afraid of into something he can deal with, and work in, and fight against, and be part of.
Because the Sanctuary makes it real. And Will needs to believe in that. Even more than he needs to believe in Magnus.
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