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six-of-cringe · 1 year

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I think that one of the reasons why people misinterpret Wylan's character and arc, among others, is because they misinterpret the relationship between him and Kaz. This post has kind of mitosised off from the BFWP (Big Fucking Wylan Post) I'm writing because it's a bit of a different focus and constitutes its own post.

A lot of people talk about Wylan's character and development as though it's meant to match Kaz's - starting out as a nice kid who the city forces to become amoral, indifferent to violence, and well-versed in crime. These qualities are usually talked about with a weird reverence as an irrefutable symbol of "badassery", as though it's always a positive development for any character regardless of the story's narrative, which annoys me but is not the topic of this post. That's part of the BFWP's job.

Following Kaz's exact development is not the point of Wylan's character. The point is that Kaz and Wylan narrative foils - very similar in many ways, but with a fundamental difference that creates the "broken mirror" effect/shows how they could have turned out if they'd chosen differently. I think that difference is how they respond when they climb out of the harbor after their respective betrayals. Narratively, Ketterdam represents a very harsh system that presents the people struggling there with very few options. You can either choose to ditch decency, play by the Barrel's rules, and live, or you can hold on to decency and die.

When Kaz returns to the streets after Jordie's death, he chooses the first option. He copes with what happened through ideas of revenge, and to survive long enough to see it he quickly turns to thievery and violence. He thinks to himself after he robs a kid for money and food that it was much easier to survive when you've left decency behind. He survived through violence, creating the Dirtyhands persona around himself for protection.

When Wylan has to fend for himself, he choses the second option. He finds "honest work" at the tannery, where they exploit workers and expose them to toxins. He wonders if he'll live long enough to use his savings to leave the city, or if the chemicals would kill him first. He was smart enough to steal and survive, but he chose decency, and with it, he chose death. There are a number of reasons why he chose differently than Kaz despite their similarities - his older age and thus more developed moral code, having no one to avenge but himself when he believed himself worthless, his more privileged upbringing, and his relatively low drive to live. Alone, he would have died.

Then Kaz steps in. Kaz's role in all the crow's lives is that, intentionally or not, his ruthless rule of the Barrel creates a sort of haven that allows them to survive where they would have died had they stayed alone. Wylan is a really clear example of this, and though Kaz's intentions were at least partly self-serving, his involvement both kept Wylan from dying of exposure or street violence as well as prevented him from needing to do the more terrible things that it takes to survive in the Barrel. Throughout the books, we see Kaz kind of taking the brunt of enacting violence in Wylan's place - traumatizing Smeet's daughter, killing the clerk on the lighthouse. Wylan could get by making explosives in the workshop rather than having to shoot or stab or beat the life out of people. And at the end of the series, Kaz sees to it that he never will have to. Of course Wylan did bad stuff to survive when working with the Dregs, it's the Barrel. But the extent is greatly lessened because of Kaz's involvement.

Wylan's arc was never about becoming comfortable with violence, or becoming just like Kaz - the way people characterize him as some sort of ruthless murder mastermind is inaccurate and redundant with Kaz's character. He isn't nonchalant or celebratory about crime or death or violence by the end of the book. He doesn't HAVE to become like Kaz, because Kaz himself gave him the space to continue being decent, intentionally or otherwise. Understanding that dynamic is important to understanding what Wylan is like as a character and as a person. If you assume Wylan's trajectory is to become "Kaz 2.0", then you're going to mischaracterize him. I've seen posts about how Kaz was the Jordie that he didn't have to Wylan, and I think that makes a lot more sense. Because Kaz is willing to do the horrible things in his stead, Wylan has the third option otherwise impossible in the Barrel - maintaining his decency and surviving.

#Kaz really do expose ppl to the horrors of the world but simultaneously protect ppl from losing themselves to it #sorry guys. wylan likes math and puzzles and his friends he does not like crime. crime is an unfortunate byproduct of surviving #'we could wake them up' Mark my words you stupid quote i'm coming for YOU this week #does this make sense. does this post Sense???#wylan nearly blows his cover just thinking about a terrible guy kaz killed in front of him. THIS is your ruthless killer?? lol #one thing about me. i like characters with Hope and Gumption. thank you wylan sixofcrows #wylan is a bitch but only when standing up for what he thinks is right. especially against kaz. GUMPTION. the GALL.#glad you didn't bite it in the cancer factory you funky little genius #this pairs nicely with my jesper analysis. he enacted violence but unlike wylan he Refuses to Think About It #wylan van eck #kaz brekker #six of crows #soc #tgt #soc meta #soc analysis #bfwp #crooked kingdom spoilers

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vampirepunks · 2 months

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Higgs Monaghan's MBTI + Enneagram Typology (pt. 2)

(disclaimer: this is my opinion based on deep character study, eight or so years of special interest in typology, and subjective interpretation. if you wanna argue, good luck finding my PDB. friendly debate is fine.)

MBTI: ENTP (Ne-Ti-Fe-Si)

Enneagram: 7w8

Instinctual Variant: sx/sp

Tritype: 782

(part one: mbti deep dive)

(Sam analysis)

As an ENTP, Higgs is right at home in enneagram 7. However, he's an interesting flavor of ENTP 7, due to his sexual instinctual variant, 8 wing + secondary fix, and emotional center in 2. Let's start with the basics.

Enneagram 7 Overview Basic Fear: Of being deprived and trapped in pain Basic Desire: To be happy, satisfied, to find fulfillment Fixation: Planning Trap: Idealism Passion: Gluttony

Deprived and trapped in pain, huh? Considering Higgs' backstory as an abused child locked away from the outside world, forcefully told there was no life outside the four walls of his home, denied the ability to explore and discover, punished for basic curiosity, this makes perfect sense. Higgs experienced extreme repression of his natural instincts, denial of his basic emotional and psychological needs, and had no means to escape the constant abuse he suffered. Remember, the common belief is that one's MBTI type is innate, while enneagram theory hinges on the acquisition of negative traits stemming from warped self-beliefs manifested by the impact of inevitable social oppression and possibly even trauma. The enneagram dips closer to psychology and sociology than MBTI (still pseudoscience tho, Naranjo was a hack and is very worthy of criticism) and thus is a lot more logical in its foundations. Hence, I strongly believe that any MBTI type can be any enneagram, due to the breadth of human experience, it's just a matter of conflicting cognition and instincts. Don't fight me on this one, y'all, I'm working on my sociology B.A., I can go back and forth all day about this stuff. I'm gonna get banned from PDB any day now for the arguments I get into.

It's not hard to understand why "be happy and fulfilled" became the crux of Higgs' pursuits. Enneagram 7 takes this most basic human desire, "be happy," and crafts it into an obsession. Until they overcome their fix and passion, 7 will never be satisfied. (cough cough, intelligent eyes in a hunger-pang frame... ahem. sorry, sorry, something stuck in my throat there. moving on.)

Enneagram 7 treats life as one grand stage, where anything can happen if you just want it badly enough. Thus, 7 is hedonistic, rebellious, undisciplined in one way or another, driven towards wish fulfillment, egotistical, persuasive, and extremely seductive, with some variants of 7 exhibiting charlatanism and fraudulence.

Sexual 7

Instinctual variants are the result of the enneagram type's passion invading an area of the social life and self, dominating its expression. There are three realms here: sexual (not always explicitly in the adult sense, this refers to one-on-one relationships, intimacy, etc), social, and self-preservation.

So, obviously sexual 7 is the result of gluttony + the sexual instinct. sx7 traits include: talkativeness, grandiosity and exaggeration, exhibitionism of personality and style, invasive tendencies, brazen audacity, obliviousness, magical thinking, relationship difficulties, self-indulgence, hypersensitivity, anti-hierarchical escapism, and intolerance for frustration.

Put simply, sx7 has their head in the clouds. Ichazo nicknamed this subtype "suggestibility." Although I really dislike Naranjo, he made an excellent point when he said, "The sexual seven is not earthly, but heavenly. He is not interested in the things of this world. It is the gluttony of the things of a higher and more advanced world. The sexual E7 is what we could call a dreamer[...] His passion is to dream, to go towards the sweetness of the imagined instead of contacting the ordinary and not so interesting reality."

Higgs is a showman. He paints everything in metaphor, in literature, in poetry, in history, in performances and masks and shadow theater. When captured in the literal view, Higgs' life is one tragedy after another, with no rhyme or reason, no grand answer to "why me," no satisfying conclusion to make an adoring audience cry for him. In the meta, fourth-wall breaking sense, the player becomes that for him. He looks us in the eye and asks, "Isn't this what you've been waiting for this whole time?" and prances around putting on a good show as we give him the attention and recognition he craves; we observe, we react, and a few of us see him. For a few moments, we live in his tragedy, we smile at his one-liners, we laugh at his bad behavior, and in those precious moments, he isn't alone. He's still at it, winking at the camera in the DS2 trailer when he quips about porters having to pull the trigger sometimes, a sly little, "I know what you did. You're not better than me. You get it."

But let's peel back that layer. Higgs is a mask. Let's talk about Peter.

Yeah, Peter, who was destroyed time and time again by his stubborn drive to believe, no matter how many times it got him hurt, nearly killed, even. Peter, who believed his way into stepping into a new world with a new sky. Peter, who believed his way into becoming a terrorist. Peter, who believed his way into Amelie's puppet master hands. Peter, who believed until the moment the carrot was snatched away and he met the stick face-first. Peter, the child whose only crime was being curious, became a grown man with his dreams shattered entire, with no innocence left to call his own, no one to save him, and no way out. So what was there to do but construct new dreams, nightmares made ideal, to build anew an image of himself as "the bridge that brings the extinction" in service of a greater power? Dreamer turned apostle, Saint Peter having the faith that he could walk on water. Except Amelie didn't pull him out when he sank. (Sam did, but that's a completely different conversation.)

Higgs built up a world of magic, because his real life was tragic, and in the end, Amelie forced him to bury the castle.

sx7 traps themselves in false hope, breezing through the world with witty speeches, talking, talking, talking, coasting by on charm and an energetic demeanor to mask their anxiety. This is right at home in the possibility-obsessed, silver-tongued ENTP, but the sensitivities of sx7 soften the ENTP personality quite a bit, amplifying their vulnerabilities and making them all too easy to manipulate. This is a personality that needs someone to protect them, and to teach them to protect themselves, which Higgs never had. Coffin tried, but fate had other ideas, and she became another loss upon his shoulders.

Self-Preservation 7 (secondary)

Now, on PDB, almost everyone has voted Higgs as sx/so, and I get why, but I believe Higgs is very social-blind and not countertype. The last instinct in a stack is a personality's blind spot, their weak point, the thing they struggle with, try to ignore, and overcompensate for. For Higgs, that's the social instinct. The self-pres and social instincts are conflated a lot in 7, due to this type’s inherent need for outward validation; their cool exterior conceals fear of inferiority and deprivation. 7 is arguably the most extroverted of the enneagram thus their self-preservation needs are heavily dependent on the presence of other people and having a clear role within a group. They often create family units and can appear similar to the so8 via their proclivity for creating a “tribe” for themselves, a group they nurture and in turn are protected by. Thus, sp7s are characterized as defenders in spite of their obvious self-interest. sx/sp 7s are often warm, charismatic people. Combined with an 8 fix, they're quite intense. In a well-read ENTP, this is a personality that could sell ice in the Arctic, and people gravitate towards their ability to sell their dream. "Together, we'll carry packages from sea to shining sea."

Many of Higgs’ deeper issues can be explained through the aforementioned developed Fe + social-blindness + a 2 fix in his emotional center. Having grown up completely isolated from the world, there’s no way he could be anything but soc-blind. His self-sacrifice is cognitive compensation for social deficiency and expression of a moral righteousness generated by his sx7-driven idealism, not an instinctual social egotism and rejection of gluttony. More on this when we get to his 2 fix. sp7 is the closest of the 7 variants to the literal definition of gluttony. They yearn for indulgence in every way.

Now, let's talk about that 8 wing and tritype secondary fix

Enneagram 8 is known for its aggression before all else, and it has a strong pull on any personality that has it in their wing or tritype. The 7w6 is flighty, much more risk-averse, and they work to satisfy their gluttony by seducing others into feeding their cravings for them, holding back to explore all possibilities, and they seek assurance that they're making the right choices, whereas 7w8 knows what they want and they'll take it if they have to. The 8 wing adds a heavy-handed, decisive edge to the 7 personality; 7w6 pushes back when the world closes in on them, 7w8 pushes forward against the world to make sure they're never restricted to begin with. Thus, the sx7 with an 8 wing displays much more sexual aggression (licking people!) and is inclined to show dominance. They're self-protective, they don't like to share their toys, and they won't let anyone take what's theirs. See: "gonna make [Sam] regret ever fucking with me and mine." This makes the 7w8 a powerful protector, a fierce enemy... and a nervous wreck prone to covering up fear with violence, anger, and provocation. This sort of aggression is a tendency in the standard 7w8, but with an 8 fix added to the tritype, it becomes a leading trait. This is particularly interesting in an ENTP, as they aren't typically aggressive by nature; they seek conflict for entertainment's sake, without malice, looking to test people and expand their own worldview through discourse. The ENTP 7w8 with an 8 tritype fix, on the other hand, takes up stronger convictions, greater stubbornness, and an impatience for people who won't bend to their whims. They often go looking to convince people they're right, getting frustrated when they aren't heard. ("You just don't get it, do you?") Further, when 8 invades the sexual instinct, secondary to a 7 fix, you get a personality that wants to possess the hearts and minds of their closest loved ones, fears abandonment, would die to protect one of their own, and knows better than to bite the hand that feeds.

Finally, the tertiary 2 fix

Enneagram 2 is a nurturer. 2 generously gives of themselves, constantly fixating on everyone else's needs. This is a personality that would give another person the shirt off their own back if they asked. Important thing to understand: their help isn't free. They might say it is, but 2 unconsciously expects to be rewarded and praised for helping others. Overall, this fits well with Higgs' secondary instinctual alignment in sp7. 7 fears being deprived, while 2 fears that no one appreciates them, and they mask this insecurity with a show of humility and an insistence that they were merely doing the right thing. They reason that if they meet everyone else's needs, their own needs will be taken care of in reciprocity. Meanwhile, they minimize those needs, making themselves as small and convenient as possible, denying they have needs at all. With an sx/sp alignment and a secondary 8 fix, this becomes a push-pull internal conflict between "I don't need anything, really" and "Give me what I need or else." I firmly believe that part of why Higgs' betrayal of Fragile was so malicious was a subconscious urge to punish her for not being... you guessed it... what he needed.

Let's go back to the point from post no. 1 about Higgs having highly developed Fe. In his youth, every time Higgs found himself in a new social situation, he responded with skepticism and instinctual aversion to social connection. It took time and persuasion for him to warm up to the idea of group politics; he’s only convinced when he realizes he’s needed and stands to have his own needs fulfilled in turn. Most people try to place Higgs' emotional center in enneagram 4 (which, when modulated by the sx-instinct and an 8 wing, can get downright nasty due to the fixation with envy and the aggression of 8) but frankly... I think that's lazy analysis.

Higgs’ initial reluctance to accept his DOOMS for what it was and subsequent secretiveness about killing to maintain it for his own survival screams 2. Higgs doesn’t self-victimize or wish to be special. Rather, he conceals his own needs and justifies his actions through a belief that he’s undertaking a selfless path. (“I’m an altruist now, I live to help other people[…] Community’s what it’s all about.”) He needs the world to need him and deteriorates when his role is threatened. In his time leading the West, people loved him and relied on him, but that wasn’t enough for him. Because he’s soc-blind and sx-dom, he only feels truly seen, fulfilled, and appreciated when he has attention and approval through a one-on-one relationship, such as with Coffin, Fragile, Amelie, etc., and he obsessively pursues the same recognition from Sam. (It’s worth acknowledging this is also indicative of disordered attachment, anxious-avoidant type.) When he fails, he falls back on the self-pres instinct, so… pizza, anyone?

Amelie initially lured him with the deceptive promise of enough power to create the better, freer, fairer world he was striving for. In his mind: save the world = save himself. Can’t save the world? Can’t save himself, time to take the whole thing down with him and call it mercy. That’s an unhealthy 2 heart center, believing he can only meet his own needs by rescuing everyone else, projecting his own turmoil onto others. He convinces himself he’s doing the right thing, giving the world what it needs. While his thirst for wide-scale justice is genuine, he exhibits an intense craving for attention, intimacy, and recognition, becoming suddenly naive and vulnerable when someone offers what he lacks. Conversely, he’s antagonistic, aloof, aggressive, and ego-defensive when his needs are denied or threatened.

Conclusion

Higgs' most basic of needs were denied from a young age, and as an ENTP, he's inherently driven to hedonism, has a need for an intellectual playmate/trustworthy equal, and craves a balance between novelty and safety, so he’s gluttonous towards intimate relationships and a sense of security. His sx7 alignment means he dreams big and loud, constructing kingdoms in his mind and a personal narrative where he's the hero in shining armor, free to explore the world as he wishes and save it while he's at it. His sp7 secondary means he thirsts for his own means of survival and the assurance of it, going out of his way to endear himself to others and become indispensable to guarantee that survival. His 8 fix means he's assertive, strong-willed, aggressively self-protective, and highly possessive of anything he views as "belonging" to him. His 2 fix means he needs others to need him, needs to feel important in his loved ones' lives, needs to have his efforts rewarded, needs a larger role to fulfill, and most of all, needs to know that he's allowed to need things. As an sx7, he's comfortable with wanting things, but that 2 fix means needs are unacceptable for him to express.

Becoming Higgs—embodying a self-righteous, pharaoh-inspired persona—was the only way he could cope with the injustice and deprivation he suffered. (Coffin: “There was such a fear in him, but beneath that a terrible anger[…] That poor boy…”)

Mature-but-unhealthy ENTP 782 at its finest. Feet on the ground, head in the clouds. In conclusion, I want to fuck him so bad it makes me look stupid. What a man.

#literally obsessed with the fact that he has the exact mirror of my personality type #intj: ni-te-fi-se. entp: ne-ti-fe-si. alter egos. he's 7w8 i'm 8w7. he's soc-blind and i'm soc-dom. so on so forth #i could fix him and he could make me worse <3 #to sum up: this is a horse girl movie and i imagine myself to be The Special Girl who's the only one that can ride (😏😏😏) the wild stallion #i'm delulu about it actually. very fun. highly recommend. but watch out it'll hurt your sanity forever and people will def look at u funny #:)))))))#✨✨self-awareness✨✨#mbti #enneagram #personality typology #character study #entp #higgs monaghan #death stranding #logan.txt

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