The starkest memory of lain for me is going to be when lain’s sister broke down, when an out-of-body experience with the twisting reality around her, a malicious information overload broke her into a twisted different husk. The other is when, not too few episodes later, lain herself started fragmenting and fighting her fragments. Vivid imagery showcases the identity clash, this fight between the many creations people made of her, the personalities she grafted from them, that are still ultimately Her.

I turned to my best friend for a bit after that and had to take a not-so-insignificant break to just sit down and try not to utterly lose it. One of my leading issues is the imitation game. My identity is a similarly fractured being, all running in the Wired comparatively and in contrast with how I go day-to-day in the flesh. To make things worse, I’ve already mentally rejected that flesh, but accepted that I have to live with it and all the suffering it brings me until I get a real chance to take action towards it. The attempts I’ve made to keep that delay as pleasant as possible were themselves delayed, which just heightened the pain of that anticipation and made me find more avenues to escape as a consequence. I’ve lived like that for years ever since the question of identity came up sincerely in my head. In fact, I’ve lived with such tolerance for the world of flesh that I question if I’m really in pain anymore and if I really should transition to what I want to be. Is that escape I’ve crafted, this identity I show off to myself and other friends I hold dear through the wire, is that real? Am I truly who I present myself to, do I actually want the “Real” to reflect that, are these fragments just as thorny and unwanted as lain’s own? How can I truly say that any part of who I am and act differently towards groups of friends is all a part of me when they’re all just intricate complex imitation games that rely on these people’s encouragement?

What is my real sense of ego, anymore? Can I say I’m not similarly hollow?

Admittedly, I do not have answers to these questions. In fact, I probably bring myself pain by even expressing them. They’re thorny, discordant thoughts that I try Very Fucking Hard to not think about. But they are relevant ones, they’re in themselves a part of the whole this show represents, and they deserve to be faced. Whether intentionally or not, the communication web we created has become an ultimate part of us. The show’s main thesis is that the web is just as real as the ones we walk. Scaringly, the monstrous hate-infused and encouraging places lifted by corporations attempting to connect us further have become brainworms we must live and work with. We can treat it but it doesn’t stop that Everyone Is Already Connected, even if that first step for some was the worst way possible.

Certainly, this is barely even an inkling of the reading here. That last couple lines came with further context that the wired is not a higher plane, nor is it really even a good thing. Liberating maybe, I can name countless lives I’ve lived in other people’s DMs, all of which gave me a sense of euphoria in being truly ‘myself.’ Were it not for them, and my SO, would I have even survived quarantine? But it’s still equally toxic, burning with info stress from disinfo sources and detached mouths spewing contextless lines at nothing, that we will equally treat as fact. There’s an entire conspiratorial network that weaves through lain, a lot of it mouthed off profusely as truths after we’re already punched into a corner where we must accept them. The logical grounding is smokescreen, metaphors for this enormous overload that drives people to burning corpses as the comprehension breaks down and is exposed.

In the latter points of Lain I looked for the ending hoping for solace and conclusion. I was treated to a painful ego death as I cried for the girl forcing herself to treat herself so insignificantly in order for people to survive. ‘Death’ in lain is shown to be transcendent in that those voices spoke back to people alive, but then that turns out to be more information than we can reasonably process and has to be quarantined. So then death becomes a fleeting memory, not able to persist in an apathetic world.

But that’s a lie. Lain knows better than that, and she herself undoes that sacrifice in part just to be remembered again. Her voice carries, and we all love her for it.

I’ve projected a lot on this show, these are barely even coherent thoughts with very little in the way of structure. I choose to end it positively though. I won’t need to undo these wires to love myself, the mess is a whole that is affirming. I just need time.