Thread by @mykola

Hmm. But “The One” is a narrative trap created by the machines. So this isn’t quite it. It’s not that they are The One.

It’s that they are one.

Right?

She serves as his subconscious, as his identity, as his reflection at all times. They even dress the same. She is he is she.

https://twitter.com/mykola/status/1469846307372208133

That line about “I thought you (I) were a man” —> “most men do” is a major clue that this is neo meeting his own lack of cisness, but also a broader statement about the reductive assumptions “most men” make about their own identities.

I watched part of a video linked somewhere in that thread last night that talked about how important and key to the trans experience it is to realize anyone you talk to could become an agent if you threaten their worldview by existing outside of it.

That’s what the agents are.

They are programs that enforce The Matrix, which run in a superstrate of collective processing across all of the computational nodes (read: people) in society.

Anyone has the capacity to become a cop at any time until they’re fully liberated, removed from that superstrate.

And if and when you meet an agent?

You run.

Because nobody is sufficiently themselves to stand there and confront the full force of society’s regulatory program on their own.

Why has it never been done?

Because someone has to model success first.

So yeah, this is actually i think maybe the single most Faithpunk story there is.

(Faith = the human capacity to act as if X were true, Punk = the opposite of cop. The Matrix is about faithpunks fighting faithcops over the right to self-identification.)

Neo is “the one” because he contains all the rounding errors of the matrix, we’re told. He’s every part of humanity that couldn’t be made to conform born into a single person, whose role it is to end one cycle of the matrix and begin a new one.

That’s the big plot, right?

But this means that he’s “the one” in the narrative sense that the others need to see. He can show them what it means to be so authentically human that no program can contain you. That’s his whole arc.

And the machines exploit that, because we are narrative animals.

The big difference between Neo and previous iterations of The One, we are told, is that Neo’s love for humanity is concentrated in one person. Trinity.

But if Trinity is on some level Neo’s authentic self the whole thing clicks: Neo chooses self-love over a false dichotomy.

That’s it, that’s the trick.

Neo’s power is rooted in his ability to love and be loved by himherself, as personified metaphorically in Trinity.

That’s how Neo comes back to life in the first movie, it’s how he surprises the architect in the second.

(Even Morpheus cannot do what Neo can do, not at first. His faith isn’t strong enough - he is on some level a materialist whose faith is grounded in what he has seen.

He needs to see Neo beat an agent before he can do it himself.)

Note that this is why everyone hated N+T’s “chemistry” when the movie came out. I remember being so confused by that overwhelming popular reaction, to me it was interesting.

But Neo + Trinity are not a cis straight couple. It’s not that kind of love, it’s not shot that way.

It’s urgent and gentle and patient and kind and desperate and utterly rooted in taking care of each other in every level possible as peers, with a nuanced awareness of each other’s specific needs and vulnerabilities and limits.

Even their sex isn’t shot with a male gaze.

That’s why it weirded you out, because you are conditioned to see a different set of ineffable dynamics manifest on the screen and when they’re not there it feels like “they’re doing it wrong” and huh is that what dysphoria feels like? Did they shoot dysphoria-inducing sex here?

Gosh these movies sustain so much reflection and contemplation.