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Disclaimer[]
I am typically not one for disclaimers. The reader often seeks out the battle because they are interested in the characters, and are often aware of the topics that their series contain in terms of subject matters. However, the human mind is a complex thing. Simple curiosity can draw us to things we would much rather not see, and send us spiraling further and further, all because we did not know what we were getting into. Ignorance is bliss, after all.
This is all just a rather grandiose way of saying that I will be including disclaimers in all of my battles henceforth, given my irresponsibility regarding such matters in the past. The majority being slightly inconvenienced by having to read over a short segment of words is something I would rather take over one person being unaware of what they will read, and potentially having disastrous effects on their mental health.
Given the nature of Serial Experiment Lain and _Boisvert, this episode will feature discussions and depictions of depression, isolation, disassociation, derealization, abstract images, suicide, and other related subjects. If you feel uncomfortable with any of the aforementioned topics, I would advise that you do not read this story.
Description[]
Serial Experiments Lain vs _Boisvert
Introduction[]
The room was nearly shrouded in darkness, the only illumination being a simple, dark blue light, the source of which was unclear given the lack of doors and windows. A bulky television stood on a nearby table, the only piece of decoration in the minimalist room. A blonde teenager lay on the carpeted floor, eyes closed, spread-eagled. He blinks for a bit, standing up as he looks around, mouth agape as he looks at his new surroundings. However, he did not notice a figure behind him.
???: Hi there.
The teenager shouts and rapidly turns around, falling backward. After attempting to scoot backward in a feeble attempt to escape, seeing nowhere he could run to, he raises his arm to shield himself, gazing upon the figure. A strange man whose outline seemed to bend reality, appearing as a void. It was hard to comprehend, the only features he could make out were the shape of an old fedora on his head, and two red dots that appeared to serve as eyes in the nothingness the figure contained. He began hyperventilating, convinced this was a bad dream. Maybe retribution for what he did.
???: Woah, woah! Relax flower boy! I'm not here to hurt you!
The teenager began to incoherently babble, still not reassured as he began to weep, eliciting a sigh from the hat-donning figure.
???: Alright, alright. Most people would be scared if they randomly woke up in a dark room and the first thing they see is an eldritch entity with a hat. I am the Hat Man. I know you're Basil, so we can skip that part.
Basil had begun to calm down, the look of fear and horror that was on his face shifting into confusion.
Basil:...The Hat Man?
The Hat Man: Yep, that one guy who hunts down people who take too much Benadryl and harasses random strangers just to make them question reality. Well, I'm sure you aren't here to HANG around.
Out of nowhere, we hear a laugh track play, the Seinfeld theme playing as it was quickly drowned out by the sound of applause, Basil glancing around in a feeble attempt to find the source of this auditory manifestation.
The Hat Man: I shouldn't say anything else regarding that, those who know will know. Anyways, it appears that you and I have been summoned from the depths of the abyss in order to fulfill the need for entertainment that someone who is playing God desires, attempting to drown out the monotonous routine that they follow over and over again by discarding of their playthings and bringing us in instead, clinging onto the hope that this will be it. That this false change will bring them happiness, deluding themselves as they know that nothing will come of it, yet refuse to accept it. Their escapism has completely destroyed them, and they can only watch as their kingdom comes crashing down, nobody to blame but themselves.
Basil: Woah... I have no idea what any of that means-
The Hat Man: I was going to make another reference regarding your black-haired friend but I worry I will get too philosophical yet again. Here, just take this script.
The Hat Man pulls a folder out of his trench coat and hands it to Basil, who mutters to himself whilst scanning over it.
Basil: O-okay.
The Hat Man: Regardless, the topic of a false god is a wonderful segue to today's episode.
Basil: Lain Iwakura, the goddess of The Wired
The Hat Man: Room, the Devil of the Complex
Basil: I'm Basi-
The Hat Man: We already introduced ourselves, no need to duplicate the same formula out of comforting familiarity. That part just got edited out of the script.
Basil looks down at the script and to his surprise, The Hat Man was right.
The Hat Man: Yeah, the person who writes the scripts is a pretentious philistine who thinks any type of subversion will endear him to others, even to the point of the point of annoying self-deprecation! It's great having no free will in what I say!
Basil: Can we just end this segment and move on with the episode?
The Hat Man: We shall do so. Uh, given the meta-abstract nature of this episode and both of the series talked about today think of some cool hijacking or transition to the next segment. We don't get paid enough for special effects.
Basil: Didn't you just say you're an eldritch entity?
Let's Love Lain[]
The Hat Man: Ah, the 90s. It seemed as if a new era had donned. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and its allies had become the sole hegemony of the world. With the unexpected end to the Cold War, the excessive spending on military matters in order to counter their rivals had ceased, and the former highly secretive technologies they had developed could now be repurposed.
Basil: This led to the rise of the personal computer, and the internet as a whole. Now the common man was only a mouse click away from all the information he wanted, and you could instantly communicate to others in real life, even if they were on the other side of the world. Even though we could already do that with phones-
The Hat Man: Stick to the script, it’s different because now you don’t have to talk to people with your mouth to talk to them.
Basil: What about letters?
The Hat Man: Nobody uses letters anymore.
Basil: Oh, okay.
The Hat Man: Anyways. That’s right, Basil. The future seemed bright with the leaps in technology available, this sense of optimism engrained in the perception of many. And like all the times that came before, this view was soon to be shattered across the world.
Basil: In Japan particularly, this was brought upon by the end of the economic miracle starting from their defeat in World War 2, and ending at the start of the 90s. With a stagnating set of demographics, a stagnating economy, and a disillusioned youth, the idealism regarding the Japanese economy had dispersed as the nation entered what would be dubbed the “Lost Decade”, much to the relief of their competitors.
The Hat Man: What? Toxic work culture and the youth isolating themselves to have parasocial relationships with fictional characters causing a labor shortage? They could have never foreseen that, really.
Basil: Speaking of isolation, the rise of the internet had presented a strange paradox. You could now talk to people without the anxiety of face-to-face communication, yet one could find that the internet can also be a one-way mirror, where you can look into the worlds of others and deeper into fantasies of being someone you aren’t. It was a place where you could put on a mask, losing your sense of connection with the real world.
The Hat Man: This brings us to present day, present time. A man by the name of Masami Eiri was working for Tachibana General Laboratories on the Protocols for a network called the Wired, this world’s equivalent to the internet and also a world of its own consisting of data, networks and non-linear time. He was given control of developing Protocol 7 of said network when he introduced the idea of implementing the human consciousness into the Wired in order to make humans effectively immortal.
Basil: Of course, his superiors thought the idea was insane and fired him. With no job left, and his purpose in life gone, he threw himself in front of a train. However, he made steady progress on the program prior to his dismal, managing to store his consciousness in the protocol, so he found himself remaining after his death, now residing in the Wired..
The Hat Man: Vindicated in his theory, and now desiring to expand this system to the rest of humanity in order to create a collective human hive mind, he found that he was effectively the God of the world he resided in, and with his expertise in technology, he had just the idea of what to create to achieve his goal. A program in the world he is not in. If his talks with her are to be believed, at the very least.
Basil: Lain Iwakura.
The Hat Man: A shy, stoic Japanese middle schooler, she lives a relatively normal life in a world where technology has rapidly advanced, becoming a cyberpunk-like world. This uneventful existence is interrupted when she receives an email on her NAVI, a high-tech device akin to a computer. The sender of the emailer? A classmate who committed suicide, despite the date showing they would have been dead by the time the message was sent.
Basil: Why are you looking at me like that-
The Hat Man: I don’t even have eyes, gaslighting isn’t real and you’re insane.
Basil: Oh, alright.
The Hat Man: Anyways, like I was saying, the classmate had apparently sent this letter following their death to multiple of their peers, claiming their suicide was their way in order to become one with the Wired through abandoning their physical form and having your mind become apart of it.
Basil: Given the insanity of that claim, Lain naturally became interested in the Wired, and entangled in a conspiracy that shakes her understanding of the world as she dives further and further into solving it, gradually isolating herself, culminating when she’s confronted by the God of the Wired himself, Masami Eiri.
The Hat Man: However, Eiri bit off more than he could chew. He was used to initially having the upper hand in all his encounters with Lain, but he underestimated how much she had learned.
Basil: He attempts manifesting into the real world, attempting to fuse with the world, starting with Lain. However, after seeing her friend Alice’s reaction to the events unfolding, she begins questioning his authority. She claims he is but a false god, enraging him as he realizes his plans cannot proceed, panicking as a result.
The Hat Man: He begins to morph and shift into a horrific blob of flesh as he realizes the one whom had formerly aided him is not against him, lashing out and promptly being telepathically bludgeoned to death with various electric equipment.
Basil: That’s… a somewhat anticlimactic death for a claimed god.
The Hat Man: It is. Now ascended to the de facto Goddess of the Wired, and with Alice severely traumatized from all that has occurred, Lain realizes the harm that Protocol 7 has caused, and realizes she can fix the world. She concludes the world is a better place without her existing.
Basil: She chooses to turn back the clock and erase all traces of herself, at the same time ensuring that Masami Eiri never created Protocol 7 and instead lives as a simple office worker. Nobody remembers Lain, and the Earth continues to live without her, as she oversees the world as its passive ruler. It will remain that way, as she takes on this heavy burden for the sake of others.
The Hat Man: You can also ignore all of that if you are talking about the kinda canonish video game, which focuses on Lain getting therapy, her parents divorcing which leads to her moving out on her own, then murdering her therapist and shooting herself in the face out of hopes of ascending to the Wired.
Pop Up: In the Serial Experiments Lain Official Guidebook, producer Yasuyuki Ueda stated that the anime, video game and other official works all take place in different worlds, but that thinking about the series in terms of worlds was the wrong way to go about it, and that they were all connected and had to be viewed together in order to understand Lain, alongside the creative staff viewing all Lains as one and the same. As such, we will utilize a general composite of all official Lain media.
Basil: What the fuck.
The Hat Man: The headquarters called and said the suicide metaphor was not blatant enough. Except that the game was developed first so the joke doesn’t work but still. Anyways, the introduction is done, so now we can move on.
Basil: Given the technological-centric world Lain is in, her primary tool is her NAVI, which she uses to access the Wired. She is highly skilled with its internal workings, rapidly learning to enhance it throughout the series. With it, she can gain information from other Netizens and other such things, like programming an AI as a replacement for her father.
The Hat Man: Yep. In more interesting terms regarding her arensel, she also has a gun which she stole off a woman who committed a murder-suicide.
Basil: She also has a bat, which she actually does use on someone other than herself, showing the strength to disfigure metal with a few blows.
The Hat Man: Rest in peace Lain’s android father, we will never forget you. As one could guess from her skill regarding technology, one of Lain’s main assets is her intelligence aside from the whole being a reality-warping god thing, shown by her rapidly picking up the complex system of computer engineering mere days after being introduced to it, upgrading her computer by herself and turning her room into a labyrinth of wires, all for the purpose of further finding out the truth of the world she resided in.
Basil: She also managed to reveal the identities of all the members of the Knights not long after finding about their existence. The Knights of Eastern Calculus, being a highly skilled and mysterious hacker group that even the government could not contend with. This immediately results in all of them being murdered by the government immediately afterwards.
The Hat Man: Oh yeah, I forgot about that entire plot line of Lain being stalked by the Men in Black and aliens, the latter seemingly disappearing out of the plot. Not joking, this actually happens.
Basil: What if they just added that to mess with the viewers and make them think it was an essential part of finding the deeper meaning of Lain when it was just something they wanted to add?
The Hat Man: That would be extremely funny. Besides her intellect, she also has more supernatural skills. Her presence can affect technology even when she does not intend to, as seen in when her emotions become negative and streetlights begin going wacky. It can also be assumed this passive technological manipulation is what caused the club shooter to commit suicide, speeding up the weird electronic drug in his system. That or Lain just got really lucky with his paranoid delusions, your pick.
Basil: Funny enough, that wouldn’t be too far off, as she managed to drive a trained psychologist insane after a few sessions with her. Even though she didn’t really say much that would cause that, excluding frustration that she wasn’t seeing any breakthroughs.
The Hat Man: That is true. Of course, Lain doesn’t drive everyone around her insane with just her presence, but there isn’t anything that implies that the psychologist had any cybernetic implants or anything along those lines, so it’s possible that it’s just the world messing with the psychologist, that or Lain already has powers in that point of the story. Also a possibility, since Lain seems to have teleported, near the ending of the game.
Basil: Right. Well, then I suppose we will talk about her alternate personalities.
The Hat Man: Right. First, there’s regular Lain Iwakara, the same person that she has always been. Then there’s Lain of the Wired, a confident, bold and extroverted entity. Uhhhhh, some people consider the appearance of a seemingly more mean, trollish Lain to be another separate entity, fittingly being granted the nickname “Troll Lain” by the fans.
Basil: Is that it?
The Hat Man: I honestly do not know if the other Lains Lain talks to are entirely separate entities from Lain of the Wired or not.
Basil: Oh. Well, on to the weaknesses then
The Hat Man: Not yet, Basil. First, we have to discuss the elephant in the room.
The camera zooms out to reveal an elephant in the room.
Basil: Oh, wow, I’m not sure how I didn’t notice that.
The Hat Man: The elephant has been discussed. Anyways, about Lain’s weird transcendent epic ascension power scaling big chungus thing, which means we will have to discuss cosmology and metaphysics, which is good since everyone loves stuff like that. Good thing I went to college.
Basil:
The Hat Man: Say something so I can continue without making giant walls of text.
Basil: I don’t want to.
The Hat Man: That’s fair.
Room[]
"Do you know what day it is? When did you last go outside? When did you last see your friends? Your family?"