2020-08-21 16:29:57 ¶ ●

malo’s comments on the conspiratorial tone of homestuck’s skaianet systems documentation give me pause on the very nature of the whole Secret History of Twin Peaks. the two texts are in essence the same concept; an attempt to draw all of human history into one web, connecting seemingly disparate dots across hundreds of years until they all spiral together into one central point. but The Secret History’s connection to conspiracy theory is perhaps even more explicit. frost spares no thread from the fabric he weaves; aliens, government coverups, the masons, the illuminati and crowley’s thelema are all among the supernatural phenomena apparently connected to the story of twin peaks.

a favourite theory among The Return’s audience is that the directors write certain scenes to poke fun at them; that certain characters act as audience surrogates, desperate for answers but receiving none. and now I have to wonder if this is the core of The Secret History. the whole book is a corkboard of red strings tied up with red strings, and indeed the introduction is framed in such a way to make the reader feel like they are the one doing the investigation; tammy is the audience surrogate, and the corkboard is a cautionary tale. this is how not to understand twin peaks. getting caught up in connecting all the tiny dots will just obscure the bigger picture from you. even if we can assume all the events detailed by the book really did happen, how are we to trust the conclusions that the authors reach? tammy’s attitude toward the unexplainable is always to try to ‘rationalise’ it; but the fact is that rationalising the things we already know will not always provide us with the answer. again, the central phrase to twin peaks’ mystery: things are not what they seem.