i’m re-reading all web statements and like. logically i understand that if a desolation avatar can set people on fire, then a web avatar should be able to puppet its victims. i’m going to refer to it as ‘mind control’ even though it’s not quite 'mind control’, people tend to describe it as their limbs moving involuntarily, sometimes there’s even a conscious recognition that they don’t want to do it, but they’re still going to do it. but i’m so blindsided every time this happens. the direct unambiguous control aspect of the web really upsets that central thematic tension between the romanticism of being seduced into your downfall (jon’s story is partly this, “when has your discomfort ever actually stopped you from walking the path of the beholding?”, 152) and being a victim of the gods (jon’s story is also this! a guest for mr spider was bad luck. his life was destroyed the moment he picked it up, but it also doesn’t negate the choices he made while at the magnus institute). which is where that damned lighter comes in, every time they ask him about it he just point blank changes the subject and you’re meant to read them as moments of direct web 'mind control’, right. and while i can appreciate (do) the meticulous levels of planning that went into the whole web reveal, i’m struggling to like this. i think that theme of agency works best when the writing just leans towards various mechanisms of control influencing a character with or without their knowledge (sometimes to the point where it doesn’t even feel like much of a choice but they still choose to do it.)
like, they seem to be saying the same thing here? manipulation doesn’t have to mean bodily forcing someone to do what you want, it can also be about controlling what they know and/or limiting their options so they’ll struggle to understand the significance of their choices. until they do just what you want them to do, entirely out of their own 'free will’ and this is exactly how elias manipulates people (jon, most of all) and how the web is generally written, i think. this is simply a lot more compelling and makes the victim feel complicit in their own fate in a way straight up 'mind control’ doesn’t.
So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behaviour, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations. Bentham was surprised that panoptic institutions could be so light: there were no more bars, no more chains, no more heavy locks; all that was needed was that the separations should be clear and the openings well arranged. […] The efficiency of power, its constraining force have, in a sense, passed over to the other side – to the side of its surface of application. He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish- Panopticonism
