(Originally written as part of a conversation.)
Do what thou whilt shall be the whole of the law.
Earthlings,
In the show Rick and Morty, Rick says this:
“Listen morty I hate telling it to you this way but what people call ‘love’ is actually a chemical reaction that drives animals to procreate, it’s strong and before you realize it you’re in a terrible marriage.” –Rick
He said shit like that to deflect from his deeply broken heart when his wife and daughter were killed in his “whiny baby backstory” That’s an example of what’s called “shadow projection”. He just happens to be good at putting it into seemingly scientific terms. Blame the concept of love because what you love was taken from you.
The scene in the toilet episode when Rick talks to Tony in the giant Rick robot.
“You know what shy pooping is, Rick? It’s a pointless bid for control. You wanna take the one thing in life that you think is truly yours and you want to protect it from a universe that takes whatever it wants. It took my wife, it clearly took something from you. We can spend our lives fighting that, or we can be free.” –Tony
It’s my favorite line of the entire series because it’s the only time someone tells Rick how it is without restraint or remorse. In a different show it would be the big moment where Rick finally gets it. In his case though, he knows all of that already but he doesn’t care because he has decided that his life is already meaningless so he wanders the multiverse filing his time with cheap joys until it eventually kills him. His tendency to build suicide devices and then whimp out at the last moment, and his constant drinking, are unhealthy coping mechanisms he’s built up because he knows he’ll never really escape those feelings, emotional epiphany or no, so he doesn’t bother. He will always miss his wife and child but he also has the power to see what might have been and that hurts him more than anything, because that will never be him. It will always be another Rick living the better life. All that talk of the “Rickest Rick” is ego inflation. The Rickest Rick is the one where that guy never showed up at his house with the portal gun. And yet even that isn’t bad enough; there’s a Rick out there that’s living that life for all he knows, but instead it’s a simulation being used to take the essence of that, simplify it down into an edible form, and made into pieces of food. In a world where you can do anything and nothing truly matters, why do anything at all?
Love is the law, love under will.
Shwifty as ever,
Vanessa