IJ study archive

Poor Me, Poor Me, Pour Me a Drink — "pretty hard to believe this wraith…"

quote

pretty hard to believe this wraith could stay sober, if he needed to get sober, with the combination of abstraction and tragically-misunderstood-me attitude he’s betraying, in the dream.

Context

Gately auditing the wraith's confession through hard-won program ears, and diagnosing it instantly: for all its tragic grandeur, the tirade is self-pity, and the slogan he answers it with — the pun that turns "poor me" into "pour me a drink" — is the doctrine's blunt warning that self-pity is the disease's own on-ramp. The clichés the wraith can't stand are the exact tool Gately uses, correctly, to see through him.

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