Legion - analysis of his aspects

[hafje]

So last week I reread every Legion-related book/fragment (though I could not find any informative interviews) and puzzled as much information together about Stephen's aspects as I could. You will find this text (it is a first draft and I had no time to proof read yet so sorry for that) under this intro. I would say have a nice read and be sure to post your thoughts.

 

The Analysis itself:

 

Legion, in reality called Stephen Leeds, is a man suffering from a quite unique and interesting disease: he sees a number of hallucinations (this number probably lies somewhere around 40, although only 12 of them are named, see Appendix), called aspects who help him on his assignments. They are not personalities though, they rather seem to be separate ‘entities’ bound to his mind.

 

Each aspect is a hallucination, created by his mind, that is an expert on a certain kind of knowledge. They are in fact receptacles for his knowledge, like a book is a receptacle for words. This means his aspects can only know what he knows, which creates some interesting complications (see later). He creates a new aspect by reading a book on a certain subject. His mind transforms the knowledge he gathered into a new aspect who holds that knowledge. This means Stephen only creates aspects when he absolutely needs them. Because of this some hallucinations are older than others, Ivy for example is one of the aspects he already has the longest.

 

A proposed theory is that he created them to shove the burdens for his responsibility and knowledge of to someone else. They let him pretend to be normal.

 

The key however to the aspects is that to Stephen they are real. This is accomplished in two different ways.

First of all his mind creates his aspects super vivid and detailed which makes them seem real. His mind adds various nonexistent objects like JC’s guns and even adds their interaction with the real worlds (like the wall being damaged by the guns). The hallucinations also interact with each other, they can hear each other, speak to each other, argue. Besides that, each aspect has an excessive backstory and leads an imagined life even when they’re not interacting with Stephen himself, like Audrey taking a shower. Furthermore his mind fills in nonexistent details. When his butler comes with empty hands pretending to hold drinks, his mind thinks he has drinks with him and that he hands that over to the aspects. Another example of his mind severely changing his perception was when he hands the photograph to Tobias. Although the photograph is still in his hand, his mind perceives it to be in Tobias’ hand and therefore he can’t feel it anymore. Another example of his hallucinations being very real is that like real people he has no complete control over them, meaning he can’t summon them at will.
The strange thing about this is that even though Stephen knows and realizes that everything he sees is fake, he stills accept this hallucinations of his mind as being ‘real’ to him. Of course they are not real, as outsiders for example cannot hear them. Even his hallucinations know they’re not real and accept this fact with some notable exceptions, like JC (more on him later). This point of being not real is further accentuated by the fact that they can’t do anything while he is sleeping or unconscious.

The second important way this hallucinations are made real is by Stephen himself. For some reason (see later) he tries actively to handle them like real persons; giving them their own rooms, holding doors for them, ordering extra drinks and food and reserving extra places in cars and trains.

 

Another interesting thing about his aspects is that every one of them is suffering from issues, like phobias, manias, psychological diseases, … (see later)

 

Then there is Sandra, the woman that is crucial to the aspects. She had a sort of relationship with Stephen. She was said to be the only one that ever seemed to get him. Ten years before the start of the Camera-incident Sandra left him for reasons unknown to us, she never contacted them again and as she was very good at avoiding attention they until known have not found her yet, which means they still don’t know the whole story. Maybe there was a good reason she left?

 

In the past Legion’s situation with his aspects was way worse and more unstable than it is now, as he stabilized. He himself states he is more stable now than ever.

 

JC seems to be a very unique aspect. He is one of the only aspects that does not accept that it’s fake. Another curiosity of JC is that he is the only aspect that frequently disobeys him. Stephen has never had control over JC and it seems to be getting worse, like he is losing control over him (however the amount of control he has over his aspects is debatable, could he for instance imagine one of his aspects a puppy, or would that break the illusion of reality his mind installed). Furthermore JC and Ivy recently begun a relationship, being the first aspects to do such a thing. Lastly there is the incident in Jerusalem where JC takes ‘control’ over Stephen’s hand to fire a gun and takes enemies out in a matter of seconds. This seems to be particularly accurate to be coming from information Stephen learned by reading books or even watching other as he himself seems to have no experience firing guns. Even more strange is that in this same event, Stephen could even feel JC touching his wrist, although this could be one of his mind’s perception changes again. Anyways, JC seems to be very strange and may be crucial to understanding the aspects.

 

Theory Time

 

Lastly a theory about the Aspects. Two different times it is stated that bad things happen with Stephen when certain things happen to his aspects. First of all when too much of his aspects are together he says bad things happen. This is probably due to the overload of information in his brain. Compare it to a computer running a lot of different programs. When too much programs are needed at the same time, your computer could become slower and even overload. This would probably happen too when Stephen tries to summon too many different aspects because too much information would be ‘summoned’ at the same time in the form of his aspects.

 

Secondly the importance of his aspects seeming real is very important. It is repeatedly stated that when the illusion starts to break down and when the aspects are unhappy, bad things happen too. This is why there is such a large focus on making seem them real. The reason to why this is needed is unknown to at this point. This last one seems very important as this could very good be the reason why two of his aspects have already vanished (Ignacio and Justin). Ivy seems to be genuinely worried about aspects changing, being lost, vanishing, or even becoming nightmares. The issues each of his aspects have could be explained as ‘bugs’ in his mind, though there could be more going on around them.

 

A last theory is that the information seems to be seeping back into Stephen as it is said he seems to need the aspects less to solve his assignments. Will one day all of their knowledge drain back to his mind and will that be an issue?

 

Finally a real small note about the advanced workings of his aspects. It is said that Arnaud is actively trying to figure the camera out. But how can he accomplish this if Stephen is not constantly with him, as those times logically seem the only times he would be able to work on it. It seems very unlogical that a hallucination would be able to discover things about the camera when Stephen himself doesn’t look at it or is not with him.

Edited November 19, 2014 by hafje

[Melaan]

JC seems to be a very unique aspect. He is one of the only aspects that does not accept that it’s fake. Another curiosity of JC is that he is the only aspect that frequently disobeys him. Stephen has never had control over JC and it seems to be getting worse, like he is losing control over him (however the amount of control he has over his aspects is debatable, could he for instance imagine one of his aspects a puppy, or would that break the illusion of reality his mind installed). Furthermore JC and Ivy recently begun a relationship, being the first aspects to do such a thing. Lastly there is the incident in Jerusalem where JC takes ‘control’ over Stephen’s hand to fire a gun and takes enemies out in a matter of seconds. This seems to be particularly accurate to be coming from information Stephen learned by reading books or even watching other as he himself seems to have no experience firing guns. Even more strange is that in this same event, Stephen could even feel JC touching his wrist, although this could be one of his mind’s perception changes again. Anyways, JC seems to be very strange and may be crucial to understanding the aspects.

 

THANK YOU! Someone else noticed this too. I actually started a thread that was entirely about JC and his uniqueness compared to the other aspects.

Also JC does something VERY interesting in the sneak peek we got of Skin Deep.

Do you remember in the first book where JC comments on  feeling like he was missing 'a thousand bucks'? (I can't remember the amount, but it was in Israel when Stephen talks about feeling like he was missing a clue.)

Well, when Stephen and his aspects get into the limo in Skin Deep, that guy talking to him told JC that he donated a bunch money (JC's money) to an anti-gun foundation.  So. . . JC was in fact missing his money. Now if that's not weird I don't know what is. And that's not even counting the fact that he and another aspect have a thing going.

I wonder if JC is more 'real' than the others  because he's the most like how Stephen used to be, you know, before he went crazy or whatever. In my mind, he has aspects because he himself is so brilliant he'd be VERY crazy if he didn't section off his brilliance into hallucinations. But clearly he wasn't ALWAYS like that.

 

Edited November 22, 2014 by Melaan

[Shardlet]

Each aspect is a hallucination, created by his mind, that is an expert on a certain kind of knowledge. They are in fact receptacles for his knowledge, like a book is a receptacle for words. This means his aspects can only know what he knows, which creates some interesting complications (see later). He creates a new aspect by reading a book on a certain subject. His mind transforms the knowledge he gathered into a new aspect who holds that knowledge. 

 

This does not seem to be completely accurate.  If you'll recall from Legion, Stephen only reads a portion of the Hebrew language book in order to summon the translator aspect (I don't recall her name off-hand).  He even tells what's-her-bucket that he only needs to read a substantial portion of a book in order to summon a new aspect.

 

This is one of the key tidbits (in my mind) to indicating that his aspects are more than what Stephen and others believe them to be.

[Melaan]

This does not seem to be completely accurate.  If you'll recall from Legion, Stephen only reads a portion of the Hebrew language book in order to summon the translator aspect (I don't recall her name off-hand).  He even tells what's-her-bucket that he only needs to read a substantial portion of a book in order to summon a new aspect.

 

This is one of the key tidbits (in my mind) to indicating that his aspects are more than what Stephen and others believe them to be.

That's a very good point. My husband came up with a random, silly theory last night involving the aspects being some sort of computer program things. He was mostly being silly, but I would not be surprised if there is some tech or some science invovled, espescially since the summary of SKin Deep has to do with  ". . .biotechnology, a man whose work concerned the use of the human body as a massive storage device.. . " (audible) So it's probably not too far fetched to theorize that  Stephen's issue has to do with a slightly mystified science.

[MathEpic]

A small update to the theory of the original post.

 

In Skin Deep we learn that Steven has a "White Room", or a room as blank as possible for interacting with most/all of his aspects at once.  (Sort of like a conference room, but with less personality.)  Nothing that bad happened there, but the tone of the narrative suggested it could.  In fact there were two instances where Steven had to correct behavior from one of the aspects.  The first was when JC shot the ceiling in order to call the meeting to order.  He rebuked JC saying "I will need to imagine the hole from now on." suggesting that there was something taxing about maintaining the illusion.  The other time Audrey wrote in the air, and Leeds had to imagine that she was writing on a glass pane in order to keep up consistency.

 

Bad things don't happen when too many aspects are gathered together, bad things happen when his brain cannot keep up with the illusion.  The more aspects, the more complex the illusion and the more difficult it is to maintain.