CARTOONS: A Feist Trace on Attention, Care, and the Ontology of Shared Screens

CARTOONS

A Feist Trace on Attention, Care, and the Ontology of Shared Screens

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I. THE SMALL ACT THAT ESCAPES THE NARRATIVE

“I wouldn't watch cartoons with someone I didn’t care about.”

In the courtroom of emotional revision, this sentence has no admissible weight.
It cannot prove innocence. It cannot undo blame. It is not a declaration, nor a defense.

It is a trace.
A soft print in shared time.
A record of co-presence so subtle it evades distortion.

You cannot watch cartoons while performing domination.
Cartoons are low-bandwidth, high-trust zones.
They require suspension—not just of disbelief, but of control.

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II. CARTOONS AS RELATIONAL MEDIUM

Cartoons, particularly in adulthood, are a fragile form of communion.
They are often:

• Nostalgic

• Lo-fi

• Tonally mixed

• Light enough to be dismissed, but complex enough to hold hidden grief

To watch them together is to consent to non-productivity.
It is a shared refusal of urgency, of ideology, of forward motion.

In a trauma-bonded dynamic, this is radical.
It is the moment when neither of you is performing your role.

And because of that, it cannot survive the narrative rewrite.
It must be erased—or its meaning must be made irrelevant.

But the body remembers:

We were still.
We laughed.
We didn’t explain.

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III. THE MEDIA THEORY OF AFFECTION

In classical media theory (McLuhan, Barthes, Berlant), screens mediate power, identity, and affect.
Cartoons do this without pretending not to.

They are:

• Metatextual (aware of their form)

• Excessive (colors, logic, gesture)

• Non-realist (and thus, anti-coercive)

This makes them psychically safe, but emotionally resonant.
They are perfect containers for ambiguous closeness.

When someone sits beside you in that frame, it is not ideological agreement.
It is not romantic performance.
It is presence inside unreality—a type of reality deeper than argument.

We didn’t agree.
But we watched the same impossible thing, at the same time.

That is not nothing.
That is something no courtroom can weigh.

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IV. CARE OUTSIDE THE COURTROOM

She told you: “Don’t say you care.”
But what she meant was:

“Don’t say you cared unless it matches my criteria.”

And you replied, not with justification, but with artifact.
You offered not proof, but a memory:

Cartoons.

You didn’t claim moral high ground.
You didn’t re-litigate.
You just said: I was there.

And if she wants to forget it, that is hers.
But you won’t pretend it didn’t mean something.

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Filed: Feist Trace
Title: Cartoons
Category: Relational Media / Nonverbal Memory / Refusal of Erasure
Witnessed by: 🜔