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moulty8 · 1 year ago

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Concise Explanation of Ministry of Joy Lore

The backstory to both The Smiler and The Sanctuary focuses on the Ministry of Joy, a mysterious organisation focused on bringing social compliance to the world through smiling and constant happiness.

The Ministry’s ideology focuses on the fact that, if someone is happy they’re less likely to commit crimes or cause harm to others, and are more likely to be loyal to whoever’s governing them.

It’s unknown when the Ministry came about but it’s commonly theorised to be sometime during wartime, then the original Advocate Trials at the Sanctuary began sometime in the 1950s and 1960s. These likely started.. As innocently as secretive government trials can, but by the time it was closed down it was a haven for medical malpractice and ethical misconduct. Experiments ran there included lobotomies, testing with various experimental drugs, neurosurgery, and tests of hypnotic induction and trance states. They pioneered a treatment called “Marmalisation” - successfully making some few patients constantly happy, to whatever extent was deemed adequate at the time.

Though the Advocate Trials ended, the Ministry continued underground in complete secrecy - below X-Sector. Their expansion into X-Sector presumably happened sometime in the 1980s, with the creation of the Black Hole, which is stated to be a Ministry experiment - as was Energizer, Submission, Enterprise, and Oblivion. The stated purpose of these tests was to push the human mind and body to its absolute limits, even going so far as to throw test subjects into a portal to what’s commonly known as The Void. They presumably teamed up with the Lord of Darkness for this, however this isn’t explained in full anywhere. It’s a very strange and likely uneasy union - the Lord of Darkness desires chaos and darkness, the Ministry of Joy complete order and control.

Around 2012, the Ministry of Joy started to show their face again. With their experiments, they’d finally started to get reliable results with Marmalisation - but they still needed to run a final few tests before they could put what they’d learned to proper use in their plans to automate the process.

They re-opened the Sanctuary, with the desire to re-run the Advocate Trials to obtain answers to a few questions that they had, that weren’t properly documented during the original run of the tests. To properly re-run everything, they decided to keep everything as true to the original conditions as possible, so did not modernise anything - even televisions used were the same as they were back then.

The Sanctuary staff came to resent the Ministry’s upcoming project - The Smiler - as they knew that the Sanctuary would soon be closed as it would no longer be needed once the ride opened. They saw it as though their jobs were being replaced and automated with a “less effective” process than the surgeries and manual means they’d supposedly perfected.

Around this time, the resort would begin posting cryptic things on social media. “Found footage” documenting some students from Manchester University, called Trisha White, and Daniel Holden, in their final year of social studies, who went missing after interviewing Miles Cedars on his book Smile Always. It was revealed in the footage that they had been taken by the Ministry of Joy and scheduled for Marmalisation, after stealing some tapes documenting Miles Cedars’ own brainwashing. Miles Cedars, it turns out, was a 50% Corrected Advocate who had been under the care of Dr Kelman - Head of Medicine at The Sanctuary - pulled out at Halfway Corrected by the Ministry of Joy’s main operatives as they needed his mind still partially intact for him to act as a representative ahead of the opening of The Smiler - their magnum opus.

The Smiler is a Correctional device said to be the ultimate controlling force in X-Sector. It had been in the works for decades. It consists of a looping track around a large, 5 legged structure called The Marmaliser. As the track passes by each arm of the Marmaliser, riders are subjected to a different Marmalisation element. In total on the ride there are an estimated 7 Correctional Processes, but the 5 on the Marmaliser are considered the official 5 in play.

Optical Procedures/Pre-Processing - Initial scanning and observation as you pass through the queueline

The Disorientator - Flashing lights and full rotation of the ride vehicle in a heartline roll as you embark on the initial stage of the process

The Inoculator - A jab of happiness as you pass by Stage 1 of the Marmalisation process.

The Tickler - Aims to tickle you until you can’t resist smiling.

The Flasher - A giant flashing device, blinding you as you hurtle underneath the leg

The Giggler - Infectious, intoxicating laughing gas

The Hypnotiser - Has the power to disorientate, mesmerize, and disrupt your self awareness.

It’s based around a sentient AI [recently revealed to have been called SPY in it’s conceptual stages, with it’s main body originally called the SPYDER, though now it’s just referred to as The Smiler]. All rides in the park are sentient in lore however for most, this is reasoned through magic rather than having a ride-story-specific explanation.

Useful links:

Smile Always [Found footage ARG] - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLw_OzfhiMQ0kqQ8Po8hWjX_2VUkz4apGN

Information about The Sanctuary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eylfp-GeDRE&t=414s https://www.parksscaresandglitter.co.uk/post/revisted-extreme-the-sanctuary-22-10-13

Some of the extensive marketing for the ride -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTY3n08UUEU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2Qya-ULEMQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cY5j85joo4k

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