#but now it’s like. you are deliberately ignoring lore to make your theory

[apollos-boyfriend]

POPPING BOTTLES MATPAT OFF YOUTUBE FINALLY!!!

Maybe the channel will turn into something good, maybe the channel will completely die in 6 months.

i really do hope it turns into something good. because there’s a genuine reason why game theory was so beloved in its beginning and why so many people (myself included) have so much nostalgia towards it. and yeah, not all their old videos were great either, but they weren’t plagiarized. they weren’t directly contradicting canonical points for the sake of being “out there” and “different”. i really do hope the channel(s) can slow down and take its time to focus more on the love of theory crafting instead of the shock value of being different

[misskattylashes]

My controversial Milex theory

So, common lore is that Miles has always been this free and easy, liberated rocker, and Alex was the repressed, closeted one, holding Miles back from coming out. But recent events have made me think differently. There was the Miles at church thing, the realisation from Knee Socks that that is possibly about Miles and his religious guilt (the ghost in your room etc), and now the Suki Waterhouse thing. He has deliberately posted her song, congratulating her on her hit. It is an unusual move for him, but there won’t be any speculation about them because she is settled with Robert Pattison and they have recently had a baby. It is like Miles is making an effort to show there is no bad blood between them.

Why? Well I am thinking that maybe he is gearing up to come out, and seeing as Suki was his biggest publicised romance and she was supposed to have left him for Bradley Cooper (who it is rumoured also gay/bi) then Miles is now saying between the lines that it is no big deal what happened between them.

Alex always gets the bad rap because he is the one who has had long term girlfriends, but I think we have to look closer at Miles. He too has been in situations where he was sticking his tongue down the throat of a Page Three Girl or some model, and his lyrics in the early days were full of ‘she’ and ‘girl’ much more than FWN or Humbug. Even his videos always had females in them, just as much as AM’s videos (and let’s not forget, Alex has never fully interacted with a woman in an MV).

Personally, I think from 2008 – 2015 Miles and Alex had a casual thing going, but listening to Alex’s lyrics from this period, I would say that he realised early on that he was in love with Miles, and it was an open secret. See any clip of the Monkeys being interviewed around this time and the other boys pull faces when he talks about Miles. Whereas I think Miles was still convincing himself he could ‘go straight’ if he wanted to. I say this because in between DWYA and CDG we have EYCTE, and twice Alex has made reference to them ‘falling in love’ during this time, and by the end of the tour, Miles looks as lovesick and smitten with Alex as Alex has with him since 2008. Miles could no longer fight his feelings and had to come to terms with his sexuality, but by then he had mucked Alex around too much, and Alex had to go back to being CEO of Arctic Monkeys, so Alex wouldn’t commit to him. Hence you get CDG (but you also get the Ultracheese). This led to their breakdown around 2017 -2018. But instead of what everyone thinks, that La Cigale was the beginning of the end, I think it was the opposite.

By NYE 2018/2019 they are in their local in Bethnal Green, celebrating (Louise is there but Alex is trying to ignore her) and by Change the Show, Miles’ lyrics are no longer gender specific (apart from Caroline) and he sounds more annoyed at Alex rather than full of angst and hurt like CDG.

Then we get to OMB/The Car.  OMB is full of songs where Miles is reflecting upon his own behaviour, and on The Car we have Jet Skis and Hello You that hint at their reconciliation.

So in summary, I think Alex’s closet is very public but in their inner circle everyone knew the truth, but Miles’ struggles were far more internal and it took for him to realise he was in love with Alex for him to come to terms with who he really was and he had to become comfortable with that before they had any future.

[rabbit-is-wise]

hey man. h. hey man. hey man i hope you know what you just did. i just wrote one essay in the rbs and trust i WILL write another

so like LITERALLY YES I HAVE SEEN PEOPLE WITH MY OWN EYES TYPE THE WORDS TYLER WAS LYING IN I AM CLANCY AND POST IT ON TWITTER DOT COM AND RECEIVE AGREEMENT IN THE REPLIES. im not gonna be messy and post usernames but

out of the 12 replies under this tweet, almost every single one is in agreement. and i have to ask, like genuinely, do any of you people know how storytelling works?

and im so dead serious when i say that. i’ve talked about this to moots, ive talked about this to my irl clikkie friends, ive talked about this to my bsf who doesnt even know the story (yet), id be surprised if i havent posted about it on here yet. and i never post abt it on twt because of how prominent this theory is, and the way people talk about it, i just dont feel it would be a receptive environment. and while i absolutely acknowledge i might be wrong, that doesn’t change the fact that i feel so unwelcome (in this regard) i dont even try. a lot of people openly shit on tyler = clancy truthers, and once again i admit maybe i just don’t know where the joke line is! but regardless of intent this is definitely the outcome, because i cannot be the only one on that godforsaken app.

but my question—why in the every loving fuck would tyler lie to us? yes, he likes to make fun of us, and yes, things can be misleading before they are explained. but why would he lie. concept albums/music videos/other sporadic things are a very hard medium to tell a story through, something tyler openly stated during the clancy livestream while explaining torch’s guiding ability! so when giving us material, LITERALLY WHY WOULD HE LIE ??

sorry for shouting. but people constantly discredit tyler’s ability as a storyteller, as if he has not been writing it for over ten years. i promise he knows the story better than you. i promise. and i also promise when posting a video like this, where he brings the whole clique into the story regardless of their knowledge level, he would not lie. it would be literally balls to the walls batshit insane to do that. he isnt a 12 year old writing a fanfic making it up as he goes (as someone who was one), he is a grown man who has been writing for years and has been writing this specific story for, oh yeah, OVER TEN YEARS. YES, he said they react to us, but that’s more in the way he tells it, he’s not changing the story with how we react. he’s laying it out for us, and people are, at this point, deliberately ignoring it. that’s the only explanation i can fathom.

it goes in tandem with torch’s guiding ability. once again, i acknowledge i am not always great with determining where the jokes start and stop. but things about torch not being real, especially around bandito torch, tick me off to no end. because tyler fully said “bandito torch is real.” not only that, but voldsøy torch being a projection doesn’t mean he wasn’t real, it just means it was different. like he’s still there, and the neds/keons can see him at least, we just don’t know if anyone else can.

tyler talking abt the story and torch’s guiding btw

MOVING ON from how lore clikkie twitter gets on my nerves, though, i have thoughts on what vialism may have been! because of course i do. and courtesy content warning for discussions of death and suicide

so, vialism as a word of course comes from the fact that vial is a container. a vessel, if you will. and as the religion currently stands, committing yourself to it renders you a vessel for the bishops upon achieving glorious gone, aka your death. and as clancy says, “it teaches that self destruction is the only way to paradise.” they use this to feed their power cycle.

so now that we have those concepts established, i think vialism was not all that different in its original form. i think it was a religion meant to celebrate death, and the fact that we are all vessels for something greater. when you die, it’s a glorious gone because whatever message you were carrying has been achieved. it’s not about self destruction, it’s about moving through life with a purpose, and the joy that comes when you have finally reached the end of your journey. it’s sad, but you’re meant to move on and continue being a vessel for your message.

hold on a second! that sounds familiar! that sounds like a certain album relased in 2013, whose songs are easily connected to the story! it almost sounds like this video of tyler talking about the name vessel, even.

i don’t know why im being such a smart aleck. basically yeah i think vialism used to be a religion built around the concepts within vessel, and the bishops twisted it to mean only suicide could get you to the “glorious gone” status.

i want to draw a connection to neon gravestones, as one of the closest looks at the culture within dema we get (especially within the songs)

now you wait just a minute! doesn’t that sound like clancy asking for a healthier view of death—not lingering on it but celebrating the life and its conclusion? and you know…that reminds me of another song…another close look at dema within the music itself…

hmmm…almost like the bishops have twisted what used to be the act of honoring the life and death of a person into minimizing the life and glorifying the death, and now encourage people to ruminate on that so much they never move on with their own life…and leave the people confused and guilty when they feel the pull to continue living…

much to think about!

hi guys im back to be really fucking annoying abt lore again

upon a rewatch of the “i am clancy” video, i caught a line i think people have glossed over. when talking about the creation of sai, he specifically says “they made me entertain the people. lie to them.” and you know what the big message behind scaled and icy was? clancy is dead. he full tells us he was lying. like we already knew it was propaganda, and that the bishops were filtering everything he said, and then he outright says “i lied.” of course, this only holds merit if you believe what he says in this video (no im not bitter people think he’s lying in it. youre crazy)

also, just other thoughts—i think people are way too hung up on the tyclancy debate. besides the fact that i don’t understand why it’s still a debate at all, but the stuff he talks in this video goes so far past that.

first of all, he mentions his friends (“i can feel my friends rolling their eyes”). he has friends dude. i cant fucking get over that. he even laughs a little when he says it too. guys he has real friends besides torch. i think we moved on from that too fast. tell me more about your friends catboy

second of all and more importantly: “i am a citizen of an old city. well, they say it’s old, but there’s just no proof.” this was also hinted at in two of the fpe letters (transcriptions from ciancyisdead on twt)

and clancy also says vialism is a “hijacked religion”

WHY do we not talk about this more often. guys theyre faking a whole history within dema and manipulating a religion to keep the appearance up. we have no idea what vialism used to be before the bishops got ahold of it and began twisting it to fuel their seizing ability. the bishops’ corruption runs so much deeper than just clancy. his importance comes from his status as an exception and escapee, but like, the bishops are doing a lot outside of him. he has a personal connection that is the center of the story, as it should be, but like. there is so much more. why don’t people ever talk about vialism dude it’s so frustrating to only see the same couple of things constantly debated, especially because half of them have already been laid out, people just refuse to believe the information theyre given

okay leaving this here now bc one of my fics updated

[thefirstknife]

hi, sorry to bother you 🥺 when was the first hint, in your opinion, that something was wrong with osiris?

You're not bothering me at all! I'd love to discuss it a bit more to mention some stuff I haven't before.

First chronologically would probably be the deliberate framing of the ending of Immolant. He is shown alive after Sagira's death and they mention that Sagira's Light stood above the Pyramid for days. Since this is the last Osiris POV we have, it implies that he stayed in the Hellmouth for ?? days until managing to message for help.

But personally, I wasn't thinking about it until some time midway through Season of the Chosen. Around Chosen, I started noticing minor things that would mildly irritate me about him, like the way he was talking. His tone. The way he kinda goaded Saladin into scheming against the Cabal? But I chalked it up to him being bored in the Tower. Rest under the cut because of length:

Presage got me thinking more. The way he spoke about the Crown of Sorrow, the way he told us about how "The Darkness" and "The Entity" are two separate things (something Osiris never mentioned before). When I first started considering the theory, the first thing that popped to my mind was what he says to Caiatl during Presage when they both hear voices. Osiris says that he heard the following:

The ignorance of my youth. The pain of change. Unproven faith wilted by logic.

I never understood what he meant by that. I mean, it could be a number of things. It's frustratingly vague, more so than Osiris is usually. This isn't too much of a direct evidence because it can be interpreted in multiple ways but it struck me really hard when I first heard about the theory. Because it could be applied to Savathun.

She was also ignorant in her youth, following the words of her father's worm and leading her siblings to the Worm Gods. The pain of change from simple krill into Hive and then further into Hive Gods. Unproven faith (in the Worms and the Darkness) wilted by Sword logic.

This is a huge reach btw and the reason why I don't include it as evidence. It's having a conclusion and then looking for evidence, in a way. But at that point, I decided to look into it more.

I think the first proper direct hints were all the strange encounters various characters had with him and the way he's described as "melting out of the shadows." Noted in the first part of this post. Specifically how Ikora and Saint think they can hardly recognise him. They are the closest to Osiris so they know him best (with Ikora saying Saint specifically knows him best and Saint was utterly confused about him post-Immolant, especially in Boots of the Assembler lore tab).

Once you start thinking about it tho, you can go to any point in any of the three seasons and there will be something that's off. For example, early in Hunt, Crow makes a note that Osiris has been coming to him (secretly?) to teach him about Hive stuff:

Now, again, Osiris knows a lot about the Hive. He participated in the plot to take down Oryx and he knew how to interface with the Dreadnaught in Immolant. So on its own, this isn't much of a proof. But when you look at all the stuff together, it starts being hard to ignore.

But yeah, I think the best proper hints were the way other people reacted to him. People closest to him. I'd also say that both lore tabs of Savathun's POV of being in the City are good hints too, but they don't work as well if you don't already suspect Osiris. Retrofuturist and Ripe. The "this form allows me some dignities" from Retrofuturist is weird, but fits when you apply it to Osiris. And in Ripe, she has to make a random civilian forget what he saw which makes little sense if the civilian just saw a random person. More about Ripe here. We're kinda expected to start piecing things together at this point.

While Hunt and Chosen were somewhat subtle overall and relied more on what we don't have (lore from Osiris' POV), Splicer really didn't fuck around. Most of the stuff he says and does in Splicer is really bizarre, starting with the fact that he seems completely uninterested in exploring the Vex Network, to randomly antagonising Mithrax despite being one of the first people to advocate for Eliksni allies, to "underestimating the Young Wolf," to helping Lakshmi with the Vex portal and then going all out with showing us that cutscene. I legit did not think they would show us something so blatant already.

Something I haven't discussed yet at all is the phrasing of Lakshmi's radio message (1 minute, 46 seconds if the timestamp doesn't work) and how she says Osiris helped her "open a rift."

First, this reminded me of the lore book Empress, lore page New Gods. The lore page is defaced with Savathun's scribbling where she explicitly states she corrupted Umun'Arath and gifted Torobatl to Xivu Arath, "her favourite sister." The page ends with this:

She laughed and laughed and laughed until her mouth began to ooze. Until Caiatl, disgusted, pushed her off the sword with her foot. The body tumbled back onto the green blaze.

[A gift for my favorite sister.]

As the fire consumed the corpse, a gargantuan portal opened in the sky.

A portal opening above the City and flooding it with enemies? Happened before, with the Cabal. This was a more direct intervention by Savathun because she used Umun'Arath's dead body for the portal somehow.

However, this isn't the first time Savathun tricked someone into opening a rift to unleash the Vex. She tricked Crota into cutting open a rift in space and unleashing the Vex into Oryx's throne world.

The portal/rift that let the Vex into the City also unleashed the Taken as well. With Quria dead, Savathun really (presumably) has no way of controlling either of them. It explains the chaotic nature of Override: Last City. And of course, Lakshmi would need help from someone who knows how to manipulate Vex portals AND from Savathun. Savathun using Osiris as her meat puppet is a perfect fit.

[lazyliars]

//rp

Before I get into it, I want to state that is EXPLICITLY an analysis of the Characters, and is not intended to touch on how the cc's played them in a meta sense unless specifically stated otherwise.

Also, I just wanna put out there that I started writing this as soon as the streams ended and I LOVED THEM SO MUCH. I had such a good time watching them, and serious kudos to all the cc's for putting on such a good show.

I'm not writing this analysis to critique the way the story is being written, I really, really enjoy it, I just want to put my two cents out there on some of the differing character interpretations going on right now. I think this will come off as critical of the Syndicate, but I'm not trying to tear them down from a writing standpoint, but examine the characters' morality, the narrative direction that the story is going, and express my overall thoughts on both.

NOTE: The original post ended up breaking Tumblr's post editor because it was so goddamn long (i think??? or tumblr just hates this meta specifically.) So there is a part two to this, which I cannot link because it screws with Tumblr's tagging system. Thank you, you garbage website.

-

Tommy.

There is a relatively large section of people who believe that Techno and Phil's characters reactions to Tommy dying (Techno saying “pog” upon hearing that Tommy was beaten to death, and Phil's chuckling and insistence that he wasn't really dead) do not reflect on their characters' moralities.

I HUGELY beg to differ.

Tommy and Techno had a massive falling out. I'm not going to talk about who was 'right or wrong' in this situation because at the end of the day, they both ended up feeling hurt and betrayed by each other.

I think there is a degree of misplaced anger over this reaction and feeling hurt on Tommy's behalf, as he implied that he wanted to reconcile with Technoblade and clearly still cared about him on some level. However, this is audience only knowledge. Techno has no way to know this, and shouldn't be criticized for feeling more or less on same page as he was post-doomsday, seeing as Tommy never got the chance to try and make things better or even just talk to Techno, either by choice or by chance.

That being said.

Techno is the one who, himself said “I would have fought the world for you-” during their screaming match on Doomsday. Techno knows that Tommy went through something deeply traumatic due to Dream during exile, although not the whole of it. Techno is the one who took in the half-dead raccoon boy who had nothing to offer him, and tried to make him an ally.

It's not unreasonable to be shocked, surprised, or concerned that his reaction to a former friend's brutal death at the hands of his abuser was, and I quote, “Tommy's dead? Pog, I hated that guy.”

Yes, Techno feels betrayed by Tommy. But that doesn't mean that the attachment that was clearly there (again, took in the half-dead raccoon boy who had nothing to offer him) turning to spite and mild joy at his death should go without comment because “it makes sense.” It is still shocking. It is still worth examining as a character moment.

This is not meant as a critique on how cc!Techno is playing his character. I am pointing this out to say that I think this reaction was intentionally done to portray c!Techno as a person who has been so blinded by the attacks against him and the hurt he feels that he would revel in a former-friend's brutal murder, which is in my opinion, and I know this is a controversial take, kinda fucked up. (the c!techno part. Playing a messy character is pog.)

Now, none of this inherently makes Techno a villain*. He's allowed to feel however he wants about whoever he wants, and none of that makes him a villain. It does however deal a hit to his morality. It's not... good, to laugh at someone dying to their abuser in a prison. It's something that might make sense for someone in Techno's situation to do, but the fact that it makes sense doesn't mean it's not still a huge dick move.

He (and Phil for that matter) are both fairly emotionally stunted people – they struggle to express themselves well, and often hide their true feelings. It's fair to view this reaction as a form of denial, shoving down any last traces of attachment to Tommy and laughing it off instead, similar to Jack.

However, it reads less like that to me, and more like Techno has already cut Tommy, and by extension all of those residual feelings, out of his life. Which is still a coping mechanism to deal with the pain of being hurt by someone you care about.

But he and Tommy didn't fall out over nothing – Again, I don't want to get into the morality of who was right or wrong on Doomsday, but It's fair say that they both felt hurt, and had such a bad miscommunication by the end of things that it came as a surprise to them both. Even if Techno was 100% morally justified on Doomsday, the fact that he was surprised by Tommy's switching sides should be an indication that he missed something - that he needs to look beyond the surface level.

This coping mechanism is dangerous – it paints Tommy as something a lot worse than he was to Techno, and helps him further ignore the idea that he had any fault for what happened, or to perform any introspection going further.

Once again, this is not a bad writing choice. It's actually really compelling.

((*note: the definition of 'Villain' I am using here is:

1 : a character in a story or play who opposes the hero. 2 : a deliberate scoundrel or criminal.

c!Techno is not currently opposed to a 'hero' character, and he is not AFAIK deliberately being 'villainous' or 'criminal.'

I think it's important to differentiate a character that is acting amorally or immorally, from a character who is being cast narratively as a villain. More on that later.))

Phil is a little more clear cut, but also a little more ambiguous, and... that's right... you know what time it is!

IT'S SBI FAMILY DYNAMICS DISCOURSE TIME! YAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!

...no thank you actually.

The SBI family dynamic is so, so fraught, and so argued inside and out and backwards and forwards... I'm tired of it and I don't really have anything to add. I'm just gonna clarify how I personally interpret Phil's relationship to Tommy, and then move on with that assumption in mind.

Tommy seems to view Phil as a father figure, someone who he wants to impress and earn the affection of, as seen when he tries to claim that he was the sole builder of the hotel to him, and also someone who he sees a protective figure, as seen when he calls out to him in the prison, multiple times.

I've seen some people argue that the above lines aren't canon, and are meant as meta jokes about cc!Phil, and.... I disagree? Both are stated during and about lore, extremely heavy lore in the latter case when Phil is one of the first people Tommy calls out for after being resurrected. It reads to me as an intentional character moment on Tommy's part.

Whether or not Phil knows that Tommy views him this way is up for debate. I'd argue that he probably doesn't – Phil doesn't seem to think much of Tommy one way or the other, and only seems to view him as an annoying kid that followed Wilbur around.

As an aside, I have seen some people claim that c!Phil doesn't know c!Tommy at all beyond their canon interactions, but I haven't seen anything from Phil's streams to confirm this as canon? I don't catch all of his streams so it's possible that i've missed this, but it would a huge deal if so and a bit of an outlier within the overall SMP. Almost all of the characters on the SMP come in with their out-of-character dynamics to other streamers somewhat intact. If there is genuinely a clip of Phil saying that his character has not met Tommy before this, please send it to me.

I'm gonna direct anyone else curious about this topic over to @lucemferto​'s excellent video, link in the source. It goes over the muddled history of the SBI family dynamic in an accessible and informative way.

To summarize: I consider Tommy to view Phil as a father-figure, while Phil does not return the sentiment. That's what we're going with today, watch them canonize Tommy as his biological son tomorrow just to spite me specifically.

So, after all that, does it matter when looking at Phil's reaction to Tommy dying?

Well, not really. Phil's reaction was a lot more... reasonable. That is to say, he completely denied it and therefore did not go through any processing of it. We don't know exactly what he'd think, if he discovered it was true, and there's a good chance that we wont seeing as Tommy has been revived.

He also seemed a surprised by Techno's cold reaction, assuring Ranboo that “he has a heart in there somewhere.” It's just theory at this point, but I do think this suggests that if Tommy was proven dead, Phil probably would have a more emotional reaction.

I do want to take the chance to comment on Phil's overall relationship with Tommy though, and why it matters to his character as a whole, mainly because he canonized a little something today.

Wilbur wrote him letters.

And if you're telling me that Wilbur “Don't call me your brother I'll cry” Soot wouldn't be telling his dad about Tommy – Tommy annoying him, Tommy's stupid cobblestone towers, Tommy sacrificing his discs, Tommy, his vice president and best friend,

Then I have to ask if we're talking about the same guy.

And this is why, even if Phil's first time ever talking to Tommy was after Nov 16th(something that I highly doubt) It still wouldn't make sense for the audience to disregard Phil's more callous interactions with Tommy, such as during Doomsday, and the fact that he hasn't really taken any interest in Tommy or had any urge be active in his life.

Just like L'manberg was Tommy's last connection to Wilbur, Tommy is one of Phil's last connection to Wilbur – he is one of the last remaining things that Wilbur truly cared about, however strained it was at the end.

I think that reading Phil as a character going through a negative arc rather than a positive one is a valid interpretation. I don't think it's the only valid interpretation, but it's one that can and should be discussed by those that want to engage in analyzing the dsmp. Phil, as a character who is failing, who is genuinely doing a disservice to himself, Tommy, or both, is a facet of this character that should be examined, and his non-relationship with Tommy is a good avenue to do so.

TLDR: Techno's reaction to Tommy dying paints him as being blinded by hatred. Phil's reaction less so, but it points to a general disinterest in Tommy's life that ought to be better explored.

In part two, we'll look at the syndicate as an entity, what it's role in the story might be, and, of course...

[prisontoybox]

//Because I lack self control and have too much interest in the shadow kids, I asked the LN twitter about a random thought I had on discord yesterday and wanna share it for anyone that isn't in there so I can hear any opinions or just talk about lore.

Ramble incoming

Link to their answer here (has my late theory in it)

Only things I can way with a lot of certainty but not 100% (is anything really ever 100%?) is:

-Nomes are only one (1) remnant of a previous life

-There is possibly some other remnant, as they stated the Nome needs another remnant to exist. This *could* be the shadow(or rather a soul) to exist but it could mean there is still a body (altho kinda weird to take a body but leave the clothes, wouldn't it make more sense if you took the body to feed someone/threw it overboard/whatever the Lady would have done with it and also take the clothes to toss or give to other kids or some other use rather than leave them there?)

-That Nome™ is not RK. Not entirely, maybe not even 50%. It's moreso a collection of his memories and behavior, I theorize, and that's what all Nomes are if they are just echoes of the past

-For that Nome to exist there has to be something left of RK, reverse engineering this the only things he could have left behind were likely his clothes, memories, a physical object he was attached to maybe (like the doll from the first scenes in the Depths?) or possibly the floatsam bottles

Some less certain things:

-Are they directly answering my questions? My main questions I was looking for answers here (even though I write unclear I know I'm sorry) were:

1. Who or what are/were the Shadow Kids?

2. Are Nomes and Shadow Kids related?

3. Is there any connection between the Runaway Kid and the Shadow Kids?

4. Who or what ARE the Shadow Kids connected to besides anything with RK?

-What they answered was about the Nomes and remnants of someone else. Something we have heard before if I'm correct. But the Nomes were only a little portion of what I was asking about, so it could be that they deliberately chose the easier topic of Nomes, or they have more connection than thought, as the other topic was remnants. Are they comparing Nomes to Shadow Kids as a remnant?

-Reverse engineering their answer to my rambles and questions, they were very much targeting the portions of said remnants. Likely especially the comments of what happens to the Thin Man and Lady's bodies after they die compared to the Shadow Kids and their boss fight, and the question of if the Shadow Kids are connected to the Runaway Kid as remnants themselves of him or other Maw children. This could very well provide the information that they are at least remnants of someone

-

Some images here for reference too, I didn't know or forgot but the Shadow Kids do have the same sense of fashion as our beloved RK apparently (photos taken from a first person mod and I don't have the tools to find a model of them). They appear to have at least one model (with the shackle) and at least 3 masks iirc.

I'm gunna be fixating and researching everything about these ignored boss enemies even worse now great but I need some answers and theories man. Any help for resources or your thoughts and theories would be wonderful to hear! If you'll excuse me I'm gunna need to replay the dlc and LN1 again later

[helianthus21]

Monday 7: Thunderstorm

[doing this] ~1,2k

Danger averted and monster slayed, Dean and Cas turn towards each other with wide eyes.

Before Cas can open his mouth, Dean points a warning finger at him. "Don't say it!”

"I told you!" Cas growls anyway, making Dean throw up his arms in annoyance. "I told you this was not a simple vengeful spirit, yet did you listen to me?"

And it’s true, Cas had said this hunt was likely to be more complicated than it seemed, but can anyone blame Dean for discarding his manticore theory? He’d always thought those were just stories, and if real after all, long extinct. 

His ignorance had led him into the creature’s den without any backup, and had Cas not followed him despite the rising tension between them, he’d likely be half-lion-half-dragon meat by now. 

Still, guy doesn’t have to be so haughty about it.

So Dean doesn’t let up. "I know, okay? But all evidence pointed to-"

"Evidence that has more weight than my word?"

"Oh, because your word is law?"

"In this case, maybe it should be."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Maybe you should get off your high horse."

"Maybe you should acknowledge that my experience spans billions of years further than yours and that my judgment rarely fails me when it comes to ancient lore."

"Are you calling me a child?"

"You're certainly acting like one."

“Well, I’m not a child and your not my dictator!” Dean spits, and storms off. He can barely see the path he’s walking on, but it doesn’t stop him from homing in on the exit out of this stupid den like a drowning man chasing air. 

At one point he almost stumbles over something, and it’s only for Cas’ sudden appearance beside him that he doesn’t fall. Somehow, it only makes him more furious. He bats Cas’ supporting hand away and resumes sprinting away from him. What is he, a clumsy little damsel?

Outside doesn’t bring the desired relief: As soon as Dean steps out in the open air, he’s assaulted with buckets full of raindrops and he’s soaked to the bone in a manner of seconds. 

Startled, Dean freezes right at the mouth of the late manticore’s cave. It’s been like a whole other world in there, full of blood and dirt and ancient monsters that such a simple thing like a change in weather is what finally rattles him. 

“Dean-” Cas stops right behind Dean as he takes in the next problem they certainly can’t fight. 

Thunder roars somewhere ahead, and it’s so loud, the storm can’t be far away from them. 

Frustratingly, Cas seems wholly unbothered by the rain. It seems to make a deliberate detour around Cas’ shape, and he’s as dry as ever, looking to Dean like nothing in this world can touch him.

And nothing can touch him. Not the stuff of ancient legends, and certainly no puny human.

Turning his face towards the mourning sky, Dean lets the drops of rain clear his face of dust and grime. He huffs a laugh. "Are you mad because it rains or does it rain because you're mad?" he says out of nowhere, more to himself than anything else.

Cas looks at him, frustrated with a language he can't translate. "What?"

He wouldn’t be getting that reference, Dean thinks. “Nevermind,” he says dryly and moves to sit down on the ground.

"This is not a good idea, Dean. You'll catch a cold, or worse."

Ignoring Cas’ warning, Dean taps the space beside him. "Come here"

Cas hesitates. Then, after a moment of inner struggle, he steps closer to Dean, slowly, as though afraid Dean might evade his touch again. He doesn’t dare dry Dean yet, but —

"At least let me-" He concentrates, and the thunderstorm gives way to a calm drizzle, a sliver of sunlight reaching through the clouds. 

When he turns his attention back to Dean, he finds Dean gaping at him. "So you can control the weather."

"I can't,” Cas corrects. “Nature is a force that bows to no one. I can just offer a nudge, a request that it go easier on us. Fortunately, nature rather seems to like you."

A force in the universe actually being on his side, wouldn’t that be something, Dean thinks.

“I s’ppose that’s ‘cuz of my dashing looks and charming personality,” he says, wiggling his brows for emphasis.

When Cas says nothing in response, Dean sighs, defeated. “Why do we keep doing this?” 

“Doing what?”

“This,” Dean gestures helplessly between them. “Fighting. About everything. About nothing. Goddammit, everything turns into a fight between us, these days.”

Cas opens his mouth. Closes it. He begins subconsciously fiddling with the sleeve of his coat. He feels so small, suddenly. Against the logic of physics, his body feels drowned out in the coat, his existence paling in comparison to the world, the universe.

“I wish…,” he tries again, and that’s as far as he comes.

But Dean seems to understand even what Cas doesn’t. “Yeah, me too.”

Cas is not used to wishing for anything, other than for the most imminent mission to succeed. Wishing for himself, however… what an amazing thing to presume. 

It’s frustrating, fighting with Dean. But Cas would be lying if he said some part of him doesn’t enjoy it a little bit too. He’s never felt as alive as when Dean yelled at him, when he told him to make a choice, to take the leap.

He’s never felt as alive as when Dean gets all up in his face and pushes and prods until Cas pushes back and they fall into a dance so unlike anything Cas has ever known. Not functional and clean, but passionate and messy and so very very… real.

He would, Cas realizes, always choose the thunderstorm over the quiet.

“I was scared for your life,” Cas says softly. “I’m sorry I overreacted.”

Dean looks down, shakes his head once, and when he turns back to return Cas’ gaze, there’s a grin on his face. “It’s cool,” he says. “I was stupid. Just hate being treated like I can’t handle myself during a hunt.” 

Cas’ gaze drops to his hands. “I’m sorry for being patronizing.”

“Told you, Cas, it’s fine,” Dean repeats, and after hesitating briefly, he extends a hand to place it on Cas’ open palm. His hands are smooth and warm despite the chilly air, but it’s not the reason for the sudden warmth that fills Dean from his core. He refuses to look anywhere but straight ahead, giving Cas the opportunity to admire his profile in the mysterious glow of the approaching sunset. His cheeks are a little red, but Cas will politely blame that on the lighting. 

“I’m sorry for yelling, I guess,” Dean says lightly, though Cas knows just these few words took a lot out of him. 

Cas smiles, a slight uptick of the mouth. “If you ever stop yelling at me, Dean Winchester,” he says. “I know something must be very, very wrong.”

Dean makes a noise of protest, but it’s half-hearted, and when he shoves at Cas companionably, it leaves their shoulders lingering. “Shut up,” he says in a way that has the words carry a whole other meaning. That much Cas has learned about the intricacies of human interaction, at least where this particular human is concerned.

“Look,” Dean says, pointing towards something beyond the crowns of trees. A rainbow has formed across the sky, a blending of red and green and indigo, and sitting shoulder to shoulder, they admire it together in companionable silence.

Yes, Cas thinks. Every thunderstorm with Dean is worth it. If only for what follows.

[pi-cat000]

MSA: Winged Arthur AU (part 8)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7,  

Part 9: here

. 

Vivi POV 3

“What the?” There is a loud declaration of confusion from Lance. Vivi follows his line of sight to Arthur. Vivi assumes he has just spotted the wings.

“I know. I have no idea how they got there. He collapsed before he could say anything.”

Lance, attention moving between her, the ghost, and Artur, exhales long and hard. Then he angles the gun more towards the ground, ordering, “Keep an eye on that bastard. If it moves, give a yell.”

She nods, stepping forward, allowing Lance inch around her and crouch next to Arthur. He needs to do a bit of manoeuvring to avoid stepping on Arthur’s mess of feathers, but he manages it in his grumpy Lance fashion.

While Lance checks on Arthur, she once again makes eye contact with the ghost. Now hovering closer to the entrance, near a beat-up semi-trailer – where had that come from? –  the ghost is anxiously clenching and unclenching its fists. Purple eyes are tracking their movements with a disturbing intensity. Creepy. Doubly so now ‘Lewis’ looks like a flaming skeleton again. She glares and receives that pitiful expression. Thankfully, with both her and Lance there, the ghost has decided to keep its distance. Vivi would rather it go away and return to its middle-of-nowhere-mansion, but it appears she’ll have to settle for whatever this was.

“He’s okay, I think, apart from the wings anyway. Too dark out here to see much besides feathers. I want to move him inside ta get a better look.” Lance leans back, muttering under his breath, “Also, it’s gotten mighty cold all of a sudden.”

Vivi nods again, relieved to have confirmation on Arthur’s wellbeing. She’s not really feeling the cold but going inside seems like a good a course of action as any.

“What happened to that tree creature?” She asks while Lance goes about trying to pick Arthur up.

“Gone, ran off into the desert with the giant fox.”

“That’s good…I think?” Vivi can’t help the twinge of worry for her fake dog who had been bleeding heavily last she’d seen. Mystery, who had been injured protecting her. Secret or no secret, she feels responsible.

“I got in a few good shots on the tree before they went outta range.” Lance continues to speak, before narrowing his eyes at ghost-Lewis, “What’s that things deal?”

“It’s a wraith,” She states, ignoring the way ‘Lewis’ wilts, flinching back, “They’re dangerous. It’s probably best we keep an eye on it.” Sure, ghost-Lewis seems relatively fine now but she knows that calm is a facade hiding a whole lot of angry fire.

“Right.” Lance doesn’t question her, focusing instead on carrying Arthur which looks difficult due to how the wings flop about. Vivi wants to help but doesn’t like the idea of taking her attention off the ghost for any length of time. Luckily, after a little fussing and several swear words, Lance manages to sling Arthur over his back, so it looks like he’s wearing a very feathery coat. He shuffles his way to the front door. The trip takes an unreasonably long time, considering the door is only a few feet away. Vivi tracks their progress, on edge and anxious.  

There is some difficulty fitting Arthur through the screen door, forcing Vivi to turn and help arrange the wings in a way that will allow them past the frame. Once done, she about-faces to find the ghost has drifted closer, appearing hopeful now neither her or Lance are acting outwardly aggressive.

“No,” She says, brandishing her bat again. “You stay out here.”

“What,” The ghost, stunned, freezes in place, staring like she’s grown an extra head. Vivi steps forward, blocking the entrance.

“You’re not welcome inside this home,” She reiterates. “Uncle Lance. Tell ‘Lewis’ he’s not welcome inside.”

Lance, now just through the doorway, stumbles almost dropping Arthur, giving an abrupt, “Huh?”

“First rule of supernatural anything. They have to be invited into homes.”

“Not what…” Lance shakes his head, “What do yeh mean by ‘Lewis.’”

Okay, so Lance knows who Lewis is��Perfect. That doesn’t change anything aside from confirming her theory that she had known this ghost at some point. She waves pointedly, giving Lance as serious an expression as she can manage.

Lance’s gaze snaps to the ghost in befuddlement.  “Hold up. Yeh not tellin me that that, right there, is Lewis?”

“That’s what he said his name was. Right before he tried to burn me and Arthur,” She states.

“I would never hurt you…I swear. It’s just…Arthur…he’s done something. I don’t know...there’s a lot I… you… don’t know. If you would just let me explain,” The ghost pleads again, genuinely remorseful. Talk about your mood swings. Another point in favour of her wraith hypothesis.

“Is that before or after you burn us both to a crisp.” Vivi snaps back.

Lance side-eyes her seriously. Then he examines the ghost, expression hardening.

“Hurt my nephew and yeh ain’t welcome here. Simple as that,” He grunts and turns, heaving Arthur with him.

“No! You can’t. I’m telling the truth!” The ghost reaches out, fire guttering and flickering to his more human form. He sounds desperate. With one shaking arm, he grasps towards her, “Please.”

Vivi glowers and deliberately slams the door in the, now human, face.  For a second, she doesn’t move, waiting to see if ‘Lewis’ is going force his way in. There is only a loud cry of frustration, more sad and mournful than angry. Back against the door, Vivi exhales hard. Why does her chest hurt like it’s full of breaking glass? She runs a hand along her collar bone trying to massage the ache away. It’s useless, the pain isn’t physical. An inhale, and she pushes herself off the door. 

When she enters the combined living-dining space, Lance has already dragged Arthur to the couch and is in process of wrestling him into a comfortable position. He’s doing his best to work around the copious number of feathers but is struggling to find success. Vivi rushes forward to help, glad for the distraction. They end up lying Arthur down on his stomach so the wings are draped over the couch’s backrest and spill onto the carpeted floor.

“That true? The stuff about welcoming in supernatural creatures?” Lance grunts, while he checks Arthur’s pulse and breathing, running a hand over Arthur’s head and the rest of his limbs, searching for breaks or other injuries.

“I don’t know,” She sighs, straightening, “There’s a lot of lore spanning multiple mythologies, and it crops up a lot in older superstitions. It's more of an educated guess.”

A thoughtful hum.

“Suppose it’s better than nothin. Those myths happen ta mention anything like this?” Lance is now repositioning the wings to look more natural while muttering, “Don’t know nothin about birds. Do these look like they’re sittin right?”

“No myths that I can think of off the top of my head. I mean there are a few where people turn into birds. Not that I think that Arthur is turning into a bird,” Vivi hastens to clarify when Lance gives her an expression of acute alarm. She shuffles nearer, pointing at Arthur, “I think those are flight feathers. They’re definitely not supposed to be bent like that.”

They spent a few seconds straightening the plumages in soft silence.  

“There are a bunch of mythical humanoid creatures that have wings and such. I don’t know…maybe you’re related?" Vivi breaks the quiet and is met with a blank expression. “Do you have any relatives who mysteriously vanished for a few years then rocked up pregnant or with an unknown baby? Was anyone adopted into the family? Like, did someone find a child abandoned on the steps to your house and decided to keep it? Any sudden changes in a family member’s personality like they’d been mysteriously replaced?”

“What are yeh on about?”

“The most common reason why humans’ manifest supernatural traits is usually bloodline related. Someone somewhere had a fling with something not quite human,” Vivi elaborates to which Lance frowns, obviously thinking.

“There’s nothin like that that I can think of. But, don’t get along with the bastards, so who the hell knows.”

“Oh, that’s a shame. I guess I can jump online and look into it.” She looks back to Arthur. “Maybe later...”

Carefully, she reaches out from where she is crouched to smooth out a few more feathers which are twisted at odd-looking angles.  They feel real, growing from between Arthur’s shoulder blades and extending into smaller downier feathers a little along his back. His shirt has ripped from where the appendages had grown in. No sign of that golden light from earlier.

“Who’s Lewis.” She asks, the question coming suddenly. The response is particular. A huff of air followed by tired and drawn eyes. Lance appears almost haunted.

“Humph. Ain’t that a question and a half,” He stands, glancing towards the broken windows. From this angle, they can just make out the back end of the semi-trailer but said ghost is out of view.

“I know him, right? This Lewis person?” Vivi prods.

“Yeah. Yeh know him.”

Lance turns, calculating, “Suppose I could tell yeh more, seeing as ya seem to be retainin the name ‘Lewis’ well enough.”

“Wh...?”

“But not before I get a drink and yeh see to any of ya own injuries. Arthur’s fine enough, but yeh look dead on ya feet."

What did Lance mean by ‘retaining the name?’ Was this linked to her memory gaps? Probably.

“I’m fine. I mean, I wasn’t fine. I got stabbed here,” She rubs her shoulder, “but, Arthur kind of took care of it.”

Lance peers at her shoulder. There’s a lot of dried blood but no sign of the injury it came from.

“Arthur? He did what now?”

“Healing magic. It’s what knocked him out. He just, I don’t know, healed everything. I actually feel great, like I’m on some crazy energy drink. Ah… Sorry.”

Lance snorts, rubbing his eyes, “Don’t apologise. That boy wouldn’t know self-preservation if it hit him over the head. If you’re sure ya ain’t injured any, then how about yeh keep an eye on the kid while I get us something to drink. Then I’ll tell yeh what I know of Lewis.”

Vivi relaxes a little and nods.

“What can I get yeh?” Lance pauses in the doorway.

“Uh…Tea I guess? Herbal if you have it.”

Lance disappears and she hears things being moved around in the kitchen. Vivi settles down into a more comfortable position on the ground next to Arthur, continuing to smooth the feathers. So, she was right, ghost-Lewis fit somewhere into the swiss-cheese that was her memory of the last several years.

.

Note: Okay, so do people want to read a ‘Lance explains Lewis to Vivi’ conversation (if so, then whose POV do you want it in). Or do people want me to skip to Arthur waking up. I’m leaning more towards skipping atm but if there’s interest I’ll probably write that scene first.

Part 9: here

[dalekofchaos]

Ways they could’ve handled Supreme Leader Snoke in the Last Jedi  and what they did instead

My other Sequel trilogy wasted potential posts

Rey

Finn

Poe

Rose

Luke

Han

Leia

Kylo Ren

Captain Phasma

Hux

List of ways they could’ve handled Snoke in TLJ

Show Snoke completing Kylo Ren’s training. SHow Snoke sending Kylo to Mustafar, Dathomir, Malachor and Moraband

Have Snoke give Kylo Ren one final test, killing his mother General Organa

Order Kylo Ren and the Knights Of Ren to Ach-To to kill Luke Skywalker and bring Rey to him

Show Snoke using Battle Meditation against The Resistance, while Leia uses BM against Snoke. Leia’s will against Snoke’s might over Ach-To, while Snoke is trying to kill Luke, Leia is trying to save her brother.

Make Snoke Darth Plagueis It makes sense and ties the three trilogies together.  Darth Plagueis was a powerful Sith Lord who could influence the midichlorians to create life and also save others from dying. He taught everything he knew to his apprentice, Sheev Palpatine (aka Darth Sidious), but he eventually lost his power and young Palpatine killed him in his sleep. How could Plagueis not foresee his own demise at the hands of his ambitious apprentice? Why did Plagueis suddenly “lose his power”? The truth is, he didn’t lose his power and he knew Sheev planned to kill him. It was part of the plan. By dying, I believe Darth Plagueis was able to transmit himself into Sheev and assume control of his body, almost like an infectious disease. Ever notice his name? Darth Plagueis. Plague, as in an infectious disease. Darth Plagueis unlocked the secret to immortality by moving from one body to the next, continuing his lifespan through multiple hosts over countless years. Ever wonder why Palpatine was so obsessed with training a powerful young apprentice? Surely he knew that one day the apprentice would want to overthrow him, so why train his own murderer? In Return of the Jedi, Emperor Palpatine continually provokes Luke to strike him down. Why would Palpatine want to be killed if the goal is longevity? Because Emperor Palpatine was assumed by Darth Plagueis and, through his death, he would then be able to transmit himself into a new host body. He wasn’t just looking for an apprentice, he was looking for a new body since Palpatine’s body was growing old. Luke Skywalker was meant to be the next host body for Darth Plagueis. But unfortunately for Plagueis, Darth Vader had a change of heart and defeated the Emperor. Snoke was Plagueis. It’s the only way to make things work. StarWars.com describes Snoke as a seeker of arcane and ancient lore, and the Last Jedi Visual Dictionary shows that he is a collector of rare memorabilia. At some point, Snoke must have found the wreckage of the Death Star on the forest moon Endor, and was infected by Darth Plagueis when he came upon the corpse of Palpatine. Did you ever wonder why Snoke thought it was so important to complete Kylo Ren’s training? It’s because Snoke was Darth Plagueis and he was training his next host body. Plagueis didn’t have a choice but to infect a really old political influencer like Snoke. Kylo was being groomed to become the next host body. Remember the infamous(ly terrible) scene in The Last Jedi where Snoke is “predicting” how Kylo Ren will kill Rey? Wasn’t it a little too obvious? Wouldn’t Snoke have been able to foresee Kylo’s treachery? See through his conflict? It’s because he wasn’t predicting Rey’s death, he predicted his own. He knew Kylo would kill him. He deliberately bullied and provoked Kylo in order to stir his anger into hatred to further fuel his dark side and lead him to completing his training. So let’s say Kylo puts on his ring for his official coronation as Supreme Leader and Plagueis take’s full possession of Kylo Ren, Plagueis had an apprentice who has fully cemented himself into the dark side and now a new and more powerful body. Darth Plagueis has everything he needs to way waste to the Resistance and the final destruction of the Jedi.

What they chose to do with Snoke instead

Snoke died pointlessly without doing anything with him. Supreme Leader Snoke is wasted and there is no reason to care now that the villain you’ve been building your trilogy around is dead. Snoke’s death was too soon. Snoke is a dark side user. Calm and collected. Old enough to see the rise and fall of the empire. He takes no risks and does what it takes to win. He was different from Palpatine and I dare say he even had potential to rival Kreia. He was a mastermind and did not allow himself to be a slave to the dark side. He did not want his apprentice to die like the Sith masters of old. He did not want to keep power until his dying breath. Snoke was not the average Sith Lord, he was different.  He was respectful, he was very powerful, and watching his scenes, even when faced with failure, he remained calm and collected because he was playing the long game and was not a slave to the Darkside like the Sith. He was invested in turning Kylo Ren into Vader’s heir and even has a ring from the catacombs of Vader’s castle. Snoke was so interesting, so many unanswered questions and this well thought out villain. And then TLJ turned him into a dumbed down Palpatine rip off. The claim that Snoke and his backstory is not important is dumb, considering that we know nothing on why this war is even happening or even why The First Order is doing ANYTHING! We want to know who Snoke is because we want to know how this random evil guy was able to destroy the lives of the entire original trio, corrupted Ben Solo and override the happy ending the entire original trilogy and prequels were fighting for. The struggles of the prequels, the clone wars, rebels, original trilogy, all of these stories and struggles were undone because of Snoke, so of course we have questions. Why do the remnants of the Empire follow Snoke and where did he come from? Not wanting to know the motivation of the villains is just plain ignorant. They completely wasted Snoke. Snoke is a power from the unknown regions. He was SO powerful that Palpatine sensed him, Palpatine was so focused and invested in Jakku in hopes of getting closer to the Unknown regions and he wanted to meet what he believed was the source of the dark side of the force. And they just kill him off so easy? Now there is no reason to care. Kylo Ren is not an intimidating villain and it’s pretty obvious he’s turning to the light in Episode IX. Hux is a bumbling incompetent fool and I’m pretty sure they already confirmed he will be more comedic in Episode IX instead of being a threat. There is a villain problem for the Sequel Trilogy. There is no menace in The First Order anymore and I really feel there is no reason to care.

Pointlessly tried to kill Rey instead of trying to turn her

“Your Snoke theory sucks” card is patronizing and insulting. God fucking forbid your audience is fucking invested in the story. God forbid we actually care about learning about the big bad of the sequel trilogy. God forbid we put more thought into Snoke than you did. “Your Snoke theory sucks” no Rian, your Snoke card sucks, your inability to do ANYTHING with Snoke sucks and talking down to us for caring about the direction of the big bad and killing him for no reason sucks. You arrogant piece of fucking shit.

Because Snoke was killed, they copped out and lied out their asses that it was always the plan to bring back Palpatine….bullshit. “oh but wait Snoke was a host body for Palpatine” BULLFUCKINGSHIT. Not originally. Snoke was someone who was supposed to be the darkness Palpatine was trying to get closer. Snoke was the man who destroyed 30 years of peace. He could’ve been anyone, hell even Darth Plagueis. But no, why create interesting characters when you can bring Palpatine back because it’s obvious you have no original ideas.

[dungeonecologist]

WILD ARMS 2 - Raline Observatory

The Raline Observatory is a neat set piece, albeit one riddled with issues in English.  It distracts us with side characters, but actually sets up a pretty core feature of the world that will come back much later in conjunction with the Live Reflectors (which are about to become defunct once we finish this quest and unlock our flying ship) The name however is yet another mistransliteration from the Japanese for “Ley Line.”

Ley Lines came from the observations of one Alfred Watkins, an amateur archaeologist/explorer of the 1920s (as was not terribly uncommon at the time) who made note of the arrangement of major historical landmarks in straight lines across the British country side, from which he questioned the meaning, cause, or function.  In the 1960s this work was incorporated along side Chinese fengshui to theorize that a kind of natural flow of energies across the Earth existed, and that spiritually attuned cultures all across history had been drawn to places where such streams of energy intersected, either by divination or by the consequence of ideal circumstances for settlement or ritual structures stemming from said concentrated energies.

Here, it those theories are applied rather literally, and will be revisited more explicitly at a later point in the story.  Not coincidentally, this dungeon is located on a string of volcanic not-quite-islands, volcanoes being a rather on the nose example of a point at which energy has built up and been released from the Earth, literal energy obviously but in many belief systems spiritual energy as well.  Oddly there aren’t actually any apparent Ley Lines on the Filgaia map; the dungeons are all pretty evenly distributed.  The only semblance of patterns* are that various locations that come in 4s are deliberately scattered across 4 quadrants, but that’s less meaningful and more just practical when you don’t want your game’s marathon of dungeons to take place right next to each other.

*(The ones I’ve marked here are the 4 Live Reactors: red, the 4 Diablo Pillars: Blue, and the 4 Ray Points: Green.  Perhaps the only real deliberate design here is that the finale dungeon which is tied by lore to the Raypoints, is located right in between the 4 of them; the intersection if you draw lines between opposite points.  On this note: the Raypoint dungeons may also be a mistransliteration, meant to be “Ley Points.”)

Anyway we get into this neat abandoned lab setting and immediately have a boss thrown at us.

I think I’ve mentioned both the Kobold, and accidentally the Salamandra, now but among those iconic elemental monsters is also the Undine; Generally portrayed as a beautiful humanoid water nymph.  The boss monster, Undines (I don’t know why there’s an “s”, the Japanese even reads ウンディーネ:u-n’-di-ne) is very much not.  Actually, given the circumstances I’d almost assume this was some kind of mistransliteration, but the boss card even says “Elemental Spirit,” so what else could it be other than a water spirit? (although when I looked over the epithet in Japanese the phrase is 素体 精霊獣, so what they translated as “Elemental” actually means something more in line with “base form” as in a chemical element, not an alchemical one.)  Also of note are its moves: Hookey Bust, Intafada, Reject all Fools, and Shocking Guinea.

We’ll start with Shocking Guinea, as it might be the most straight forward; it alludes to Undines being a manufactured monster, and presumably kind of a lab experiment.  It has turned on its creators so perhaps it was inhumanely experimented on until it lashed out?  This move is also perhaps the outlier in the set.  Intafada I can only assume refers here to the literal meaning of “shaking” or a small tremor and not the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in Gaza in the early 90s...  Ignoring the bizarre language choice for that, the move Hookey Bust is a little confusing but suggests one of two things to me; either being caught playing hooky, or rolling a losing number in a game of dice.  The former fits with the idea of an escaped experiment, but the latter along with Intafada and the general jester look of Undines seems to suggest shaking and rolling dice?  That in some vague sense seems to match with the Reject all Fools, if it means Fool like a court jester.

Okay you know what, I gave the translators too much credit.  The moment I started digging things got all kinds of muddled.  The move Reject All Fools in Japanese is 理解できないモノは拒絶: “[I] reject things [I] don’t understand.”  I take it the translators interpreted 理解できない モノ as “things/people that can not understand” i.e. “Fools,” but it might also be, “things/people that cannot be understood.”  I make the distinction because I think it has to do with ghost stories and belief in the supernatural, although what “supernatural” would really mean in a fantasy setting isn’t super clear...

The move Hookey Bust is 学校の怖い胸像: “Scary Bust of School” as in a scary sculpture found in a school, which I’m pretty certain is a reference to the trope of Japanese middle or high schools having a kind of local hauntings where some kind of ghost turns out to be the anatomical model in the science lab or the nurse’s office.  It ties into the science lab/experiment theme going on all throughout here.  Spooky science lab also explains the “shiver”/”shake”/”tremor” we get from Intafada.

Speaking of terrible translations, the baffling Lilly Pad monster appears here, a bizarre imp with a little sword and cape, and boobs on its head???  The katakana here is I believe meant to be a transliteration of Lilliput, as in Lilliputians from Jonathan Swift’s novel, Gulliver’s Travels.  The actual design doesn’t make much more sense in light of that, as they aren’t especially tiny, but at least the basic idea gets across, as opposed to the entirely nonsensical Lilly Pad.  I’m not sure they add to the theme going on exactly, but the visual aesthetic of a tiny or shrunken person does resonate with some classic mad science lab cliches.  

And we also have the Jelly Blob, which is just a staple of RPGs by this point.  Technically speaking I think the origin is, again, Dungeons and Dragons, with he Gelatinous Cube and Ooze monsters, and in turn any number of variants on the both as well as the off shoot Slime family of monsters.  Again, very in line with the science experiment vibes.

The one thing that presents a tiny hiccup in this is the Pas de Chat; in Japanese simply named Laughing Haunt.  It might be a stretch, but I think it’s just another reference to school hauntings, like the Hookey Bust reference.  It’s the only way I can think to fit this into the overarching themes of the dungeon.  The “English” name, Pas de Chat, is a ballet term referring to a jump in which the legs are brought up toward the opposite knee in quick sequence before landing.  It is French for “Step of the Cat.”

I have no idea why it looks the way it does, but it does display some interesting animations with leaps and twirls that is understandably evocative of dancers.  It also fights with a pair of stiletto daggers.

I kind of neglected to mention, but throughout this whole dungeon we’ve been followed by the wacky comedy relief duo, Liz and Ard. (Toka and Ge in Japanese: You get one guess as to what the word “Tokage” translates to.)  As we reach the end of the dungeon they of course spring on us that they too are after the rare Germatron mineral, and that they are apparently Odessa’s free lance monster engineers.  The two jump us with a second boss fight where the two showcase a host of battle tactics about as wacky as everything else we’ve put up with from them thus far:

Liz, the self-styled lead researcher of the duo can throw concoctions to ail the team, but that also hit himself and his assistant, Ard.  Meanwhile Ard is a tank and a powerhouse, even as the inevitable Poison ailment from Liz’s attacks chips away at his HP.  But to add to it, his strongest attack deals huge recoil damage to himself trading off for yet more offensive power.  If you focus your attacks on Liz and heal as needed, Ard will likely kill himself even before Liz falls.  An appropriate end to the mad science theme of the dungeon all around.  And naturally, we’ll be seeing more of the lizard duo as the game goes on.

[astroellipse]

live blogging but it’s all one post and not actually live at all. this one is really long open at your own peril.

This has to be one of my favorite cutscenes in the game... I skipped most of the cutscenes in this questline with “Tsuyu” and whatever else went on because I don’t care for it, aside from some funny Asahi bits. And this cutscene is the KING of funny Asahi scenes, him just getting straight up murdered. It’s even funnier the second time around because now I realize... he was never actually acknowledged by Zenos. That was Elidibus controlling his body, simply using Asahi’s devotion for his own devices. And I realize now that Elidibus was trying to back up Emet-Selch’s own carefully laid plans, which... is something to keep in mind for later. I can’t wait to see more of Fandaniel later I love his/Asahi’s voice actor. And I know it’s fairly negative in this case but I can’t help but enjoy the campy villains...

And now I can finally stop skipping cutscenes! I realize I just now skipped the part where Alphinaud set out on his doomed journey to Garlemald, but... man I didn’t want to hear Gosetsu cry about Tsuyu I just hate that plot point so much. They really shoulda just let them die.

Oh my god I forgot that Gosetsu is bald now. I know it’s like a tradition thing and serious and everything but. Hhhh he looks so silly without it... Doesn’t help that it lets you see the outlines of all the polygons comprising his head...

Oh man I appear to have gotten events swapped around. Is it now that we see that energy source on the Azim Steppe? We’re about to go and put up that barrier in the Brume, which I’m pretty sure i thought came after ShB for whatever reason. I think I’ve mentioned it in a previous post... though that one I also think I deleted for an unrelated reason, I think because I was tired and got some details wrong and in my frustration and exhaustion threw the whole thing out. I’ll have to write down those particular thoughts again, after I see whatever it is that’s about to happen.

Oh man. i wonder if Hien doesn’t realize that Y’shtola is blind. They get to the Azim Steppe and he’s immediately like “Let me show you my favorite spot where you can see the pretty fields and sky :)” and she returns with “Yeah yeha okay let’s get on with what we came here to do”. Very funny. Actually Hien and Y’shtola are in general very funny together I like seeing him react to her talking to him like he’s an idiot.

So, the legend goes that a “wayfaring soul” came to the Steppe and received a sliver of Nhaama’s power in the form of a shard, and used it to cleft the earth and raise it to the heavens to avert calamity, then made an offering of blood. The sliver of power is Allagan technology, which was used to raise Azys Lla and create Dalamud. The dialogue has been very particular about referring to the person in this story as “wayfaring soul” and not shorter synonyms like “traveler”, which i think is probably deliberate? Especially with this now being the lead-up to ShB.

I guess now would be a good time to re-write some of my thoughts about the Steppe. It is not an original theory that Azim the god and Azem the ancient are related if not one in the same. They are both light, and related to travel. The WoL is expressly referred to as a traveler by Cirina’s grandmother, and iirc Azem is as well. Azim descended from the heavens to walk amongst his children, who are all nomadic. If they do have a relation, then the people of the Azim Steppe might be thought of as Azem’s people. I say this because I’ve been wondering why the Empire hasn’t touched the Azim Steppe, the real reason. The Xaela would make incredibly useful conscripts, and could be easily trounced by a suitably large magitek army during any one of their squabbles, or I’m sure the Empire could destabilize them in any other way. And that isn’t even to mention the large energy source hidden away in its cliffs, which have to be giving off some kind of signal. I wonder if the Empire ignoring the Steppe has anything to do with Solus and his sentiment for Azem.

I suppose I should actually get on with re-seeing this part, then.

God. I love y’shtola the bit with Magnai is so good. The voice acting. He sounds so hurt with his “Little...?”. “Look into my eyes” She’s blind you absolute dumbass.

Alright. Well. I didn’t actually gleam anything new. We’re about to go into the meeting sequence and. God. This is another one of my favorite cutscenes in the game. the visual effect used to represent the WoL’s soul being torn from their body is so cool... I wonder which outfit I should wear? I’ve changed all of them I think since uploading screenshots last. AST is cute and what I’ve been using for the last few quests to soak what little exp I can, but... this is a bit too serious for a cute healer in a skirt and glasses, plus the collar on the shirt would cover his face in some of the shots... DRG it is again then, I guess. It has sort of taken over as my primary class. I enjoy playing it more than BRD :\

“Let us hope that the coming meeting passes more peacably than the last such gathering in ala Mhigo” jfc Y’shtola. Hhhhhooooo here we go!!!!!!! Hhhhh I love Alisaie I remember this was the part that solidified her as precious little sister numero uno.... god... the scene where she gets taken away I’m already nearly tearing up I love Shadowbringers man holy shit.

Raha you dumbass!!!!! Endangering everyone like that. Literally takes five tries before he gets it right, and trying to explain everything while the WoL can’t rightly hear. I know he’s desperate but goddamn dude. Just. God. I’m so excited. I’m excited to see Urianger get to be an actual character again. I’m excited for the Scions to actually care about each other and especially the WoL. Also to see Doran grapple with these troubles as Secret did, finally finally learning why the hell he’s here, what Secret is and what he is, and... coming to terms with it. He was excited when it first happened, before his memory was sapped, mostly a product of being fused with Secret for so long without a will of his own, but... after experiencing all this, seeing these people as his friends. Learning to accept his place in the story much more easily than Secret...

There’s a reason I’ve kept the title “The Last Resort” on him. It’s for my own purposes. Secret has still not accepted that she as a person, though not her soul was created for the sole purpose of being a hero. If she can’t accept this in time... she might resort to letting Doran take the reins. Forfeiting her personhood altogether. This path would rely on unofficial lore about Fantasia, about how it warps reality to make it so that you were always this race or that... I might actually do it, too. I’ve done more things right with Doran, and I have friends on this server. I... suppose Secret would take Doran’s place in my personal narrative then. Which. Feels bad. Like a disservice to Secret, though... I suppose it doesn’t have to be. At this point Doran is still no less relevant to her. Secret will have simply gotten literally washed away with her memories.

I’m uh. Starting to think I might be too attached to Secret. The thought of having her not be my main character, of neglecting her in any way, of having to make this choice is. Making me genuinely emotional... though I suppose I’ve seen enough people on here talk about how they cry about ocs and whatnot.

Anyhow. I think I might change Doran’s hairstyle for Shadowbringers. might make it longer. It seems only appropriate, it having been so long... and something more elegant would be fitting. Maybe I’ll finally find and settle on an AST glam that is suitably pretty. I adore my current one for how cute it is but it doesn’t exactly fit ShB’s vibes.

Oh wait back to serious stuff. It’s funny that Lyse didn’t get called. G’raha explained it as the people closest to the WoL were called, and... for even Urianger to be called and not Lyse. It has funny implications.

MAN....... WHY does this game put Alisaie through so much :(((((((( Endwalker had BETTER give her and Alphinaud some damn good development like they implied. LET THE WoL BE THEIR OLDER SIBLING OR SOMETHING...... The WoL and Alphinaud were so good together during HW, and then them and Alisaie in this sequence and a few other scenes before now and during ShB but... it just doesn’t feel like it’s there during ShB, not with all the other adult characters around.

Granted I do this with every kid in this game. I saw Myste and even before I knew what their deal was it was just

this plays in my head every single time i see a kid. Let me adopt Unukalhai. Game. Game I am demanding now let the WoL care about others. That poor kid has just been sitting in the Solar for two entire expansions then some, and not even as a result of being a necessary quest npc stuck in a time bubble like Urianger’s double in the Waking Sands like he’s aware of what’s going on. I... actually imagine he might be relevant in Endwalker. Reaper comes with your very own voidsent, which means the void will be relevant again which might mean Unukalhai will be relevant!!! At the very least to the Reaper questline, if it has one.

Continuing the story again. Actually you know what LET THE WOL HUG THEIR FUCKING FRIENDS!!! It wouldn’t take THAT long to set it up for each different race which I assume is what keeps them from having the WoL physically interacting with much of anything but it would be SO GOOD!!! IT WOULD BE WORTH IT!!! I wanna give Alisaie a hug she’s suffering so much :(

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH IT’S HIM HIM HIM HIM IT’S EMET-SELCH FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YES! HELL YES I’VE BEEN WAITING!!!!!!!!!I forgot he was introduced here!!!!!!!!!!! It sounds like his voice actor hasn’t settled into his voice yet at this point though :0 And his theme!!! i love his theme I thought it was so weird at first but it’s fitting...

Oh my god did they not update Varis’s model since his debut? Look at this shit

Why are his pupils square... and blown up as it is on my screen it’s like... i can see individual splotches of color on his texture??? Incomparison Emet-Selch’s eyes are still sharp up close and instead of weird splotchy skin you can see individual pores. I just. Why. Didn’t they update him???

OH LMAO RIGHT AND THEN VARIS JUST SHOOTS HIM! GOD. And the FACE they have him make. Emet-Selch is such a good character.

Actually I’ve decided that Garleans are just ugly. I think that’s just it actually.

And then there’s... Black Rose, was it called? This would be confusing to see if you didn’t do those sidequests in Gyr Abania. Granted they were to unlock aether currents but I imagine plenty of people skipped them. This would have been a very abrupt introduction, and it loses relevance so soon after...

Hmm. With the story bringing back what I now realize are forgotten/resolved tidbits about the Empire, I can’t help but wonder if they’ll bring back the Optimates, what with us finally seeing the Garlemald in person in Endwalker. They would make for a good enough rival faction.

I have... changed Doran’s hair... it’s really just his old hairstyle but longer, the highlights are even in the same place though they’re fainter. He has gone through subtle changes between expansions. First I changed his lips to a darker color, flip flopping between not wearing lipgloss to a peach color then to as dark as you can get without wearing actual lipstick. Then I changed his eyebrows, still short but angled slightly downwards. And now his hair is long... the implication is that he’s let it grow out over time. It looks nice with most of his outfits, even plays nice with DRG’s hood, though as I expected my previous AST glam is a no-go. It actually looks cute from the front but it sticks right through them hem in the back and we can’t have that.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh may have just spent 800k gil on a nice shirt. On the bright side my AST glam is now just about as pretty as I can get it. I took the vibe I liked from the old one and now Doran’s a little... uh... maybe I shouldn’t have given him long hair.....

Ah shit I haven’t put together a GNB glam yet and I’m running low on funds... the only reason I could even afford that shirt was bc one of my fc members gave me and the only other guy that was on 1mil one night at random :| I really like the current glam but... it’s too cartoony for ShB!!!! hhhhhhhh Maybe I’ll be able to utilize some of the next Scion set once I get it...

hhh back to story... there’s this person in my FC that’s super talkative, but 56 and married and getting into over-sharing territory :| not like... weird oversharing but man I don’t need to know you get hives that was unprompted. Chill otherwise and it IS like 12 but wtv.

Aw man if that guy in the most recent trailer really was the twins’ dad then no wonder Alphinaud is out here looking to make any man who’s nice to him out as a father figure. There’s Estinien, Arenvald, now Gaius... and you might count Urianger and Thancred, and maybe the WoL.

Oh, Ascian lore! There’s a hierarchy. Red masks stand above black, already knew this. Those joined to the Source stand above those adrift in the shard. I don’t think I would have understood this the first time.

“A silent agent of death... Now that I think on it, Black Rose may well possess the perfect aspect.” I... is this him pondering whether this is how the Calamity will take shape, or deciding it?

Oh I really don’t like Varis’s voice acting. I’m glad he dies soon. Although, that “... It was by design!?” was pretty good. So is that information that Garlemald is an Ascian construction is absolutely hilarious, as is Emet-Selch toying with Varis.

OH. Emet-Selch has all these clones because Varis choose him as a test subject while messing around with Allagan cloning technology. I thought for some reason that the clones had been Emet-Selch’s doing.

“I’ve a feeling this won’t be the last time his bravery in the Empire will serve us here in Eorzea.” Said by Raubahn about Alphinaud setting back Black Rose production. Probably obvious foreshadowing for Endwalker.

Sharlyan... attempted to negotiate peace with the Empire? That’s not exactly surprising, though it is still new to me. Tucked in optional standing-around dialogue from Alisaie

Oh my GOD I hate Varis and his idiot hat. This scene is so uncomfortable and not just because I have to hear Varis speak. All of the city-state leaders act like monumental shitheads just to create tension and let Varis put them down it’s stupid. You idiots you’re supposed to be engaging in peace talks not venting about the Empire. Put aside your pride and play parley with the single most hated man in the world. It’s literally all just to stall for time, why would they do any of this. And oh my god, who even let Aymeric speak here. He brings up his stupid little battle with the dragons or his daddy issues at every opportunity. Yes yes we all played Heavensward but I can assure you it was not for its politics or message about war. Like yeah that whole ordeal ended terribly. We just killed the evil people/dragons and that was that. Solved purely through force.

Hhhh I forgot about this. That Varis AGREED with the Ascians. “There will be but one race--a perfect race--as we were when time began.” HHghghh. Oh right and he freely admits the bit about Garlemald being built by an Ascian.

Hm. Currently the Ascians’ plan is to bring about more Calamities which would be terrible and kill lots of people. Fandaniel... wants to kill everyone. I wonder how he accounts for the other shards. Wouldn’t it have made sense to at least try and work with his fellow Ascians? Either to round all up all the souls in one place before blowing it all to hell, or by sabotaging their plans and creating more situations like the one that created the Void. Or if decimating the Source would kill everyone anyways.

“Don’t you dare leave me alone.” ALISAIEEEEEEEEEEEEE AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH I HATE THIS PART! I HATE IT! DON’T TAKE HER AWAY THAT SCENE HURTS SO MUCH!!!!!!!!!

Taking a break to do my dailies for poetics bc I BARELY make the ilvl requirement for the next dungeon. anyhow. In this prae run there’s a Haurchefant look-alike called “Haurchefant Corpse”. He’s wearing a white suit and a halo, and is a scholar. I’m still laughing man wtf!!! Dude kinda sucks though he didn’t summon his fairy before the battle with Nero and only got out like two offensive spells lmao

Alright. Story again. G’RAHA. STOP BEING A CRYPTIC ASSHOLE!!! ALISAIE!!!!!!!!! HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I KNOW THEY REUNITE SOON BUT... HER REACHING FOR THE WoL... WHO LET THEM BOTH ONTO THE BATTLEFIELD!!!!! I’ll fucking cry man... this is cruel...

Oh my god I was looking to see if there were any story sidequests at this level i skipped the first time and saw that there IS story with Unukalhai that I haven’t seen, currently. Because I haven’t been able to do all of the savage trials with him... maybe once I get to 80 I’ll be able to convince someone to unsync them with me for first clears... the questline is called “Void Quests” too... Ah. To do this last questline you have to have ALSO done all the role quests. Good thing I’m leveling one of each currently lmao... wait. I don’t have a caster. I suppose I’ll have to level summoner on him after all...

“But no one is invincible, Doran. Not even you. So please, take care of yourself out there.” Foreshadowing of the WoL nearly getting merc’d on the battle field. Side note I had to look that up because I’ve been thinking of that word a lot lately. And now realize that it is not a real word but a gaming term? Also that it’s written like that. It comes from CoD4. Or. Actually. reading more I have no clue where it comes from though I did know it was in relation to mercenaries at its root even if its meaning doesn’t.

Ah... speaking of this is probably the last story bit I’m going to do before bed. Though. I... think this leads right into entering Norvrandt. Oh holy shit Doran’s forehead is so big now. he looks so goofy in this shot they took away his fucking eyebrows.

I’ve mostly been wearing his new AST glam since I changed his hair and that at least has glasses... and GNB wears a full-face mask and BRD has a half-face mask. But this. This looks like a lil bit silly ngl.

Ohhh I forgot you fight as Hien against Elidibus/Zenos... While waiting for the WoL to arrive. i love fighting as DRG against Zenos. Same reason as I enjoy using SMN. Fighting using the power of a beast, it’s fitting. Also goddammit G’raha... Why are you so stupid. My guy. Thank goodness Estinien is some kind of stalker because my god. Ohhhh riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight it’s later you actually go to Norvrandt. Rn you just get a lil peek at G’raha. Again, waaaay too recognizable. Literally not even a secret.

Hhhgh... hearing Aymeric speak to the WoL.... they are Friends it is Cute. He like... actually tries, I realize. He makes it clear that he’s fond of the WoL past the obvious hero stuff. Godddddddd this is adorable... Aymeric is still an idiot but he is an incredibly endearring idiot. Ah... and Count edmont comes to visit too. His fatherly relationship with the WoL is adorable as well... I still remember their moment during the DRK questline.

Hhhhhhhhhhhhhggggggg and Tataru crying about seeing the WoL... fwiends... ShB is GOOD. And the WoL goes and kneels in front of her.. ghghhh

Ahh that WAS finally the end of the intermediate stuff. Oh my god I love this game. Jesus christ this is so good. And I finally got the new travelling outfit! Hopefully this’ll give me an idea for a GNB glam... I... can’t use the body piece cause it’s too gaudy but the others would work maybe.

Oh shit I finally lost my sprout too! I’m gonna stop writing now just gotta finish up some business...

[metatiki]

void-within replied to your post “Random Thoughts on Corypheus”

My theory is that there was lyrium in remnants of his armor (a common enhancement for armors in the setting) and that he deliberately let red lyrium Blight-strain infect this.

I wouldn’t doubt that, given Corypheus’ view of power, but I was more curious about the fact that, in DA2, Corypheus was already darkspawn, which means he was already Blighted, and had been during his entire imprisonment. If Red Lyrium is a corruption of living lyrium, wouldn’t the lyrium in his armor have already been red in DA2? And since it wasn’t, what is the implication of Blight/tainted vs Corrupted/Red lyrium, which are supposed to be the same thing according to Bianca? 

Bianca states specifically that Red Lyrium is lyrium corrupted with the Blight, so I’m just curious why Corypheus, as a blighted darkspawn, shows up as blue in the first place, and only later as red in DAI. Couple that with that fact that DAI as a whole was originally written to be an expansion of DA2 with Hawke as the Inquisitor, rather than a whole new game and protagonist, it really does raise some interesting questions (to my mind).

Basically it boils down to a difference between ‘oh well this is a retcon, and Corypheus was always meant to be red but we developed that idea later and you weren’t supposed to notice’ and ‘Wait, what if there’s a distinction between Blighted and Corrupted, and someone (himself or an outside force) Corrupted Corypheus and put two powerful bads together’? After all, Dragon Age writers have proven time and again that absolute fact is not necessarily the same as what the player learns from other characters in-game (in this case, Bianca, in other cases Flemythal). Bianca could be absolutely certain that what she says is true, but in the end, it might be a deliberate red herring by the writers to obfuscate something even more sinister re: red lyrium or the taint.

Also I don’t think red lyrium “corrupts” darkspawn like it does people, both are Blighted so it makes sense relationship would be symbiotic rather than parasitic. Maybe letting it infect him is what allows Corypheus to control red lyrium (something no other darkspawn was ever seen doing).

Which feeds into my prior musing: why wasn’t he red in the first place, since I would presume his own corruption and nature as darkspawn would infect any lyrium on his person/in his armor given the virulently infectious nature of red lyrium (ignoring the blithe fashion in which everyone and their cousin in the Inquisition constantly walks all over the damn stuff). Erimond certainly does emphasize Corypheus’ control of the Blight, but even Corypheus needed the help of Nightmare to provoke the Calling in the Grey Wardens, so there are limits to his control of the blight itself. And Corypheus isn’t the only darkspawn to control the blight--there is also the Architect and his experiments in DA:A. I’m not sure Corypheus controls red lyrium as much as he uses it. It may simply be that one merely needs to be a powerful mage, and this combination of the ability to use lyrium for magic and manipulate the blight at a sophisticated level is what gives Corypheus his power.

Which also brings up an interesting idea for why Templars are used by Corypheus if you side with the mages. After all, there are two classes that can use lyrium: mages and templars. Perhaps Corypheus needed Templars because he could control them with the red lyrium in ways he couldn’t control normal warriors. That link to lyrium is there, an easy way to control and an easy way to corrupt.

And maybe this mixing of red lyrium Blight with darkspawn Blight is what made red lyrium so much more virulent in DAI. The stuff sat inert in the primeval thaig for millennia, and even in Kirkwall it did not particularly spread...but is now thriving all over the place.

And yeah, this brings up again the question of the Blight and the taint. If red lyrium is only Blighted lyrium, then the only distinction between red lyrium Blight and darkspawn Blight is the nature of the living creature corrupted, not the nature of the corruption itself, if that makes sense. As it is presented in-game, there aren’t multiple types of Blight infection, just different expressions of that infection.

But yeah. What caused the corruption of the primeval thaig in the first place, who contained it, and what was it meant to be a weapon against? My guess is the Titans, of course, which again, raises interesting possibilities.

Overall, I’m about half-convinced Corypheus being blue in DA2 is just a retcon oversight, and that based on the way lore now stands, Corypheus should have been red from the get-go in Legacy. Still, it’s fun to speculate.

[pamphletstoinspire]

A LANDSCAPE WITH DRAGONS - The Battle for Your Child’s Mind - Part 4

A story written by: Michael D. O’Brien

________

Chapter IV

The Mortal Foe of My Children

The New Illiteracy

Like it or not, we are fast becoming an illiterate people. Yes, most of us can read. Indeed, adults and children now read more books, numerically speaking, than at any other time in history. But our minds are becoming increasingly passive and image oriented because of the tremendous influence of the visual media. Television, film, and the video revolution dominate our culture like nothing before in the history of mankind. In addition, computers, word processors, pocket calculators, telephones, and a host of similar inventions have lessened the need for the disciplines of the mind that in former generations were the distinguishing marks of an intelligent person. In those days man learned to read and write because of necessity or privilege: maps, medical lore, the history of the race, genealogies, and recipes. Each of these could be handed down intact to the forthcoming generations far more easily, and with greater accuracy in written form than by word of mouth.

So too with the ancient myths and legends that embodied the spiritual intuitions of a people. The printed word guaranteed that no essential detail would be lost. And if the storyteller had the soul of an artist, he could also impart the flavor of his times, the spiritual climate in which his small and large dramas were enacted. Words made permanent on a page would to some extent overcome the weaknesses of memory and avoid the constant tendency in human nature to distort and to select according to tastes and prejudices. Furthermore, the incredible act of mastering a written language greatly increased a person’s capacity for clear thought. And people capable of thought were also better able—at least in theory—to avoid the mistakes of their ancestors and to make a more humane world. The higher goal of literacy was the ability to recognize truth and to live according to it.

Something is happening in modern culture that is unprecedented in human history. At the same time that the skills of the mind, especially the power of discernment, are weakened, many of the symbols of the Western world are being turned topsyturvy. This is quite unlike what happened to the pagan faiths of the ancient classical world with the gradual fading of their mythologies as their civilizations developed. That was a centuries-long draining away of the power and meaning of certain mythological symbols. How many Greeks in the late classical period, for example, truly believed that Zeus ruled the world from Mount Olympus? How many citizens of imperial Rome believed that Neptune literally controlled the oceans? In Greece the decline of cultic paganism occurred as the Greeks advanced in pursuit of truth through philosophy. For many Greeks the gods came to be understood as personifications of ideals or principles in the universe. The Romans, on the other hand, grew increasingly humanistic and materialistic. Though the mystery cults of the East flooded into the West as the Empire spread, the Roman ethos maintained more or less a basic pragmatism; at its best it pursued the common good, civic order, philosophical reflection. At its worst it was superstitious and unspeakably cruel. But all of this was a long, slow process of development, inculturation, and decline.

By contrast, the loss of our world of symbols is the result of a deliberate attack upon truth, and this loss is occurring with astonishing rapidity. On practically every level of culture, good is no linger presented as good but rather as a prejudice held by a limited religious system (Christianity). Neither is evil any longer perceived as evil in the way we once understood it. Evil is increasingly depicted as a means to achieve good.

With television in most homes throughout the Western world, images bombard our minds in a way never before seen. Children are especially vulnerable to the power of images, precisely because they are at a stage of development when their fundamental concepts of reality are being formed. Their perceptions and understanding are being shaped at every moment, as they have been in every generation, through a ceaseless ingathering of words and images. But in a culture that deliberately targets the senses and overwhelms them, employing all the genius of technology and art, children have fewer resources to discern rightly than at any other time in history. Flooded with a vast array of entertaining stimuli, children and parents suppose that they live in a world of multiple choices. In fact, their choices are shrinking steadily, because as the quantity increases, quality decreases. Our society is the first in history to produce such a culture and to export it to the world, sweeping away the cultures of various nations, peoples, and races and establishing the world’s first global civilisation. But what is the character of this new civilization?

The modern mind is no longer formed on a foundation of absolute truths, which past societies found written in the natural law and which were revealed to us more explicitly in Christianity: At one time song and story handed down this world of insight from generation to generation. But our songs and stories are being usurped. Films, videos, and commercial television have come close to replacing the Church, the arts, and the university as the primary shaper of the modern sense of reality. Most children now drink from these polluted wells, which seem uncleanable and unaccountable to anyone except the money-makers. The children who do not drink from them can feel alienated from their own generation, because they have less talk and play to share with friends who have been fed only on the new electronic tales.

Busy modern parents seem to have less time to read to their children or to tell them stories. Many children grow up never having heard a nursery rhyme, not to mention a real fairy tale, legend, or myth. Instead, hours of their formative years are spent watching electronic entertainment. The sad result is that many children are being robbed of vital energies, the native powers of the imagination replaced by an addict’s appetite for visceral stimuli, and creative play replaced with lots of expensive toys that are the spinoffs of the shows they watch. Such toys stifle imaginative and creative development because they do practically everything for the child, turning him into the plaything of market strategists. Moreover, most media role models are far from wholesome. Dr. Brandon Centerwall, writing in the June 10, 1992, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, links television violence with the soaring crime rates. There would be ten thousand fewer murders, seventy thousand fewer rapes, and seven hundred thousand fewer violent assaults, he says, if television had never been invented.

Many parents exercise very little control over their children’s consumption of entertainment. For those who try to regulate the tube, there is a constant struggle. A parent may stand guard by the television set, ready to turn it off or change the channel if offensive material flashes across the screen, but he will not be quick enough. Immoral or grotesque scenes can be implanted in his children’s minds before he has a chance to flick the remote control. He may even fall victim to his own fascination and lose the will to do so. Scientific studies have shown conclusively that within thirty seconds of watching television, a viewer enters a measurable trancelike state. This allows the material shown to bypass the critical faculty, so that images and ideas are absorbed by the mind without conscious reflection. Even when the contents of a program are not grossly objectionable, hours of boredom and nonsense are tolerated, because the viewer keeps hoping insanely that the show will get better. Television beguiles many of the senses at once, and the viewer is locked into its pace in order not to “miss anything”.

But perhaps the shows ought to be missed. When one listens carefully to many of the programs made for children, one frequently hears the strains of modern Gnosticism: “If you watch this, you will know more, be more grown-up, more smart, more cool, more funny, more able to talk about it with your friends.”—“You decide. You choose. Truth is what you believe it to be.”—“Right and wrong are what you feel are right and wrong for you. Question authority. To become what you want to be, you must be a rebel.”—“You make yourself; you create your own reality.”—“We can make a perfect world. Backward older people, especially ignorant traditionalists, are the major stumbling blocks to building a peaceful, healthy, happy planet.” And so forth. It’s all there in children’s culture, and it pours into their minds with unrelenting persistence, sometimes as the undercurrent but increasingly as the overt, central message. What stands in the path of this juggernaut? What contradicts these falsehoods? Parental authority? The Church? In film after film parents (especially fathers) are depicted as abusers at worst, bumbling fools at best. Christians are depicted as vicious bigots, and ministers of religion as either corrupt hypocrites or confused clowns.

The young “heroes” and “heroines” of these dramas are the mouthpieces of the ideologies of modern social and political movements, champions of materialism, sexual libertarianism, environmentalism, feminism, globalism, monism, and all the other isms that are basically about reshaping reality to fit the new world envisioned by the intellectual élites. Victims of their own gnosis (which they see in grand terms of “broadness” of vision, freedom, and creativity), they are in fact reducing the mystery and majesty of creation to a kind of Flatland. If this were a matter of simple propaganda, it would not get very far. No one can survive long in Flatland, because at root it is busy demolishing the whole truth about man, negating the ultimate worth of the human person, and turning him into an object to be consumed or manipulated. Thus, the propagandist must prevent any awakening of conscience and derail the development of real imagination in his audience. He must inflame the imagination in all the wrong directions and supply a steady dose of pleasurable stimuli as a reward mechanism. He must calm any uneasiness in the conscience by supplying many social projects, causes, and issues that the young can embrace with passionate pseudo-idealism.

The late Dr. Russell Kirk, in a lecture on the moral imagination, warned that a people who reject the right order of the soul and the true good of society will in the end inherit “fire and slaughter”. When culture is deprived of moral vision, the rise of the “diabolic imagination” is the inevitable result. What begins as rootless idealism soon passes into the sphere of “narcotic illusions”, then ends in “diabolic regimes”.1 Tyrants come in many forms, and only the ones who inflict painful indignities on us are immediately recognizable for what they are. But what happens to the discernment of a people when a tyrant arrives without any of the sinister costumes of brutal dictators? What happens when the errors come hi pleasing disguises and are promoted by talented people who know full well how to use all the resources of modern psychology to make of the human imagination the instrument of their purpose? How long will it take the people of our times to understand that when humanist sentiments replace moral absolutes, it is not long before we see idealists corrupting conscience in the name of liberty and destroying human lives in the name of humanity?

In many ways this new visual culture is pleasurable, but it is a tyrant. Literature, on the other hand, is democratic. One can pause and put a book down and debate with the author. One can take it up later, after there has been time to think or do some research. The reader’s imagination can select what it wishes to focus on, whereas in electronic visual media the mind is pummeled with powerful stimuli that bypass conscious and subconscious defenses. It is tragic, therefore, that authentic literature is slowly disappearing from, public and school libraries and being replaced by a tidal wave of children’s books written by people who appear to have been convinced by cultic psychology or converted in part or whole by the neopagan cosmos. Significantly, their use of language is much closer to the operations of electronic culture, and their stories far more visual than the thought-full fiction of the past. They are evangelists of a religion that they deny is a religion. Yet, in the new juvenile literature there is a relentless preoccupation with spiritual powers, with the occult, with perceptions of good and evil that are almost always blurred and at times downright inverted. At least in the old days dragons looked and acted like dragons. This, I think, not only reflects truth in a deep spiritual sense, it is also a lot more interesting. A landscape with dragons is seldom boring.

Invasion of the Imagination

The invasion of our children’s imagination has two major fronts. The first is the degradation of the human image. The second is the corruption of conscience. The territory of fantasy writing, for example, which was once concerned with a wholesome examination of man’s place in the cosmos, has become almost without our knowing it a den of vipers. The genre has been nearly overwhelmed by the cult of horror. A new wave of grisly films and novels is preoccupied with pushing back boundaries that would have been intolerable a generation ago. The young are its first victims, because they are naturally drawn to fantasy, finding in the genre a fitting arena for their sense of the mystery and danger of human existence. Yet the arena has been filled with demonic forms and every conceivable monster of the subconscious, all intent, it appears, on mutilating the bodies, minds, and spirits of the dramatic characters.

The novels of R. L. Stine, for example, have practically taken over the field of young adult literature in recent years. Since 1988, when the first title of his Fear Street series was released, and 1992, when the Goosebumps series appeared, more than a hundred million copies of his books have made their way into young hands. Through school book clubs, libraries, and book racks in retail outlets ranging from department stores to pharmacies, an estimated one and a quarter million children are introduced to his novels every month. For sheer perversity these tales rival anything that has been published to date. Each is brimming over with murder, grotesque scenes of horror, terror, mutilation (liberally seasoned with gobbets and gobbets of blood and gore). Shock after shock pummels the reader’s mind, and the child experiences them as both psychological and physical stimuli. These shocks are presented as ends in themselves, raw violence as entertainment. In sharp contrast, the momentary horrors that occur in classical tales always have a higher purpose; they are intended to underline the necessity of courage, ingenuity, and character; the tales are about brave young people struggling through adversity to moments of illumination, truth, and maturity; they emphatically demonstrate that good is far more powerful than evil Not so with the new wave of shock-fiction. Its “heroes” and “heroines” are usually rude, selfish, sometimes clever (but in no way wise), and they never grow up. This nasty little world offers a thrill per minute, but it is a like a sealed room from which the oxygen is slowly removed, replaced by an atmosphere of nightmare and a sense that the forces of evil are nearly omnipotent.

Stine does not descend to the level of dragging sexual activity into the picture, as do so many of his contemporaries. He doesn’t have to; he has already won the field. He leaves some room for authors who wish to exploit the market with other strategies. Most new fiction for young adults glamorizes sexual sin and psychic powers and offers them as antidotes to evil. In the classical fairy tale, good wins out in the end and evil is punished. Not so in many a modern tale, where the nature of good and evil is redefined: it is now common for heroes to employ evil to defeat evil, despite the fact that in the created and sub-created order this actually means self-defeat.

In the Dune series of fantasy novels, for example, a handsome, young, dark prince (the “good guy”) is pitted against an antagonist who is the personification of vice. This “bad guy” is so completely loathsome physically and morally (murder, torture, and sexual violence are among his pastimes) that by contrast the dark prince looks like an angel of light. The prince is addicted to psychedelic drugs and occult powers, both of which enhance his ability to defeat his grossly evil rival. He is also the master of gigantic carnivorous worms (it may be worth recalling here that “worm” is one of several medieval terms for a dragon). There is a keen intelligence behind the Dune novels and the film that grew out of them. The author’s mind is religious in its vision, and he employs a tactic frequently used by Satan in his attempt to influence human affairs. He sets up a horrible evil, repulsive to everyone, even to the most naïve of people. Then he brings against it a lesser evil that has the appearance of virtue. The people settle for the lesser evil, thinking they have been “saved”, when all the while it was the lesser evil that the devil wished to establish in the first place. Evils that appear good are far more destructive in the long run than those that appear with horns, fangs, and drooling green saliva.

The distinction may not always be clear even to discerning parents. Consider, for example, another group of fantasy films, the enormously successful Star Wars series, the first of which was released in 1977, followed by two sequels. They are the creation of a cinematic genius, so gripping and so thoroughly enjoyable that they are almost impossible to resist. The shining central character, Luke Skywalker, is so much a “good guy” that his heroic fight against a host of evil adversaries resembles the battles of medieval knights.

Indeed, he is called a “knight”, though not one consecrated to chivalry and the defense of Christendom, but one schooled in an ancient mystery religion. He too uses supernatural powers to defeat the lower forms of evil, various repulsive personifications of vice. Eventually he confronts the “Emperor”, who is a personification of spiritual evil. Both Luke and the emperor and various other characters tap into a cosmic, impersonal power they call “the Force”, the divine energy that runs the universe. There is a “light side of the Force” and a “dark side of the Force”. The force is neither good nor evil in itself but becomes so according to who uses it and how it is used. There is much to recommend this film trilogy, such as its message that good does win out over evil if one perseveres with courage. The romantic side of the plot is low-key and handled with surprising sensitivity to the real meaning of love (with the exception of two brief scenes). Other messages: The characters are unambiguously on the side of good or evil; even the one anti-hero, Han Solo, is not allowed to remain one. He becomes a better man through the challenge to submit to authority and to sacrifice himself for others. Luke is repeatedly told by his master not to use evil means to defeat evil, because to do so is to become evil. He is warned against anger and the desire for vengeance and is exhorted to overcome them. In the concluding film, Luke chooses to abandon all powers, refusing to succumb to the temptation to use them in anger. It is this powerlessness that reveals his real moral strength, and this is the key component in the “conversion” of the evil Darth Vader. The final message of the series: Mercy and love are more powerful than sin and hate.

Even so, the film cannot be assessed as an isolated unit, as if it were hermetically sealed in an antiseptic isolation ward. It is a major cultural signpost, part of a larger culture shift. If Dune represents the new Gnosticism expressed aggressively and overtly, Star Wars represents a kind of “soft Gnosticism” in which the gnosis is an undercurrent beneath the surface waves of a few Christian principles. It is important to recall at this point that during the second century there were several “Christian Gnostic” sects that attempted to reconcile Christianity and paganism and did so by incorporating many praiseworthy elements from the true faith. Similarly, Luke and company act according to an admirable moral code, but we must ask ourselves on what moral foundation this code is based, and what its source is.

here is no mention of a transcendent God or any attempt to define the source of “the Force”. And why is the use of psychic power considered acceptable? A major theme throughout the series is that good can be fostered by the use of these supernatural powers, which in our world are exclusively allied with evil forces. Moreover, the key figures in the overthrow of the malevolent empire are the Jedi masters, the enlightened elite, the initiates, the possessors of secret knowledge. Is this not Gnosticism?

At the very least these issues should suggest a close appraisal of the series by parents, especially since the films were revised and re-released in 1997, and a new generation of young people is being influenced by them. The most pressing question that should be asked is, which kind of distortion will do the more damage: blatant falsehood or falsehood mixed with the truths that we hunger for?

Vigilance, Paranoia, and Uncle Walt

No assessment of the situation should overlook the influence of Walt Disney Productions. Its unequalled accomplishments in the field of animation and in drama for children have made it a keystone in the culture of the West. Walt Disney became a kind of secular saint, a patron of childhood, the archangel of the young imagination. Some of this reputation was merited. Who among us has not been delighted and, indeed, formed by the films released in the early years of production, modern retellings of classic fairy stories such as Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio, and Snow White. In these and other films, evil is portrayed as evil, and virtue as a moral struggle fraught with trial and error. Telling lies makes your nose grow long; indulging in vice turns you into a donkey; sorcery is a device of the enemy used against the good; witches are deadly. There are even moments that approach evangelization. In Fantasia, for example, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment is a warning about dabbling in occult powers. In the final segment, “Night on Bald Mountain”, the devil is shown in all his malice, seducing and raging, but defeated by the prayers of the saints. As the pilgrims process toward the dawn, they are accompanied by the strains of Schubert’s “Ave Maria”. Although there are parts of this film too frightening for small children, its final word is holiness.

Upon that reputation many parents learned to say, “Oh, it’s by Disney. It must be okay!” But even in the early years of the Disney studios, the trends of modernity were present. As our culture continued to follow that tendency, films continued to diverge from the traditional Christian world view. Snow White and Pinocchio are perhaps the most pure interpretations of the original fairy tales, because the changes by Disney were of degree, not of kind. Much of the editing had to do with putting violence and other grotesque scenes off-screen (such as the demise of the wicked queen), because reading a story and seeing it are two different experiences, especially for children.

By the time Cinderella hit the theaters, the changes were more substantial. For example, Cinderella’s stepsisters (in the Grimm version) were as beautiful as she, but vain and selfish. And the prince (in both the Grimm and Perrault versions) sees Cinderella in rags and ashes and still decides to love her, before she is transformed back into the beauty of the ball. These elements are changed in the Disney version, with the result that Cinderella wins the prince’s hand, not primarily because of her virtue, but because she is the prettiest gal in town. Some prince!

Walt Disney died in 1966. During the late 1960s and 1970s the studio’s approach gradually changed. Its fantasy and science fiction films began to show symptoms of the spreading moral confusion in that genre. “Bad guys” were at times presented as complex souls, inviting pity if not sympathy. “Good guys” were a little more tarnished than they once had been and, indeed, were frequently portrayed as foolish simpletons. A strain of “realism” had entered children’s films—sadly so, because a child’s hunger for literature (visual or printed) is his quest for a “more real world”. He needs to know what is truly heroic in simple, memorable terms. He needs to see the hidden foundations of his world before the complexities and the nuances of the modern mind come flooding in to overwhelm his perceptions. The creators of the new classics had failed to grasp this timeless role of the fairy tale. Or, if they had grasped it, they arbitrarily decided it was time to change it. What began as a hairline crack began to grow into a chasm.

The Watcher in the Woods is a tale of beings from another dimension, seances, ESP, and channelling (spirits speaking through a human medium), a story that dramatically influences the young audience to believe that occult powers, though sometimes frightening, can bring great good for mankind. Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a comedy about a “good” witch, softens ancient fears about witchcraft. Pete’s Dragon is the tale of a cute, friendly dragon who becomes a pal to the young hero and helps to defeat the “bad guys”. In another time and place such films would probably be fairly harmless. Their impact must be understood in the context of the much larger movement that is inverting the symbol-life that grew from the Judeo-Christian revelation. This is more than just a haphazard development, more than just a gradual fading of right discernment in the wake of a declining Christian culture.

This is an anti-culture pouring in to take its place. Some, of it is full-frontal attack, but much of it is subtler and pleasurably packaged. Still more of it seems apparently harmless. But the undermining of a child’s perceptions in forms that are apparently harmless may be the most destructive of all. By the 1990s, old fairy tales such as Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, and The Little Mermaid were being remade by Walt Disney Productions in an effort to capture the imagination (and the market potential) of a new generation. The Little Mermaid represents an even greater break from the original intention of fairy stories than earlier retellings such as Cinderella. The mermaid’s father is shown to be an unreasonable patriarchist and she justifiably rebellious. In order to obtain her desire (marriage to a land-based human prince), she swims away from home and makes a pact with an evil Sea Witch, who turns her into a human for three days, long enough to make the prince kiss her. If she can entice him to do so, she will remain a human forever and marry him. So far, the film is close to Hans Christian Andersen’s original fairy story. But a radical departure is to be found in the way the plot resolves itself. Despite the disasters the little mermaid causes, only other people suffer the consequences of the wrong she has done, and in the end she gets everything she wants. Charming as she is, she is really a selfish brat whose only abiding impulse is a shallow romantic passion. In the original Andersen tale, the little mermaid faces some difficult moral decisions and decides for the good, choosing in the end to sacrifice her own desires so that the prince will remain happily married to his human bride. As a result of her self-denial, she is taken up into the sky among the “children of the air”, the benign spirits who do good in the world.

“In three hundred years we shall float like this into the Kingdom of God!” one of them cries.

“But we may get there sooner!” whispers one of the daughters of the air. “Unseen, we fly into houses where there are children, and for every day that we find a good child who gives its parents joy. . . . God shortens the time of [our] probation.”

Obviously there has been some heavy-handed editing in the film version, a trivialization of the characters, stripping the tale of moral content and references to God, with a net result that the meaning of the story is seriously distorted, even reversed. In a culture dominated by consumerism and pragmatism, it would seem that the best message modern producers are capable of is this: In the “real” world the “healthy ego” goes after what it wants. You can even play with evil and get away with it, maybe even be rewarded for your daring by hooking the handsomest guy in the land, winning for yourself your own palace, your own kingdom, and happiness on your own terms.

Harmless? I do not think so.

Aladdin especially represents the kind of films that are apparently harmless. To criticize it in the present climate is extremely difficult, because so many people in Christian circles have simply accepted it as “family entertainment”. But Aladdin begs some closer examination.

The animated version is adapted from the Arabian Nights, a fairy tale that originated in Persia and reflects the beliefs of its Muslim author. According to the original tale, a magician hires a poor Chinese boy named Aladdin to go into an underground cave in search of a magic lamp that contains untold power. Aladdin is not merely poor, he is lazy. Through neglect of his duties, he failed to learn a trade from his father before he died and now is vulnerable to temptation. When he finds the lamp, Aladdin refuses to give it up and is locked in the cave. When he accidentally rubs the lamp a jinn (spirit) of the lamp materializes. In the Islamic religion the jinni are demonic spirits, intelligent, fiery beings of the air, who can take on many forms, including human and animal. Some jinni are better characters than others, but they are considered on the whole to be tricksters. According to Arabian mythology, they were created out of flame, while men and angels were created out of clay and light. Whoever controls a jinn is master of tremendous power, for the jinn is his slave. Aladdin, helped by such a spirit, marries the Sultan’s daughter, and the jinn builds them a fabulous palace. But the wicked magician tricks them out of the lamp and transports the palace to Africa. Aladdin chases them there, regains the lamp in a heroic struggle, and restores the palace to China.

In the Disney remake, Aladdin is now a young hustler who speaks American urban slang in an Arabian marketplace. He is a likeable teenage thief who is poor through no fault of his own. He wants to make it big. When he meets the Sultan’s daughter, who is fleeing the boring confinement of her palace, and rescues her through wit and “street-smarts”, the romance begins. The film strives to remain true to some of the original plot, but in the characterization one sees evidence of the new consciousness. The film’s genie is a comedian of epic proportions, changing his roles at lightning speed, so that the audience barely has time to laugh before the next sophisticated entertainment industry joke is trotted out. He becomes Ed Sullivan, the Marx Brothers, a dragon, a homosexual, female belly dancers, Pinocchio, and on and on. It is a brilliant and fascinating display. He is capable of colossal powers, and he is, wonder of wonders, Aladdin’s slave. An intoxicating recipe for capturing a child’s imagination.

This is a charming film. It contains some very fine scenes and deserves some praise for an attempt at morality. The genie, for example, admonishes the young master that there are limits to the wishes he can grant: no killing, no making someone fall in love with you, no bringing anyone back from the dead. Aladdin is really a “good thief”, who robs from the comfortable and gives to the poor. He is called a “street-rat” by his enemies, yet he feels within himself aspirations to something better, something great. He is kind and generous to hungry, abandoned children; he defies the arrogant and the rich, and he is very, very brave. He is only waiting for an opportunity to show what sterling stuff he is made of. It is possible that this film may even have a good effect on the many urban children who five close to that level of poverty and desperation. By providing an attractive role model of a young person determined to overcome adversity, it may do much good in the world. There are even moments when spiritual insight is clear and true—when, for example, at the climax of the tale the magician takes on his true form, that of a gigantic serpent. And yet, there is something on the subliminal level, some undefinable warp in the presentation that leaves the discerning viewer uneasy.

Most obvious, perhaps, is the feeling of sensuality that dominates the plot. It is a romance, of course, and it must be understood that a large number of old literary fairy tales were also romances. But this is modern romance, complete with stirring music and visual impact. Aladdin and the Princess are both scantily clad throughout the entire performance, and, like so many characters in Disney animation, they appear to be bursting with hormones. There is a kiss that is more than a chaste peck. Nothing aggressively wrong, really. Nothing obscene, but all so thoroughly modern. At the very least, one should question the effect this stirring of the passions will have on the many children who flock to see the latest Disney cartoon. The cartoon, by its very nature, says “primarily for children”. But this is, in fact, an adolescent romance, with some good old cartoon effects thrown in to keep the little ones’ attention and some sly innuendo to keep the adults chuckling.

The handling of the supernatural element is, I believe, a more serious defect. To put it simply, the jinn is a demon. But such a charming demon. Funny and sad, clever and loyal (as long as you’re his master), harmless, helpful, and endlessly entertaining.

Just the kind of guardian spirit a child might long for. Does this film implant a longing to conjure up such a spirit? The film’s key flaw is its presentation of the structure of reality. It is an utterly delightful advertisement for the concept of “the tight side of the Force and the dark side of the Force”, and as such it is a kind of cartoon Star Wars. Like Luke Skywalker, Aladdin is a young hero pitched against impossible odds, but the similarities do not end there. Luke becomes strong enough to battle his foes only by going down into a cave in a mysterious swamp and facing there “the dark side” of himself. Then, by developing supernatural powers, he is enabled to go forth to defeat the evil in the world. Similarly, Aladdin first seeks to obtain the lamp by going down into the jaws of a lionlike beast that rises up out of the desert and speaks with a ghastly, terrifying voice. The lamp of spiritual power resides in a cave in the belly of the beast, and Aladdin takes it from him. Here is a clear message to the young who aspire to greater things: If you want to improve your lot in life, spiritual power is an even better possession than material powers such as wealth or physical force. It could be argued that Luke does not enlist the aid of demonic beings, nor does he cooperate with supernatural forces for selfish purposes. Indeed, he is a shining idealist. But this argument presumes that developing occult powers does not place one in contact with such evil beings—a very shaky presumption to say the least. At best there is an ambiguity in Luke’s cooperation with “the Force” that leaves ample room for the young to absorb gnostic messages.

What is communicated about the nature of spiritual power in Aladdin? Leave aside for the moment the question of the hero being helped by a “good demon” to overcome a bad one. Leave aside also the problem of telling the young that they should ignore their natural terrors of the supernatural in order to succeed in their quests. Leave aside, moreover, the subtle inference that light and darkness, good and evil, are merely reverse sides of the same cosmic coin. There are subtler messages in the film. For example, a theme running throughout is that Aladdin is “worthy” to master such power, though we never learn what constitutes his worthiness. The viewer assumes that it is his bravado, cunning, and basically good heart. In reality, none of us is worthy of powers that properly belong to God alone. None of us is worthy of restoration to Paradise. Salvation is Gods gift to mankind by the merits of his death on the Cross. Even so, we have not yet reached our one true home. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and in this world no one is capable of wielding evil supernatural powers without being corrupted by them. It is modern man’s ignorance of this principle that is now getting the world into a great deal of trouble. A powerful falsehood is implanted in the young by heroes who are given knowledge of good and evil, given power over good and evil, who play with evil but are never corrupted by it.

Beauty and the Beast handles the problem differently, but the end result is the same — the taming of the child’s instinctive reaction to the image of the horrible. The Beast is portrayed as a devil-like being. He is not merely deformed or grotesque, as he is in the written fable. In the film his voice is unearthly and horrifying; he is sinister in appearance, his face a hideous mimicry of medieval gargoyles, his body a hybrid abomination of lion, bull, bear, and demon. His castle is full of diabolical statues. Of course, the central themes are as true and timeless as ever: Love sees beneath the surface appearance to the interior reality of the person; and love breaks the spell that evil casts over a life.

Yet here too there are disturbing messages: A “good witch” casts the spell in order to improve the Beast’s character, implying that good ends come from evil means. But no truly good person does harm in order to bring about a good. While it is true that good can come out of evil situations, it is only because God’s love is greater than evil. God’s primary intention is that we always choose the good. In the original fairy tale, the spell is cast by an evil sorcerer, and the good conclusion to the plot is brought about in spite of him.

The Disney Beast really has a heart of gold. By contrast, handsome Gaston, the “normal” man, proves to be the real villain. He is a despicable parody of masculinity, a stupid, vain macho-man, who wishes to marry the heroine and chain her to the ennui of dull village life. The Beauty in the original tale embraces the virtues of hard work and the simple country life that result from her father’s misfortune. The Disney Beauty pines for something “better”. There is a feminist message here, made even stronger by the absence of any positive male role models. Even her father is a buffoon, though loveable. This gross characterization of “patriarchy” would not be complete without a nasty swipe at the Church, and sure enough, Gaston has primed a clown-like priest to marry them. (The depiction of ministers of religion as either corrupt or ridiculous is practically unrelieved in contemporary films — Disney films are especially odious in this respect.)

To return for a moment to the question of beauty: A principle acknowledged in all cultures (except those in a terminal phase of self-destruction), is that physical beauty in creation is a living metaphor of spiritual beauty. The ideal always points to something higher than itself to some ultimate good. In culture this principle is enfleshed, made visible. If at times spiritual beauty is present in unbeautiful fictional characters or situations, this only serves to underline the point that the physical is not an end in itself. In Disney’s Pocahontas we find this principle inverted. Dazzling the viewer’s eyes with superb scenes that are more like impressionistic paintings than solid narrative, stirring the emotions with haunting music and the supercharged atmosphere of sexual desire, its creators are really about a much bigger project than cranking out yet another tale of boy-meets-girl. Beauty is now harnessed to the task of promoting environmentalism and eco-spirituality. The real romance here is the mystique of pantheism, a portrayal of the earth as alive, animated with spirits (for example, a witchlike tree-spirit gives advice to Pocahontas about the nature of courtship). The earth and the flesh no longer point to something higher than themselves; they are ends in themselves. The “noble savage” understands this; the white, male, European Christian does not. And as usual, Disney portrays masculinity in its worst possible tight (excepting only the hero, Smith, who is sensitive and confused). The other European males are rapacious predators, thoughtless builders, dominators, polluters, and killers; and those who are not any of the foregoing are complete nincompoops. It is all so predictable, all so very “consciousness-raising”. What child does not take away from the film the impression that, in order to solve his problems, industrial-technological man need only reclaim the lost innocence of this pre-Columbian Eden?

I did not view Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame in a theater but watched the video release at home. The effect of the full-screen experience must have been overwhelming for audiences, because the visual effects in the video version were very impressive, clearly among Disney’s most brilliant achievements in animation. However, I was disturbed by themes that have now become habitual with this studio. Within the first ten minutes of the story a self-righteous Catholic moralist rides into the plot on horseback and chases a poor gypsy mother, who runs barefoot through the streets of Paris, carrying her baby in her arms, in a desperate attempt to reach the sanctuary of Notre Dame cathedral. She stumbles on the steps of the church and dies. The moralist picks up the baby, discovers that he is deformed, a “monster”, and decides to dispose of him by dropping him down a well, all the while muttering pious imprecations against this “spawn of the devil”. So far, not a great portrait of Catholicism. In the only redeeming moment in the film, a priest rushes out of the cathedral, sees the dead woman, and warns the moralist that his immortal soul is in danger. To amend for his sin, he must agree to be the legal guardian of the baby. The moralist agrees, on the condition that the monster be raised in secret in Notre Dame.

In the next scene the baby is now a young man, Quasimodo, a badly deformed hunchback who lives in isolation in the tower of the cathedral. He is the bell ringer, a sweet soul, humble, good, and creative, content to make art and little toys and to observe from his lonely height the life of the people of Paris. His solitude is broken only by the occasional visits of the moralist, who takes delight in reminding Quasimodo that he is a worthless monster who survives only because of his (the moralist’s) “kindness”. Is there anyone in the audience who has missed the point: The moralist is the ultimate hypocrite, the real monster. Quasimodo’s only other friends are three gargoyles, charming, humorous little demons who are reminiscent of the Three Stooges. They encourage him to believe in love, to believe in himself, to have courage. In one interesting short scene, the gargoyles mock a carving of the Pope. Later in the film there is a scene depicting the churchgoers praying below in the cathedral. Without exception they pray for wealth, power, and gratification of their desires—a portrait of Catholics as utterly selfish, shallow people.

A sensual young gypsy woman flees into the cathedral to escape the moralist (who is also a judge). Safe inside, she prays for divine assistance in a vague, agnostic fashion. In stark contrast to the prayers of the Catholics, there is nothing selfish in her prayer. She merely asks for justice for her people. As the music swells, she turns away from the altar, still singing her “prayer”, strolling in the opposite direction of the Catholics who are approaching the altar. Her supplication dissolves into a romantic musing that is more sentiment than insight into the nature of real mercy and justice. Disney’s point is clear: Traditional Christianity is weak, blind, and selfish; “real Christianity” is sociological and “politically correct”.

The romantic element, a mutual attraction between the gypsy woman and a young soldier, is simply a rehash of the screen romances that have become a necessary ingredient in Disney animated films. Lots of body language, lots of enticing flesh, a garish portrayal of the tormented moralist’s secret lusts, a contrasting depiction of the beautiful young couples sexual desire as pure and natural, and a sensual screen kiss that is inappropriate for young viewers (as it is in Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and other Disney films). Perhaps we should ask ourselves if viewing such intimate moments between man and woman is ever appropriate, even for adults. Is voyeurism, in any form, good for the soul?

The Hunchback of Notre Dame concludes with a frenzied climax in which the forces of love and courage are pitted against the ignorance of the medieval Church. Quasimodo has overcome the lie of his worthlessness through the counsel of his gargoyles and is now strong enough to defy the moralist. He rescues the gypsy girl, who is about to be burned for witchcraft, and flees with her to the bell tower. There the moralist tracks them down (after first pushing aside the ineffectual priest who tries to stop him) and attempts to kill them. As one might expect, he comes to a bad end. The gypsy and the soldier are reunited, and Quasimodo makes do with platonic love. All’s well that ends well.

Based on Victor Hugo’s novel of the same tide (published in 1831), the film retains much of the plot and characterization and even manages to communicate some truths. But the reality-shift evidenced in the modern version is a serious violation of the larger architecture of truth. The truths are mixed with untruths, and because of the sensory impact of the film medium, it is that much more difficult for an audience to discern rightly between the two. This is especially damaging to children, who because of their age are in a state of formation that is largely impressionistic. Moreover, most modern people do not know their history and do not possess the tools of real thought and thus are vulnerable to manipulation of their feelings. Young and old, we are becoming a race of impressionists.

Rather than thinking with ideas, we “think” in free-form layers of images loosely connected by emotions. There would be little harm in this if the sources of these images were honest. But few sources in culture and entertainment are completely honest these days. And even if the mind were well stocked with the best of images (a very rare state), it is still not equipped to meet the spiritual and ideological confusion of our times. The problem is much deeper than a lack of literacy, because even the mental imagery created by the printed word can be merely a chain of misleading impressions, however well articulated they may be. The real problem is religious illiteracy, by which I mean the lack of an objective standard against which we can measure our subjective readings of sensation and experience. Without this objective standard, one’s personal gnosis will inevitably push aside the objective truth and subordinate it to a lesser position, when it does not banish it altogether. That is why a modern maker of culture who feels strongly that Catholicism is bad for people has no qualms about rewriting history or creating anti-Catholic propaganda and will use all the powers of the modern media to do so.

One wonders what Disney studios would do with Hugo’s Les Miserables (published in 1862), an expressly Christian story in which two central characters, the bishop and Jean Valjean, are heroic Catholics fighting for truth, mercy, and justice in the face of the icy malice of the secular humanists, against the background of the French Revolution. Would the scriptwriters and executives sanitize and politically correct these characters by de-Catholicizing them? It would be interesting to observe the contortions necessary for such a transformation. Perhaps they would do what Hollywood did to Dominique Lapierre’s wonderful book, The City of Joy. The central character in that true story, a Christlike young priest who chose to live among the most abject of Calcutta’s poor, is entirely replaced in the film version by a handsome young American doctor (who was a secondary character in the book). In the Hollywood rewrite, the doctor is idealistic but amoral, and he is in the throes of an identity crisis. Uncertain at first if he is merely a technician of the body, slowly awakening to the possibility that he might become a minister to the whole person, in the end he chooses the latter. Following the gnostic pattern, he becomes the knower as healer, the scientist as priest. It is a well-made film, containing some good insights and moving scenes, but by displacing the priest of Christ, it loses an important part of the original story’s “soul”, cheating us of the real meaning of the events on which it is based.

Where Catholicism is not simply weeded out of the culture, it is usually attacked, though the attacks tend to be swift cheap-shots. Take, for instance, Steven Spielberg’s smash hit, Jurassic Park.

Again, there is much to recommend this film, such as the questions it raises about science and morality, especially the issue of genetic engineering. In the struggle between people and dinosaurs there is plenty of human heroism, and the dinosaurs are even presented as classic reptiles—no taming or befriending here. So far so good. On the level of symbolism, however, we are stunned with an image of the reptile as practically omnipotent. The Tyrannosaurus rex is power incarnate, and its smaller cousin, the Velociraptor, is not only fiercely powerful, it is intelligent and capable of learning.

There is a telling scene in which the most despicable character in the film, a sleazy lawyer, is riding in a car with two young children. When a dinosaur approaches the car to destroy it, the lawyer abandons the children to their fate and flees into an outdoor toilet cubicle. The T-Rex blows away the flimsy structure, exposing the lawyer, who is seated on the “John”, quivering uncontrollably and whining the words of the Hail Mary. The T-Rex picks him up in its jaws, crunches hard, and gulps him down its throat. In the theater where I saw the film, the audience cheered.

Where Is It All Leading?

At this point, the reader may be saying to himself, “What you describe may be true. I’ve seen evidence of it, and I’ve struggled to understand it. I’ve tried to pick my way through the flood of things coming at my children, but I’m not having much success. I’m uneasy about the new culture, but I don’t seem to have the skills to argue with it.”

I think most conscientious parents feel this way. We know something is not right, but we don’t quite know how to assess it. We worry that our children might be affected adversely by it, but at the same time we don’t want to overreact. The image of the “witch-hunt” haunts us (a fear that is strongly reinforced by the new culture), but we are equally concerned about the need to protect our children from being indoctrinated into paganism. What, then, are we to do?

Our first step must be in the direction of finding a few helpful categories, a standard against which we can measure examples of the new culture. I have found it useful to divide the field of children’s culture into roughly four main categories:

 1. Material that is entirely good.

 2. Material that is fundamentally good but disordered in some details.

 3. Material that appears good on the surface but is fundamentally disordered.

 4. Material that is blatantly evil, rotten to the core.

I will return to these categories in the next chapter’s assessment of children’s literature, where I hope to develop them in greater detail. I introduce them here to make a different point. Two generations ago the culture of the Western world was composed of material that, with few exceptions, was either entirely good (1) or fundamentally good but disordered in some details (2). About forty years ago there began a culture-shift that steadily gathered momentum, a massive influx of material that appeared good on the surface but was fundamentally disordered (3). It became the new majority. During this period entirely good material became the minority and at the same time more material that was diabolically evil began to appear (4). There is a pattern here. And it raises the question: Where is it all leading?

I think it highly unlikely that we will ever see a popular culture that is wholly dominated by the blatantly diabolical, but I do believe that unless we recognize what is happening, we may soon be living in a culture that is totally dominated by the fundamentally disordered and in which the diabolical is respected as an alternative world view and becomes more influential than the entirely good. Indeed, we may be very close to that condition. I can think of half a dozen recent films that deliberately reverse the meaning of Christian symbols and elevate the diabolical to the status of a saving mythology.

The 1996 film Dragon Heart, for example, is the tale of a tenth-century kingdom that suffers under a tyrannical king. When the king is killed in a peasant uprising, his son inherits the crown but is himself wounded when he is accidentally impaled on a spike. His heart is pierced, and he is beyond all hope of recovery. The queen takes her son into an underground cave that is the lair of a dragon. She kneels before the dragon, calls him “Lord”, and begs him to save the princes life. The dragon removes half of his own heart and inserts it into the gaping wound of the prince’s chest, then heals the wound with a touch of his claw. The queen says to her son, “He [the dragon] will save you.” And to the dragon she says, “He [the prince] will grow in your grace.” The prince recovers and grows to manhood, the dragon’s heart beating within him.

The prince becomes totally evil, a tyrant like his father, and the viewer is led to believe that, in this detail at least, traditional symbolism is at work—the heart of a dragon will make a man into a dragon. Not so, for later we learn that the prince’s own evil nature has overshadowed the dragon’s good heart. When the dragon reappears in the plot and becomes the central character, we begin to learn that he is not the terrifying monster we think him to be. He dabbles in the role the superstitious peasants have assigned to him (the traditional concept of dragon), but he never really does any harm, except to dragon slayers, and then only when they attack him without provocation. Through his growing friendship with a reformed dragon slayer, we gradually come to see the dragon’s true character. He is wise, noble, ethical, and witty. He merely plays upon the irrational fears of the humans regarding dragons because he knows that they are not yet ready to understand the higher wisdom, a vision known only to dragons and their enlightened human initiates. It is corrupt human nature, we are told, that has deformed man’s understanding of dragons.

The dragon and his knight-friend assist the peasants in an uprising against the evil prince. Even a Catholic priest is enlisted in the battle. This character is yet another Hollywood buffoon-priest, who in his best moments is a silly, poetic dreamer and at worst a confused and shallow remnant of a dishonored Christian myth. Over and oyer again, we are shown the ineffectiveness of Christianity against evil and the effective power of The People when they ally themselves with the dragon. The priest sees the choice, abandons his cross, and takes up a bow and arrow, firing two shafts into the head and groin of a practice dummy. In a final battle, he overcomes his Christian scruples and begins to shoot at enemy soldiers, quoting Scripture humorously (even the words of Jesus) every time he shoots. An arrow in a soldier’s buttock elicits the priest’s sly comment, “Turn the other cheek, brother!” When he aims at the evil prince, he murmurs, “Thou shalt not kill! Thou shalt not kill!” then proceeds to disobey the divine commandment. The arrow goes straight into the prince’s heart, but he does not fall. He pulls the arrow from his heart and smiles. Neither Christian myth nor Christian might can stop this kind of evil!

Here we begin to understand the objectives that the scriptwriter has subtly hatched from the very beginning of the film. The prince cannot die because a dragon’s heart beats within him, even though he, not the dragon, has corrupted that heart. The evil prince will die only when the dragon dies. Knowing this, the dragon willingly sacrifices his own life in order to end the reign of evil, receiving a spear thrust into his heart. At this point we see the real purpose of the film—the presentation of the dragon as a Christ-figure!

Shortly before this decisive climax, the dragon describes in mystical tones his version of the history of the universe: “Long ago, when man was young and the dragon already old, the wisest of our race took pity on man. He gathered together all the dragons, who vowed to watch over man always. And at the moment of his death, the night became alive with those stars [pointing to the constellation Draco], and thus was born the dragon’s heaven.”

He explains that he had shared his heart with the dying young prince in order to “reunite man and dragon and to ensure my place among my ancient brothers of the sky”.

In the final moments of the film, after the dragon’s death, he is assumed into the heavens amidst heart-throbbing music and star bursts and becomes part of the constellation Draco. The crowd of humans watch the spectacle, their faces filled with religious awe. A voice-over narrator says that in the years following “Draco’s sacrifice” a time of justice and brotherhood came upon the world, “golden years warmed by an unworldly light. And when things became most difficult, Draco’s star shone more brightly for all of us who knew where to look.”

Few members of the audience would know that, according to the lore of witchcraft and Satanism, the constellation Draco is the original home of Satan and is reverenced in their rituals. Here is a warning about where Gnosticism can lead. What begins as one’s insistence on the right to decide the meaning of good and evil leads inevitably to spiritual blindness. Step by step we are led from the wholly good to flawed personal interpretations of good; then, as the will is weakened and the mind darkened, we suffer more serious damage to the foundation itself and arrive finally if we should lose all reason, at some manifestation of the diabolical.

When this process is promulgated with the genius of modern cinematic technology, packaged in the trappings of art and mysticism, our peril increases exponentially. My wife and I have known devout, intelligent, Christian parents who allowed their young children to watch Dragon Heart because they thought it was “just mythology”. This is an understandable naïveté, but it is also a symptom of our state of unpreparedness. The evil in corrupt mythology is never rendered harmless simply because it is encapsulated in a literary genre, as if sealed in a watertight compartment. Indeed, there are few things as infectious as mythology.

We would be sadly mistaken if we assumed that the cultural invasion is mainly a conflict of abstract ideas. It is a major front in the battle for the soul of modern man, and as such it necessarily entails elements of spiritual combat. For this reason parents must ask God for the gifts of wisdom, discernment, and vigilance during these times. We must also plead for extraordinary graces and intercede continuously for our children. The invasion reaches into very young minds, relaxing children’s instinctive aversion to what is truly frightening. It begins there, but we must understand that it will not end there, for its logical end is a culture that exalts the diabolical. There are a growing number of signs that this process is well under way.

In most toy shops, for example, one can find a number of soft, cuddly dragons and other monsters to befriend. There are several new children’s books about lovable dragons who are not evil, merely misunderstood. In one such book, given as a Christmas present to our children by a well-meaning friend, we found six illustrations that attempted to tame the diabolical by dressing it in ingratiating costumes. The illustrator exercised a certain genius that made his work well nigh irresistible. One of the images portrayed a horrible, grotesque being at the foot of a child’s bed. The accompanying story told how the child, instead of driving it away, befriended it, and together they lived happily ever after. The demonic being had become the child’s guardian. One wonders what has become of guardian angels! Such works seek to help children integrate “the dark side” into their natures, to reconcile good and evil within, and, as our friend expressed it, to “embrace their shadows”.

In Lilith, a classical fantasy by the nineteenth-century Christian writer George MacDonald, the voice of Eve calls this darkness “the mortal foe of my children”. In one passage a character describes the coming of “the Shadow”:

He was nothing but blackness. We were frightened the moment we saw him, but we did not run away, we stood and watched him. He came on us as if he would run over us. But before he reached us he began to spread and spread, and grew bigger and bigger, till at last he was so big that he went out of our sight, and we saw him no more, and then he was upon us.

It is when they can no longer see him that his power over them is at its height. They then describe how the shadow temporarily possessed them and bent their personalities in the direction of hatred. He is thrown off by love welling up within their hearts.

The German writer Goethe, in his great classic work Faust, uses a different approach to depict the seduction of mankind. At one point the devil says:

    Humanity’s most lofty power,

    Reason and knowledge pray despise!

    But let the Spirit of all lies

With works of dazzling magic blind you,

    Then absolutely mine, I’ll have and bind you!

In children’s culture a growing fascination with the supernatural is hastening the breakdown of the Christian vision of the spiritual world and the moral order of the universe. Reason and a holy knowledge are despised, while intoxicating signs and wonders increase.

________

1 Russell Kirk, “The Perversity of Recent Fiction; Reflections on the Moral Imagination”, in Reclaiming a Patrimony (Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 1982).

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Why Some Prices Are More Proper Than Others

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Why Some Prices Are More Proper Than Others

The whole discipline of advertising and marketing is strongly based in psychology. And that is without a doubt proper in relation to pricing approacH.

We’re all acquainted with rate tags that read $nine.Ninety-nine or $19.ninety nine. Do these virtually circulate Greater product than tags reading $10 or $20? What approximately including the decimal and zeros: $10 and $20? Does any of this make a distinction? Research says it does Travel Knowledge.

Putting the Right price can have a powerful impact on the success of your unsolicited mail campaigns.

Charming Prices No person is aware of whilst entrepreneurs first started shaving pennies off their Costs, although a whole lot of the lore factors to occasions inside the 19th century. One story is that doing it required the store clerk to make an alternate. This meant commencing the coins register and recording the sale – a massive discouragement to the clerk who otherwise may from time to time pocket the coins himself.

Every other Extra complicated story tells of a smart Chicago newspaper publisher who, in 1875, priced his newspapers at a penny to compete with other newspapers that charged a nickel. Pennies have been not often used at the time, so he got his advertisers to set their Charges lower by way of subtracting a penny from their whole dollar Fees. This assured his readers always had the Proper exchange to pay for the paper. It appears like an exceptional story, but No person is aware of for sure if this really is how “.ninety nine” at the cease of Prices became so famous. It seems a touch far-fetched to give an explanation for this type of prevalent phenomenon.

What we do realize is that this type of pricing has a powerful impact on client conduct. It’s every so often referred to as “attraction” pricing, fractional pricing, or odd-even pricing. Putting a rate even a penny or under the whole dollar amount can growth sales by means of 21-34%, depending on other elements. That’s a huge quantity which can make or break your marketing campaign.

marketers are properly aware of this. In line with a survey of Expenses that become published in the advertising and marketing Bulletin in 1997, 60% of Fees resulted in a nine; 30% resulted in a 5, and handiest 7% resulted in a 0. So now the question is, why do those numbers paintings so properly?

Why Much less is Extra We may think we make rational selections, but we’re all motivated through unconscious parts of our very own minds that make us understand matters in approaches we’re not aware of. Rationally we know that $9.ninety nine is most effective one penny Much less than $10.00 and consequently doesn’t amount to much, however unconsciously we react as although it’s a large distinction. There are some of the theories as to why this is so. Here are a few of the Greater universal ones:

The Reference price: Even as it’s an in a large part unconscious manner within us, we’re usually placing a price on matters. We do it all the time without knowing it. And to help us make correct valuations, we use a process of contrast. We set Some type of reference point in our minds, and then we ask ourselves, is this price better or decrease than the reference factor I’m comparing it to? If something is priced at $9.95, the reference point we evaluate it to could most likely be $10, and compared to that, $nine.95 seems like a good deal.

Virtually, pricing something at $10.05, in this example, would not be a terrific concept. We would still in all likelihood use a reference point of $10 instead of a reference point of, say, $eleven. however, now the price of $10.05 is better than the reference point, and might not appear like a good deal.

So, with the Right pricing, you establish, in the prospect’s thoughts, a reference point that’s better than the price you’re asking, and that consequently makes the charge appearance appealing. Shaving off a penny or two does the trick well.

Ignoring the “Insignificant”: We tend to gloss over matters that seem insignificant to us. Bucks appear critical to us. Cents now not so much. So we awareness at the greenback amount and don’t note that 99¢ is basically Some other dollar.

This phantasm is reinforced via taking what we want to appear insignificant and making it bodily smaller. That’s why the “.99” part of a fee is often made small and superscript, so it’s lifted out of view where it is able to be More effortlessly disregarded.

The appearance of Being the “Lowest rate”: The use of fractional Charges gives the influence that the enterprise has truly fine-tuned their pricing to offer you the exceptional fee. A charge of $6.94 says “bargain.” complete save chains paintings in this principle. Walmart constantly lists Fees with extraordinary quantities of change: .88, .ninety four, .ninety six. by using contrast, Macy’s commonly lists its Costs with a “.00” on the quit – unless the item is on sale. Then it usually ends with “.99” or something like it.

The Anchor of the Left-most Digit: We read from left to Right and the first thing we see whilst we observe a rate is a left-most digit. As a result, that first digit incorporates the best mental weight.

It’s smooth for us to remember that $1.ninety nine can also feel like a drastically decrease fee than $2.01. however, it is going even further. If human beings are asked how they understand the distinction between, say, $4.99 and $6.00 (without without a doubt doing the mathematics), they may perceive the distinction to be toward $2.01 rather than $1.01. That left-maximum digit commands the way we see a fee, and shaving a penny or two off a price to trade it from $20.00 to $19.ninety eight, can make a massive difference in sales.

The object Falls Into a Distinct charge point: An additional purpose for Using fractional pricing is that it may seem to position the item into Another class. This has to do with an item’s charge factor – where it falls on the subject of other aggressive Expenses. Many humans have a fee factor in thoughts. As an instance, $20 is a charge point many consumers have. If an item is below $20 it appears less expensive; if it’s Extra than $20 it appears More pricey and shopping it might require Greater thought.

If you may keep the fee of your product under a not unusual price point so it falls in the Less pricey category, you could raise your sales. And even some pennies, at the important factor, could make a large distinction. A charge of $19.99 manner the object fits within the Right category. Making the rate $20.19 raises it into the following category inside the thoughts of the patron, and might lessen sales.

while Extra is More Some companies don’t want to look like the most inexpensive preference obtainable. Their fulfillment should be based totally on The appearance of being expensive and worth it. those businesses like to apply “prestige pricing.” They deliberately make their Costs better, and the folks who select to shop for from them like it. they may rarely shave off the penny. they may charge in complete Dollars. this is something you spot lots on menus in quality restaurants. They’ll simply say: Grilled Caesar Salad: 15

They will now not even use a greenback sign. That manner doesn’t experience like cash. You have to know who your high-quality customers are. If they need to peer themselves as being so rich and fashionable that they simply want the first-class, no matter the value, then Extra may be More.

fee Checking out is Critical

Proper Clothing

As continually, I’m returned to my vintage mantra: you have to check. you couldn’t guess at the first-class charge. You have to test and discover. you may wager that Walmart has an entire group of entrepreneurs who’re always Trying out Charges. I’ve customers who are always strolling cut up to take a look at mailings with Distinct Charges and the outcomes are frequently unexpected: once in a while, the better charge does better.