I’ve just had it pointed out to me that the english language wasted a real opportunity by naming the fruit “olives” and not “greece’s pieces”
I’m going to need another shot of espresso in my coffee after that
-Owl
Make it two!
For me.
Funny how every time I “live vicariously” it always looks form the outside as if I’m merely engaging in hedonic excess
Truly am I misunderstood
I didn’t think that would be a hard sell.
All right, main thing I’m thinking about is a theory of where Edenic origin myths in art come from.
Should be quick so I’ll do that while you’re settling in.
That sounds fun
It’s a relatively simple idea that I got from discussing Goblin Slayer-as-MT with Kensuimo.
I’d guess that the artist had an archetypal MT figure in her head and felt the pressing need to write about them and needed to invent a backstory for their personality to make sense.
Huh, using they/them here. Maybe my testosterone is low.
Also, assuming the author of that series is female for some reason.
Now I’m obsessively looking to see if I was right about the latter.
This bodes ill for my focus.
So you’re describing an explicit vision of a character that the author finds intriguing, not just the typical projection that defines early attempts at character-building in authorship
Right, I suppose I was assuming that was clear.
I’m talking the sort of character who gets stuck in your craw.
The sort of figure that seems almost from beyond your own head
What some might call a gift of the muse
If you’ll remember, the entire Berserk story is based around that counterfactual: where did this guy come from?
Probably the best kind, too.
Here’s the original Guts story: https://berserk.fandom.com/wiki/Berserk:_The_Prototype
Notable: the local tyrant in this story is literally Vlad Tepes.
With telekinesis.
The original version of Guts also had a wide-brimmed hat, like Vampire Hunter D, so it’s likely the character was drawn from that particular niche of the collective unconscious.
And Vlad is sort of a poor man’s evil melonhead arch-villain, who thankfully got developed into a snake behelit demon dragon apostle as part of molding Guts’ backstory.
The innocence lost bit was also highly developed: “In a conversation between Guts and Puck, it is revealed that apostles brutally killed Guts’ mother before his very eyes, which is implied to have been the impetus for his personal war against them.”
In this case, the bog standard MT Punisher character got developed into a very good TT portrayal.
Finishing off the Goblin Slayer example, the author felt the need to justify the character’s existence with a traumatic backstory.
In reality, MTs are primarily the way they are due to genetics.
That said, genetics come from ecological adaptations.
This indicates that the MT traumatic backstory must be “mythically true” in the sense that something like it must have happened over and over throughout history for this sort of person to have evolved as a template character out of the womb.
It’s that repetitive harsh selection pressure that I believe is likely to have elevated such stories to myth.
So when we see outlandish stories like the Eclipse creating an outlandish character like Guts, where nonetheless both resonate with our understanding of a *type* of story and a *type* of character, then it’s likely that the evolutionary equivalent was mythically true.
Another thing: Goblin Slayer was the original inspiration for the idea that little monsters represent little cognitive problems (from https://aeolipera.wordpress.com/2020/05/25/of-swords-and-shadows/).
The reason Goblin Slayer is so MT is his absolute autistic obsession with a particular niche of problems.
By extension, big monsters are big problems.
So Berserk yields yet another interesting insight: where do these geniuses come from?
Guts’s sword was forged with the instruction to “make something that can kill a dragon”.
Then, after the Eclipse, he becomes obsessed with killing snake behelit demon dragon apostles, and is given this sword to do it (after losing his eye and becoming Punished Guts, of course).
I have more thoughts on that subject but am willing to move to another topic.
Nah, keep going
(That last bit on trauma is consistent with the research that early life trauma to a k-selected person can produce the unlikely confluence of fast-life and slow-life history traits necessary for genius.)
If we take this idea to its conclusion, then it suggests genius is born from evolutionary repetitions of the Gilgamesh and Enkidu story, where Gilgamesh was presented with the choice between the warmth of peership and his genetic destiny as lonely Nietzschean god king.
And choosing to betray Enkidu in service of his immortality project (as in The Denial of Death).
Enkidu, on the other hand, has not been genetically selected to be a god king over a bunch of philosophical zombie sapes.
After many years of autistic struggle where everything was against him (represented by Guts’ stupidly harsh early life, e.g. being born from a woman as she’s being executed), Enkidu has found a friend and peer for the first time.
In the show, he ruins it first by playing it very libertarian.
By just up and leaving all of a sudden.
In his defense, the man has no social skills at all.
Then, having developed his autistic mastery of swordsmanship in the wilderness (as is our custom: one must grow out his cheek flanges), he remembers that other people exist and returns to be friends again.
This is, sadly, the way we think. That friendships will still just be there ten years later.
In the meantime, Griffith has not been doing so well. And it’s in this moment of weakness that Satan offers the apple.
What’s notable is that any good Jacob and Esau story has this literally Edenic apple motif.
I watched the first episode of Death Note yesterday and it was everywhere. I want to do an analysis of that episode and maybe also the last one.
Hell, I suppose this would be the time and place.
No time like the present
I can’t help but note that Griffith is always Eve in these stories, with Adam standing there like an autistic retard.
Later, I imagine him picking boulders out of his field before plowing and plotting revenge.
Maybe the story of Sisyphus is actually the story of the extreme male brain.
Quite plausible haha
Aeoli Pera 