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37 - Oblivion's Shivering Isles: Mantling Sheogorath and Walking Like a God · Mythic Mind Games

• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Welcome back. As we get into Shivering Aisles, which is
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: probably my favorite section of this study. It's always been
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: my favorite expansion, favorite VLC how we frame that of
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: the series, because it's obviously the most explicitly philosophical and
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: psychological in that we're dealing with order and madness, and
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: this all kinds of applications or lenses we can use
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to analyze this. I think of Carl Jung, I think
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: of Currike Guard, which is my primary wheelhouse, and so
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I've always really been drawn to the shippering aisles. I'm
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: going to avoid monologuing right now, I'll have opportunity to
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: do that. So maybe I should start by asking your
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: initial thoughts experience. I know, Ian, you are even replaying it,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: so why don't you just start off with some general
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: thoughts kind of where do you want to go with this?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Ian?
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: You want to kick us off.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I'm not gonna lie. I was really disappointed when you
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: said I'm not gonna monologue.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean I figured I kind of kind of
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: head just a little bit because I also have my
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: solo video I need to do where I'm really gonna
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: get structured. But don't worry, I'm sure I'll do some
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: improperty monologues along the way.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: I'm looking for something. Uh, could we give the honor
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: to Tyler?
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Sure?
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: So, I mean actually the first time I even played
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: Shivering Ailes is actually with the remaster, So because what
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: I said, I blew through the main story of oblivion
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: that was kind of my own really first go at it.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: But it's it's really interesting coming at this from a
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: clinical perspective, being that I work, you know, and a
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: clinical perspective with the mental health counseling.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: It was almost this little joke where it's like I'm
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: kind of walking through with my with my DSM five
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: and just like, all right, narcissistic personality disorder, we got
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: to skidz a big personality disorder we got, and then
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: just kind of walk through the different characters and just
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: kind of seeing how, especially for the writing, they definitely
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: we're pulling some of like like like Sheldon is like
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: this classic like narcissist and it's just beautiful. As someone
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: who's actually works with some narcissist narcissistic personality disorder, it's
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: just really just like, oh man.
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: That hearkens back to some troubling times. But then just
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: just kind.
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: Of displaying and and and such a I enjoy kind
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: of the absurd absurdity of it where you're getting.
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: To explore some of like this goofy.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: Dark side of you no brains and our minds and
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: our spirits and and where it can go and and
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: once again in a very entertaining way, especially with chigraths,
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: just you know, madness of it all, and and and
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: just the beauty of the the delivery of it all
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: is great. So I mean, I've got a lot of
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: thoughts as far as you know, even just kind of
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: exploring the whole idea of dementia and and mania, the
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: splits and kind of like what ties it together. And
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: it's just all really interesting because I kind of start
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: going on just word deep dives to you because we
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: have our very you know, modern words for dementia, and
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: you think of, you know, just like the clinical diagnosis
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: of like you know, degenerative brain disorders, but even looking
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: back at historically, we're you know, it's as the thing
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: that ties them both together is a loss of reason
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: and I and and and.
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: They're very unique ways.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: And I just found that really entertained to kind of
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: deep dive further into so those are.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Just yeah, yeah, and the fact that both sides are
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: abandoning reason, but in very different kind of ways. On
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the mainia side, at that level, they're abandoning reason by
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: becoming overly expressive. They're losing sight of limitations, the kind
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: of limitations you need to actually be particular people using logic,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: using reason, which operates in a particular limited kind of way.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: And when you just give yourself over to the totally boundless,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: you lose yourself entirely. And Kirkyguard talks a lot about this.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: This is what he would refer to as the despair
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: of infinitude, where you're giving yourself over to just open
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: possibility so much that you aren't actually anything anymore. And
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: you know, as much as Careerguard is often treated as
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: this radical subjectivist, in reality, he's very much or he
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: would be at least a very harsh critic of contemporary postmodernism,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: in that, you know, he in really referencing the romantics
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: of his own day. He really makes the point that
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: as soon as everything becomes possible, you lose everything because
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you no longer have any boundaries. But then on the
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: other side, on the dementia side, you have what he
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: would refer to as the despair of finitude, where now
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: you are so bound by a lack of possibility that
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: you are given over to neurosis. You kind of get
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: lost within yourself. You don't see any any expansive possibilities
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: before you. And so this is why everybody is just
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: stuck inside their own heads because they're too limited. They
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: don't they have lost sight of possibility, whereas mania side
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: has given themselves over to possibility. But what the self does,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: for kicker Guard, the authentic integratedself, is you take the
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: limitations affinitude, You take the boundaries of what human nature
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: is and what it can be. You take the limitations
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: of your own particular life and the things that you
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: just can't get around. You embrace those limitations, but with
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: a spirit of possibility, recognizing that you are someone who's
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: capable of change. Right, and so to be an authentic self,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: you don't just give yourself over to one side or
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the other, and you don't even hold them intention You
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: integrate them together, right and so, and that's exactly what
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: you end up doing, you know, as a character going
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: through this story to a level that even Shio Gorath
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: isn't capable of doing because he holds both of them intention,
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: whereas what the real psychological hero does is he integrates
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: the possible and the actual together. So I guess there's
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: my improperty monologue.
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well I found interesting too.
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: Just you brought up care Guard, So I read Sickness
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: under Death, you know this this week, and you know,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: just looking at those.
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: Despairs and then.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: Seeing show Garth even you know Jigglag two where they're
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: both like this defiant despair, right, like the most defunt,
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: like the most defiant despair, and those two spectrums where
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: you've got this complete chaos and then you've got this
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: complete reason and they're both willing into their their own being,
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: but without obviously without what you know, Careguard looks for
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: his faith and you know, that full integration, and and
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: seeing that they're once a get two sides at the
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: same coin in a way, and just seeing all the
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: imagery and stuff like that, it's just really it was
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: really interesting to look at and then seeing the player
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: character coming in and like trying and you know, working
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: to integrate, and but even looking at that looks at
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: futurizing this Elvis for that no idea but but just
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: seeing that in the story is just really interesting pulled together.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that you brought in the signal
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: sent to Death, which is exactly the framework I'm using obviously,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and that's what I'm really going to focus in on
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: for my the asynchronous video I put out there looking
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: at through that lens. Yeah, Shia Gora, he really embodies
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: what Kurkey Guard calls like the demonic defiant sort of despair,
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: where in despair he is willing himself to be something
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: that he knows that he isn't that he's not, like,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: he knows that he is Jiggalag, that's his true identity,
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: but he is. He is trying to will himself to
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: be something entirely different, to operate outside those bounds. But
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: in so doing he entered into madness and he loses
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: sight of himself altogether until you, as the player character,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: are able to integrate the mad god into a psychology
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: of reason, so you know, you're able to take this
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: together and then go off and solve the obiphing crisis. Like,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: you know, whuld I play these games, I always like
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: to give my character like some kind of story, you know, backstory, motivation,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: that sort of thing. I feel like one advantage of
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: fiction is that you get to live different kinds of lives,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: like whether you're reading a book or play a game.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: That's one value of fiction. And so you know, I'm
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: playing this you know, good divine crusader type, and now
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to justify what am I doing here in
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the shivering aisles, playing around with this crazy dadra And
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: you know, the way that I'm approaching it is really
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: this idea of like, you you need to I mean
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: to swap psychological philosophers here, like you need to incorporate
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: your shadow, like you need to recognize the monstrous potential
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: that you have, and you know you don't give yourself
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: over to it, but you find a way to well
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: integrate a certain degree of chaos in the pursuit of
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: greater order. And so I think that I don't know,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: there's a lot there that could go on. Ian Did
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: you find out what you're looking for?
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: Sort of yes? And no, Yeah, I'm terribly sorry. I
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: was only kind of half listening there because I'm a
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: terrible multitasker. So like for somebody who is, so let's say,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: for people who are, uh, you know, fans of the
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Elder Scrolls, you know, but you know, like, but they
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: don't necessarily know who Kunkerguard is. I'm not saying I'm
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: that person, but i am that person. Who what is
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: a what's a quick down of Kirker Guard, like who
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: he is and kind of generally what's he writes what
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: he writes about to see.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: If it makes this succinct as possible, because he's he's
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: a very obscure writer who goes all over the place.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: But I mean he basically, you know, he's coming out
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: of the Danish State Lutheranism, which at that point had
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: become very cold, very rationalistic. You know, the idea that
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: you're born into the state Church and by virtue of
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: being a citizen of Denmark, well you're also a citizen
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: of the church. And that is essentially what Christianity is.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: It is entirely cultural, very much driven by rationalistic philosophy,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: and Kirker Guard is trying to reassert this authentic vibrancy
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: of the Christian faith, and so he takes much more
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: of an inward turn, focusing on the fact that to
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: be a Christian, to be an authentic self, requires that
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: you make actual decisions. It's not enough that you're just
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: born into aish and culture. You have to make a decision.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: You have to live a life, as he says that
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: is contemporaneous with Christ, meaning as a real, live reality.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: And so in his psychological text like The Sickness unto Death,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: he's looking at different pathways that people can walk and
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: trying to put their life together. And so on one side,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: you'll have the hyper rationalists who see everything well, much
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: like Jiglag or much like who's the librarian guy that
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: you meet towards the end Dias Yeah, yeah, exactly, And
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: so you know that would be the hyper rationalists. Everything
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: is going to happen the way it's going to happen,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: because well that's how logic plays out right, that things
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: are going to happen the way that they're going to happen.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: But on the other side of Kirkey Guard, on the
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: other side, from the opposite side of the rationalists, what
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: you have is the romantics. The romantics who are just
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: saying like anything goes free love, there's no boundaries, kind
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: of like I mean, in many ways the predecessors to
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: the hippies, right, is that sort of mentality and so
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Kinky Guard says, Okay, you go off into hyperrationalism, and
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: you're going to lose yourself because you're no longer actually
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: making decisions. You're just becoming a product of fate, and
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: that's not really what a person is. And then on
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: the other side, if you give yourself over to the
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: just crazy openness of the romantics, well you also lose
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: yourself because to be human is to have certain limitations,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: certain structures. We are made a certain way, and we
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: are made to live a certain kind of way. We
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: can't just create ourselves from the bottom up, as some
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: of the later existentialists will say. And so he's really saying,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: on one level, the rationalists are in a state of
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: despair because they're losing what it means to be human.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: The romantics are in a state of despair. They're losing
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: what it means to be human. And that right there,
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: we have the extremes of dementia and mania, right whereas
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: the authentic self is going to not just grab the
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: possibility of the romantics and the kind of impossibility or
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the impossibility of the rationalists. But we're gonna do is
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: We're gonna bring these things together and say yes, reason is, well,
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: it's real. There's reality to logic. There's also a certain
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: givenness to human nature. But also we are full of
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: possibility and they're all kinds of decisions that we have
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: to make. And if we're making real decisions, well then
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: there's a certain degree of chaos. There's a certain degree
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: of openness to reality in the path that's before us.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: And so what we need to do we affirm our limitations,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: but we also recognize the possibility that's required for us
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to make movements in taking those limitations where they're supposed
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to go. So was that helpful?
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, it was, thank you. I was starting like
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: I was starting to see okay, okay, I think I
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: see where he's making the uh making the mania and
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: dementia connection. Like you know, we're we're kind of we're
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: kind of drawing the dots here a little bit, are
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: connecting the dots. Excuse me? So yeah, yeah, I get that.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: That's that's uh, that's cool. Thank you, Thank you very much.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: So I guess I'm trying to figure I'm trying to
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: figure out like where to start or like how to
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: I was hoping that I was going to get to
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: write some stuff down before we started to keep it short,
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: that's not how life played out. So but I'm I'm so,
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to think how I wanna like, how I
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: want to like kind of like broach the topic. So
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: the so a big thing that's going on here in
• 14:29
  Speaker 2: uh in Shivering Ailes, which is we're getting we're getting
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: into some we're getting into some actual like you know,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: philosophy within the world of the Older Scrolls itself is uh,
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: it's a process called mantling, also known as the anantiomorph,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: which is one of the six walking ways outlined by
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: the vac and the six walking ways are in the
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Older Scrolls are basically this idea. Uh of uh, they're
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: they're they're different philosophical approaches to I said, to transcendence
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: of some kind, whether it's a patheosis, whether you know, uh,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: you know, whether it's achieving kim you know, you know,
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: whether it's you know, just kind of you know, uh,
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: you know, what one thing or the other. A lot
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: of them are all kind of uh, A lot of
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: them are all they kind of sort of lead to
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: the same outcome. Some of them are different, some of
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: them are a little different, some of them are just
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: kind of different paths to the same thing. But mantling
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: is and this is like, this is kind of like
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: like I've been I've been studying this a lot, and
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: I'm still struggling to a adequately describe it. But mantling
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: is basically, h when you uh you, you basically become
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: somebody else essentially, So the so like it uh really
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: so like the most obvious example, of course, and what
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: we're talking about right now is an oblivion, which is
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: the champion of cyri Dill mantles u Chao Goath and
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: he becomes and the champion himself becomes the you know,
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: the new mad God. I think the phrase that is
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: used in the games. I can't remember where the quote is, uh,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: but the phrases you walk like them until they must
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: walk like you. So there's kind of like this idea
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: that going on that all of the actions that you
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: take and this is what, this is what, this is
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: what and this is what Chao Gareth is actually like
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: doing to doing to you from beginning to end, like
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: you are his contingency plan. He at what you know,
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: at one point he calls you like you know, a
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: you know, a good little rat in a maze you know,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: he's like, you know, kind of like emphasizing essentially his
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: his control over you, essentially where all of everything that
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: he's telling you to do is some thing that he
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: himself would do. So in basically you're so you are
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: living like a share Goroth, You are acting like share Goroth.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: You are walking in his footsteps, and in doing that
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: you actually have kind of like this this uh this uh,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: this transcendental process that happens this this uh this enantio
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: morph this or it put in more using English words,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: the steps of the dead. Essentially, uh, where you are
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: you know you are, you are basically becoming an incarnation
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: of somebody else, usually a divine figure who is who
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: is dead. Now, share Goth doesn't really die, but he
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: ceases to be when he becomes Jiggalag. So when he
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: ceases to become Jiggalag, you become the new You become
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: the new share Goth. Uh. This sort of thing also
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: happens in Moro Wind. It's not mantling exactly, it's not
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: not in the exact same way. I think it's called
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: I think the word they actually use in Moro Wind
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: is incarnation, where you know, uh, the the Nerreverene becomes
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: the Neu Reverene because he like walks in the steps
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: of U Narravar himself, and then walking in the path
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: of Narravar becomes you know, uh becomes a Narravarene, becomes
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: an incarnation and echo of Narravar. And it's actually like
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: the reason why you are sent to uh to Moro
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Wind in the first place by the Emperor, because the
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Emperor kind of has like if I remember right, the
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: Emperor himself actually has like a dream essentially, he has
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: he he has a lot of those if you kind
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: of like if you if you remember if you know
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: anything about urial to seventh, but he kind of has
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: like this dream that oh, this guy, like you know,
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: this guy might be the ne Reverene that breaks the
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: tribunals hole on Morowind. So that's that's that's that's kind
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: of like you know that idea. There's also other examples
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: of mantling in the Elder scrolls are uh Tallos Taalos
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: evidently kind of mantles uh Lorcin and when he becomes
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: the when he becomes the ninth divine uh Madam Marco
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: uh the the the Ultimer's uh Necromancer. He attempts. Uh.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: He attempts Mantling several times and Elder scrolls online. The
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: main plot of that game is that he's attempting to
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: use the Amulet of Kings to trap mullag Ball's soul
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: and like mantle muleg Ball and become mullag Ball, become
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: the new mullag Ball. Long story short. That fails and
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: uh in uh daggerfall uh he became. He decides, well,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: I guess I'll become a moon instead. And because of
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: the way the Numidium works and dragon breaks work where
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: kind of like all paths kind of converge and become
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: true at the same time. Uh, he both fails and succeeds,
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: which is why we see a physical uh uh Mada
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Marco in the flesh uh in uh in the Oblivion
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: Mag's Guild quest line. So he's kind of so he
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: he he kind of does. Mada Marco does kind of
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: a Schrodinger's cat there. He's kind of both alive and dead. Uh.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: That's a bit, that's a bit of a tangent. I apologize,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: but uh yeah, uh that's kind of uh that's kind
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: of the gist of what Mantling is. There's uh there's
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: other examples of mantling and incarnation.
• 20:44
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: Pellanal White Strake who we who we've mentioned before from
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: the Song of Pellanol and the Knights of the Nine
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: d l C. Who was the who was the champion
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: of Alicia and the humans during the slave rebellion, and
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: who I argue the champion of sil Sira Dill also
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: mantles pell Andal White Strike before ultimately mantling uh the Sakrat.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: Now I'm still trying to wrap my mind around what
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: this means, uh, because on one hand, we talked about
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: walking in the steps of the person and you kind
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: of become that person, like can we get in shivering
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: aisles and potentially elsewhere in the in the lore and
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: you know, I think of like the imitation of Christ
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: idea and that idea of theosis or you know, as
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: we sort of walk the walk well it you know,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: through the application of grace as well. I mean we
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: we it's a not literal incarnation, but a type of incarnation.
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: That's what why the scripture refers to the Church as
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the body of Christ. Right, It's a kind of incarnation.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: But now when we take this to the Elder Scroll's lore,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: I mean say in Shivering Aisles, what is are are
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: you literally becoming Shia Korath like? Is this a a
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: are you taking the title or you like literally becoming
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: the person I don't fully understand exactly what's.
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: Happening, so so my understanding again like again, this is
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: kind of this has been kind of hard for me
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: to wrap my head around to and I feel like
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: there are people who could do a better job than me.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: My understanding is that and this was this was this
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: was something that was like, uh like just mildly upsetting
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: to me personally, just kind of like as a as
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: a player many many years ago, my understanding is that
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: you're your character and also canonically, the Champion of Siri
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: dil like literally becomes share Gooth uh like essentially, and
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: you get you get allusions to this in Skyrim in
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: the Skyrim Quest when you meet Shera Goroth and share
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: go Off makes some really interesting that that Shaya Garth
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: makes some really interesting uh comments about Martin Septim and
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: maybe like maybe like one or two other events that
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: happened in the Oblivion games that kind of suggest that uh,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: he and the champion or kind of he and the
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Champion are kind of one of the same person another
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: other other things that I was looking up that I
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: didn't really have like time, I didn't have time to
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: dig into further, which only made this even more confusing,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: which which was So there's this famous prophet in the
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Shivering Isles called Art and Sewel and the Mannix have
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: their version of kind of who Arden Sewell was and
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: what he did and what happened, and the demand and
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: the Demented have their version. There's there's kind of an
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: annu anw padame thing going on there with Art and Sewell,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: you know, like you know, was LORCN good? Was LORCN bad?
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: We don't know that seems to be going on with
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: uh that seems to be going on with Ard and Sewell.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Apparently arden Sewell like like you know, mantled Shaya Goroth
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: and was shay A Goreth like at one point, but
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: then he wasn't anymore, So I don't, like, I don't
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: fully understand that. And I also found something somewhere that
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: apparently Haskell mantled share A Goareth at one point, but
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Haskell's Haskell, and he's like the butler. So if he's
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: the butler, like, what did he become Shaa Gareth and
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: then he wasn't share Gareth anymore. Like I don't understand,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: you know, what's going on. I need somebody smarter than myself.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I'm a hack of a fraud, but go ahead. Well.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: I find curious though, because you think about the cycle
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: each era where you know, share Garath turns into Jiggila, right,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: and then Jiggla eventually becomes Showgath again, and there's like
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: this perpetual cycle of like this turning into turning into
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: I wonder like if like a character does mantle share
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: Gorath and for whatever reason does it anymore?
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: But eventually then jig lag then revert into sure Garth.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: I just there's like this melting pot of like what
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: is happening kind of thing going on and trying even
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: just like trying to I'm trying to bring reason to
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: the mad gods?
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: What I'm doing?
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who's Who's who's really mad? You know the three
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: people sitting in this call?
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah it. I think the real struggle here comes down
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: to in the elder scrolls lower, like what exactly does
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: it mean to be a person? What does it mean
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: to be I mean, what an existence?
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: I mean now I mean, I think we understand why
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: make our cameraon lost his mind at this point? Go ahead.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, it isn't and you can probably speak it's
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: better than I can. But I mean, isn't like the
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: existence itself something like a dream.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: Uh yeah. So it's so there. There is kind of
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: this idea in Elder scrolls. So one of the things,
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: I think, one of the things that will help us
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: like going into this is that so there's there's actually
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: like a couple of levels on which like the world
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: and it's philosophy and like it's it's ontology and everything.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: It can be interpreted in a couple of different ways there.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: You know, it can be interpreted in universe in narrative,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: which is what we here doing most of the time.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: There's also kind of like, uh, there's also kind of
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: a meta interpretation so uh too. And a lot of
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: what Kirkbride and these other writers are doing. I wish
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: I could remember the names of the other writers, because
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: there are other writers other than Kirkbride who are smart
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: and just like just incredible writers, and I can never
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: remember their names. And I feel like a terrible I
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: feel like a terrible person. Uh. But what all of
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: kind of like what all of these guys are doing
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: with Elder Scrolls philosophy partly is just kind of using it,
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: uh in uh, using it to kind of like I
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: don't know if contextualizes the right word. Basically the idea
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: that like Elder Scrolls is a game that knows it's
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: a game. Like so so there's like there's a there's
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: a lot going on, kind of like with Kim with
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Amarant with well, you know whatever, where it's like Okay,
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: it's like you know, you can you can interpret that.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: You can kind of like interpret it as like with
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: like a lot of stuff that like the VEC is
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: saying I don't have like I don't have like quotes
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: pulled up. But basically like, uh oh, this is kind
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: of you know, this is kind of a VEC talking
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: about like uh, you know the you know, Kirk Kirkbright
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: is writing and kind of like you know, using philosophical concepts,
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: you know, basically just to say, oh, this is the
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: player in the middle of the fight and he pauses
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: his game, you know, to get up and take a
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: break and like grab a snack or use the restroom
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: or whatever, and then come back and like get back
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: into the game. And that's and this is and and
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: uh that's kind of like what this passage is saying.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Or it's like, oh, the character realizes, you know when
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: when when a person kind of has like that that
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: realization that oh they are inside the dream of the godhead,
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: like you that it can also be interpreted and understood
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: as the character has suddenly has the self awareness of
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: realizing that, uh, he has a video game character that
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: is being played by a player, or like you know,
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: like you know, kind of like Amaranth is kind of
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: like uh, you know, you know, if if Kim is
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: kind of like understanding your place of the dream and
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: kind of like becoming a lucid dreamer like you know,
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: within the dream and the and being able to exert
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: limited control over it, Amaranth is kind of like leading
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: the dream altogether. And it's like, hey, you know, like
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Amaranth is like when the player turns off the game
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: and goes outside. You know, that's so like there's like
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: there's a there's a there's a lot of fun stuff
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: going on there. And I think I think, like there
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: are there are people who can explain all of this stuff,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: like you know, better better than I can. That's basically
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: the gist of it, there's a level to all of
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: this where if we are to understand it in that way,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: it would probably be like it would probably be healthier
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: for all of us at the end of the day,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: you know, to just kind of to you know that, uh,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: while you know, the the the philosophy is in Elder
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: Scrolls is attempting to do something both serious and unseerious
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: at the same time, it's kind of like it's having
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: it's it's having fun, like it's it knows what it
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: is and it's having it's having fun with itself, and
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: it's like, you know, it's it's uh, you know, they're
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: you know, the the creators are obviously exerting a degree
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: of seriousness and excellence and excellence into their work, while
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: at the same time not taking themselves so seriously that
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: at the end of the day, you know, they know
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: that hey, like you know, this is all you know,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: this is all just kind of like a video game,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: and everything we're writing is just kind of like, you know,
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: kind of pointing to or or or saying that there's
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: a level to all of this where we say, oh,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: you know, the Godhead and the dream is just like, oh,
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: you know, it's just like a video game. There's that
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: can be that can be like overly reductionist, which is
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: not always helpful. And I think, you know, and I
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: think this stuff is meant to be this stuff is
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: meant to be taken like, you know, at the same
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: time seriously on its own terms within the context of
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: the world. There is a quote somewhere in one of
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: the lessons of the vech It might be sermon too,
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure where, Like the vec is still an
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: egg and he's he's looking at something I can't remember
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: exactly what he's looking at. He's he basically looks at
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: something and says, Oh, this doesn't mean anything, and then
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: he looks at it again and says, oh, this might
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: mean something, and then he looks at this thing a
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: third time and finally comes to the conclusion, Uh, you know, yes,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: people projecting their their meaning their meanings like onto things.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: This could be a proverb. And it's kind of like
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: Kirkbride like poking fun at people, like reading it thirty
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: six sermons and trying to like take it a little
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: too seriously, and it's like dang, dude.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But then at the same time, that approach of Okay,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: it it is a simulation, right, I mean, that's what
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: the game is, and maybe it's just dream talk is
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: sort of moving in that direction. But that's not entirely
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: unlike primary world philosophies, where we're talking about literal simulation theory, right.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I mean Elon Musk says that we're most likely in
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: a simulation.
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: Like yeah, like, yes, simulation theory and like and like
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: the you know the Greek that I think the Greeks were, like,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: I think all the Greek philosophers were trying to argue
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: about whether or not we were inside a dream. You know,
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: there was a whole thing about whether or not you know,
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: reality is an illusion or you know whatever. It's all
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: just like, you know, the same ideas keep coming back.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: There's nothing new under the sun.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: Right, and so I mean the like the matrix idea,
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's very old philosophically, and so yeah, I mean,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: maybe we're in a simulation, but maybe we don't even
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: go into the digital simulation route. I mean, it's what
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: you're describing is not entirely unlike what you get from
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: the secular existentialist Jean Paul Sart, who says that you know,
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: there is no essence. In other words, the only story
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: that there is to discover is the story that we tell,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Like to to use what you said about Avec, it's
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: the meaning that we project onto the world. That's the
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: only meaning that exists. And you know, if we begin
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: with that sort of mentality, then we kind of get
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: to the same place within the Elder Scrolls, whereas we
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: can't when we're talking about Mantling and you know, you
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: becoming shio Goorath, like, it seems pretty clear that there
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: aren't strong boundaries over individual persons within the game, right,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: And that's why it is sort of like a dream
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: where the people are really real, Like they are kind
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: of just projections that can fade in and out of
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: each other. Like, I mean, if you've ever had a
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: dream before, you know that they don't always make a
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: lot of sense, Like the boundaries aren't always there. Sometimes
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: you can be talking to a person and then they've
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: become someone new and you don't even think anything of it. Right,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: It's just like that's kind of how dreams work, that
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: there's no fixed meaning there. And you know, I can
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: easily take kind of what you're saying here and then
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: apply that to a lot of real world philosophies that
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: say that there is no fundamental meta narrative, and then
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: we kind of end up in the same place with
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: the same sort of conclusion where it might make sense
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: to look at a video game series and say, yeah, okay,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: don't take it too seriously. It's a game. But the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: problem is if you reject meta narratives in real world philosophy,
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: then you kind of end up in the same place
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: where we say, just don't take it too seriously. All
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: philosophy is just a game, all right. That's basically what
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: I deal with a lot, you know, working in in
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: academia with my colleagues in the Humanity's apartment of you
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: know it. It's all just kind of made up, and
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: so it doesn't really matter, which kind of makes the
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: question why why are you teaching?
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: But I think, I think, fortunately, fortunately in this case,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: we are talking about a game, you know, so like
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: so it's like it's and I think, I think, I
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: think in I think in this particular case, like you know,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: just like you know, I understand, you know, understanding like
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: you know, at the end of the day, you know,
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: that's kind of that's what this is. You know that
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: that like just just just for our for our own sake,
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: for our own sanity, for our own like you know,
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: you know, mental emotional and spiritual health. Like you know,
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: we're like, you know, if we can you know, we
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: we we like we can still both like enjoy the
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: game and engage with the game seriously while also accepting
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: that it's just a game and kind of of like
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: the game kind of like being self aware and having
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: fun to put that idea, and playing with both sides
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: of the aisle. Yeah, like if we're talking, yea, if
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: we're if we're if we're talking, if we're talking about
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: like applying like these arguments that you're that you're talking
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: about like in real life, Oh yeah, you know that's
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: you know, that's that's that's annoying. That's insufferable.
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: You know.
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: Fortunately for us, like in this particular instance, you know
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: it is you know, it is just a game. Now,
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: that doesn't mean that, like I said, that doesn't mean
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: that we can't engage with it seriously and do what
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: we are doing right now. There's a there's a there's
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: a there's a lot of enrichment to be uh found
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: in that I think.
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: I mean this this even kind of reminds me of
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: you know, in tokens on fairy stories, just like what
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: the role of even like fairy stories are and the
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: image of the wipe being away thing like the condensation
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: of the fog in the window is The games kind
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: of provide opportunity for us at times too, like when
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: we're diving into the simulation and enjoying the narrative, the
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: meta narrative even just trying to like grapple with the
• 36:10
  Speaker 3: things that it allows us to that kind of wake
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: up and when we do touch grass again, it's like
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: a new appreciation for the real in a way where
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: it it gives us like this this greater sense of
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: being and when we grapple with this unreal and these
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: shadows of things, and I think when when we're able
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: to shift a perspective in a way that engages us
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: with a healthy way, you know, because even looking at
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: the way that many people and when you see the
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: Lord discourse and Elder scrolls, like people are going for
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: answers and it's and I'm sure that part of the
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: infuriating part of something the ways that the writers do
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: deal with these things is that people are looking for real,
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: but you need to take a step back and realize
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: you're not dealing with real right now, and so they
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: you can have more clarity and what is happening here?
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: And and to me.
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: When I kind of look at the you know what
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: I earlier in the discord, I kind of was saying
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: like it was very reductionistic. I'm just like the idea
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: of the towers and and all the meta narrative of
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: the older scrolls were like, I am god, the towers
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: the console, like the elder scrolls are just discs, the
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: CDs and you know, and then the developers or the
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: age Redadra and it's all just fun, right.
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: But in a sense when you.
• 37:28
  Speaker 3: Look at it through that lens, it's like, Okay, there's
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: a certain bit of unseriousness here which allows us to
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: enjoy playing through the serious and enjoy it and rather
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: than trying to to have like you know, it's instead
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: of trying to have cannon, it's stop, it's fun.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: There. There is a so like I you know, I
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: wasn't like I do so when you made when you
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: went on that little when you went on that little rant,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: like I knew I knew immediately what you were putting down.
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize that there was actually a video that
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: you were referencing. And then and then I found that
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: video and I watched it. So that's actually a good
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: Uh what was the name of that guy? I can't remember.
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I would like I would like to I would like
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: to plug it. Uh, there is a but there there
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: is a guy who Uh there is a guy who
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: basically interprets like the philosophy of the towers with the
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Elder Scrolls, and he does it in a very meta
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: narrative way where it's like, oh, you know, the wheel
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: of the orbis is the disc, you know, and you
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: know and you know that your your PC tower is
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: literally a tower, and you know, so on and so forth. Uh.
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Kotho also has a video on the six Walking Ways
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: and he he like approaches it like with like an
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: in world understanding of what these philosophical ideas mean. And
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: those two so those two videos are like very very
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: good if you kind of want like an all around
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: kind of understanding of, like an introduction to an all
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: around understanding of kind of like what these ideas are
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: before you kind of go further, you know, deeper into
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: it for yourself. If you want.
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: And I guess if I don't know if the same
• 39:15
  Speaker 3: video they're referencing, because I actually kind of pulled that
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: together after watching Darrelot's tower video is actually.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: Where I yeah, Darryl Yeah, Darrylt. Darylt plugged a video
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: where where a guy is like literally saying like the
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: wheel of the orbis is the disc like that, and
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: that's like I I I never so I watched Darrel
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: Lott's tower video, which is which is you know, an
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: excellent you know that's like, that's an excellent masterclass video
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: right there. I didn't. I never actually watched the video
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: he was plugging. And I watched that and I realized, oh,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: this is what Tyler's talking about.
• 39:55
  Speaker 4: I actually did see that video.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: But that's hilarious because everything you said almost was pretty
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: much a word for word from that video that it's wild. See.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: I guess I all this talk of like the the
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: world is the game, you know, that sort of thing,
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: it's I just don't find that very compelling to Maybe
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: that's their attention, right, but I'm just saying that if
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: that's in their attention, I disagree with that because like
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: to go back to on fairy stories right. Tolkien says
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: that a fairy story can engage in humor, it can
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: engage in satire, but it can't do is satirize its
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: own rules, its own magic, because at that point it
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: no longer really is a story that provides escape. It's
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: just I don't I don't know. It's just it's it's
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: too tritely self aware a good fairy story. And I
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: would argue that the Elder Scrolls does provide a good
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: fairy story. Maybe not the ultimate, maybe it's the perfect,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: but it does provide a certain level of escape that
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: I think is useful. And I would say that in
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: those occasions in which it doesn't take itself seriously, I
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: would say that it loses itself as a fairy story,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: and in so doing, it loses itself as a fantasy game.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: And so you know, I like to take it seriously
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: as a sub created world. Now when I'm playing the game.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: Doesn't mean I'm getting upset, but I feel like the
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: philosophies are right. I don't expect the philosophy, do you, right,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: But I do find that, I don't know, I find
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: enrichment in not looking to the Elder Scrolls canon. As
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: you know, scripture right, and obviously the people who do that,
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: which leads to some of the you know, heated discussions
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: and the Reddit threads or wherever. But but I do
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot of value in maybe taking it
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: even more seriously than it takes itself, and I don't know,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: engaging with those ideas while still having fun. I don't know.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Maybe my idea of fun is as a little too academic.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: But I one hundred percent agree with what you're saying.
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: And I think the now, I think the I I
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: don't have I didn't. I didn't I didn't write these
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: thoughts down exactly, so I'm trying not to. I'm trying
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: not to talk in circles and repeat myself. But I
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: think they're you know again, like I think, I think
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: there's I think there's room for both and that they're
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: they're both, they're both valid. But I like did like
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: you know, on the whole, on the whole, like I like, I,
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: I agree with what you're saying, and I think like
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: elder scrolls can absolutely be engaged with in that way,
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: and at the end there is value in that.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: I think it just kind of gets into the weird
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: medium of what like a weird subcreative.
• 42:45
  Speaker 4: Medium that video games are.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: And I know, like this has been a conversation previously before,
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: but you know, just sub creation, like it's purest form,
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: you know, as I said, as Tolkien would argue, I
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: mean the written the written word has you know, there's there's,
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: there's so there. There's a lot more that we can
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: put into it. And then the more that it preaches
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: to us, the less that we get to create into it.
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: And like video games have this really weird medium where
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: we're able to put ourselves into this situation but not
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: and there's there's boundaries, there's parameters which also like healthy
• 43:24
  Speaker 3: and good because it I mean, imagine if Elder Scrolls
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: does pull away a lot of boundaries, which can sometimes
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: make the game aimless, and we have to put those
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: boundaries on ourselves sometimes because next thing, you know, you're
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: just sitting there looking at stars for an hour next
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: to the campsite and Skyrim and not doing anything, and
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: it's like what am I doing here? But we have
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: to kind of clamp these boundaries onto us. And so
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: even just like think about that, like just from you know,
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: the Dizzyness of Freedom idea where it's like we don't
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: where do I even go?
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: And where?
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: You know, even just grappling with that is a kind
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: of a healthy way to engage with the game in
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: a way where it's like enjoying the boundaries, enjoying the
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: limits in a way that help us. Uh, like I said,
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: enjoy a narrative where we can learn something or experience
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: something that's actually meaningful.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean too. I mean we're talking about a
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: fancy series. We're naturally gonna talk Tolkien all the time.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: At least that's where I go. And you know, Tolkien
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: makes the point that, yeah, that literature, that that books
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: do provide the coinsidential, subcreative medium compared to film. I mean,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: you know, in his lifetime, they were talking about making
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: movies out of Lord of the Rings, and you know,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: he he seemed to be okay with the idea if
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: it were done correctly, but even then he recognized it
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: to be an inferior medium because in a book, the
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: audience or the reader also gets to engage in subcreation.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: You know, if if we had never seen that the
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: Jackson movies or you know, or the uh, you know,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: the ones that came before it, if you know, then
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: you have to cast like what do these people look like?
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: What do these sound like? Beyond the exact words on
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: the page, like what does it feel like in this room?
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: What was the tone like? And so you engage in
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: the subcreative process, and in so doing you become part
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: of the story in a unique kind of way versus
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: just watching a movie and having all the creative decisions
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: made for you. Well, I think that video games are
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: potentially moving is in the direction of literature versus a movie,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: because you do have certain boundaries that are given to you.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: Otherwise you don't have a story, you don't have a
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: world that you're entering into. So there are boundaries, but
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: also you have freedom to operate within those boundaries to
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: shape what the story is, and especially so in an
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: open world game like like what Potesta tends to give us.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: And so that's one reason why I argue that certain
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: games can fulfill at least a quasi literary role as
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: we partake in the subcreation that has already been subcreated,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: like it's a given a take and so yeah, and
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: so I don't know. That's one reason why I kind
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: of like, not kind of, I do like to take
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: these games seriously because I think then they become more enriching,
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: They can become more fun because you are truly engaging
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: in subcreation rather than just you know, fiddling around and
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: wasting time, which is you know, that's the chief criticism
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: against playing video games, right that it's a waste of time,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: and it very much can be. But I also would
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: argue it can be very enriching, perhaps even as enriching
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: as reading a good novel.
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: I would just say, even as we've been engaging with,
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: as the mythic mind in general has been engaging with,
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: you know, talking through games like that, Like when you
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: guys are going through the Mass Effects series, I was
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: playing a lot kind of as you guys were going
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: through it, and it was a new experience to the
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: game to actually.
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: Like bring a new level of thinking to it.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: So even as I'm playing through like the shiverg Isles again,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: like it was just once again like bringing a little
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: it's almost like bringing a little bit of more of
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: myself to the game instead of just like purely role playing.
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: You know, we're bringing a little bit more of the
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: real into the world, and it's really fascinating how it
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: opens your eyes once get to just what what the
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: the the interesting things that the writers are doing, but
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: even being not even intentionally doing. It's just what happens
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: when humans do things, is that we start bringing these
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: things into it. And I would say, like when we're
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: using escape as a way as a without the other parts,
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: like without the without you know, the recovery, consolation, when
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: we're just escaping for escaping sake, we do kind of
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: lose some of the magic that could be happening while
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: you're in a game, because once again, like being into
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: the shivering aisles, it brought up this these thoughts of curereguard,
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: which kind of recenters the idea of like the of escape,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: the escape of like despair as faith like and how
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: powerfulight is. It's not virtue. It's not virtue that brings
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: you there. It's faith. And that's just a really gentle
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: reminder that a video game provided, which is just like.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: What right, I mean when whenever somebody is telling a
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: compelling story, they're saying something real right, Otherwise it wouldn't
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: be compelling. It resonates with us on some kind of level,
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: whether we're playing a game, watching a movie, reading a book, whatever,
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Like the reason why something stands out is because it's
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: standing out in a way that relates to the substance
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: that we know. So, you know, I don't think necessarily
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: that our writers are intentionally giving us this Kake Guardian framework.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: At the same time, I feel like it's very clearly
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: there in the story that they are telling. And you know,
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: as you referenced talking there with this not just escape
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: but escape consolation, recovery, that engaging with a good story,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: where they're talking about a book, a movie, a video game,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: engaging with a good story should actually better equip us
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: to live out well in the real world. If it's
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: not doing that, then I would argue that, well, maybe
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: we are just wasting our time, which I mean, I
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: don't think there's anything wrong necessarily with having a hobby
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: that is just that. But at the same time, like
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: we do need to recognize our mortality in the fact
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: that we have limited minutes on this earth, and so
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: you know, if our engagement with the fantastical isn't better
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: equipping us to, you know, even at the very least,
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: like think through life a little bit better, then I
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: think we do have reason to question how we're spending
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: our time. And so, you know, while a lot of
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: people would take that idea and say, okay, well then
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: we shouldn't play video games, right, do everything out in
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: the real world. But I don't take that approach. What
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: I would say instead is let's use every opportunity, even
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: things that are just fun, like, use every opportunity to
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: well find better pathways of meaning in your real life.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: And I think that if we are looking, you know,
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: if we knock, like that door is going to be opened,
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: we're gonna find what it is that we're seeking. And
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: especially so in a compelling story like we get in
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: the Elder Scrolls, like we get in the shipping aisles,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: you'll you'll find what you're looking for.
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: So I found, actually I found this Kirkbride quote. Uh,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: I guess I have like I have, like I have,
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: like a couple of things. I'm interested to see. I'm
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: interested to see where this goes. Number one, I found
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: the Kirkbride quote when basically there was a there was
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: a there was a fran a fran a fan who
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: is a voicing kind of like a similar discontent at
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: the idea that everything at Older Scrolls is just a dream.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: And Kirkbride kind of answered in a forum post and
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to give you the whole quote. It's
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: strange because Kirkbride is a very strange man, if you
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: haven't figured that out already. But kind of like the
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: heart of it is, he says, I just want to say,
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: I never think. I never think I did. He's, you know,
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: he's kind of talking about, oh, you know, it's just
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: a dream, like you know, I never thought I never
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: did think it was like, you know, just a dream.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: But he says, you know, he says, I think the
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: whole it's just a dream. Avenue is completely missing the point.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: Consider your lucid dreams, if you've been lucky enough to
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: ever had one, then think again before you dismiss the
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: idea of divine hypnagogia. So that's Kirkbrider right there. For
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: I can see the look on your face, Andrew. I'm
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: actually I'm actually really curious to know like what that's
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: triggering inside you. And I'm very I'm very eager to
• 51:38
  Speaker 2: hear that. But as a as a peer, as as
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: as the part too, I think the fact that we're
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: sitting here having this conversation at all in the first place,
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: the fact that we're having an Elder Scroll series you know,
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: the fact that you can look at the lessons of
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: evict and make our cameraon and just like all this
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: other stuff or like you know, Marouk the prophet most Simeon,
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: who we've never got a chance to talk about, my
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: beloved monkey prophet, uh that that crazy monkey. Like the
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: fact that we can sit down and talk about all
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: of this like that, to me, that means like, you know, Elders,
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: you know, elder Scrolls is like you know there, you
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: know there is you know, there is meaning and value there,
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: like it is doing its job. Like the fact that
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: we're having this conversation at all tells me that this
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: is doing its job as a piece of art.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and absolutely, And even if I I mean, I'm
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: certain I don't agree with Kirk Bright on a great
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: number of things.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: You don't have to. He's a strange man.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: He's a strange man, but he spins off some interesting ideas.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: And I mean, to me, like that is one sign
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: of good storytelling, not necessarily that I agree with the philosophy,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: but that we can easily have a philosophical conversation because
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: you know that there's there's something of substance there. I mean,
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: it's just you know, same thing about you know other
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: you know, religious myths or or Peggan mythology or whatever.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: I can look at that and I can find meaning there,
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: whether it's meaning that's inherent within the system, even if
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: I don't take the system as a whole, or you know,
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: by sort of kind of hitting a wall. I can
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: better understand myself right through that experience. And so I
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: think the old school kind of fulfill that. As far
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: as what Kirkbride said there. Honestly, I don't even really
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: know what that means, but I don't think. I like
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: how it sounds, but I have no idea what that means.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: I don't. I don't know if I could break it
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: down for you either. I didn't. I didn't have the time.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: I've I've read the quote before. This is how Kirkbride
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: just interacts with people in forums. Like he gives you
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: an answer that's just like kind of frustrating. He does
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: that like he does that a lot. People have actually
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: archived all of his online. He's got like like almost
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: every single one of them is like this, like he
• 54:05
  Speaker 2: kind of answers your question and he kind of doesn't
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: just like just like just like the the VEC is.
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: The VEC is basically his oc. Like it's basically like
• 54:17
  Speaker 2: both both the Vek and men Car Cameron are basically
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: his mouthpieces for like spouting like his weird ideas like
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: into like into into the world. And it's also actually
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: like there's there's a lot of he's actually done like
• 54:34
  Speaker 2: a lot of like out of game unofficial stuff like
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: with the with the VEC, there's like a there's a
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: book called like the Thief Goes to Syridill, where it's
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: basically like the VEC kind of like traveling somewhat in
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: disguise to Siridill in the third era, and he's kind
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: of like answering he's a he's a he's answering questions
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: from the people, which is kind of like both like, oh,
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: it's like the people in Siridill, but it's also he's
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: just answering like forum questions, and he kind of synthesizes
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: the two kind of like into like the narrative of
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: the Elder Scrolls, and it's actually where we get like
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: so even though like a lot of this stuff isn't
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: necessarily official, it actually gives us a lot of context
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: for the philosophical ideas that are present within the Elder
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: scrolls and kind of like gives us the key to
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: throw open the door to discuss them in ways that,
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: like you know, in some of the in game books
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: may be maybe lacking in now.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: We've done a lot of sort of meta stuff here now,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: way too much, which I mean, it's fine. I think
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: it's good worthwhile conversation.
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: No, it is, it is, but we it's yeah.
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: To shift it back to shivering aisles proper here.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: I do, I do want to do that. I have
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: I have a I have a I have a final
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: point because you were asking earlier, like what is this
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: mantling thing? I think a better example, like probably a
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: more concrete example, and this is something I never would
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: have figured out on my own at all. So I'm
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: gonna shout out. I'm gonna shout out Kotho again. He
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: was talking about like mantling being a concept within within
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: the Bible, where uh, it's like when when Elijah and
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: Elisha go down to the river and then God comes
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: and whisks up Elijah to heaven and he leaves his
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: and he leaves his Elijah leaves his mantle behind, and
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: Elisha like so Elishah like picks up Elijah's cloak and
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: basically kind of like takes on the takes on Elijah's
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: role as God's chosen prophet, And in that sense, he's
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: kind of like he's kind of like mantling Elijah and
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: becoming Elijah two point zero almost. So it's an idea
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: that's kind of like it's kind of present in the Bible.
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: Obviously obviously not in the same way, absolutely not in
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: the same way, but symbolically there is that idea going on.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: You can even look at it with you can even
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: see again like simbolically, you can see it in other
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: passages where you know, like you know, when the Pharisees
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: ask John the Baptist, they say are you are you?
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: Are you Elijah? And John says, no, I'm not Elijah.
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: But when the disciples talk to Jesus later, Jesus says, yeah,
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: John the Baptist is Elijah, like he is like Elijah
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: return fulfilling that prophecy.
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that makes sense. I guess. The struggle for
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: me is that in those situations they are picking on
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: the the symbolic role of the original person, whereas in
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Elder scrolls it seems like you're literally becoming that person
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: rather than just what they represent, right, Like you know,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: if the Shio Gorath in Skyrim is the hero of Oblivion, like,
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: then he's literally just become absorbed into the actual person
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: of Fio Goorath rather than just carrying on the role, right,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: And that's where things get confusing to me.
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so that was the thing. So my my under
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: my understanding from everything that I have read is that
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: like official, it's officially canon that the Champion of Sira
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: Dill like became you know, became Shaya Goroth, became the
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: new sha Goroth. That was something that was at the
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: time I actually have, I actually have kind of like
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: a take this is this is a very personal take
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: at the time that was kind of that was that
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: was kind of upsetting to me at the time when
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: I was younger, and partly because you know, I so like,
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: you know, I like playing I like playing those good characters, right,
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: We've talked about this before, you know, I like playing
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: those good characters. I liked the idea that my champion
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: was the guy who was kind of you know, kind
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: of bringing about like this kind of like this this
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: uh this this this this christ like salvation and new
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: law almost with alongside Martin, where Martin destroys the you know,
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: the the Amulet. We've talked about all about all of
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: that already. The Abbot, you know, it becomes the avatar
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: Maracotash and now we don't need we don't need the
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: the dragon fires anymore, and you know all that stuff.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: I liked the I liked the idea that he was
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: kind of like, you know, kind of like bringing bringing
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: about kind of like this this uh, this this new
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: kingdom almost. I liked the idea that he was. I
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: preferred the idea that the champion was Mantling Pell and
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: Old White Strike, you know, you know, as opposed to
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: you know, the the you know, the the Star Made Night,
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: as opposed to like, you know, share Goth you know
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: the you know, the Daydrik, God of Madness, and and
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: it seems to be like a reoccurring theme in Elder
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: scrolls as well, like you get to the end of
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: Skyrim with that dragon Born DLC and Hermeus Mora like
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: that you know, Hemeus Moyer claims the dragon Born has
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: his own basically says, in no uncertain time and in
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: no uncertain terms, you belong to me now, and it's
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: like and that's like we can we can talk more
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: about that when we get there. But like it's a
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: reoccurring theme that I find like really irritating where it's like,
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: you know, you know, I would you know, I I
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: would rather like I would rather be like this other person,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: other kind of other than kind of what the direction
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: that the story is kind of pushing me in. And
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: I kind of had I kind of had an epiphany recently.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: So one of my favorite, one of my favorite characters
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: in the Bible was is was Gideon. And it was
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: partly because, like you know, off and on in my life,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: I felt like I could identify a lot with uh Gideon,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: like just feeling like he's you know, just kind of
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: like a person who's like not really you know, not
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: really fit for the role, like you know, a role
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: that he's called to in life. But you know, nevertheless,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: you know, God calls him to that role and you know,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: with God's health, he succeeds and all of that. And
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: I was reading the story and Judges I had never
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: for years, I had never actually read Gideon's story from
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: beginning to end. And it's actually like it's actually a
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: kind of depressing because it doesn't end that happy. And
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: then Gideon did what God told him to do and
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: they all lived happily. Ever after, you get to Judges
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: eight and in verses like twenty two to let's say
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: twenty seven, all the people basically come to Gideon after
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: he has performed his role of judge and has delivered
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: them from you know, it delivered the people from their enemies,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: and they want him to rule. They want Gideon to
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: be their leader, and he refuses, but he does something
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: else instead that's really different. He basically tells everybody to
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 2: gather their all of their get all their gold together,
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: and they melt it down and they turn it into
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: an idol, and it says and Gideon made an f
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: od of it, you know, the gold, and put it
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: in the city in Ophrah, and all Israel horrid after it,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 2: and there it became a snare to Gideon into his family.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: And that when I first read that, that crushed me right.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: And the thing that the thing that kind of like
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 2: recentered me and helped me like kind of like better
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: understand all of this in its context. I'm going this
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: is this is related. This is related to Shorry goroth
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: I promise if you haven't, if you haven't figured out
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: where I'm going with this yet, uh, the like a
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: lot of the also like a lot of these figures
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: in the a lot of these figures in the Bible.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: You know, these aren't like you know, these aren't these
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: aren't Aesop's fa fables characters. You know, these aren't like
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: you know, these aren't all like prescriptive stories for good life.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of descriptive stories in here. And the
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: point overall of the story of the Bible is that
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: like throughout history, time and again, God is God proves
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: himself faithful to a faithless people, like like kind of
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: like you know, like again and again and again and
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: again and again, and like Gideon is just kind of
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: like another microcosm of that, Like he's an writable servant
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: of God, but he still succumbs to idols and you know,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: and at the end of the day, Gideon is not
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: you know, Gideon is not Jesus, you know, the one
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: who is really worth kind of like our affection and
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: our adoration in our pursuit and so I kind of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: so I kind of there's a part of me that's
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: kind of like has kind of like you know, is
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: looking at the champion of syritill in the context of Gideon.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: So we've talked before about like, you know, now we
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: you know, we we you know, we we we bring
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: all of our our Christology into the eldest Girls. And
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: you know, we've also talked about how like you know,
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: it's like you know, obviously it's not like it's not
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: like a Christian myth. You know, uh, like you know,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: it's not it's not it's not perfect in that way.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: And you know, when you know the the you know,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: the the deep the deeper you get into the older
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: s Girl's lore, the more you kind of see, like
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: you know, the craft, the cracks, and like you know,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: certain interpretations may not always necessarily like you know, hold
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: up is well as you thought they did the first time.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: Some do, some don't. But that doesn't mean just because
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: it's not like a Christian myth doesn't mean that we
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: can't like find the Christology in it and pull out
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: the silver linings. And this is kind of like one
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: of the this again, this is just my personal take
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: on the Shivering Isles DLC. And this is kind of
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: like one of those reading the story, rereading the story
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: of Gideon helped me to kind of like accept the
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: champion of Cerectell's place like in the story, in the
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: grand scheme of things like yeah, like you know, this
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: is not a Missianic figure, this is an echo and
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: even these you know, mortals, as great as they are,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: are fallible. I don't know if that makes any sense,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: or if anybody here else, if anyone else here found
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: that as helpful as I did, or if I'm just
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: kind of like spewing nonsense like a like a citizen
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: of the Shivering Isles.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, I think it's a it's a good comparison.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a good reminder that even the best
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: here in the Bible or even beyond the Bible, like
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: the best heroes, they fulfill a given task. That task
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: generally is not perfection. It's they achieved the victory of
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: the day, right, and that's perhaps all we can hope for.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: And I mean, maybe that's not a bad way of
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: framing it. It's just I don't know. I guess it's
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: difficult from a gameplay perspective because you are the one
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: playing the role, right, rather than just I identify with
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: this character. It's I'm actually playing this role, I want
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: to achieve victory, not I want to do this thing
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: and then descend into chaos. But I mean, I don't know,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: but I think it's a good comparison, even if it
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: is still a little bit frustrating, like.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: You know it is it is like you know again
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: like it because like yeah, there's there's Yeah, it's a game,
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: so you know, when you're actually playing it, when you
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: when you are the doer of the action in the story,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: you are given that power, like you know that is
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: you know that that can be that feeling can be
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: more frustrating when it goes in a direction that you
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: don't necessarily want it to go, like in a world
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: that kind of advertises itself as like kind of giving
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: you the agency. So I think, like it's not, it's
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: not like it's not completely like we're we're we're not,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: we're not. Our discon our discontent and situation like that
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: is not wholly unfounded. Yeah. Uh, you know when we
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: kind of you know, when we kind of like wanted
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: one thing or hoped for one thing and kind of
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: like you know, the game kind of like forces you
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: and uh forces you in a in a in a
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: direction that you may not necessarily uh like or find
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: agreeable or or you know whatever. At the same time,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: like this has kind of helped me, like my my
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: own personal revelations have kind of helped me put into
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: the con in this particular instance, have helped me put
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: in to put it in the context. There's there's I've
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: I've played I've played plenty of games where you know,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: I you know, I got to you know, I got
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: to be like the per the person that I wanted
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: to be. And one of the one one of one
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: of one of the things about all this metaphical metaphysical
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: stuff that we've been talking about in Elder Scrolls is
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: that it's kind of generally understood that the player, uh,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: the player character in every Elder Scrolls game has achieved Kim.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: And that's why, like you can kind of go wherever
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: you want, do anything you want, use any skills and powers,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: and become insanely powerful and like you know, you know,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: uh you know, oh, like you know you die, well,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: you know, you reload a slate, you reload to say,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 2: because Kim, because you know Dragon Break, you know, the
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: player has you know, the player has that that power.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: Like at the end at the end of the day,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: kind of like you're saved is your kind of like, uh,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: your particular playthrough is like you know, is your own,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: and kind of like you know, the decisions that you
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: make in it are are your own. There is kind
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: of so even though at the same time we've been
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: talking about how like shay A Gorath, you know, the
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: player like the player character, the champion of Sirio is
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 2: mantling share Goroth and becoming share Goroth, there is some
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: interesting wiggle room here and there in the game, kind
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 2: of like what you were talking about with Kirkerguard earlier
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: and kind of like bringing like some reason to it.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: We were talking about I've already forgotten her name, like
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: the crazy flesh goolm lady, like you know, if you
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: when you go to her lab and she's like torturing
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: all those people, and she says, well, this is sanctioned
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: by Shaya Goroth, you know, and just kind of a
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: reminder to everybody. Share Goro is not a good person,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: but you can Yeah it's not, but you can, like
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: you can, like even even as you're mantling share Goroth,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: like you can still tell her to let all of
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: those people go and you're still like you're still sharing
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: Garreth in some capacity while exercising like a degree of
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: brsy in reason which which is I don't know which
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: which is interesting?
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: Right? Maybe you can reform what she Goth is well.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: I guess thinking about it too. If Mena Marco could
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: have two different aspects at the same time, why couldn't
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 3: the Champion of Sira dell in a way where you know,
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: you have a save that is that hero and it's
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: just a crazy mad god. It's just one of the
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 3: it's just one of those dump characters that you're just
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: getting all the achievements for.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 4: He could be the mad god.
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: You know. This actually segues really interestingly to a point
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: that I was going to make earlier. I wasn't going
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 2: to go in this direction initially, but like the conversation
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 2: is kind of like like perfectly kind of made me
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: realize something I was planning to talk about, like how
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: Shaa Groth has changed over the years across the games.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: Like I mean, if you read like share Groth's, if
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: you read like any of the books concerning Shayah Garoth,
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: like you realize like you know, just I mean again,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: like you know, he's a god of madness. This is
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: not you know, this is not this is not a
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: thing of you know, this is not a thing of goodness.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: This is not a thing of balance. You know, this
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: is very you know, madness is like madness is disorder.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: And Shaya Goroth, like I was reading the Accords of Madness,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: and a lot of those stories are his dealings with
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: other gods, but also kind of like how he tortures
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: mortals in one way or another for his own purposes
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: or you know, amusements or you know whatever, his whatever,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: his enigmatic you know, godlike ways are in some ways
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: that are just like not you know that they're they're
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: they're they're not terribly good at all. But what's funny
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: about Shaya Goroth is and again the content in context,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: he's talking about you, the player, as the rat in
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: his maze that he controls. But when he said that
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: line about cheese, everybody went crazy. Everybody went crazy, like
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 2: for that line. They love that that like, you know,
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: at that moment, Share Garoth became everyone's favorite Dadrick Pence,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: prince and and Shara Garoth is one of my favorite princes,
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 2: Like you know, he's a fun character. He's well written,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 2: he's well, you know, voice acted. He fills his role
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 2: within the world you know, you know very you know,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 2: very nicely.
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 5: But like.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: For like kind of like going forward, every iteration of him,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: like you get to Skyrim and share Gaoth is nicer.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: Like if you play the Elder Scrolls Blades game, which
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: is like a mobile gotcha Elder Scrolls game, like share
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 2: Garath shows up in there, and he's kind of like
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: a tutorial character. He's just there to kind of help
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 2: you out of the goodness of his heart. And like
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: if you see him in ESO and Elder Scrolls Online,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: share Garroth is also like he has become over the
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: years because of his popularity from the cheese line. He
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 2: has become a lot more of a fluffy, bubbly character
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: that just talks about cheese all of the time, like
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: so much so that he drops the lot. He drops
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: the cheese line several dozen times in Elder Scrolls like
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: people have counted like it's it's it's definitely one of
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: those things that's overdone and og fans of share Goroth
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: kind of want him to go back to being the
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: more sinister like, you know, not particularly you know, nice
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: friendly god that he kind of sort of has become.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: And maybe we can.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 5: Look at that and say, you know, maybe the reason
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 5: Shaya Goroth is nice Aaron talks about cheese all the
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 5: time is because he's the champion, and you know, the
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 5: champion mantled share Goroth.
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: But like, you know, like he is walking like Shaa Goroth,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 2: but Shaa Garreth is also walking like the champion, walk
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: like them until they walk like you mantling. So boom,
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 2: take that, sha Goro.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: It's a nice way of of there's justifying the marketing.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: I do like the Shiogath as a somewhat of a
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: villainous maniac because that you know, he is somebody who
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: is I mean to bring it to Lewis. I know
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: someone mentioned that hideous strengthen the in the discord, that yeah,
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: this is somebody who's operating outside of natural law, somebody
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: who's operating outside the bounds of what is rationally justifiable.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: He's someone who just does stuff and accordance with the
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: power that he has. This is why he is able
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: to give the blessing to this essentially this necromancer who
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: is doing all kinds of demonic experiments on people, and
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: he gives the blessing because well, it suits his his whims,
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 1: it suits his ends in creating this gatekeeper who is
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: going to help to defend his realm, and so, you know,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: whatever it is that is going to justify him, he's
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: he's going to do it. There's a certain rationality there,
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: but entirely a self referential rationality of does this suit
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: my end? Not is this right? But is this right
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: in accordance to what I want to do? And in
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: so doing he has really set up as well a
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: postmodern of back to this world of power idea that
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I talked about with ac same sort of thing of
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: I'm just going to do stuff. I'm going to create
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: my own values, which can sound very reasonable, but in
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: the end, it's madness because you've abandoned the reason that
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: binds us all together. So yeah, I think that he
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: should be kind of villainous, because that's what madness actually
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: looks like. As you said, it is disorder. It's not
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: just you're kind of quirky. You're not a court jester.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: You know, a court jester historically had a place because
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: they were telling truth in a certain kind of capacity.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: All right, Whereas I mean a I mean to be
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: truly mad is well, it's to be disordered. It's to
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: be villainous, is to be dangerous to those around you.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 3: This this gets me thinking a little bit because you know,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: just once again trying to order things that are disordered.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: But I mean Ian said something that kind of triggered
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: in my mind of looking back when you you know,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 3: you post it on there the thirteen busses Blessings with
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: show grath and looking at like the the danger prince
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 3: of something like of of of madness making others suffer.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: What's interesting is that you know, in his world and
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: his realm and what he's doing, it can seem like madness,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 3: but that that imposing of suffering on others has this
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: interesting role that because that suffering can do for the person
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: who's receiving the suffering in a way where it could
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: be because Blessed is the who tricks us we are foolish,
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: punishes us when we are wrong, tortures us where mindful
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: loves us in our imperfection. And it's almost it's interesting
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 3: because like thinking of like a greater there, there's a
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: greater power here and whether Show show Growth likes it
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: or not, his madness is playing a role here of
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: achieving something greater than anything he can imagine. And you
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: just hearing kind like that molding of people, like what
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 3: role does madness play? What role does chaos play? Well,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: it's like, well, it's this it's this shaper that punishes us,
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: but it's good for us les.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: Right. I mean, the the chaos that we perceive, or
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: at least the perceived chaos that we experience, it rouses us.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: It causes us to stuff outside the mundane that which
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: we expect to happen. And that is when real decision arises.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, when when life seems to be going more
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: or less how you expect that it will, you don't
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: recognize it's the decisions that you're making every single moment, right,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: You're just living your life, you're not really thinking about it.
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: But when you get those disruptions, the kind of chaos
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: that you never really asked for, and you know, whether
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: you get that diagnosis, or someone betrays you, or you
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: lose your job through no fault of your own, or
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: like whatever it is, something happened, some perceived chaos that
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: shakes things up. Well, now you're suddenly more aware of
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: the decisions you have to make How am I going
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: to relate to the world as is presenting to it
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: itself to me right now? In reality, as Carey Guard says,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: like you're always making that decision, whether you recognize it
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: or not. However, there's times of chaos where things get
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: shaken up. That's when you are more aware of that
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: decision that you have to make, and so chaos has
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: its place. Now hopefully you don't have a bad God
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: who is giving you these lessons in this sort of way.
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, there is truth even in
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: the madness, is right?
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: I think to my therapeutic work too, and thinking of
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: you know, I get the clients that are kind of depressed, stuck,
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: not going anywhere, and how everything has become so mundane
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: where there's there's and this is kind of something that
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: happens just in in the world that they can happen
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: easily in the world, in a world that we live
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: in where we don't have to fear a lion around
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: the corner everywhere we go, that we're gonna get eaten,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: we're gonna die of exposure. Like when when when things
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: can become mundane and when they do, people get so
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: stagnant and so stuck on themselves, and so then everything
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: becomes so internalized. Everything that they see comes so about
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: them and absorbed, and then when something chaotic hits them,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: it's just like someone who's in that zone you see
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: where they're gonna go, and and it shakes them and
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: shapes them in a way that they have to make
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: a decision right, and they have to do something. And
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: it's amazing how ill prepared so many people are for that.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: And it just gets me thinking of like even in
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: a real world sense of like how to recognize or
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: how to not get so stuck in the mundane, How did.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 4: Not be just a natural man, you know, and.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: To experience you know, the spiritual and to experience the
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: bigger anyways, Yeah.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that for the most part, our lives
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: tend to be too small. I mean, like I have
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: twin four year olds and so, you know, toddlers. They
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: they react what we would typically think of as overreacting,
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: whether it's good or negative, Like everything is so dramatic
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: to them. That's because the context for their life is
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: so small that everything that we see as small is
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: quite large to them relative to their scope, to their perspective.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: But the problem is that you know, as you grow up,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: your world should get bigger, and so now you're able
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: to see things in better proportion. But unfortunately, a lot
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: of times we are not childlike but childish, meaning we
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: keep that small context. We become neurotic over every little
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: thing because we don't yet see the bigger picture. We
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: don't recognize that we are part of a larger context.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: The things that we perceive each and every day that's
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: part of a larger context, and a larger context is well,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: the better perspective we're going to have on the things
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: that we're encountering day by day simultaneously will recognize that
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: the things that we tend to treat as being incredibly significant,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: well maybe they're not all that significant. But the same time,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: maybe the things that we tend to see is insignificant
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: actually have a much larger role to play within a
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: much larger world. So it kind of works in both
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: directions that the more air you have to breathe, well,
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: the better you can breathe. And in fact, I got
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: another Kickyard quote here. This comes from the concept of
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: anxiety when he says, the hypochondriac is anxious about every
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: insignificant thing, but when the significant years he begins to
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: breathe more easily. Like, sometimes if you're given over to
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: this limited demented right to use the shivering a isles
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 1: kind of language, you're given over to this limited, demented,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: confining sort of perspective. Well, what you need is to
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: actually encounter something substantial, maybe the very substantial thing that
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: you're afraid of happening, Like, maybe that's exactly what you
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: need to come before you and to break you out
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: of these confines, Like you need something real, You need
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: to get outside of your tight little space. And sometimes
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: well you need a little chaos in your life to
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: break you out of that, maybe even unwillingly. But if
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: you learn to embrace that, that's Spurgeon says, say, you
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: learn to kiss the wave that slams you against the
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: rock of ages, right, like sometimes you need that and
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: what seems to be chaos can actually bring you to
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: a greater order.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: And then just looking at the shiver an Aisles in
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: general with like you know, seeing the two different sides
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: Of mania and dementia, it's a it's a really interesting
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 4: thing about that.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 3: The characters that are with are are they've given themselves
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: so over to each side that they cannot see anything
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 3: else and there's nothing else to do, you know, there's
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 3: nowhere else to go for them. So in a sense,
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 3: like each side is actually there is very little chaos
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: on each side of dementia mania, because unless you're moving
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: back and forth, there is no chaos in that.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's fair, that they're both just different
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: manifestations of misaligned order. Right, they are what they are.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, even you know, mania, which we would probably
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: most likely identify with chaos. I mean, they are so
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: much just in the abyss that there's nowhere to actually move,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: and so it's a it's a kind of stability. And
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: and you know this is always true. I think that
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: the further we get to like ultimate being, and the
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: further away we get from being, well, the more there's
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: a kind of mimicry at play here. I think of
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: in Dante's Divine Comedy that on one hand we have
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: the perfect being of God. On the other side of being,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: we have Hell that's at the center of the earth.
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: And here in the innermost circle of Hell what we
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: have is Satan frozen over right. The idea of being
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: that the further you are away from the warmth and
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: being of God. Well, the more you're approaching this stagnation
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: of nothingness, but anything that exists, well it's still there.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: And so the closest you can get is a different
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: form of stability. And so the hell that Satan occupies
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: this innermost circle of hell is actually a kind of
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: mirror image of the stability of God, operating on the
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: complete opposite sides of the spectrum of existence. And so
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: either way, there's a kind of stability at play here.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: And in the end, you always are where you are,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: and so there's no such thing as true chaos. There's
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 1: only perceived chaos. Boethius, the Roman philosopher, Roman Christian philosopher.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: You know, it says that there really is no such
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: thing as luck, what we refer to as luck, or
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: what we refer to as fortune. It's really just a
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: way of saying we're ignorant to the mechanisms at play.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: But ultimately all things are ordered, and so that's why
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: our perceived chaos should be an opportunity in order to
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: discover the actual order that's at play. There's no such
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: thing as true chaos. But yeah, I think it's a
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: good point that they are both different kinds of order. Well,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: is there anything else that is burning in your minds here?
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: You know what's really weird, something something that just like
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: it keeps me up at night. It's the fact that
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 2: at Jigilag all right, So Shaa Goreth was originally j Jigilag.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 2: He was cursed by the other princes into his madness
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 2: as Shaya Goareth so that he wouldn't like homogenize all
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: of the dadrich realms because he was because Jiggilag is
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: a gremlin like that, but he is, like the Deadra
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: are fundamentally at their core like creatures of patame. They
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: are they are, they are they are entities of change
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: and chaos. That is, that is what all of the
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: princes are. So why the heck do we have a
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: Patamaic Deadra of order?
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean, I I can only assume because it's
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: still a kind of order that's outside of the sort
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: of meta order of the way that things ought to be,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: you know, because he's still building out his own realm, right,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: That's why he gets cursed by becoming Shia Goorat, because
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: he's expanding his own realm of order. And so I
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: assume that in making him the dadrich Prince of order.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: It's essentially saying he's a very logical tyrant, right, which
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: is still a kind of disorder.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very it's very interesting because it's like it's
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 2: not just i mean, like the the kind of the
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: kind of order that we're talking about here is everything
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 2: is bleak and gray and dead and crystal, and Jiggilag
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: wants to bring it, wants to uh, he wants to
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: enforce that. He wants to impose like that that that
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: that that kind of order, that kind of tyranny onto
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 2: every realm and existence. Like basically, it's kind of it's
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: it's it's a kind of it's it's a kind of
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: disordered order, that kind of that that that that seeks
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: to that seeks to crush anything and everything that that
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: isn't it, right?
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: I Mean like in uh Screwtape Letters, Lewis portrays hell
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: as a bureaucracy, and you know, it's it's that kind
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: of perfect bureocracy that can can be very structured, it
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: can be very logical even but it's still very wrong
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: because it's a kind of order where that manifestation of
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: order is itself disordered from the way that things ought
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: to be.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: I was thinking about like I was actually thinking about
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: Sourron too, And what Tolkien says about Sourn, Tolkien kind
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: of describes like Sourn himself is like, you know, is
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: kind of like a bureaucrat in a sense. And and
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: like I can't remember the exact quote or or where
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: it is that might be in one of the letters
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: where he kind of described Suron in that way, in
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: a comparable way to that, but like what's interesting about
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 2: Sarn is that, you know, Saron, if he can't have
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: his way, well, then if he can't have the world
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: ordered in the way he wants personally, well, then better
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: that it's all just you know, Barren waste an ash.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: Right, And because after the defeat of his master Melchor
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: which or mor Goth, which led to basically the destruction
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: of the world in large part, Suron had a desire
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: to put things back into order. He wanted to see
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: things healed, which is actually it's a good desire. But
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: the problem is he defined order by himself, and so
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: that's the problem. And so instead of being someone who's
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: actually ordering in harmony with the way that things ought
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: to be, bringing things back to the original purpose. He
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: set himself up as as God, and that's where things
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: become disordered. Uh, It's why Tolkien says in a letter
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: one eighty three, he says, like, the central conflict in
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings is actually not about freedom, and
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: that's what a lot of people tend to think that
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: it is, as who get freedom from tyranny. He said, No,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: that the central conflict in Lord of the Rings is
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: actually about God and his soul right to divine honor.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: It's when that's lost that everything becomes disordered. And so yeah,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: I think that Saran paralleled comparison. I think that relates
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: well to what we see in Jigilag and obviously a
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: less profound character, but nonetheless same basic idea play.
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: Jigalogue is definitely a lot more. I would say Jigla
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: is even more souless than uh Saron is. Like there's
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 2: like there's like there's like there's like a there's like
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: a malevolence to Sarn, and Jigilag is just like right, Crystal.
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: Yes, right, Suron has disordered desires. Jiglag he's just.
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: Lame, is lame like lamest Apocalypse. Still wouldn't want to
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 2: experience it. It would be horrible. It would suck, you know,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: like his his order nights are still going around slaughtering everybody,
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: Like that's not good. But like, as far as villains go,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, I can understand why the other princes might
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 2: want to spice things up a little bit as far
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 2: as Jigglag is concerned, while also keeping him contained.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I want
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: to live under Shiegora Jigglag. I'm not sure what she
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: would pick.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: I was actually thinking about something interesting earlier, which is
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: that there are various cultures of Daitro worshippers within the
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 2: Elder Scrolls that don't necessarily like like you know, they
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: like you know, they they they honor the Dadra uh
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: so like like the richman for example in Skyrim. They
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 2: actually have this really interesting culture where it's like, okay,
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: the the Dadra, we don't necessarily these are not we
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: We worship them not because they are beings worthy of
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 2: our our love and devotion and affection, but because they
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: are beings that are uh worthy of respect and fear,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: and that they and that they the kind of like
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: the they have they have harsh lessons to teach, harsh
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 2: lessons to teach us. But those lessons that they teach
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: us are kind of like what help us to uh
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 2: survive in this in what is itself kind of like
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 2: a very a very cruel world. And that's not and
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: that's not that, that's not me glazing the dadra like
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: in any in any way, but it is an interesting
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: perspective to think about. Like, Okay, like these people don't
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 2: always view their gods with love, but with like a
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: with that I don't know if grudging respect is the word.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, they're they're looking for.
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 2: They have to take them seriously, right.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: They're looking for some stability in a world that is
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: inherently chaotic. Right, everybody looks for for some kind of anchor.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, even if it's not necessarily good. Reminds me
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: another CS. Lewis quote, where men are forbidden to honor
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: a king, they will honor millionaires, athletes, film stars instead,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritualis for spiritual nature,
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: like bodily nature will be served, deny a food, it
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: will gobble poison. And so we're all looking for something
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: to worship, right, and so we're looking for something to honor, right,
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: and so if you don't have good models to follow,
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: well then you're gonna follow bad mind. But you're always
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: going to follow some kind of model, right, And so
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: did the day drich lords provide some reference point, like
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: some direction of where to go? Like these are obviously
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: strong beings and you know we're weak little mortals, and
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: so you know, why not Maybe it's the best option
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: that we have. They're like the red Pill bros. For
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: all the young guys looking for someone to follow. They
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: might not be good, but they've got some dynamism behind them.
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 2: So shivering aisles is fun.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, inconclusion, shivering isles is very fun. Cool Like
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: go to subscribe, that's exactly head over to Patreon. Yeah. So,
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I I enjoyed this talk. I feel like
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: it's it's gone a good length here to go ahead
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: and wrap things up. We covered a lot of ground here,
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: large scale, small scale everything. Between next time we will
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: move on to Skyrim and I will see you around
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: the Discord until next time.
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: Thank you, sir, good night, madam