The Gravest Sin in Most Postmodern “Epics”:

“However well-meaning and strong the individual man may be (if he could only use his strength), he still has not the passion to be able to tear himself from the coils and seductive uncertainty of reflection. Nor do his surroundings supply the events or produce the general enthusiasm necessary in order to free him. Instead of coming to his help, his milieu forms around him a negative intellectual opposition, which juggles for a moment with a deceptive prospect, only to deceive him in the end by pointing to a brilliant way out of the difficulty — by showing him that the shrewdest thing of all is to do nothing.”

 

-   S.A. Kierkegaard.

 

The Present Age, by Soren Kierkegaard.

Consider three good premises for narratives; you’ll find they have a lot of shocking, almost (dare we say it?) Archetypal Similarities:

 

I.            A Boy falls down a well (or well-like fissure in the ground) and finds himself (both literally and in metaphor) down in some form of Hellish Wonderland. He is accosted by a Species of Monstrosities and taken captive by a beast who arrogantly would appoint herself to act as Surrogate for his own Mother. While he’s tempted by the comforts of her second “Home”, he wakes from her intoxication and escapes, though he must slay her at the door to win his freedom. He is then rewarded for his courage by a Local Spirit who acts as his Mentor on his Journey to return to his True Home among his Fellow Man.

No problem.

Solid Advice and Facts. (Consistent with what Cow Herself said, by the way.)

Along the way, the Young Man cleanses all the lands of Vile Fiends. Each of the five acts of the drama culminates within an Epic Confrontation with an Archfiend that embodies one or more of the most deadly Sins, including classic sins like hubris, avarice, and wrath, as well as far more subtle vices such as the desire for attention, the pursuit of fame, the craving for a perfect body, an unquestioning subservience to false authority, the will to rule all life, and a machine’s Indifference to Human Plight.

I can arrange that for you, Undyne-san.

At last, once the Young Man has vanquished all of these, he meets his Mentor, who smiles on him for his courage and resolve and who rewards him with his passage back to the Domain of Human Beings on the Surface. Yet, upon return, the Hero sees himself within a mirror and discovers that he is no longer the Young Boy he was when he first fell down into Wonderland; he is A Man Now and a Fearless Warrior. The Audience is moved to tears, the drama ends, and the director walks onstage to riotous applause for having told an Epic Story for the Ages.

Right back at you, Sensei. Peace.

II.          A Young Man has traveled to a Distant and Forgotten Land to bring a Maiden, Who Was Sacrificed Unjustly, back to life. He brings her to a Temple, through the ceiling of which he beholds a Godly Being and attends His Voice, one of Authority and Terror. He is told that he is carrying a Weapon which is Crucial to the Girl’s Salvation. He is then instructed to hunt down a series of some sixteen Giants and to slay them in exchange for the Young Maiden’s Life.

No problem.

Although these Giants seem at first to be completely insurmountable, the guidance of his Godly Mentor, coupled with his own resolve, determination, ingenuity and courage, prompt him and enable his success. He Slays the Monsters in due order as instructed, with the Godly Being choosing every challenge in proportion to its difficulty, that each mountain which he has to climb may be no higher than the skills he has acquired by that point.

Wish I could say it was nice knowing you.

At last, with all the Monsters Vanquished, the Forgotten Land is free, and Human Beings are permitted to Return. The Godly Being keeps His Promise and delivers the Young Maiden from her fate, so Justice is restored, and both the Young Man and the Maiden take the High Bridge back to Their Own Home, attended by the Grateful Denizens of this Forgotten Kingdom.

Loves a Happy Ending.

III.        Giants ravage all the lands in search of Human flesh and blood for sport, to make of mortal men their delicacy. Only one small City-State remains, a noble, civilized domain ruled by a Just and Reasonable King, yet one not quite prepared to fight the Scourge Upon its Doorstep. When the Giants finally attack the City, it’s the peasants on the outer rings who are affected most. Among them is a fierce Young Man, one diligent in the defence of His Own People, though one unencumbered by ambitions to success and status. All these virtues notwithstanding, he is much too young and weak to keep his home from crumbling, and, though he strives and strains to extricate his Mother from the wreckage and the carnage, through the reckless efforts of a Coward he is torn away from her and watches as she is devoured like a mollusk by a Grinning Devil. Vowing vengeance, the Young Man then joins a Fighting Force Committed to Retaliation and Resistance.

Give them Hell, Lads (and Lass).

Though the fight consumes the whole of this Man’s adult life, he climbs the ranks, he gains in power and leads armies, Owning all the Beastly Qualities Within Himself, yet his resolve in the pursuit of Vengeance is his moral center, pure as any Boy’s Love for His Mother, for the will to vanquish The Entire Species Which Destroyed Her is no different, as Any Species Which Could Do Such Evil merits not a drop of sympathy, to the extent we love and sympathize with those whom we regard as Good and Human.

Finally, the Monsters have been Vanquished. The Old Warrior, regarded as a Hero of the People, takes the Throne and rules this Great and Noble City, though his injuries are much too great for even such a Powerful Old Man to bear, and so he passes to the Next World, where he’s reunited with his Smiling Mother once again, while Those on Earth Commemorate Him with much weeping and with songs of exaltation. 

As you have inferred, with the assistance of those words I chose to capitalize, there are trends which all these stories have in common, universal principles which we call Archetypes, of which a few include:

 

1.   The Woman’s Death, be it

a.    the Murder of the proper Mother, which *must be* avenged,

b.   the Surrogate, Impostor Mother, who *must be* destroyed in order to be free, or

c.    the Unjust Enslavement of the Damsel in Distress, a fair, untarnished Maiden who *must be* released.

(In all three cases, this Death marks:

-   the Death of Childhood,

-   the beginning of the Road to Manhood,

-   the refusal of Temptation to Passivity,

-   the willing or unwilling Loss of Home,

-   the recognition of a Moral Duty, one which also is a Martial Duty, and, above all else,

-   a bold, unflinching look upon the very Face of Evil, Evil which is *irredeemable* and *which must be destroyed at any cost*.)

Um, duh. That's why you're here, Boss. That's why all of us are here.

2.   The Guidance of the Mentor, an Authority committed to

3.   The Purifying and Redemption of the Land, especially the Vanquishment of Monsters, in

4.   Defence of Human Beings, which are antithetical to Monsters, possible because

5.   The Boy Becomes a Man, and then

6.   The Man goes Home, if not his Old Home then a Finer Home, yet nonetheless one far removed from the strange Underworld which he’s descended into,

7.   He is Reunited with the Proper Woman, and

8.   This Woman is a Goddess whom he wins by moving past the Temptress or his own bad conscience, and

9.   The People Sing His Praises for a long, long time, though they lament his leave. 

Skol. (If you know, you know.)

Now, in the hands of writers who know what they’re doing, (which I also ought to capitalize, though I’ll spare you) all these stories would resolve in more or less the manner I’ve described. Yet having an idea is but half the battle, and a story, as it’s often said, is never smarter than its writer. In an age of warriors and fighters, none would question that a story *ought* to end this way, since fiction ought to mirror Life, and Life is Ruthless, Bloody Conflict. (I won’t dare to spare you capitals here, and it’s all that I can do not to use All Caps to drive home this crucial thesis.) That’s because, within an age of warriors and fighters, narratives are written not by boys but men and, at some times, the women who love men *as* men and not as boys.

Yet what if all these narratives were handled not by men but boys, those who have not yet vanquished any monsters, who’ve not rescued any maidens, who’ve not fought in any battles, who’ve not struck their fathers back (and paid the price), who’ve not looked Evil in its Ugly Face unflinchingly, who’ve only ever been aware of their own darkness in the abstract (not in practice), who’ve not had to earn their right to live, who have been nurtured by the Surrogate of Academia but never felt much reverence for Scholarship and Research, whose philosophies were fabricated by manipulators and whose peace was sold to them for profit, and – above all else – who never *changed* in such a fundamental manner that their image in the mirror shocked them, since they never *truly* ventured from that place which others told them was to be their Home?

To answer this, commence the Spoilers:

 

I.            The Young Man discovers that his Mentor was the Greatest Villain of Them All. He is allowed a chance to utterly undo all of his “errors” and begin again from the beginning. He acquaints himself with his oppressors and discovers the extent of the banality behind their evil. So renouncing battle, he succumbs to his temptations to passivity. He learns that his great Mentor was a sad and lonely being, motivated by sheer spite and hatred, and that “violence was not the answer”. He eats pies in his new Home (within the Underworld) and has a jolly good time with his Stockholm Syndrome friends, and, when he looks upon his visage in the mirror, he discovers that he has not changed one bit. The audience bursts into tears and, though they cheer, the writer never comes onstage but in a mask, and he is praised for his refusal to accept the glory which is proffered him.

Only the last word of your point of view is true.

Yet why the offer? Simply put, it is because he let the player choose between two paths: on one hand, you choose genocide and see yourself Become the Monster in Defence of your Humanity; upon the other, you accept your Kinship with All Monsters, and the outcome is so saccharine, so dull, so commonplace, so nauseating, and so fluffy that you wish that you had chosen genocide.

Zip it, you old Yume Nikki knockoff.

Logic Lives.

II.          The Mentor was a Monster All Along, and all the Giants were but fragments of his Soul, enslaved by Human Beings who, in fact, were the aggressors to begin with. (I could capitalize all of the clichés here just as I did with the Archetypes, but they do not deserve it.) None of them are grateful for the Hero’s conquest, as he has set free the Monster they worked so hard to suppress, and, when he merges with that Monster, as a new host for its parasitic Spirit, he is made a sacrifice and killed.

        The Maiden does wake up, no doubt a silver lining, yet no Man is there to walk her Home across the Bridge, for, rather than becoming a Great Man, the Hero is transfigured and becomes a horrid Child. His praises are not sung for countless Ages, yet his Curse endures for many generations, and the Maiden is believed by some to have become an evil Queen.

Nice contacts, Wander.

Swiping right, right now.

Tragically stupid, yes.

III.        It was the Government; they were the Monsters All Along. The Giants were the products of perverse experiments, akin to Human Beings as a wretched consequence, unwitting sacrifices who did all they did because they had been robbed of natural discretion and intelligence, and no one bothered to attempt to understand them (a surprise, considering that they would indiscriminately level villages and then devour Mothers right before those Mothers’ Wailing Sons, with smiling glee). The Man who swore to kill them off becomes a genocidal maniac, his vengeance is regarded as a sin and not a heartfelt moral obligation, and the Giants are his victims. His involvement in his own Dark Side consumes him to the point that he becomes the greatest Monster, and the audience insists that he should just “grow up”, and when they are compared to him they are ashamed of his black heart.

 

Revenge is human. Monsters are inhuman. You can't justify what happened to the Yeagers. You can't rob them of their right to be avenged. They are not merely victims of a cycle they themselves perpetuate. They are its end. Respect thy Mother, lad.

This has to stop.

 

Yet, first, let us consider how profoundly all the Archetypes have been subverted, desecrated, and abused:

 

1.   The Woman’s Death:

a.    the Murder of the proper Mother must *not* be avenged,

b.   the Surrogate, Impostor Mother must *not* be destroyed for standing in one’s way to freedom,

c.    the Enslavement of the Damsel in Distress, not quite Unjust but just “upsetting to the game’s protagonist”, must *not* be broken with a Sword.

(This marks:

-   an Endless, Passive Childhood,

-   the Refusal of the Call to Manhood,

-   a Surrender to Temptation,

-   an acceptance of the Hell World as one’s Home, out of convenience,

-   *Renunciation* of all Moral Duty, the adoption of the dogma of “non-violence”, and, underneath it all:

-   a meek and meager gaze upon the very Face of Evil *in the Mirror*, Evil which *may* be redeemed “because it’s you”, and why should *you* not be entitled to a second chance, regardless of the blood you’ve spilt?)

2.   The Mentor was no more than a Corrupt Authority, who orchestrated this whole thing to make sense of a lonely, meaningless existence, (or for just as meaningless a reason,)

3.   Vanquishing the Monsters was an act of Genocide,

4.   The Monsters were the Humans all Along,

5.   The Boy Remains the Same as when he started,

6.   He does not go Home but stays among the Underworld,

7.   He’s never reunited with the Proper Woman, as he never slays her Surrogate, thus choosing Temptress over Goddess and succumbing to his undeveloped moral reservations, since

8.   The Proper Woman was, perhaps, an Evil Woman all along, and

9.   No one sings his praises when he leaves, though they insist he stay.

 

Because the game was made for "idiots", by the admission of its one wise, florid character.

*This has to stop*.

 

It would be bad enough if writers wasted their careers in peddling this trash, if everybody in the Public laughed them off a bridge for so completely bastardizing our sacred stories, that one wellspring of all human dignity which unifies us all in holy conflict.

Yet imagine what a lower rung of Hell we all would live in if the Audience Itself were like this, if they patronized the Artist not because he was a Visionary Poet who could channel all the Gods and Goddesses in a compelling, captivating play, but rather since he did what little work he had to do for which they were too lazy or too busy with their sheepish lives to do it all themselves, that he was but a mouthpiece for their sad, pathetic, pointless, bloodless and unbloodied lives, their underlying fears and doubts before the storms of a tumultuous existence, a small mirror for their unscarred skin and their perpetually bruised self-images. Imagine if the reason that the authors of these works accrue such wealth and fame lies in that they lead these neurotic echo chambers, occupied by babies who hold jobs, and yet these babies, fed a watered-down derivate of wisdom, think it is the *men* who occupy the Echo Chamber, that it is not LIFE ITSELF which constantly demands a sacrifice in War. (You can’t hold back these caps.) 

There are, of course, some merits to these works, though those do not excuse their underlying pitfalls. There are other works which handle these same themes of ambiguity with far more subtlety and passion, and they are far less transparent or, in their transparency, they manage nonetheless to move us and convey us on a roller coaster ride of willfully suspended disbelief. Yet they are few and far between, and they should not be emulated by the hacks who are not true to Life, for they know little of it. We need Heroes more than ever now, not sentimental boys who will not lift a blade to save a soul, not even their own selves. 

**[({R.G.)}]**

  

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