(no subject)

[feotakahari]

A mutual talked about the ways their abuser tried to convince them they were inherently evil. Because I can’t process horrible shit without linking it back to fiction, I got to thinking about Torment: Tides of Numenera again, and I just figured out a really good way to explain what’s wrong with that game’s endings.

The villain thinks you need to die because your mere existence causes destruction. He’s right. You create a subtle flow of entropy and collapse wherever you go. Even if you do good things, you’ll still cause entropy as a side effect, and even if you live as a hermit, your entropy will leak out into the world. In the good endings, you let him kill you, and the endings where you survive are portrayed as selfish or cowardly.

I got to thinking, is destruction necessarily a bad thing? One example the villain gives is that your presence caused a couple to quarrel and break up. But they seemed like a terrible match, and they’re probably better off apart. What if you live as you are, and cause destruction as you are, and you channel that towards destroying the things that allow for rebuilding better?

An abuser will try to tell you that you’re horrible and evil and make everything worse. There’s value in saying they’re wrong, but there’s also value in asking, what if they’re right? Would that really justify treating you this way?

Comments

[lb_lee]

I am too braindead to respond properly but this is giving me things to think about in a nice way and I wanted to say thank you for that.

Rogan

[entanglingbriars]

I'm fascinated that you think the Sorrow is the villain of the story. I very much interpreted the villain as being the Changing God. That said, I do share your dislike of the ending. I wrote a brief review of the game a few years ago: https://entanglingbriars.dreamwidth.org/6019.html

[feotakahari]

Eh, the Changing God is just an opportunist who found a route to immortality. It’s like the difference between Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine.