#I think that 'death of the author' is an inherently narcissistic viewpoint

[miirshroom]

"Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure." - Cazaril, "Curse of Chalion" by Lois McMaster Bujold

"As the golden barbs inflicted eternal agony upon him, Midra held fast to Nanaya's entreaty: 'Endure.' The word was a curse." - Remembrance of the Lord of Frenzied Flame

Have been listening through "The Curse of Chalion" by Lois McMaster on audiobook. Early 2000's fantasy novel that I'd not encountered before, but has similar tone to Carol Berg's Rai-Kirah trilogy and Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy from around the same era. It was a slow burn on the fantastical elements but once they kicked off I'm finding some familiar themes around death magic in the way that it is applied in Elden Ring.

Like, I have a concept of the characteristics of a "ghost" from pop culture osmosis, and the prose here describes it well:

"Old lost souls…No god takes up a sundered soul. It is left to wander the world slowly losing its mindfulness of itself and fading into air. New ghosts first take the form they had in life, but in their despair and loneliness they cannot maintain it".

This recalls to me mostly the ways that "souls" are presented in Demon's Souls, actually, but it carries through to Elden Ring in the way that the most degraded form of the soul detaches and hovers in various places waiting to be collected. Or how the Spiritgraves in Shadow of the Erdtree are the fading ghosts of graves.

There's the titular curse of the Bastard god, which corrupts the royal family like the demi-gods are tainted by their great runes. Also bringing to mind that the Remembrance of Astel, the Naturalborn of the Void can be used to craft the "Bastard's Stars" flail. Another design feature of the Astel being the gold rings around its tail, suggesting a connection to the Golden Star that delivered the Elden Ring with all of its corrupting influence.

But the parallel that is hard to overlook is in the mechanics of the death magic. To cast a death curse always is to slay both victim and caster and have their souls carried away by a demon. Due to a conflict between two divine powers acting at the same time there is a half-finished assassination where a soul is prevented from leaving and manifests to all mundane appearances as a cancerous tumour in a person's body. Similarly, the double deaths of Ranni and Godwyn are half-completed and this is connected to the deathroot which spreads across the Lands Between like a cancer.

BUT, did I enjoy The Curse of Chalion? I liked about the first 3/4 of the book but have mixed feelings about the ending. On the one hand, it's interesting to see a protagonist who recognizes that being ignorant of the truth does not protect people from consequences and has a fairly quick turnaround on keeping his allies informed, even of the crazy supernatural stuff. And the curse is lifted in the end, which effectively amounts to lifting the influence of a god - cool.

On the other hand, there was a literal Deus Ex Machina required to accomplish this and the main character concludes that for at least the last 3 years of his life everything that he has suffered has been orchestrated by this god to fulfill a prophesy that will lift the curse. All he had to do was endure and keep devoted to the higher purpose and in the end he is miraculously cured of an ailment, gets the girl, and is advisor to a queen. It's the kind of contrived outcome that only makes sense where gods are real and take active interest - and the text makes a point that faith in the existence of gods is absolute (due to a guaranteed miracle that everyone gets at end of life that shows which of the 5 gods their soul has gone to). So it's instructive about how to imagine what theology would be like in a world where the gods and demons being debated are literally real and active. But the ending is a little less intuitively cathartic for observers living in a world that is not like that. So if intuition fails I try analysis.

"If the gods saw peoples' souls but not their bodies in mirror to the way people saw bodies but not souls it might explain why the gods were so careless of such things as appearance or other bodily functions. Such as pain? Was pain an illusion from the gods' point of view?" "Perhaps heaven was not a place but merely an angle of view. A vantage. A perspective" - Cazaril

The pain of the character is indeed an illusion from the point of view of the author writing the story. I can see the thoughts (soul) of this character on the page and I know from those thoughts that he has gruesome and painful scars, but I can't see his body so if he didn't keep thinking about them I could forget that they exist. I wonder if there is an intent to partially deconstruct faith in this story. Some of the theological musings at the end dance around the idea that it is easy to read stories as validating religious belief, because 'faithful' characters will always be objectively correct that there is an omniscient divine being - the author - who deals out trials and rewards, and to whom people are puppets pulled along on strings. And once a character grasps this new perspective how could they not be struck by an obsession to describe the experience to other characters? Resulting in a sudden change of personality and detachment from former desires?

The only remaining point of contention would be on whether that author is a benevolent god for giving life to these souls or malevolent demon for causing suffering (an in-universe debate in the Curse of Chalion between the 5-gods religion and 4-gods religion - which honors the 4 gods of the 4 Seasons but insists that the Bastard god of Unseason is a demon!). And speculations on how the gods themselves are made and what happens if they die.

"Death ripped a hole between the worlds…If a god died what kind of hole would it rip between earth and heaven?"

If "god" is the author then what happens upon "death of the author"? There is no more mediator between the imagination of the reader (heaven) and the author's text (earth). In short: fanfiction. One may imagine that characters freed from the hand of the author can find happiness. Or, it can be imagined that their illusory struggles continue. Otherwise, they simply return to non-existence.

[theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin]

"I have some problems with [Luke] as a character)" was mentioned in your Reylo response post. Very interested in what your thoughts are on Luke! 👀

Do you want me to get murdered?! Well, if I didn’t get lynched for calling Sirius Black a Stephen King villain I can surely do no worse here.

Let’s do this.

Caveat that, as usual, I am wearing a heretic hat and expect no one to agree with what I’m saying.

Luke Skywalker, much like Harry Potter, is not the character the authors and vast majority of the audience seem to think he is. Luke is seen as the true coming of the Jedi, the light side of the Force incarnate, and someone so innately good he was able to redeem his father, restore peace to the galaxy, and restore the Jedi Order.

I disagree with all of this.

I think this is what Luke thinks he did but the truth is far sadder and, well, in general worse.

First, let’s start off with Luke’s hero’s journey throughout the saga.

Luke starts your ordinary guy, he’s not bad by any means, but he’s not particularly good either. He lives in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, part of a relatively well off family, and set to inherit the world’s most boring business: moisture farming. He has dreams of going out, seeing the world, and becoming a great pilot.

Important to remember but what most people gloss over: Luke starts if not pro-empire then neutral towards it. Luke wants to attend flight school, given his desire for glory and adventure, he probably wants to join the empire’s military. He might not like Storm Troopers all that much but the fire of revolution doesn’t burn in his heart the way it does Leia’s.

Now, personally, I like this about Luke. It makes sense to me. Given where and how Luke grows up, given all he’s ever known, I think this makes perfect sense for his viewpoint. He might get hassled by stormtroopers now and then but the empire really doesn’t interfere with his life except in a) propaganda b) offering an escape from his dull existence. What would someone like Luke know about the Rebel Alliance?

The movie however... sort of goes out of its way not to acknowledge this, and this is where I start having problems with Luke. Luke gets Leia’s message about Obi-Wan Kenobi, sees the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen in his life, and gets to embark on this amazing adventure. The story sort of takes it for granted that he then agrees with old hermit, Obi-Wan, that the empire is evil. This is helped because Luke does too.

In other words, Luke’s opinions are very shallow and lack any introspection. Finding himself in the company of Jedi, smugglers, and hot rebel princesses, Luke suddenly goes, “Ah, yeah, I hate the empire!” We never really see him change his mind by reflecting over what the Death Star means/the destruction of Alderaan, the death of his relatives, or his meeting with Darth Vader. Luke seems to be won over... Honestly, it feels like it’s because the Rebel Alliance let him fly a plane before the Empire did.

Then he blows up the Death Star, is a galactic hero/enemy number one of the empire, and he’s full on board resistance man and the next Jedi.

Which brings us to point number two, Luke legitimately thinks he’s a Jedi.

Obi-Wan gives him half a word of advice for maybe half of a day, watching Luke swing a sword around and get shot at by a robot. Yoda trains Luke in a swamp for, generously, maybe a week or so before Luke ditches him (against his advice even) to go save his friends. Luke has 0 training (beat out only by Rey, who wasn’t trained at all). More, he lives in a world where everything he knows of the Jedi is colored by Palpatine’s propaganda and old legends. The Jedi temples have been ransacked and presumably next to nothing of the Jedi culture remains, I can imagine Palpatine as being nothing but thorough in his elimination of the Jedi religion. The Jedi survived in Obi-Wan, Yoda, and in some sense Anakin Skywalker.

They do not survive in Luke. Luke puts on some quasi-Jedi robes, slashes his sword around a few times to save Leia from Jabba, and he says, “Now I am a Jedi!” Luke is that kid, LARPing, yelling “firebolt, firebolt, firebolt!” Only, that is, if the LARPing consisted of him representing a massacred culture thinking he’s it’s sole legitimate heir. So... Luke is playing Cowboy and Indians, and he’s the Indian.

In my opinion, Vader wasn’t so much redeemed as he always had a very high priority in finding his son and keeping him alive. The obvious way to do this would be to take Luke as an apprentice and, eventually, murder Palpatine. Well, that didn’t pan out, and eventually Anakin chooses murder-suicide to save his son’s life. It’s very touching, I’m not knocking the moment, but I do think a lot of that was Anakin vice the inherent goodness of Luke.

Anyways, Luke and pals save the day, they start a new republic and then they learn life is complicated. The new republic fails within decades, worse, it’s feeble and likely torn apart by civil war, strife, and constant infighting. It is utterly powerless, to the point where the First Order easily rises to replace the Empire and take over its vast resources (with Palpatine building a secret sith army on the side no less). That Leia rather than lead an army through the new republic in the sequels is leading her own private resistance army is very telling.

Fitting in with this, Luke starts a Jedi Academy. The prequels, and yes go ahead and slander them all you like but they’re better than many admit, taught us a few things but one of them is that it is hard to be a Jedi. To walk the path of a Jedi is to open yourself up to great temptation to use the dark side, and the dark side isn’t just some strange quirk or sense of duality, it is the equivalent of selling your soul. It is an unnatural action that leads to unnatural abilities. 

You get a bunch of Force Sensitive kids in a room: you better know what you’re doing.

Luke doesn’t. He collects a handful of the remaining Jedi artifacts that Palpatine somehow didn’t destroy, opens up his Jedi School (even teaching his nephew), and within maybe five years the place is burned to the ground, his students murdered by his nephew, and his nephew runs off to join a Sith Lord who appeared out of nowhere (Luke not realizing that this was just immortal cockroach Palpatine). 

Luke then becomes a grumpy old man who just can’t deal, sits on a rock drinking blue milk, and whines that for how shitty of a teach he was that Obi-Wan guy was worse for messing up with his father. Which, frankly, is very in character for Luke.

Luke has never really failed in his life, or at least, never had to recognize his own failure. So, when he does, he a) doesn’t realize what went wrong b) blames everyone but himself c) sits on a rock and waits to die.

So yeah, that’s Luke for you.

A whiney, shallow, stupid, somewhat narcissistic, hero. I... don’t dislike the concept of his character, played more straight I’d love his character, but I dislike that people talk about him like he’s the most noble creature to ever grace the planet and has this inherent understanding of a murdered people that the murdered people themselves never had. 

(All the Jedi were doing it wrong! Luke made the real Jedi Order! Is something I see a lot and... well... say what you will about their philosophies, but this kid who was not a part of that culture “doing it better”... That’s real problematic folks, real problematic.)