#spirit origin theory

[amaryllis-sagitta]

I've always disliked the spirit origin theory and I finally know why

To put it briefly: it's the cornerstone of the Thedosian brand of gnostic pessimism ingrained in the worldbuilding around both Fade spirits and elves, that subtly condemns their existence among the living no matter how hard the writing tries to compensate in the other direction (and to be fair, it hardly ever does).

I have already mentioned in several analyses that the worldbuilding in Dragon Age is trying to impose some objective moral order through the system of virtues embodied by Fade spirits and the speculated position of the Maker, illustrated through the visual allegory of The Gaze. Every place where the Gaze does not fall is identified as the Void - the realm of the Blight, demonic whisperings, evil in mortals' souls, oblivion and erasure.

This moral compass ingrained in Thedosian worldbuilding is outlined in the Canticle of Threnodies. I have always posited that we can read the Canticle's "Maker" as a purely formal locus meant to hook up some form of prisca theologia that would be partially true regardless of whom we put in the Maker's seat.

For example: the Canticle claims that when "The Maker" created the physical world from a portion of the Fade itself, then Their firstborn, Fade spirits, turned away from their perfect resonance with the Maker. They envied what they were not, and for this poisoning of the heavenly "song" with discordant (so, evil) intentions, the Maker castigated them, declared them the first demons, and made humans Their "chosen" race -- presumably, this time building them of both Earth and Spirit so that they would not envy partaking in either.

After multiple hints left in DAI Trespasser, that sparked speculation about the spirit origin theory as the dominating fan theory years ago, DATV confirmed that the "firstborn elvhen" were Fade spirits that manifested physically. They used lyrium, the blood of the Earth's Titans, to build themselves physical bodies. The Stone retaliated, and the first elvhen waged a war with it, eventually devising a way to sunder the spirit essence/ dreams from all Titans. It is heavily implied that this choice to carry out their existence on Earth as war and conquest has twisted whatever the "virtuous" spiritual nature was left in the Evanuris, and that after the end of that war, Elgar'nan simply could not stop.

Why would they do it though? While some concept art from the artbook shows spirits observing primordial dwarves dwarfing, in the end, the Regret mural that shows Mythal inviting Solas into the world explicitly tells us he had no desire to live "as HUMANS" (and the story fails to bridge that lore drop with the known lore about humans allegedly arriving to Thedas from across the seas, and only being able to thrive after the Veil).

So, despite disproving the story about the Chantry's Maker creating the Veil, the writing confirms the Chant's initial overtly anthropocentric orientation. Humans were always special and spirits were always meant to backup and store their ethically charged concepts. But the important accomplishment here is that spirits/ elvhen are doomed with an inherent moral error that snowballs into inevitable strife, destruction and error!

But wait, there's more! Because now that we have the anthropocentrism as our implied position towards the Thedosian races, the history of the elvhen race looks even more like some bizzare form of "karmic" reckoning that completely misses the point of a reckoning, to replace it with unwarranted generational punishment. First, as a result of the Great Betrayal, the elvhen are sundered from their connection to the spirit essence, and thus subjected to the Quickening, which I guess is supposed to be a way of the world giving the elvhen a taste of their own medicine and saying "Be careful what you wish for". Then, once they are finally effectively like humans in every metaphysical respect (unbeknownst to everyone except the remaining ancient elvhen), the moral corruption of the Evanuris gets passed on as the Tevinters learn to glorify blood sacrifice at the behest of their Old Gods (who are really Evanuris speaking through their Archdemons, at any capacity they still have left). This gets used to further humiliate the remainders of ancient Arlathan. What happened to the elvhen now gives Solas reason to hate the mortal physical existence of elves twofold.

The fact that elves keep being punished by the narrative is a direct result of BioWare implementing the spirit origin theory the way they did, because it was devised as a scenario of original sin that necessitates conflict and moral downfall, and ends up snowballing into dooming elves through and through.

But more than that, as I have mentioned in another post, on the metaphysical level, "pure" spirits should be occupied solely with their respective defining abstracts. Spirits should know no desire. Desire is the "unquenchable flame" that defines humans. As far as DAO, we would read that the more benevolent spirits prefer to sit back in the Fade and not interfere with the mortals, and the ones with the greatest drive to join the living are predatory demons.

And the reason for all of this is "the Maker" being bored of perfection in the Golden City, and wanting some change. That the world requires change and opposition to let its best aspects shine is not an controversial idea. However, in the Dragon Age worldbuilding, this necessity for change is not introduced under a milder Hermetic assumption that, even after being cast down into a darker realm of the incarnate, one can successfully control their mundane passions and heal their soul from corrupting influences whilst existing physically... Not on the grand scale, at least.

Once spirits decided to enter the physical world, they started acting like they were trapped and forced to fight for their lives (despite them being the trespassers). The vast majority of them got spiritually corrupted (if they didn't represent vices like Tyranny from the get-go), they dragged their hesitant kin down with them through manipulation. The elvhen race fell into tyranny as their "First" were actually the worst, yet people looked up to them for survival. One particularly inventive specimen devised two catastrophic tools -- one, to deflect onto the Titans whatever should have happened to the first elvhen in order to sunder what has been wrongly joined; the other, to sunder the tyrannical Evanuris from the rest of the elvhen and spirits and stop their corrupting influence. Yet, because the world changes, the collateral of one such tool introduced a wholly new type of rampant evil, and the collateral of the other made the whole elvhen race spiral down... even further into their entrapment in physicality!

The way they built up the spirit origin theory, it draws a full circle: first, the Southern Chantry and the Dalish demonize Fade spirits - one for dogmatic reasons, because it sees the marriage of spirit and flesh as something that is evil even in humans, the other because they can't be denied that healthy cackle of metaphysical irony even if they try their hardest. Then, with DAI Solas and Cole, we're acquainted with a more sympathetic understanding of Fade spirits as being that are fundamentally different but operate on a logic that doesn't automatically lead to a shitshow of a moral downfall. But then, we learn that a group of spirits doomed the entire world to millennia of strife because they felt curiosity for the Other and because the choice to cross the great threshold almost automatically made them forget the virtues they supposedly embodied and spiral down into the "lower" survival instincts.

Personally, I believe that spirits & elvhen could be built on a fundamental existential difference in a way that would have made their excursions into each other's realm temporary. I believe that the spirit origin theory, even if upheld, could have been taken in a direction that didn't imply instant rampant and thoughtless collonialism on the elvhen part. I believe that such choices would have enforced worldbuilding that didn't need to condemn the spirits/ elvhen with that weird version the original sin that receives completely unsympathetic treatment as the time goes by.

[drenched-in-sunlight]

I know you mostly focus on the Marika/Messmer relationship in your works (which can i just say i fucking ADORE IT IT'S SO GOOD GAAAH) but i wanted to ask, what do you think of the other parent? Who do you think Messmer's (and by extension Melina's) father is and what his relationship is with him? Is it Radagon? Godfrey? A secret third option perhaps??

im glad you enjoy my work!! as for your question, i think Messmer and Melina are like... parthenogenetic offsprings?? they are born of Marika only, which is why the game groups them in as brother and sister and they are the ones inheriting everything closest and most personal to Marika.

but i don't necessarily think they know each other exist, or at least it's my personal headcanon that Melina was born after Marika shattered the Elden Ring (at which point Messmer was already stuck in LoS, so he didn't know).

i actually think Marika only split into Radagon on the eve of Liurnia war, when Messmer had already been a grown young man fighting alongside Godfrey for a while. so technically, Messmer existed before Radagon. but on paper i guess the guy could be counted as Messmer and Melina's dad? cuz he's Marika still? (ugh my head)

but imo to Messmer and Melina they don't consider him their dad (and he doesn't consider them his. i lowkey think Messmer and Radagon despise each other 😭). they only regard themselves as Marika's children. at the same time, Messmer respects and trusts Godfrey, which is the closest he'll ever regard anyone else as a father figure.

[glouris]

Gross oversimplification of how Furina & Focalors split works

The hydro archon - Furina + Focalors, one being

Furina, separated - body and spirit of the hydro archon

Focalors, separated - divinity of the hydro archon

Now, imagine that you’re Furina, while Focalors is some aspect of yourself - like your ability to play the piano. This aspect breaks away from you, taking all the memories connected to it - you learning how to play, people you knew in music school, crying over homework, everything. After that, it becomes a formless entity that haunts a piano in your living room, and plays it from the inside, directly on the strings.

Despite this entity being separate, it’s still you, because it’s you that learned the piano, it’s your skills, memories, emotions. This aspect of yourself is incomplete without the rest of you, and you’re incomplete with a chunk of your life missing, but it’s okay because you can still move on without knowing how to play the piano. 

Genshin goes out of its way to state that Furina and Focalors are one in the same several times. Focalors is not a clone, sister, mother - she doesn’t even have a body. Focalors is Furina’s allegorical ability to play the piano, she’s the act of “Furina being a god” itself.

[leafith]

For Sky Lore Fans - The Guide's Reunion's⁠

🍄‍🟫🔷🪻: heyyyy y'all uhm how are you??? :DD Someone, which is not me but is Leaf, wanted to introduce to you a thing that she created while writing her Sky: CotL Fanfiction, Fly Until You See The Light, and that has been going on for a while without you knowing. Soooo Leaf, here is your chance to speak.

🌿📜🫀: alright, thank you, colleague. First of all, I warn you, people. Since the beginning of my Sky story, you can see that it's an AU that tends to be the closest possible to the real game. Thought, it's still an AU, and many things that are NOT CANONIC and just theories exist in there.

Now, we can proceed.

Down here, you find a screenshot of the Chapter 13 of the Prophecy part of my story!

Some of you may wonder: what is a Guide's Reunion? How does it work? That's what I'm going to talk about!

A Guide's Reunion is nothing but a meeting where all the Seasonal Questgivers/Guides organize new Seasons, Events and more. So, I can also say that I've been Daydreaming about some scenarios, and my mind has brought me to the conclusion that the Guides are a full group of chaotic beings and good old friendships.

There is a difference between Seasons and Events, in the Reunions: the Seasons are a more delicate issue, so the Gods create them as ideas and tell the Guides to organize them (such as discovering more about Spirits and the Questgivers if they're already in their area, and more...). About the Events (such as Days of Nature, Days of Style...), which are easier to make and smaller, the Guides create them and organize them on their own.

The Reunions are every two/three weeks, but the time depends mostly on the needs and ideas of the members!

Now, about the Seasonal Questgivers/Guides, I'd like to add some more information.

Every Guide of every Season participates to the Reunions.

Despite this, there are some special cases... And these are the Little Prince Season, Shattering Season and AURORA Season.

These Seasons are not randomly chosen. They have something in common: none of them has got a Sky Person as Guide. The Little Prince has got the Rose, the Shattering has got the Shattered Diamond, AURORA has got an Aurora statue/sculpture (?). So, who participates at the Reunions for the original Guides?

The answers can be two, in these cases. AURORA and Little Prince can be represented by a Spirit of their Constellation. The Spirits of the two Constellations alternate among themselves to participate in the Reunions. But what about Shattering? They have no Spirits, they don't even have a Constellation, if I'm not wrong.

A Messenger of the Stars joins the Reunion for them, and they try to help the Guides.

✷ A Messenger of the Stars is a being that is very similar to Skykids. In fact, the Messengers are Skykids, but they are more related to the Gods and the Elders. They look like normal Children of the Light, but they are known for having the AURORA Blue Wings and/or the AURORA tiara. Their purposes are the following:

To organize expeditions (and participate in them) with magic functions that may be connected to the past, the present or the future of the Sky Kingdom;

To look after the Sky Creatures, if necessary, and to always protect them from the Hunters (just people who hunt the creatures);

To discover the meanings and the hidden stories behind the ancient murals in the Kingdom;

Adding a fact about them, they tend to be good musicians, healers, and they can be good teachers and warriors.

This is an example with an original Sky OC, Guwa. ✷

Now, let's go back to the Reunions topic.

When the Guides are at the Reunions, they can't stay at their area at the same time. So, they can choose between being temporarily replaced by a Spirit of their Constellation to help the Children to complete their Seasonal Quests, or to make the Quests be closed until they come back.

I've told you all a lot about the Present, but what about the Seasons in the past?

Some centuries after the Darkness, the Corruption and the King's fall, the Season were created by the Gods to keep the population united. Children of the Light were already starting their journeys at the age of thirteen, and the Seasons helped them to make new friends more easily.

Sadly, after some time, the Seasons were forgotten because nobody had written informations about them. The first Guides disappeared for choice of the Gods, and they've never returned.

Well, that was until a recent time (that we can also see as 2019, the beginning of the Seasons). The Darkness, angry and mad at Megabird, decided to make a joke on her and gave life to the Season of Gratitude. Megabird wasn't happy about it at first, but she then saw how powerful the Seasons have always been. So, she didn't stop the cycle anymore.

✷ This is also the reason some of my OCs don't have a star sign, which I've seen in the @theweeklylight 's most recent posts.

A star sign is like a zodiac sign, and you can find it in the blog I've tagged. ✷

Fun Fact before continuation

The "before Aviary" Guides usually make friendly jokes about the "after Aviary" Guides. Things like: "Back at my days, ...";

The cycle of the Pendants

The Pendants are the Seasonal necklaces that Skykids can unlock with the Pass during the Seasons.

In my AU, the Seasonal Spirits that have got a Seasonal Pendant are willing to be "secondary Guides", helpers that can participate at the Reunions. When all the Spirits of a Constellation have the Pendants, they all can participate.

The number of Spirits can change, of course. Here is some example:

Season of Remembrance -> Bereft Veteran and Wounded Warrior have the Pendants;

Season of Passage -> Melancholy Mope has the Pendant;

Season of Abyss -> Bumbling Boatswain has the Pendant;

Season of Flight -> Lively Navigator and Light Whisperer have the Pendants.

The Elders wanted to replace the old Guides with this cycle of the Pendants, but no Guide has ever let the group and nobody ever will.

✷ Oh, also, Passage Guide is very sensitive about one of his adopted Children being an helper ✷

So, I can finally say that I am finished with this topic :) I hope you all enjoyed this little essay (can we call it like that?), and I hope that this will be appreciated by the Lore Fans.

Bye bye, Sky People!

[garr9988]

Manny’s Broken Horn Theories

Now that we know that Manny will get some kind of focus episode(s) in the near future, I’ll jot down some of my theories on how his left horn got broken.

Established Facts

Some information courtesy of Shea Fontana’s Twitter that will help inform these theories:

Manny “was raised by his grandmoo and grandbull”

Manny wants to be a veterinarian

Upcoming episodes will reveal that some currently established characters have invisible disabilities

Manny’s new iteration was designed with a conscious effort not to equate being large with being a jerk

Theories

Currently, the theory I find most likely is that Manny was involved in some kind of accident or targeted attack that both broke his horn and killed his parents, thus explaining why he’s been raised by his grandparents. This incident could have thus left him with lasting trauma that gives him nightmares, which could be something Twyla sees and helps him with when she enters his dreams in “Boogey Nightmare”. As seen with Lagoona’s strained family, the show isn’t averse to portraying unfortunate familial circumstances that real kids that watch the show have to live with, so having lost both of one’s parents fits in my opinion. Maybe the accident/attack somehow involved an animal (the equivalent of hitting a deer?), and it ties into his desire to be a veterinarian?

Second theory is that Manny’s effeminate mannerisms (you all saw the way he ran does the stairs and squeed in “The Case of the Missing Squeak”) made his father abuse him for not being masculine enough, to the point of breaking his horn. Eventually his father lost custody and Manny lived with his grandparents since. I find this theory less likely because it feels a bit too much for the show to delve into, even with the above point (especially with how Toralei’s mother & Heath’s fathers are most certainly getting improvement arcs, so an unredeemed abuser feels out of place).

Least compelling & interesting theory was just that Manny was bullied by monsters even bigger than him and they broke his horn. Shrug.

This is an outdated theory now that I’ve gotten to see Manny some more and learned that he was specifically designed with a conscious effort not to equate being large with being a jerk, but I figure I’d include it here for AU fuel and posterity: in the past, Manny used to be more like his G1 counterpart, a bully. Eventually he got into a fight with someone that could hit back, and his horn was broken. After some kind of wake-up call, he turned himself around and became a kind academic.

[nyatbinary-81]

i feel like im going insane has anyone else noticed the sheer amount of times faded is associated with the puppet in the logbook. or asked how faded knows cc well enough to ask such specific questions if theyre supposedly a stranger who shares an animatronic with cc. does anyone question why the vengeful spirit is a random kid.

[friedesgreatscythe]

bioware uglies can stay in their moral equivocation discourse, i'll be over here with the smarties poring over the tiniest solas-adjacent detail as we dig through themes and foreshadowing lmao

[transyurikatsuki]

Um.... In all the debate I've seen (which to be fair is very little) about what it means to have drank from the well of sorrows, how come I have never seen anyone mention that the avvar augur says not only that he can hear it but it's different and older than elves........????? What's THAT supposed to mean

Ok I'm being told I misinterpreted what he's saying and ppl think he means older than modern elves, but also what if I'm not

[unfortunatelyilikebnha]

Replaying the beginning of the Inazuma archon quest and actually what happens to people’s visions after they die? Not the “they fade out” part, I know that, but are there like, customs for disposing with dead people’s visions? Is that something they have to put into their will? Is there a market for masterless visions? We saw during the crux clash that there was a fair bit of interest in kazuha’s friend’s masterless vision, and I know the majority of teyvat’s population are not vision bearers, but, as we saw from the number of visions inlaid in the statue, there are enough of them to be significant, so statistically since vision bearers are not immortal there are probably enough dead vision holders to supply a fair amount of masterless visions. Therefore since masterless visions exist and people seem to have an interest in them there probably have to be some kind of rules about what happens to visions when the vision bearers die so as to prevent chaos and I’m sooo curious as to what those are like. I wonder if it differs by nation or if there’s a set of rules for everyone or if it’s up to individual choice…

[cricketkorner]

I always forget that I have a Tumblr blog

[screamsofanoutlawbrain]

Batshit welcome to dreamworld theory(based on entirely vibes)

What if Wiatt's camera was actually Lucy's(his grandmother) and she's waiting till Wiatt leaves the camera alone in the facility so she can confront Winnie.

Or alternatively what if the videos we see on YouTube and the ARG site were from the past and they're fucked like that cause Wiatt gets killed and wants the word of the truth out so this fate may never happen again??

[kirkwallsquad]

in the last like 3 days i've stepped back a tiny bit from the evanuris = old gods theory, but i am not stepping back from the evanuris blackened the golden city theory. i just think the whole andruil - plague - mythal thing is. yk. plague. blight. etc.

[trickster-spirit]

the theory of consciousness as an evolved sensory experience

current model: previously nonexistent senses, and thus sensory experiences, evolutionary appeared at finite points within earth's finite history. the arrival of new senses, sight for instance, constituted a paradigm shift in the way that life forms interacted with the environment and each other. alternative theory of human consciousness: perhaps such things that make humans an "intelligent" species (i.e. consciousness, symbolism, language, etc.) are simply a sense that has appeared from the sensory organ of our brain and nervous system. perhaps we evolved to sense a sort of inherent force within the universe, and that in perceiving, we became inextricably linked with it. could it be that conscious is the sense of the universal one, the singular energy that flows through, between, from, and into all things? Brahma? YHWH? whatever name the religions of the world have deemed fit to dub the universal consciousness of Jung? perhaps our individuality is not due to any inherent purpose of our soul, but rather stems from our sensory organ's individuality, and our life from the perspective of a living mortal being in a state of physical isolation in relation to other beings. this theory being true would go a long way toward solving particular puzzles surrounding consciousness. for instance, the phenomenon of acquired savant syndrome, where a person sustains a severe head injury, and seemingly develops a mastery of a skill overnight. perhaps the sensory organ being disrupted changes its perception of the sense of consciousness. if this is the case, it would mean that our experience of consciousness is somewhat illusory, but also concretely real. we can measure the amount of thoughts we have, we can measure the time that we experience anxiety. consciousness is measurable, and therefore within the realm of reality as science sees it. however its nature and relation to reality has remained unexplained. should consciousness prove to be a sensory adaptation allowing us to experience a universal energy, it should be the case that the sensory organ (our brain), and thus our access to the observable reality of consciousness will continue to develop even further as we continue to evolve. when eyes first evolved, they were rudimentary, simply a way to tell light from dark, with little distinction between what that means. as they developed further, soon the ability to distinguish shapes appeared, and so on, then color could be sensed and other stranger spectra. are we simply witnessing the beginning of this sense of consciousness' evolutionary path? consider our rapid and all-encompassing shift to civilization (not going to put a date to that, because i am personally no longer firmly persuaded on the certainty of any date about the actual epoch of civilization's arrival). what happened to human consciousness when writing appeared? an explosion of symbolism, languages, arts, sciences, mathematics. all of these function from a single process available to us from the sense of consciousness. symbolism. what other things consciousness may produce for our sensory experience is difficult to say with any degree of credibility. to speculate would be as fruitful as imagining a new color. yet, if consciousness is a sense, it stands to reason that it may (and more than likely will) continue to evolve, and in a dizzying array of varieties as well.

[torgawl]

i was playing luocha's quest "guide for a knight stranger" when i spotted a genshin character. this is like finding beyoncé in a supermarket. what is chang the ninth doing here? i think it's pretty cool that he's a detective romance novel character in this universe instead of a writer, it's like the world is inverted. and he's the killer's uncle, nonetheless. too bad we don't know (as far as i'm aware of) if genshin's chang the ninth has nephews, but with at least 8 siblings it's very likely.

[thenukacolachallenge]

this is one of my favorite zelda video essays

[greyedian]

Pentiment soundtrack my beloved <3