Human Demonology: Occupy Daath, or The Missing Protagonist

Satan Inc.

We may have reached a point where no choice or action can lead anywhere but mayhem, genocide and ecological apocalypse.

Why not buy from a big-box, low-rent retailer and fund human trafficking and forced labor? To get billions from point A to point B without resorting to walking or biking requires accepting environmental devastation, endless war and propping up dictatorial regimes. Mountains of Appalachia are leveled to provide the energy I'm using to power the laptop on which I write this. You are able to get online and read this because legal and moral crimes were committed. At the same time, behind all these things that make the way we live possible are the best efforts and innovations of millions of good people who do much to make life on earth better. Everyone drinks deeply from the same pool of atrocities. The picture all this makes varies with every map drawn of the territory. What the individual sees of their own self depends on which map they locate the “you are here” point. There is no master patter that can be laid over the landscape that can capture every aspect of the territory.

Bottom line, it is all myth in both the pejorative and philosophical sense.

Oftentimes, when trying to uncover the mythological underpinnings of our culture, the emphasis is on narrative and where character comes in. Attention can often concern itself on the question of from what protagonists and villains are made and how to make the greatest number identify with the one intended to represent the desirable behavior and thoughts. Entertainment "news", which has adapted so well to the web holds up the people in the creative industries behind whom the most cash has been spent. Reality shows and talent competitions perpetuate that hoary old Hollywood trope of the person in the street being discovered and plucked from obscurity. Cop shows with their tortured and earnest protagonists, the characters sketched out in most detail. The criminals get the most compelling and dramatic interactions with the intrepid heroes. The officials from higher up the law enforcement may be foils to "lone wolf" officers a la Dirty Harry, or the entire system could be represented as an occasionally squabbling, but unified family united against the criminals and the press, as in the original Law & Order and its myriad spinoffs. Generally, the victims, who represent neither law breakers nor law enforcement are props to kick off the plot so the real drama can proceed. This last group is where we find most of the population, helpless, at the mercy to the fates but for the authorities and their weapons and surveillance capabilities.

...the Cop Show has only three characters--victim, criminal, and policeperson--but the first two fail to be fully human--only the pig is real. Oddly enough, human society in the eighties (as seen in the other media) sometimes appeared to consist of the same three cliche/archetypes. First the victims, the whining minorities bitching about "rights"--and who pray tell did not belong to a "minority" in the eighties? Shit, even cops complained about their "rights" being abused. Then the criminals: largely non-white (despite the obligatory & hallucinatory "integration" of the media), largely poor (or else obscenely rich, hence even more alien), largely perverse (i.e. the forbidden mirrors of "our" desires). - Hakim Bey – Boycott Cop Culture 

Mythological Sandbox: Dragon Age 2, and Global Conversation

By Mr. VI

Storytelling is about manipulating the audience; about leading them where they want to go and showing them something different. The old stories are familiar, like worn paths tracked through a dark forest, all pitted and uneven, but they are not paved roads. Here and there, the environment erupts and diverts them; trees have fallen or thickets have sprung up, and because they are paths, those who journey simply route around them and carry on.

The best storytellers and the best explorers don't just avoid these interruptions, they incorporate them into the journey, make them part of the experience. A good story is both inexorable and yet also allows you to move, to indulge in multiple divergences; switchbacks, digressions, stories within stories.

That's how Sheherazade kept her head in the epic of A Thousand and One Nights – by drawing the king further and further in. It went beyond cliff-hangers. She lead him so far down the twisting pathways that he simply forgot the route back to the place where he was going to kill her – he became so enamoured of the journey that the origin and destination were unimportant.

As Shakespeare says through the mouth of Hamlet:

I'll have grounds
More relative than this—the play's the thing
Wherein I'll catch the conscience of the King.

Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 603–605

Hamlet's play was designed to elicit visible proof from his audience. Proof that Claudius had killed his father, confirming what the ghost has to say. If that's not manipulation of your audience, I don't know what is.

As the saying goes: 'Give them enough rope to hang themselves.'

Again, there's the notion of space to move, space for things to 'play out'. And speaking of playing, those of us in Europe will soon be looking enviously at the US, because you get the eagerly anticipated Bioware epic, the fantasy RPG-sequel Dragon Age 2 three days earlier than us.

You bastards.

Still, I'm not that bitter. Come the 11th I shall be sitting down in front of my Xbox and entering a familiar world. I may not surface for a good long while, because frankly, I love the world they've created and want to see what happens next in it.



The arc of a character over from humble beginnings to world-shaking hero is a mythic theme which has been repeated over and over again, in various cultures. What's more, there are over a million downloads of the demo across all the platforms, because the publisher promised goodies if it happened.