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Your Dumbest Theory


scott-martin

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4 hours ago, MOB said:

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom serves as an inspiration for what life must have been like there under the idyllic rule of the God King

Imagination runs wild with that!  Head off for the ride down Spiral Mountain.  Battle with the Pirates of the Choralinthor.  Investigate the Machine Ruins, remnants of Tomorrowland....

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So did Belintar also call the design choices meant to draw people to certain locations "weenies" like Walt Disney did?

To explain: Disneyland's design is a very deliberate way to draw the eye first to the central location, which you can see from almost everywhere, and from there to the different areas arrayed around it in turn through the use of attractions designed specifically as eye-catchers, like Cinderella Castle for the Magic Kingdom. This both helps guests orient themselves and leads them where the park's designers want them to go (namely, to the big show-pieces and money-makers). Walt named these "weenies" when discussing how he wanted the park to work with his "Imagineers" because he would often lead his pet dog around the kitchen with a weenie.

So if we go with the idea that the Holy Country and Disneyland share certain design principles, we can perhaps assume that it's because, like Walt Disney, Belintar wants to draw visitors and settlers (and their money) toward particular places over others.

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9 minutes ago, Leingod said:

Belintar wants to draw visitors and settlers (and their money) toward particular places over others.

E.g. Spiral Mountain (aka Stormwalk), Esrola's Throne upon the Shadow Plateau (take the Tarpit Ride!), the Vent, Nochet, and all look back at the City of Wonders at the center of the Rainbow Bridges....  (I wonder if you look carefully if you can still see the Machine Ruins, the echo of the Clanking City...)

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50 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

Now that you mention it, that blue-skinned guy in Prince of Sartar has a mustache that looks vaguely Disney-like...🤔

Plus, if we do think of the Holy Country as Belintar constructing his own theme park, it ties in rather well to Jar-eel's observations that Belintar is a "patchwork god" and her wondering aloud if he ever really even had a plan or was just making it up as he went. A theme park like Disneyland is something specifically crafted to sell you on an illusion, after all. In the first place, it's the illusion that there's a real, physical place where you can go and see all these stories and fantasies and interact with them in the here and now. Perhaps even more relevantly, it's crafted to give the impression that there's always more to it than you're actually directly seeing, even though generally speaking that isn't true and all going beyond the boundaries to see more than what they're showing does is ruin the whole thing by showing you all the wires and the mascots on their smoke breaks and whatnot.

Maybe the real reason no one can reach the City of Wonders after Harrek sacked it is because he laid bare all the carefully crafted illusions that made it the City of Wonders at all, breaking the spell forever.

Edited by Leingod
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25 minutes ago, Leingod said:

Plus, if we do think of the Holy Country as Belintar constructing his own theme park

but who are the visitors ?

the gods maybe ?

Now I imagine glorantha like "brave new world"  tv series where the gods are in their tower, eating some pills (POW + mp ?) and visiting the holy contry as in the serie they visit the wilderness

and at the end, there is Argrath (no spoiler included)

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6 minutes ago, French Desperate WindChild said:

but who are the visitors ?

The populace.  They get to mingle with the gods, have their pictures taken with them, maybe even feast with them at the rituals.  It's a wonderful place. 

Until its not.

 

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2 hours ago, Leingod said:

So if we go with the idea that the Holy Country and Disneyland share certain design principles, we can perhaps assume that it's because, like Walt Disney, Belintar wants to draw visitors and settlers (and their money) toward particular places over others.

I find myself agreeing with this and chuckling at the profound cynicism of it.  It's a comparison I had never thought to make, and the real world implications...  Let's just say that I snorted into my coffee when I read this.  You've given me a very interesting insight into the antiquity of theme parks, and the white marble Grecian statuary of the gods that was garishly painted to make them seem more "real" take on a very different context.  I wonder if the Pythia of Delphi had spruikers touting the attractions?

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1 hour ago, Darius West said:

I find myself agreeing with this and chuckling at the profound cynicism of it.  It's a comparison I had never thought to make, and the real world implications...  Let's just say that I snorted into my coffee when I read this.  You've given me a very interesting insight into the antiquity of theme parks, and the white marble Grecian statuary of the gods that was garishly painted to make them seem more "real" take on a very different context.  I wonder if the Pythia of Delphi had spruikers touting the attractions?

It goes beyond the purely commercial, too. If we keep up the Disneyland comparison, it implies that Belintar has constructed his Holy Country in such a way - maneuvered the assets and resources, put in place his agents and instructed them to act in such a manner, etc. - to make sure that you only see it from the angles he wants you to see it from. Whether you're an inhabitant or a visitor (or shall we say, a regular or a first-timer?), the Holy Country is very deliberately set up to make sure you come away from your experiences with the impression of it that the God-King wants you to have. In the same way, the architecture of places of worship have always been built on the same lines of carefully crafting a particular impression to make you feel that you're in a holy place.

You could say the same about Belintar himself, again going back to Jar-eel's comments on this inscrutable "patchwork god" in Prince of Sartar, who seems to know more than anyone but perhaps was just putting up a front the whole time, and whose carefully crafted illusions start falling apart once someone spots the threads and starts to pull on them.

EDIT: Not to say that Belintar was necessarily just some cosmic con artist, though. In many ways, this interpretation paints him as an artist and a visionary who harnessed the power to make Illusion into Truth in ways that make the Red Emperor look like a hack, because like Walt Disney he understood the power of imagination and wonder in ways that very few others before him did.

Edited by Leingod
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4 minutes ago, Sir_Godspeed said:

But what if the Holy Country isn't a Disneyland, but a Westworld...?

Shadowlands might well have operated that way in various phases of the Tribute. Old-school Battlestar Galactica fans will recall the cannibal casino planet of the Ovions, a kind of lotus eater island where the "flowers" have sharp appetites. 

I don't know how to boot a theory back out of the dumb zone but it's starting to sound like this one is reaching for breakout fan canon status. Well played, @Eff! Evidently Kerofinela = Kalifornee after all. Let the MOLAD games begin and reenact the myths!

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singer sing me a given

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My Quality Assurance job just got a lot more exciting. Thanks, @scott-martin

Edited by Nick Brooke
Misremembered Delos corporate hierarchy
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52 minutes ago, Leingod said:

I guess that puts an interesting spin on some of the stuff Belintar did to get people on his side, like "Andrin the Zombie."

That's what happens when you put the Mickey suit on and agree to the Terms & Conditions.

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On 4/7/2021 at 3:42 PM, jajagappa said:

That's what happens when you put the Mickey suit on and agree to the Terms & Conditions.

On that note, I have discovered an authentic signature of the God-King, deep within a repository of autographs (Ironhoof had terrible handwriting, as a side note):

498245b512269cd210a612e2bd91a927.png

Incredible the things you can find in archives these days.

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Though a Lunar through and through, she is also a human being.

"I just read an article in The Economist by a guy who was riding around with the Sartar rebels, I mean Taliban," -Greg Stafford, January 7th, 2010

Eight Arms and the Mask

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Dumb theory:

Slontos sank because the Godlearners tried to reach Erenplose / Porlufta, and failed miserably.

This is a dumb theory because it is waaaaaay out on a limb.

  1. Seshnela just got shatered by purple giants. 
    • The Archduke of Slontos was kinda desperate, and he was hoping a city that survived the anger of the Sea Gods could help them
  2. I suggest illumination was necessary to enter Erenplose.
    • Getting to Erenplose appears to be absurdly difficult, and the last person who did it was the Palangio the Iron Vrok. 
  3. However, the GLs were not really big on illumination
    • They wanted / needed a purely materialistic / sorcerous solution.
  4. Enter the Zistorites and the Order of Purification, which claimed to have discovered the "purification rune"
    • Chaos, argued somebody, was imbalanced and impure disorder.  Or, put another way, purified chaos was disorder.  
    • Given this argument, then forms of magic that involved chaos (like illumination) could be reorganized as disorder, which could be manipulated in clean, sorcerous ways without worrying about illumination
  5. The purpose of the Trickster College of Thanor was to study disorder
    • If they could prove that disorder was purified chaos, then they could organize illumination within their systematic proofs, material analysis of forces, and logic.
  6. The Archduke, his wizards, and the faculty of the Trickster College began their ritual disorder sorcery to contact / invade Erenplose to seek its help / take its secrets.

     
  • The result: Eurmal laughed, and freed the land goddesses.
Edited by Nevermet
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On 4/5/2021 at 6:31 AM, scott-martin said:

In this model the Pool might well be one of the eastern seas. Everything depends on which direction the goddess was facing and whether she spent any time as Harantara.

Or this is the far south, and it’s the Red Camp of Innocence becoming the Blue Fire Sea. 

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On 4/11/2021 at 3:34 AM, Nevermet said:

This is a dumb theory because it is waaaaaay out on a limb.

I think almost all of the specific claims theory are wrong, but plausibly things that idiot God Learners might have believed, and thus the theory as a whole plausible.

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29 minutes ago, davecake said:

I think almost all of the specific claims theory are wrong, but plausibly things that idiot God Learners might have believed, and thus the theory as a whole plausible.

One of the things that is truly liberating when writing up setting info for Glorantha is that one gets to replace "So what ACTUALLY happened?" with the easier and more fun, "What did this specific culture think happened?"

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