Dia: I finally understand why people think that video games cause violence because I've been reading the Elder Scrolls wiki for the last three weeks of my life, and I’m ready to commit a homicide.
Duck: I have never been quite so glad that we don't have a podcasting studio.
Dia: It's just look, it's, I'm sure the games are fine. Like I have watched enough Let’s Plays to know that many people are having fun. I asked a lot of people in my life who are more into video games than me about these and they are, they seem popular with people who share many of my tastes. So like, I'm assuming these are probably up my alley.
Duck: They’re quite up my alley.
Dia: The only thing I knew about them prior to this apart from like, having seen some visuals and I think I read one article about the cat people in like, a compilation about ethnic mapping and Rroma stereotypes, which is quite interesting, but not relevant. I'm 100% sure if I was into video games, these would be video games I was into. However, trying to read the lore of a famously lore-heavy series with zero context or knowledge is like being beaten to death with a Dungeons & Dragons book. Like I genuinely feel like I have a concussion from banging my head against the Elder Scrolls, banging my head against the Elder Scrolls wiki.
Duck: I think that's fair, it is a large text. There's a lot in it. And I understand why you've gone with wiki because like, playing the games is not your thing. I do feel that you have probably chosen the worst way to absorb this lore.
Dia: I did ask. So I did actually ask people.
Duck: Right.
Dia: So I asked people how to approach this. And several of them recommended Let's Plays. So I tried to watch Let’s Plays. And I just could not form any opinions. Like I genuinely I watched about 400 Skyrim Let's Plays and just came out the other end just like no thoughts head empty.
Duck: Yeah, I think my extremely helpful suggestion was watch speed runs.
Dia: Yeah, I did try, and every single time--
Duck: On the basis that they will have everything you need for an analysis.
Dia: I really did try and I just got nothing like I had more opinions-- I think the last time I came out of a media viewing experience with this few opinions was when I watched Sonic the Hedgehog 2 whilst I had like a fever from an ear infection that meant that I couldn't remember how to spell four letter words.
Duck: Hmm, rough, rough.
Dia: Yeah, so like, that's how I was operating with this. So I took a new approach, which was I went and read the like, just like the Wikipedia level plot summaries of each game, and then went back and watched Let's Plays for the parts that I knew I was interested in and were relevant to my thesis here.
Duck: That's fine. That's a reasonable thing to do.
Dia: Which did work slightly better.
Duck: We should introduce themselves before we go further.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: Hello, dear listener. We are the hosts of Analysis Roulette, a very silly game that we are playing.
Dia: And which I've come to regret.
Duck: In which we analyse various media and media-adjacent things through a random analysis school based on rolling on a table. It's going great.
Dia: The thing is, when you had to watch Shazam, at least you just had to watch Shazam.
Duck: It’s true.
Dia: When you had Flat Earth, at least you had meaty things to say about Flat Earth. This week--
Duck: It's true. It's not that I'm not sorry for you. It's just that I’m not sorry for you.
Dia: This week, dear listener, I am doing a religious allegorical reading of the Elder Scrolls.
Duck: You are, I am one of your two hosts. You can call me Duck my pronouns he/they and with me is Dia, this week's victim on the analysis front pronouns they/them.
Dia: Yep. And I am having an experience.
Duck: Would you like me to define the text we are looking at? Before you have to analyse it.
Dia: Please. Because I don't think I can.
Duck: Okay, let's start with the real, the real unarguables. Elder Scrolls is a series of video games produced by the studio Bethesda.
Dia: Yes, right.
Duck: Terms of Reference. That's what we're looking at. There are technically five and several bits of these.
Dia: I have not looked at the bits I will come clean on that.
Duck: I would not have expected you to. So the series technically began, I'm reading off the wiki here in 1994 with Arena, then there was Daggerfall. I have, I think watched someone speed running one of those, which is to say I have no idea what they're about or what's in them.
The series really kicks off in terms of fame and scope and continued popularity with Morrowind which you can still play, then Oblivion, and Skyrim, which has been rereleased about once a year for the last 10 years. They're developing a sixth one.
Dia: I will say Skyrim is the one with which I had passing familiarity before deep diving into the wiki. I do want to preface this because I am going to complain about the Elder Scrolls a lot. Before we do anything else. I do want to preface this, this is not a personal attack on either the Elder Scrolls as a thing, the creators of The Elder Scrolls in any of its incarnations, or the people who enjoy the Elder Scrolls games.
Duck: This is a hatred formed purely of your personal relationship with analysing the text.
Dia: Yes, I actually went and like asked a bunch of people who love video games, I asked friends who are video games journalists, I actually asked a friend who is a philosophy PhD and a different friend who was a philosophy professor about their opinions on the Elder Scrolls, I really went deep to try and get like a take on Elder Scrolls that was not entirely based on the fact that I coincidentally hated reading about it. And fellas, I have failed.
Duck: In the spirit of my academic engagement with these texts is that I have played too many hours of Oblivion and Skyrim. I have also played technically speaking a couple of hours of Morrowind, but it doesn't run very well on my machine. Like the second time it crashes, you're like, eh, nevermind.
Dia: Yeah, my personal beef with these is my prior engagement with them is when I was maybe 12, 13. I do remember reading a lot of The Elder Scrolls wiki. When I was doing like fun world building projects about elves. And I was looking for media that had done interesting things with elves. So I had some passing knowledge of the elf lore. I had seen some like, posts on various social media about things people either liked or didn't like about Skyrim in specific, and I was vaguely aware of them as like, just a pillar of modern day fantasy gaming and other media influenced by gaming. I could not have told you a single character, plot, detail, or place.
Duck: That's fair. Yeah, it is one of those things of it's very, very easy to get away with doing a knockoff of The Elder Scrolls, in terms of how they play in terms of how the setting works. They are open world games, at least they are at least from Morrowind onwards, I'm not sure about prior to that. But they are from, from like the big three, are open world games. So you can explore really unusually freely, there are not, there are roads, but they're like, graphically, what I mean is, in the vast landscape, you could explore one of the parts of the landscape as a road, you could walk along and if you want it, but there's nothing to make you do so. And you can take out a lot of quests in arbitrary orders. Although I think it is worth noting here that although it is open world, the questslines themselves very linear. You can choose whether or not to do a given quest. But if you're doing a quest, it only goes one way. Maybe two, maybe sometimes you get a choice at the end. But there is a questline. That is the main story of the game, and you pretty much follow it. And they’re called the Elder Scrolls because within the world of the game, there are prophecies written on things that are called The Elder Scrolls. Although we should be precise with our terminology, these are not works of prophecy, these are works of foretelling.
Technically speaking, this matters to religious nerds like me, they sort of, they appear to start off as ambiguous foretelling, but when you do something that could match them, they become fixed, which is a neat little out where you are not the hero of prophecy until you start doing things. And then you are.
Dia: And for this media, I drew the analysis school of religious allegory.
Duck: You did, which I'm fascinated to see where you're going with this?
Dia: Yes, I do feel we should provide some context, which is just the fact that both of us are from Christian backgrounds.
Duck: Yep.
Dia: So our readings of religion do have a cultural Christian flavour.
Duck: Right, they tend to be in that direction, even if we don't mean to.
Dia: Yes, I was a Sunday school teacher for a decent period of time.
Duck: You were, you're respectable.
Dia: I am so respectable. I own more than one skirt that’s below knee length. But yes, I like, I did multiple Bible camps as a child. I was a Sunday school teacher and I also have a background studying mediaeval religion and mythology, which involves a lot of saints.
Duck: They did like the saints.
Dia: I do also have a decent academic background in a variety of European mythologies, which I would love to one day do a religious allegorical reading based on Norse religion, but that is not what I'm doing today.
Duck: That would be great.
Dia: It would be rad. I am keeping that in the, I'm keeping that in the running for future episodes. But in the present moment, that's not where we're going with this.
Duck: In the present moment, we are staying on more familiar turf perhaps.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: At least to us.
Dia: So I am going to ask for sympathy and patience from two schools of reader, reader? Viewer listener, whatever. People who consume podcasts are called, I assume listeners, but I'm very tired. And I've been reading a lot of Skyrim Wiki pages.
Duck: Yeah, casto-- castiphiles..
Dia: The first of which is people who really love Skyrim.
Duck: Castophaegi. That's the word. That's the one.
Dia: All right. I'm asking for patience, sympathy and understanding from two groups of listeners, the first of which is people who really love the Elder Scrolls. I'm sorry. I have nothing against them, I think I would probably really enjoy them. I just don't think that having to analyse them in two weeks is the best way to consume them.
Duck: I'm not sure you will get many people arguing with that. I don't think--
Dia: It would be weird if it was.
Duck: For full appreciation of these games, don't play them, spend two weeks trying to analyse them from scratch.
Dia: Yeah. And two is from any listener who has gone oh, there is a really good and obvious, religious allegorical reading you are missing completely due to your lack of religious knowledge. I had time to learn one thing while I was researching this episode, and that was only like two of The Elder Scrolls games. So. I'm doing my best. With those caveats. Do you want to talk about the Elder Scrolls?
Duck: I would love to talk about the Elder Scrolls.
Dia: I really wish we had sponsors, because that would have been such a funny time to cut through an ad break. Just like having apologised.
Duck: And then we just start reading ad texts for fishfingers.
Dia: It would be so good. Someone sponsor us just because we would be so good at being sponsored. People would absolutely listen. Definitely. For sure.
Duck: Definitely they would.
Dia: Yeah, people would buy products based on our say so. I sound like someone who could afford a Casper mattress, right?
Duck: They come in a box. So I'm told
Dia: I really don't understand the appeal of boxes. Do people just like boxes? Is that why everything you can order on a podcast talks about the box that comes in?
Duck: I think--
Dia: Are podcast listeners secretly cats?
Duck: Yes, I was gonna give a rational explanation. But no, I'm sticking with that one podcast listeners are cats.
Dia: It's just my cat is listening to podcasts and ordering all of the meal kids.
Duck: That is a very cat behaviour.
Dia: Anyway, we actually then proceeded to not talk about the Elder Scrolls after saying that.
Duck: That’s still the intention. That was the ad break. Now we're back to the Elder Scrolls.
Dia: The break for non existence ad is completed. And now I'm going to talk about video games I have not played. So there's two general sections of thing I want to talk about, which is basically a very basic and surface level analysis that I think bears discussing. And then a less surface level and more interesting analysis, which I think is actually interesting.
Duck: I'm excited for both of these. Part One.
Dia: The world of The Elder Scrolls.
Duck: Famously big.
Dia: It's very big. It has a lot in it. It has a lot of gods, godlike beings, hellish dimensions. There is a lot of stuff that is mapped onto different elements of fantasy, and real world historic culture and fantasy based on real world historic culture and fantasy based on fantasy based on real world historic culture.
Duck: Yes, it has orcs and elves in.
Dia: It has orcs and elves in it has the weird cat people in that I mentioned earlier were the only thing I had read any academic discussion of prior to this experience.
Duck: I love the word cat people. I do think it's I think it's very revealing, although I'm not sure revealing of what the cat people are from a location called Elsewhere.
Dia: Yeah, as, as happens. But I did want to talk a little bit about the idea of a triumvirate of godlike beings is the thing I've copy-pasted directly from Wikipedia. The fact that there are hellish dimensions, there is a lot of just to the left of the rigion- Rigion? Just to the left of the religion you're familiar with going on in this setting.
Duck: Yes, I think that's actually part of its appeal. In the same way as there are orcs and elves and people who are a bit Vikingey, a part of the appeal because you don't as a player, have to work very hard to get up to speed with the setting.
Dia: Unless of course you're not playing it and you're reading a wikipedia entry.
Duck: Which is a less naturalistic way to be introduced to aspects of the setting.
Dia: Yes. I mean, having jumped into this, I joke about Wikipedia entries. I did read most of the Wikipedia entries on the game. But that is not where I started. I started out watching some Let's Plays. And I will say, I did not feel like I needed things explained to me regularly.
Duck: Right. You you encounter this sort of vaguely Viking people, you're like, Oh, these are vaguely Viking people, I get what they're about.
Dia: Yeah. And I definitely think it was interesting. I mean, this partly ran up on the problem that we discussed in our Anne McCaffrey episode, which is the I have consumed much media written by people who have consumed this media problem.
Duck: Right, the retrospectively overdone and derivative problem.
Dia: There's something very, very funny about reading the Wikipedia entries on the development history of these games, where there's a lot of people talking about how groundbreaking things that are completely universal to you are.
Duck: Right, it's an it's an open world. And you can do quests in whatever order you like.
Dia: I did go and read a few like reviews and like just general like people talking about these games. And one of the things that floored me was the fact that the functional day to night cycle was that big a deal.
Duck: I didn't know it was.
Dia: Like, at nighttime the shops shut and people go inside and go to bed. Yeah, I played Animal Crossing.
Duck: They do that in Pokémon, nowadays, yeah,
Dia: Exactly. Yeah. And like there are monsters at night. And I'm like, Yeah, I choose that farm on Stardew. Valley, too. It's very funny to me, because I understand that these things were groundbreaking at the time. But it is still very entertaining, because it does feel like reading a review of someone trying on shoes for the first time.
Duck: Right, and being very, very excited. They make a clapping noise. Yes, that's what they do.
Dia: Yeah, such as setting aside the fact that a lot of this stuff, it was genuinely an innovative is quite funny to discover was innovative with the hindsight of many, many years.
Duck: Yep.
Dia: But setting wise, I did want to talk-- it's not just that it is like, akin to things we're familiar with. It's actually the ways in which it's not quite matching up that I'm interested in. I think there is to a degree in this setting an at least attempt I won't go into how successful just yet, but at least an attempt to do something somewhat novel with a genre that at the time of the first game coming out, was very preoccupied with the gods are real. There is a big evil hell dimension. There are forces of evil and forces of good. There was a lot of very linear good versus evil storytelling. That's not all that existed in videogames at the time, obviously, but it was definitely a popular school.
Duck: Sure.
Dia: I spent a lot of time having a look around what were contemporary video games when arena came out. And I was also very interested to see what arena was originally planned as, because it does seem like it was originally intended to be a lot more standard. You know, 90s video game?
Duck: Yeah, my understanding is they called it arena because they kind of originally intended it to be like a gladiatorial fighting game.
Dia: Yeah. And the thing that is interesting to me is there are a lot of sort of gladiatorial arena fighting games, there are a lot of dungeon crawlers, and there are a lot of your quest against evil games. And I do think there is something interesting in the attempts to be more complex, especially on a religious level. Yeah. And for this, I'm going to talk a little bit about Morrowind specifically.
Duck: Go for it.
Dia: What is your understanding of Morrowind? The Elder Scrolls three.
Duck: I have a limited understanding of Morrowind to being the one I haven't played.
Dia: That's helpful. So we're both in the same boat.
Duck: So both in the same boat on that one. My understanding is it leans actually very heavily on the You are the hero of prophecy side of things.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: You have been identified possibly by the Emperor actually, it’s a game with emperors in it and the Emperors tend to be sort of religiously significant semi Pope figures. I think one of them becomes a God, one of them definitely becomes a god. I don't know if he's one of the ones you meet. But you have been identified by the emperor as not just a prisoner, crimes unspecified, that's where the role playing comes in. But not not just a prisoner, but also the hero of prophecy and you have been shipped off to the relevant region and sort of turned loose to do whatever you're going to do in the faith that what you will do is fulfil the prophecy. And it's not quite save the world. It's not--
Dia: No, it's a very specific religious prophecy.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: So yes. Morrowind revolves basically around the struggle between a group of gods who are separated from a former what, what summaries I found described as a former ally, which is a demigod, I did not get the details on the relationship between these. But it's basically the tribunal, which is a trio, triumvirate, something like that of gods or as the Wikipedia plot summary describes them godlike beings, which I genuinely don't know where they're drawing that distinction.
Duck: I think, because it's something I noticed when playing the game, what gets called a god in the series versus what they use their own terminology for and called them adra. It might just be that.
Dia: Yeah, these are adra, I think.
Duck: Yeah, it might just be an unwillingness on the part of the wiki to define the adra as gods, but they clearly are.
Dia: Yeah. I’ve never understood practically the difference, but this is the most inept analysis I've ever done in my life and we're ploughing ahead with it.
Duck: Excellent.
Dia: So they're their former something, am I he's a demigod. I'm not under the impression he has any of them’s son. I think this is a demigod in the way that like Thor in the Marvel movies or is a demigod, it's, we don't want to call him a god because he's just some guy.
Duck: He's got powers, but they're not as good as our powers.
Dia: Yeah. Who has a nice little cult, and is on an island, which are believe is the centre of his power.
Duck: A goal of all cults.
Dia: He's used some kind of magical artefact called the heart of Lorkhan to make himself immortal, and is basically trying to get the Empire out of Morrowind, which is the place where it is set. Using a spy network, and a magic golem. The idea that an immortal man with a giant golem still needs spies is very funny to me, but not the point. I just, I can't believe this man knows the name, the word subtlety. You know.
Duck: I've just I've just, I haven't gotten past being impressed that somebody in that situation has worked out that subtlety means working through someone else because he can't do it himself. I think that itself is an achievement.
Dia: Yeah, it's just like, wow, you have like logistics. You have a magical artefact that makes you immortal and you're actually doing things that make sense. While…
Duck: This is rare.
Dia: Anyway, there are counter spies, which is a group called the Blades who are working for the empire on the island, which is called Vvardenfell, Vvardenfell--
Duck: Vvardenfell inexplicably spelt with two V's.
Dia: Yes, it really disturbed me. To be honest. I don't like the big V next to the small v. I could handle the double capital V in The VVhich I don't like the big V small v.
Duck: You're not a fan of Vvardenfell.
Dia: No, I don't like it, partly because my brain tells me it should be Vvardenfell. My brain-- when I see a volcano with a double l in it, my brain says Iceland. Oh, yeah, Eyjafjallajökull, I know what this is. Not the point anyway. There are spies in Vvardenfell called the Blades and you the player have been sent there to meet one of their members a guy called Caius Cassades please forgive me if I pronounced anything wrong. I have watched Let's Plays of the game, but they kind of just turned into honey in my brain after a little while and I start to go oo, a let's play on YouTube. This is sleepy time. And then remembering that I'm actually doing podcast homework.
Duck: Yeah, I feel I feel confident in the Caius part.
Dia: I wasn't sure about cAssades or kossadES.
Duck: I tought CassadEs.
Dia: I did again I watched Let's Plays, did I pay attention to them? I tried. I really tried guys. Can we just call this episode the bad one? Anyway, Caius brings you into the blades and you start going on your quests and doing your video game stuff. You can also not do quests, but that's not super relevant to my point. So we're gonna skip the open world elements because they're just not helpful. And essentially, we get to the point where we find out about the prophecies of the word I am going to hate saying because I keep saying Neverine which is a different thing. The Nereverine.
Duck: The fans of the Nerevar.
Dia: Yeah, it's a word designed for American accents. I think it's got too much rhotacisation in it for me.
Duck: Yeah, and they will probably put the emphasis on different syllable.
Dia: Yeah, I feel like if you're American it’s like, Nerevarine. And it just sounds fine.
Duck: Yeah, we will say NerevAr and they will say NerEvar, and then it will be fine.
Dia: Yeah. Whereas I'm saying Nerevarin and it just sounds like something that Donald Trump would tell you to inject into yourself to cure COVID-19.
Duck: Do not inject yourself with Nerevarine.
Dia: Really don't. But yes, so you start finding out about the prophecies of the Nerevarine.
And all of this stuff is discovered to be the reason for your induction into some spies have actually been freed from prison and sent to this island in the first place is because the Emperor suspects that you might be this Nerevarine, which is a reincarnation of a very famous hero Nerevar. And I will say, I could not work out how the lore is pieced together, I understand people piece the lore together and are good at it. So my understanding is that it is at least kind of implied that you might actually just be identified as a good potential imposter Nerevarine.
Duck: The thing about prophecy is that if you fulfil the prophecy, and things come to pass, then you were always already the hero. Even if this was achieved through wiles, rather than… if this was achieved through cutting and planning and making you into such a good imposter, that you become the real thing. It still counts. That's my understanding of the sort of logic of the process.
Dia: And that is very much part of the point I'm getting to very, very slowly.
Duck: Oooh. We have a thesis people, we do have a thesis we don't know what it is yet, but we're gonna get there.
Dia: And so your job is now to uncover the prophecies fulfil the prophecies defeat your man and his cult.
Duck: Right, fulfil the prophecy, become the hero--
Dia: I keep wanting to say Dagur, that's the guy from How To Train Your Dragon. That's not him. Dagoth Ur, which is a different guy to Dagur from How To Train Your Dragon.
Duck: Dagoth Ur, who has some other name as well in the lore? Because the Elder Scrolls never makes anything simple if they could help it.
Dia: I just can't not read it as the Goth.
Duck: The Goth forces…
Dia: It just Dagoth Ur just reads to me is so like, what would have been the tagline on someone's MySpace page and like, MySpace era of the internet.
Duck: I think that was shouted at me on the bus when I was 13. Da Goth! Urgh.
Dia: I need a minute. Okay. Um. Also another point that I found the fact that there is a volcanic island and a separate place called The Ashland. Very funny. Bear in mind that I was reading all of this while I was in the Bay of Naples for a few days.
Duck: That is very funny.
Dia: Looking at my neighbouring volcano going oh, yeah, the ash lands. I got it.
Duck: Where the Dark Elves live. Yeah, famously.
Dia: Herculaneum, full of elves.
Duck: Would read.
Dia: Yep, there's seven of these prophecies. One of them I think has been fulfilled, just by being born. It's a, it's very much like, you know, of Jesse's line situation.
Duck: Born on a certain day to uncertain parents, which you have fulfilled by being born the other half by no one else asking too many questions.
Dia: Yeah, very much a sort of, we have to work into this text, the guy was of Jesse's line.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: I'm gonna be dropping in some religious hints, as we go, just to give us some breadcrumbs to pick up later. I was like, I don't know if this will get cut, because it's maybe only funny to me and possibly you. But I went to sixth form in North London, which is a very Jewish area. And quite a lot of most of my classes were either Jewish or not religious. There were very few people who were from, like, Christian Christian backgrounds, as opposed to culturally Christian backgrounds. And at one point, I was in a, like, extracurricular lecture on some sort of art history, because I was one of the cool kids. And the issue of King David came up and was like, yeah yeah yeah, King David was familiar. And he then went, and of course, this actually comes back in a lot of modern day hymns, because it's always important to remember that Jesus was of David's line. And there was just echoing silence a room full of people who are all familiar with King David, but not with any Christmas carols. Because all of them were Jewish.
Duck: Right!
Dia: And the teacher is just looking blankly around the room going, how could one possibly know about King David, but not Once in Royal David's City, and I’m just there like, I can think of a reason.
Duck: Look, we didn’t come back for the sequels.
Dia: It's also-- I was also at that school, when we did quite often, Latin teachers think it's a really fun Christmas activity to give you Biblical Latin to translate.
Duck: That doesn’t sound fun.
Dia: We were translating the Nativity out of Latin and the guy who was sat next to me, had not worked out the word for shepherd, and could not for the life of him work out what this word was from context,
Duck: Because he didn't have the context clue!
Dia: He didn’t know the Nativity story, so he didn't know that was shepherds involved. And really, all he knew is that these people were associated with a star an angel and a sheep, which really could be any occupation.
Duck: Right!
Dia: Like, you don’t know which of those is fundamental to their identity. They could be star people, they could be angel watchers, or they could be shepherds.
Duck: An astronomer who kept sheep.
Dia: Like there were a lot of sheep around in Nazareth. They could just be incidental sheep.
Duck: It was a sheep area. There's a reason like there's, there's a recent nativity sets often include camels, and it's just like they just seemed like they fit.
Dia: Yeah, I think I was a sheep in a nativity play once. I have a strong memory of being a sheep when I'd been promised a role as an angel because the music director was in a car accident. And being five I had no sense of sympathy for the fact that he'd been in a car accident, I was just angry that that meant there were no angels this year. So I had to be a sheep.
Duck: This is the classic division is like the five year olds and under are sheep, and the five to, the six to eight or nine year olds are background angels. And then we have a handful of older children who we give speaking parts to.
Dia: I was supposed to have a singing part and they cut the singing parts because the music teacher had been hit by a car. And with the complete lack of empathy that small children have, I was just angry that there were no singing parts. So all of the extra angels were converted over to extra sheep.
Duck: No one has ever suffered like you.
Dia: No one has suffered as I have suffered.
Duck: Anyway.
Dia: I had to wear a woolly rug. Not the point. But yes.
Duck: Back on track.
Dia: You, protagonist, have been born on the right day. And the next prophecy is that you will be immune to a specific disease. I think porpoise. Corprus.
Duck: Corprus. Another word that's very hard to say.
Dia: And also another word that looks exactly like a word I'm much more familiar with. Stop doing this to me.
Duck: Right, it’s not corporis, its corprus, it's not horrid.
Dia: So I'm focusing on the prophecies is more than other incidental bits of plot. I am skipping over stuff because I don't care.
Duck: We have we have an interpretive framework, and we're focused on the prophecies. That's fine.
Dia: If you are hearing any of this and going that sounds fun. That sounds cool. Don't worry, this is not going to be spoiler heavy, because I don't understand the plot. But yes, so you become immune to this disease, which you're prophesied to be immune to, by contracting it and being cured. Which. I have some questions about the definition of immune but okay. Again.
Duck: It makes sense. Obviously, you were not the hero until you became immune to the disease by being cured of it and you can't-- it's like chickenpox.
Dia: You're immune to, you’re immune to corprus the same way that I'm immune to whooping cough, because I was born during the vaccine scandal and had to contract it the old fashioned way.
Duck: Ooh. Ruff. I have scientific form of immunity, which I do recommend if you can manage it.
Dia: Yeah, because you had the advantage of being born before Andrew Wakefield ruined the world.
Duck: This is correct.
Dia: I’ve now given away my age to anyone, who cares to go do some Googling.
Duck: Yeah, you could now place this place us specifically in some demographics.
Dia: You know, pre and post rubella. Anyway, so you become immune to it the old fashioned way. And you move on to the third prophecy, which is the one I like best because I like the fact that there's a magic ring called the moon and star also known as the one clan under moon and star. I just love that. That's my favourite bit of Skyrim lore.
Duck: This ring has a diminutive nickname.
Dia: I think the reason is because I read the plot summary before I watched the Let’s Play to give myself a bit more like of a hook to hold on to while I was taking notes on the Let’s Play. And when I read the plot summary, I was just picturing the moon ring, the like Moon rings from H2O Mako Mermaids.
Duck: Sorry, I need to look something up.
Dia: Which, while you're doing that, for listeners, they're basically these sort of cheap plastic looking rings that are clearly designed to be easy to mass produce and sell to little girls who love H2O mermaids.
Duck: There’s a picture! I love it.
Dia: They're extremely funny. They give you like a variety of magic powers which seem cool until the male mermaids show up and have a trident that gives you godlike powers.
Duck: Yeah, and they look like they are made of the smallest sliver of turquoise it is possible to buy and the kind of silver that's actually clay.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: I love them, they seem great.
Dia: They are, that is what I was picturing the entire time I was learning about the one clan under moon and star. This is what I was picturing is the moon rings from H2O Mako Mermaids.
Duck: Perfect, no notes.
Dia: And I now really want to buy one and cosplay as a Elder Scrolls character wearing it just for my own personal amusement.
Duck: I support you so much.
Dia: Unfortunately I think I do have to play the games before I'm allowed to cosplay as anyone
Duck: Who's going to stop you?
Dia: The cop inside my mind.
Duck: Well, that one is difficult to defeat.
Dia: Yes. Anyway, so the moon ring from h2o Mako mermaids originally belongs to the original Nerevar and has instant kill powers for anyone who tries to wear it. So I immediately moved on from Mako mermaids to thinking about Yugioh. So I had a really hard time just paying attention to what I was supposed to be reading during this entire saga. But it is my favourite part of the game.
Duck: It's a classic test. Are you the hero of prophecy? Put this ring on. If you die? No, you weren't.
Dia: Yeah, it's very much a witch drowning situation where it's like, Oh, guess it wasn't you. Sorry, my bad.
Duck: Right.
Dia: Now you're dead.
Duck: With certainty that you were not the hero.
Dia: And you do in fact, get the ring, you do not die though that would be the funniest possible ending to the game, and I wish they'd done it.
Duck: Oh!
Dia: Like there was, I feel like it would be such a good game, if there was something you had to do to cleverly be immune to the ring. And like you had to piece it together.
Duck: Or if you didn't do all these things in the wrong order, like before you have cemented yourself as, as you're passing enough of the prophecies, then then the ring kills you.
Dia: I just think it would be neat.
Duck: It would be great. You’re not immune yet, the ring just kills you. It's like no, sorry.
Dia: Anyway, still not the point. And then that was prophecy number three.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: You then move on. And you've got to rally the great houses under one banner,
which is described as the fourth and fifth trials in the first summary I read and then broken down a bit more in later summaries, but it's honestly just not relevant to me. So I'm going to stick with the, like, the first one I read, which was the Wikipedia one, which just yada-yada-s this entire section of gameplay?
Duck: Yeah, I think it’s that there’s technically speaking, two factions. And one of the factions is the fourth trial, while the factions is the fifth trial, if it matters.
Dia: Yeah. And I will admit, when I was watching Let’s Plays this is one of the bits where my brain just slid over so I have endless sympathy for the people who were editing the descriptions I was reading which just went “and then you do the bebedebe bit”.
Duck: You do the thing.
Dia: You do a bit. And it's actually two bits. And you just go, Yeah, sure, it’s done.
Duck: You could do them in whatever order and you don't have to do them all at once. So it's, distinguishing the bits is not important.
Dia: So basically, you have to get given titles by each of these groups. One of which is you have to get called Hortator, and the other which is you have to be titled Nereverin.
Duck: I assume that Hortator does not mean Gardner.
Dia: It-- I mean, it does a bit but we're not going to get into that
Duck: Okay, moving on.
Dia: Well, we are going to get into that, we're not going to get into that in this exact moment.
Duck: Great. Put a pin in it.
Dia: Yeah, pin in hortator, and Caecilius est in horto adjacent knowledge. I saw this bust of Caecilius recently, and the person standing next to me went “Caecilius from the horto!”, and I've been thinking about it everyday sense.
Duck: Dear reader, this is a reference to the Cambridge course in Latin a thing I have not taken, but I've hung enough, hung around enough with the kind of people whose schools offered Latin that I know that Caecilius est in horto. This is all I know.
Dia: You may also know him from the episode of Doctor Who where he's played by Peter Capaldi before Capaldi was Doctor Who.
Duck: Well, I now remember that character, but I did not remember him being called Caecilius.
Dia: It was incredibly exciting.
Duck: Exciting to a particular kind of nerd.
Dia: We actually got to watch that in Latin class. That episode of Doctor Who was a treat at the end of the year, because it had the characters from the Cambridge Latin course textbooks.
Duck: Blorbo from my Latin textbook.
Dia: Who to be fair were real people who did in fact, live in Pompeii. They're all based on like real people we have archaeological records of--
Duck: We need to, I’m dragging us back onto track.
Dia: Not the point again, sorry, I'm very easily distracted. Especially from things that I find confusing and difficult to things I find easy like Roman archaeology.
Duck: Nonetheless, having been named the interesting hortator, and the Nereverin
Dia: Still feel like that should be a medication, by the various the great houses and the tribes. And you're then I think, officially the Nerevarin even though obviously, you have just done five out of seven prophecies.
Duck: I love-- you put on the ring that confirms without a doubt that you are the reincarnated and Nereverin. And then it's like, no, you still have to go and get the people on board. Otherwise, it doesn't count as
Dia: There’s still admin. And you are told that the tribunal temple do actually kill anyone who claimed to be the rereverine. And it's actually not clear if these previous people have put on a ring. It might be clear, and I just missed it. But I could not--
Duck: They could just have killed reincarnations they’re not keen on.
Dia: Yeah, I could, I could not tell from the versions I watched. It's possible there is like data that does inform you otherwise, within the game, but I counldn’t tell.
Duck: I do not wish to be disabused of this image.
Dia: And I really love the idea that when they say the ring has the power to instantly kill anyone who puts it on. That is because somebody is behind them taking off their head with a sword.
Duck: Right, and the the line between the ring causes this to happen and this happens when you put the ring on it's very thin.
Dia: Yes. And it's once you've finished the paperwork, not when you put the ring on, that you get invited to meet one of the triumvirate. Are they called tribunal?
Duck: Tribunal.
Dia: One of those words? Yes, sorry, are the lot of things that have similar names and have similar concepts. I'm really trying.
Duck: It’s all good.
Dia: The tribunal, you get invited to meet someone from the tribunal who I Vivek who I have his name down here. And Vivec which is sending Slavic, calls you up to discuss battle tactics, and I just I very much enjoy the degree with which you are progressing from like, mysticism to paperwork to battle tactics.
Duck: All these things are in fact one thing.
Dia: And you finally get some cool, magical artefacts, which is always lovely. This one is made by the dwarves that are actually elves.
Duck: The dwarves that are elves confuse me on a mythic level, but they are certainly present.
Dia: Yep. The, which is sort of a gauntlet-looking thing that is supposed to be an ancient magical weapon that lets you get power from the magical thing which Dagoth is using to make himself immortal? It's all very snake eating its own tail at this stage. But the point is these tools can
these tools you're gonna go after so you're gonna go get these tools can destroy the heart of Lokhan which is the thing that's making Dagur, Dagothavur, Dagoth Ur, whatever his sodding name is immortal. But if you don't have this gauntlet thing, it will kill you to do so it's the Infinity Gauntlet is basically what it is.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: It's you know, it's the thing you put the Infinity Stones in so you're not just holding them and getting torn apart Guardians of the Galaxy style. I'm making this so much easier to understand anyone who hasn't played Elder Scrolls whilst making it incomprehensible to fans of Elder Scrolls.
Duck: Fans of Elder Scrolls are used to being confused they'll cope.
Dia: Fans of Elder Scrolls are already annoyed with me at this point.
Duck: We are so cancelled we just we just have to plough on ahead.
Dia: This is the most cancellable thing I've done in weeks and I defended Big Bang Theory to you recently.
Duck: You did, it was very cancelable.
Dia: But yes so you've got the gauntlet which will stop the weapons you need from killing you which is always nice when you don't die, I love not dying. And then you go to the Red Mountain which is where Dagoth Ur is, you meet him he tries to convince you that he is doing what Nerevar, who you are supposedly the reincarnation of, wanted. You get to fight him which is nice.
Duck: I mean, this was all your idea is an interesting take when faced with a hero.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: More villains should try it.
Dia: Which I think I… Okay, unclear to me again, unclear from playthroughs that you were not supposed to previously know about the heart of Lorkan. Because you beat him in a fight and he comes back from the dead. And you kind of go oh, I guess I have to destroy that which I really thought you already knew but possibly clear to people who would just understand the source material better than I do. But you do in fact go and find the heart of Lorkhan and you do destroy it you do in fact kill Dagoth Ur, and you destroy basically everything there. It's, it's a sort of, you know, it's very Independence Day, you cut off the head, everything collapses.
Duck: Your classic, you kill the guy and the whole temple crashes down around you and you have to flee.
Dia: Yeah, you know, it's the end of the Mummy Returns where Dwayne The Rock Johnson runs in in his extremely unconvincing Scorpion man CGI.
Duck: I think all the mummy movies actually have at least one instance of you kill a guy and then the whole place is falling down around your ears and you have to run away.
Dia: But only one of them means the world to me.
Duck: But it’s the wrong one which I am judging you for.
Dia: To be fair, I also I love the Mummy Returns I just don't think it's as an as iconica You kill the guy and the temple collapses as… I love The Mummy but I do think that the Mummy Returns ending is more iconic just because of…
Duck: Dwaye the Rock, sorry, Dwayne the Scorpion Johnson.
Dia: It's the combination of the like absurdly like high personal stakes like people are dying people are finding out they’re prophesied heroes and then just the Scorpion King rocks up and it's just some guy like it's the worst CGI you've ever seen in your life is actually completely irrelevant to the climax. Anyway, we're off topic again, we’ve swept…
Duck: We are so far from on topic that we cannot see it from here.
Dia: Okay, where did I get up to? Right? Mountain Temple comes down and blight is cleared from the land. It's all deeply mediaeval understanding of kings. But I'm not going to get into that, because that's one digression I'm going to manage to avoid. Please, God. And my favourite thing is when I read summaries of this, it just says, when you escaped the Nerevarin, Reverend is congratulated by Azura, who had not been mentioned at any previous point in this summary.
And I had to go and look up who the fuck that was.
Duck: It’s one of the gods.
Dia: It is one of the gods, but I did not know that. I was like, I thought I'd missed a character. No, it's just another god that you do not know anything about. But I assume if you played the game, I mean, I assume I did watch Let’s Plays. And I did hear the name I just wasn't, I don't know if I would have paid attention if I had been playing. That's that much.
Duck: That’s fair.
Dia: And, interestingly, the game does not end, which is neat. You get to go and see how you have affected the world.
Duck: That is neat.
Dia: Yes, the the sort of the cult, people have woken up and don't remember anything. A lot of stuff that was happening to sort of ends dramatically. But the tribunal have become mortal, which is very neat. And there is an expansion, I think, which is about this loss of godhood. But yes, basically, there is a whole like you can go do open world stuff, or you can go explore the consequences of what you've done. This is also a point where I find the different summaries that exist really identify themselves for what they're interested in, because they have very different priorities in the end of the game. A few of them say like, oh, yeah, you can go see what you've done, but the game's over, and a few of them talk in a lot of depth. And my personal favourite, the Wikipedia entry for this game rather than for the series overall describes the weak minded followers of the sixth house of reawakened, which just feels unnecessarily mean.
B; It’s rude.
Dia: Like, okay. I'm sure I know nothing about these people, I don't. You don't you don't really have any meaningful interactions with the fact that there's a bunch of like, cultists and spies and stuff, you are very much doing your own thing. If you're not doing the open world thing.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: Like the actual linear plot is surprisingly unaffected by the everything that is cured at the end of the game.
Duck: Yes, I mean, that's that's true of basically, all of the The Elder Scrolls games is that you, you-- it's always sometimes hard to my first playthrough of Skyrim. I didn't realise I just finished the main plot, because I still have all these open quests involving people who've been irrelevant to the main plot. That was like, Oh, well, this seems anticlimactic. And it's because it just doesn't shut off previous things in the game and you go and do stuff.
Dia: Yes. So I've walked us through the plot and Morrowind. Again, as I said, I read through at the very least read a summary or two of each game, I did watch a smattering of Skyrim Let's Plays a variety of clips of other games and quite a lot of Morrowind ones. I think at this point, I've genuinely forgetting, forgetting? Forgotten which were which.
Duck: The Skyrim ones were the ones that were drab and grey. The Oblivion ones were the ones with colour in. And the Morrowind ones were the ones with probably quite good graphics for 2002.
Dia: Yeah, that tracks.
Duck: Mostly bad graphics, but they are bad graphics from 2002.
Dia: Anyway, the point, point being, walked us through the plot, I am now going to walk us back to what I'm going to say about religious allegory.
Duck: All right, rewinding to when I'm excited.
Dia: Well, yeah, we're rolling back, we've basically given the parts. So obviously, this is not an exhaustive description of the plot of an open world game, because that is physically impossible. It's not even an exhaustive description of like the linear main plot, I have skipped bits. What this is, is, is a linear description of the events in the main plot that I give a shit about for the purposes of religious analysis.
Duck: A good rubric. And so I'm gonna move us on to our next summary, which is the gardens of Gethsemane. I've been talking for a while do you want to take this one?
Dia: Wow, I was not expecting to be called upon for the gardens of Gethsemane.
You don’t have to, I just…
Duck: No, I was not probably.
Dia: I just feel like it's been really limited like, actual interaction between hosts is more than me poorly explaining a video game I haven't played for a really long time.
Duck: So the Gardens of Gethsemane, the Garden of Gethsemane, rather, is a location outside Jerusalem, quite nearby outside Jerusalem. And the reason it is famous in Christian like
Mythos, mythmaking is on the same night he was betrayed. After the last supper, and before getting arrested, Jesus goes to pray. And he goes to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. And this is where he, where you get the famous prayer about. I super don't want to do this, but I will, if you tell me I should. It's I'm paraphrasing, this is not a translation. Yeah. This is the
praying that the cup might pass as in, I don't want to drink this as I don't want to go through with this. But I'm not going to run away. This is like the location where my fate is going to come to me. So this is where I am. But I don't want to do this, because it's going to suck. And while he is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, Judas goes and tells the Roman soldiers where he is, they come and arrest him. So it's, it has this mythological presence, this sort of weight to it of
it's simultaneously a peaceful place, it is a place of prayer and contemplation, but also the place where your doom comes to find you.
Dia: Excellent. And so that is religion pin number one.
Duck: We est in horto.
Dia: I am very much just sort of dragging around some religious pins just to give anyone listening context for things that we're probably going to bring up in discussion. So religious pin number two, is the Temptation of Christ which. This one does what it says on the tin in a way that the Garden of Gethsemane does not. You know, Christ.
Duck: I'm aware of, I have heard of him. Yes.
Dia: You know, temptation.
Duck: I am aware of all sorts that I have experienced, the these things, yes.
Dia: Well. The Temptation of Christ.
Duck: The Temptation of Christ. I think is just before the baptism.
Dia: I think it’s right after.
Duck: It might be right after it's in the region of the baptism, Christ goes off into the wilderness for 40 days to contemplate and be holy. And somewhere probably toward the end of these 40 days, literally, the devil shows up, and attempts to tempt him into using his power of being God for selfish reasons. So like, why don't you, you're really hungry. Why don't you turn this rock into bread? Ah, because man does not live by bread alone. And then takes him up to a high place. It's it's just described as a high place. And it's like, you know, you could totally just jump off and fly. And he's like, Nah, but we'll just be showing off. And the third temptation is showing him all the lands of the world being like, you could be king of all of this. And he's like, yep, nah, I've got this appointment in Gethsemane. He's collective, all these things, collectively, are the temptations of Christ. And the devil goes away being like, well, I guess he's the real deal.
Dia: Yes. And this appears, so the Garden of Gethsemane appears in one of the Gospels. I'm gonna say, Matthew, I think it also appears in Mark, I could be wrong, it definitely belongs inone or the other. It might be in both. The Temptation of Christ is definitely in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. I think it's absent from John but it's like referenced.
Duck: A lot of stuff is different in John.
Dia: There's a lot of repetitiveness between gospels, and it's very hard to keep straight. But generally speaking, if one of them is dropping the ball, it's John.
Duck: John was less biographically focused than the other three.
Dia: John had his own things going on.
Duck: He did I love John.
Dia: Don't we all? We do not. That's a very, very broad statement to make about a--
Duck: I don't think it's that straightforward. But sure. On this podcast, we stan John the Apostle.
Dia: Yeah, look, I'm just here for the animals of the apostles. That's all I care about. I'm very disappointed whenever I visit mediaeval churches outside of Europe, outside of Europe? Outside of England, within Europe, and they just don't have enough lions in them. Like you've got to go to Venice or something to see lions everywhere. What is happening, this is a failure.
Duck: Anyway.
Dia: Again, I've got a lot of notes and they're not very well connected.
Duck: We have two religious things, have you got another religious pin you want to throw in here.
Dia: So I have a, yes, so I have a religion which is a tiny bit more complicated, which is Jesus. Duck: That is a fairly complex--
Dia: I’m not going to ask you to explain this one.
Duck: I will commit several heresies and not even on purpose. If you asked me to do off the top of my head, Jesus, this is where we get back to once in royal David's city [sings quietly] “stood a low--” you know, we’ve covered this.
Duck: Oh, I used to be able to sing it, you know, at pitch when I was a soprano, but that was some time ago.
Dia: I mean, I'm not going to test whether or not I can, I probably, it's been a while. It's summer.
Duck: It's not the, it's not the season singing that song.
Dia: It's bad luck. Anyway. We're gonna talk a little bit about the, the Gospels and what they say about Jesus Christ. You know, our guy, the one in the long brown hair.
Duck: Yeah, the one on --
Dia: The one on the cross, that dude. The one who.... The reason I was sent to Sunday school as a child is that I walked past a crucifix and pointed it out to my dad and said, That man is stuck. And he thought, I have neglected this child's religious education.
Duck: Amazing.
Dia: I was maybe three when this happened. I was like, just learning to talk. I think this might have been one of my first full sentences and my dad says we need to go to church more.
Duck: Your earliest religious analysis is: that man is stuck.
Dia: And to be fair, that man was stuck.
Duck: You were not wrong.
Dia: I was correct. That man was stuck.
Duck: That was a pretty big thing that--
Dia: Or was he? That is a question for the ages.
Duck: That, we’re getting into theology and I am not qualified.
Dia: Neither of us is qualified to do theology. I didn't even bother to consult my theologian on this I spoke to like three philosophers, no theologians, what am I doing with my life?
Duck: Heresy.
Dia: Anyway, the thing with the Gospels and I'm going to try not to commit heresy here. But I might fail. Is, a lot of the mention things that seem somewhat unnecessary about the lineage of Jesus.
Duck: Right a number of them have what you might, you might even interpret as ticking off some credentials.
Dia: Yes, so the reason we are bringing up for the hymn Once in Royal David’s City, which most of my Sixth Form class were not familiar with. I really hope you left that anecdote in or that's just gonna seem like an unnecessary mean spirited dig at people I went to sixth form with.
Duck: And they have, they have their reasons. I would encourage if the listener you are not familiar with this, just, just Google it, you will be presented with the lyrics, you will then understand what we are talking about.
Dia: Yeah. The only lyric that is actually important is “Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed.”
Duck: The claim that is relevant here is that this is David’s city as in King David, that guy.
Dia: So um, if you are from a like, vaguely culturally Christian background slash surroundings, so if you've grown up in say, a majority Christian country, a majority Christian area, maybe you were in a nativity play or witnessed one at some point, you're going to be familiar with at least the basic tenets of the Nativity, which is, you know, stable, manger, Mary, Jesus, Joseph.
Duck: No room at the inn, three wise men.
Dia: Yeah, that bit. The bit that we're talking about here specifically is the donkey situation and the inn situation, namely, why is this woman who is nine months pregnant journeying anywhere on a donkey? And the answer is tax purposes. So.
Duck: Not tax avoidance actually, this is tax non avoidance.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: Failure to avoid tax.
Dia: Basically, for taxation reasons, which we are assured make perfect sense and are very normal and logistically plausible. Every single person. Well, every single man, every person who pays tax, therefore, men. Free men.
Duck: Free adult men, you know, people.
Dia: Yeah. Is having to go back to the town where they were born, regardless of where they now live to basically re-register for taxes.
Duck: There’s a census happening. It's being operated in a very strange way.
Dia: Yes. So you're heading back to the town where you were born to hand in your census data.
It's like when you move out of an old house, where you were on the postal vote, and you have to like write to someone who lives there now to get your vote sent on.
Duck: Yeah, please send me my poll card.
Dia: We are told in the Bible that this is extremely normal and totally happens and makes perfect sense as a system of census taking and taxation.
Duck: Right, we are, we are assured that this is where we are given like a year in which it happened according to who was governor at the time.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: My understanding that this historically doesn't help.
Dia: No. Though, to be fair, historical lining up with the Bible is just not an issue. I think either of us is qualified to weigh in on so.
Duck: Please speak to a theologian we are not qualified.
Dia: But point being we, we join now Mary and Joseph on their lengthy donkey journey to Bethlehem, because that is where Joseph is from. Joseph being of the line of David.
Duck: Joseph being Mary's husband, but not Jesus's dad, because God got involved.
Dia: Yeah. This is important because the prophecy which exists within the Old Testament, and not quite therefore, but for our purposes, therefore within the Torah is that a child will be born of Jesse's line, which is the line from which King David comes.
Duck: King David's dad is Jesse.
Dia: Yes, that's probably a very much easier way of saying it, then my circuitous one. The point being, it's important, we know that Joseph is of this line, and therefore going back to David's city, with his very, very pregnant wife, who is about to have a baby in a manger and all that, and be announced by a star, which is also you know, mentioned, and has become way, way more an important part of it than really necessary because we love the visual, can you blame us.
Duck: Right. It's a minor part of the prophecy, but a big part of the aesthetic.
Dia: Yeah, it's just it's a lot easier to have an aesthetic like, little manger with a star above it than it is to artistically represent King David’s city.
Duck: Cities are hard to draw. And even harder to cut out and stick on top of the Christmas tree, I'm way off topic here.
Dia: For religious purposes, I am not disputing the existence of Jesus Christ.
Duck: We are not in this analysis engaged with the historical claims of Christianity. That is not what we're doing here.
Dia: We are, however, noting that the apostles take note of all of the ways in which the birth of Jesus Christ and the early years of Jesus of Nazareth align with an existing prophecy.
Duck: Yes. They take pains
Dia: Which they tell you the people of which Jesus was part were expecting a birth of this kind.
Duck: There was a pre existing prophecy in the religious sense, which is slightly different from a foretelling.
Dia: Yes.
Duck: There was a preexisting prophecy of the Messiah. Like, who who will be, you know, the divine champion who will come and overthrow the oppressor was a big part of it. It got more spiritualized under Christianity than it kind of originally had been. But will be religiously very important. And also free us from the Romans.
Dia: Anyway, that is our third religious pin is is…
Duck: Yes, hero of prophecy, one might say.
Dia: I feel like these are slightly backwards, because I've actually started with the crucifixion, then the temptations and the Nativity. But okay, I've basically, I've led us up one path and then back down another. And I'm now going to demonstrate to you all that these paths are in fact, a circle. So really, if you think about it, I did this perfectly, and I have no issues with my structure.
Duck: This is this is poetical and on purpose.
Dia: Yes, it's chiasmus.
Duck: That sounds like a complicated word. So I'm going to believe that it is both correct and important.
Dia: Yeah, it's very deep. Actually.
Duck: Please continue with this very deep analysis.
Dia: I mean, you may be getting ahead of me, but my religious allegorical reading of this is that this is not a religious allegory, in the traditional sense of it is a Christ like narrative of triumph over oppression, which we have seen and done 5 million thousand times. And every single time, it just seems stupider because it misses so many interim bits, because nobody wants to do the interim bits. To which I say, what are you fucking Catholic?
Duck: Well now we’re cancelled. We're never coming back from this.
Dia: I'm sorry, is there a more Catholic thing to do then going nativity, crucifix, whatever. They like, you ever listen to a Catholic hymn? It's always the first verse, one verse in the middle that the conductor likes. And then the last verse. I'm sorry, some of us had to get through every single line of The Angel Gabriel, Gabriel’s Message, whatever it’s called.
Duck: I'm gonna have to edit this.
Dia: I think you're just gonna edit it so it's just me insulting religions for an hour straight?
Duck: Yes, I'm gonna remove all of me and it's just gonna be you talking into a microphone about Catholics.
Dia: Yeah. To be fair, I have said that to Catholics in the past. It's an opinion I've long held that Catholic hymns should be longer.
Duck: Anyway.
Dia: You’re not training your lungs, man, the Anglicans, we all like showing up. We're doing the whole thing we're doing.
Duck: Is this relevant to your analysis of the Elder Scrolls.
Dia: Well, no, I just I'm easily distracted. It's 9.30 at night. I've been doing content analysis all day.
Duck: Analyse faster!
Dia: Okay, here we go. Here we go. My point is, this is not a reading of-- an allegorical reading, usually in Christian contexts, is basically any story in which someone comes from adversity and triumphs over some great evil, usually in the form of an oppressive like ruler, but often also in the form of some kind of nebulous evil, poisoning the land, which I argue that that is what this story is going to be cast as several 100 years later in universe when Skyrim happens.
Duck: I like it, I like it.
Dia: This is not a religious allegorical reading of Morrowind as the, the life of Jesus Christ. It is an allegorical reading of Morrowind, as the record of Jesus Christ, as brought to us by such hits as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but also other ones in the New Testament, not all of them. Some of them are much more straightforward telling us like a to b. Some of them have a lot of like, who begat who, and where were things built. But to be fair, most of that stuff is Old Testament. Spent a lot of time in Sunday School stumbling over Nebuchadnezzar.
Duck: It's a good name.
Dia: There's a lot of just lists of people who gave birth to other people, well, actually rarely the people who gave birth usually the people who were not involved in the birthing section of the production of a human being. But still, this is a story about how prophecies come to pass. And you are put in the position of a person who can totally do all these prophecy things. Like there's a list, there's seven criteria, you just got to go through them. And you know, it'll work because you're playing a video game.
Duck: There isn't a version of this video game where you put the ring on and fall down debt.
Dia: No, there should be, but there isn't, you know, as the player that you are playing a video game, and the video games have endings, they might have multiple endings, there might be failure points, there might be, for example, a version of the game as a narrative where you just completely screwed up and died. But then you just go back to your last save point and keep going.
Duck: Right, you have an infinite number of Marios
Dia: Yeah, you can just keep on trying until you succeed in your prophecy. So in a matter of speaking, the prophecy is set in stone, which means you can always come back to it.
Duck: Right. It will be true.
Dia: This is very much in the nature of an open world game. It's very much in the nature of an open world game. You are entirely welcome upon meeting your man Caius to go, No, thanks. I'm good. I'm gonna go look over here where there's some people who seem to have a quest for me.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: You can do zero quests. In an open world game. I used to. I used to be really into Runescape when I was in primary school, so like under 10. And I got really annoyed whenever anyone gave me a quest, because the quest markers would be there. And they would annoy me and I would never do quests. So they would be there annoying me while I was trying to chop wood.
Duck: I mean, there's, there's a, I don't know about popular, but there's certainly a possible anti speed run approach to Skyrim, where you just walk at a walking pace, and eat meals and sleep at night.
Dia: Those are the Let’s Plays I probably enjoyed watching the most, because you can just watch the scenery go by and vibe.
Duck: The scenery is really pretty.
Dia: My point is, you can always do this, it's always in front of you. So when you choose in universe, your character, the player character is choosing to do all of the things you are both choosing to do them and choosing to not do them when you choose to do them. You are fulfilling a series of exercises to take yourself to a designated end point. Because that's what video games are really fundamental level.
Duck: You’re choosing to play the game, or whether you're choosing to in this case, play the plot rather than wander around and not doing that.
Dia: Exactly. You are aware at all points that there is a linear narrative mapped out for you with a correct ending. And every choice you make you are either following that linear narrative or you are forking off from it. The interesting thing about this game is other people are aware of something very, very similar in-universe so the fictional characters are aware that there is a series of prophecies and you potentially could do all of these things and fulfil these fortellings, one by one in a linear fashion, proceeding from checkpoint to checkpoint until you win.
Duck: Sure.
Dia: So we're getting meta in here, but we're getting meta in a very simple way that is hopefully followable.
Duck: Right. We have NPCs who are simultaneously telling your character how to fulfil prophecies and telling you the player how to play the game.
Dia: Yes. And so this is where I'm going to anchor point one. This is the emperor’s noting of you as a baby who was born on the correct day to our third point of religious pinning, which is the Nativity. Birth to birth. Very neat.
Duck: Very tidy.
Dia: See, I have planned plus. It's all very nice and organised. What you have is basically this setup is, look we can tick the boxes we need to make you the hero.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: Which is interesting because you you have like it's very interesting to me just in a sort of
linear progression of how video games work because character introductions are one of the things that I do find very interesting about video games, because quite often in modern open world games, one of the hallmarks of open world games nowadays is that they tend to have very, very, like, open diverse character creations, which I think is actually a really interesting challenge when you're trying to introduce character into a setting.
Duck: Right. Right, you you get to pick all sorts of things about yourself, but including where you're from and your background, and, and then the game has some kind of sort of plot flow, where it puts you at the beginning of the game. And Morrowind has some of that in that you do get to decide on your species and your stats in a fairly free way. But you are still this prisoner who has been sent over for reasons of prophecy.
Dia: Yeah. And it is very much, you can see, in a sense, the Emperor going through records and looking for plausible candidates. You don't know if he's done this before. You don't know how he found you. You just know that you’re here now.
Duck: This might be a tradition, every time I get a prisoner who was born on Christmas Day, I send them over to Vvardenfell and see if they pan out.
Dia: Yeah. And so this is our backdrop is there is just something extremely hinky and this is the thing that I find really interesting as an allegorical reading in parallel with the Gospels is I am saying this as somebody who is from a Christian background, I don't think it negates believing in Christ. To say that it is noticeable that the Gospels are doing this box ticking exercise.
Duck: Yeah, yeah, you can you can you can both believe that the guy is qualified, and notice that the writers of the Gospels are trying hard to communicate the qualifications.
Dia: Sure, I'm not lying in a job interview, when I make sure to shoehorn references to my degree into questions like What do you do for fun? So we’re onto Duck: temptation. Now my point with the temptation here is that, as I said, there were divergence points, not so much as points but as like the entire nature of the game. What's interesting to me is how much of, there is an inter, as mentioned, there's an entire section which is about like directing yourself to people, which is where we get the Hortator, which means incitor? This is why I wanted to bring back to is that gardener? It kind of means like, encourager, I guess? it's kind of like, I don't know how to express express this in English. It's almost like shouter. You know, it's it's the drill sergeant is
if you think the word exhort, which is a very obscure word, but one I assume people have at least--
Duck: It’s not that obscure a word, you can exhort someone to do something.
Dia: Yeah, exhort so that is with the prefix X meaning out of, so if you're hortator, you are-- it's almost like it's a very onomatopoetic noise. It's almost like you're like hefting something up, you are arising some response out of something.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: I almost said it. I almost translated it as arouser and then realised that was gonna give a very incorrect impression of what I'm getting out here.
Duck: Yeah. Now in English, that doesn't quite work. Although old fashioned high formal English, sure, yes. I get what you're driving at.
Dia: Yeah. It's very interesting that like, the two titles you're given are the one that makes stuff happen. And the reincarnation of some guy.
Duck: Look, it's the guy, the shouty guy!
Dia: But yes. Basically. These are when you've already passed the danger. resections is you're then sent to do politics. And this is what's interesting to me in context of like, the Christ narrative, as it is put together in the New Testament, compared to Morrowind from the Elder Scrolls. What am I doing with my life? Okay. In Morrowind, you go through being born fine, whatever, living an entirely normal life.
Duck: Yep.
Dia: And then the first challenge you have is to not die of a horrible disease, specifically, a divine disease created by the guy you are supposed to be prophesied to defeat.
Duck: Right. There's a magical plague from the villain. Prove yourself immune to this and then we can talk.
Dia: And the only reason you have to believe that you are able to survive this is the Emperor says you were born on the right day and well, you were in prison, so you might as well try. Wouldn't you rather risk death than be in prison? Right?
Duck: Depends on the prison.
Dia: It's worth it!
Duck: Continue.
Dia: I mean, I have to assume prisons in this world are not great.
Duck: They're probably not great.
Dia: I don't think they have a Geneva Convention.
Duck: Look at it another way. In this world. There are no war criminals.
Dia: I don't like that at all. That’s the worst thing you've ever said. Anyway, um, I'd like to posit that this is actually possibly the grimmest task you could be given as step one of your quest is don't die of this horrible disease that was created to kill people. We have this incredibly arbitrary reason to believe you might not die. What’s that? You have the disease? Well, sucks for you. But hey, we have this experimental cure that could do anything. Why don’t you try that? It would-- it's better than being in prison, right? This is the creepiest and most upsetting thing I found in any of my reading of Skyrim lore over the last like fortnight.
Duck: Impressive.
Dia: I don't like this element. It bothers me how this is not a like noted plot point that this is deeply fucked up. I didn't even find any fanfiction about how fucked up this is. And I looked. I think it just stuck in my craw for no particular reason. But it did seem like, cruel. And this is why I'm getting us to the Temptation of Christ. It's a--
Duck: Not an immediately seen link.
Dia: No, this is the thing. I was thinking about the Christ narrative in context of this because I was trying to come up with a religious allegory and it does not lend itself to a religious allegory and a really one to one way. And the thing I was finding interesting is the Temptation of Christ kind of gets skipped over and a lot of like Christian Parliament's because like, yeah, of course, he was immune to that. Right? I mean, like, it's a great sacrifice. It's a beautiful moment. It's important, but like, of course, it happened the way it happened.
Duck: Right. It's not really treated as a temptation. So much as a ritual exercise.
Dia: Even in like films about the Passion of Christ, of which there are many and few are good. The temptation is very much presented as kind of a like, the bit where Dumbledore shows up in the last Harry Potter movie and kind of goes, you could just die. You know, that would probably be easier.
Duck: Right, and of course, our hero being a plucky hero does not say you're right, that would be easier.
Dia: You know what Sleep Sounds great.
Duck: Again, would be a really interesting way to end that story.
Dia: Oh, my God, I'm not saying I’d forgive JK Rowling everything but like, I would let her have one transphobia if she had just ended out or you bought a series, but he goes, You know what, you're right, I will die. That's the end of the book.
Duck: Join us next time for the epilogue. Nothing is better. Amazing.
Dia: Anyway, my point is, I was thinking about this as a Christ narrative and thinking hmm, the first sort of Hero of prophecy thing we see. Right, so you've got your introduction, your your induction, so to speak into the world of the fact that you are the prophesied hero who will do this thing. I'm pitching that as baptism adjacent because it's the literal dip, the dip into the waters of you are now on your quest.
Duck: Yes, it makes-- You could do a quest, you are doing a quest division.
Dia: Yes. The next thing that happens is something that proves you are morally sturdy, right? We've got the Temptation of Christ, where you go out into the desert and fast for 40 days. Basically, it's Lent.
Duck: Yes, it is the reason for Lent. And for those of us who grew up in like modern half-assed Christian world, where we like at the absolute most give up drinking or like, beef. I think, like a lot of us sort of forget that fasting is quite hardcore, like mad respect to people who practice fasting in the modern world.
Duck: Yes.
Dia: Where you are constantly surrounded by the option of a burger.
Duck: Even the fairly, fairly hardcore lent performers, which is mainly Catholics, are not doing a full on eat nothing fast.
Dia: Yeah. Obviously, there are many people who fast for reasons that are not Lent, for religious reasons. And you can look at that for an idea of what hardcore fast it actually is.
Duck: It's not easy.
Dia: It's not just don't eat for 40 days, you would die, obviously.
Duck: No, no, no.
Dia: But it is still very difficult on you. There is a reason that religions that do practice fasting haven't, have a lot of built in rules for when you shouldn't do it, because you'll die. Like if you're pregnant, or diabetic or otherwise…
Duck: You should not fast if you are: list of pre existing condition.
Dia: Yeah. My point is, the Temptation of Christ is something that like Christians tend to sort of just like skip over the thing that had to happen at one point, like yeah, yeah, yeah, he was tempted, he decided not to rule the world as a God King. Good plan, well done. A plus.
Duck: Which does downsell how difficult it would be to not do that if you have the option.
Dia: This is the thing. I think the way it was presented to me in Sunday school as a child is like, oh, yeah, Jesus could have done anything was power, and he chose to be humble and good. Whereas I think if you just read it as a narrative within the Bible, it's much more Oh, this is quite brutal, actually.
Duck: Yeah, especially because like the first temptation is the whole bread thing, which that's after the 40 days of like, so that's at the end of fasting in the desert for six weeks. And it’s like, what could it really, What harm could it really do?
Dia: And this the thing that's interesting when you flip over and look at my proposed allegory, where the thing that happens after you accept that you are going to be on this quest is the corprus situation, where you are basically told, hey, this horrible disease exists, it was created by your orchestrated nemesis. Go see if you die. Just go see if you die, just do it.
Duck: Right. Just go and get it. Catch fasting.
Dia: And you do! Just go out and get this horrible disease and you do, you're not immune to it, you get it.
Duck: Prophecy failed.
Dia: You get it like I got whooping cough.
Duck: Prophecy failed.
Dia: You are not vaccinated.
Duck: And you are gonna die.
Dia: Your parents thought it would give you autism. And then you're given an experimental cure. And you get back up again after that. Then you go on to do the next quest.
Duck: Yeah, instead of just getting on a--
Dia: Prison must be really, really bad in this universe.
Duck: Getting on a boat and leaving which has surely got to be appealing.
Dia: And the point is, you can get on a boat and leave. You can just not be there. You can go do whatever you want. It's an open world game.
Duck: Right, you can go hang out in the tavern, and eat potatoes for the rest of your life.
Dia: Yeah. And like nothing bad will happen. There's no time bomb on this game where if you don't fulfil requests at a certain point, everybody dies.
Duck: Right, the timescale is slower than that. So it's: in a dim and uncertain future someone bad will be in charge probably. Yeah.
Dia: But like you're not having to do politics. So like who's the real winner? Right?
Duck: Consider the trade offs.
Dia: But of course you don't do that. Or if you do that you go back and undo that you did it. You go ahead and put on the moon ring from Mako Mermaids.
Duck: You admire the very small turquoise cabachon.
Dia: Yes. And you go, you get a vision which is where magic comes and I think this is actually the part where as your Azura came, comes up, but I just did not clock the name I think when I first read it I just saw vision. So when Azura shows up at the end I went who in the heck…
Duck: Azura by the way within the worldbuilding of the game. She's not adra. I don't know if this affects your analysis in any way.
Dia: No, I, I fully did not care which gods were which when I was doing this analysis. I did go back and go, does this add anything to it? And like yeah, if you want it to, you know how analysis works.
Duck: Fair enough.
Dia: I do think it's interesting because Adra, that are sort of the dark half mnemeene side of the gods but in a non-evil-hell-dimension way.
Duck: Yeah, well, one of them has a hell dimension. The others have other dimensions, which is I would argue different.
Dia: Yeah, exactly. But Azura specifically, not a hell dimension.
Duck: No, Azura is--
Dia: Title is a prince of dawn and dusk, according to my notes, which I will say sexiest god job.
Duck: Oh, absolutely.
Dia: That's rad man. Give me the liminal gods.
Duck: I don't know if we’re gonna go full cult. But we are certainly doing some quests for Azura here on the podcast.
Dia: Yeah. Absoitively. Anyway, you get a vision from the prince of dawn and dusk. I think I've read that Sarah J Maas book. And you are sort of confirmed as the Nereverin. So like, up until that point, still up in the air. And then you have to do paperwork, you have to go do a tonne of politics and talking to people and get declared it. And then you get to not get executed. And you're still not done. Like all you've gotten to this point is to not be executed. That's what you’ve won. That's your prize.
Duck: It’s so much work to not be executed.
Dia: You have done this much quest and the prize you get as you are neither in prison nor murdered. And at any point you could have just left.
Duck: I get not executed every day and I am not working this hard on it.
Dia: Exactly. Um, so this is why I come to the whole ending of the game just on a conceptual level. And my feelings about the Gardens of Gethsemane.
Duck: Uh huh.
Dia: Which is, there is no-- this is a thing because the entire game exists in a state of you could just not and it's a lot of hard work for what seems like really very little reward at every stage in the game. Like usually games reward you with cool stuff. There is a decided lack-- like you do get cool stuff. But it's not really a reward for like in-game quest markers.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: You get the gauntlet of not being killed by my own weapons, which is nice, but like you can also just not not wield weapons that kill you.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: Yeah, and I was thinking about this as a karst narrative because I was looking for a religious allegory. And I was thinking, damn, you could fuck off all your work. But even at the end of the game when the, when will you get, but you get to go outside and things are slightly less shit, but they don't even that much less shit. Like it's one specific bad thing has stopped. Yeah, it's one specific prophecy of many has been fulfilled.
Duck: Oh yeah there's a bunch more prophecy.
Dia: And then and then Azura shows up to be like okay now you get a reward but like, damn, that's it? Like it really left me with a damn that's it feeling at the end of it. And this is the feeling that I have about the Christ narrative which is in a way it is about the-- because on a worldwide scale this is that big actually to the historians who will record this in The Elder Scrolls, universe not the paper. You know what I mean?
Duck: Yes.
Dia: It's weird that they're called scrolls and I'm saying historians, but you know what I actually mean, in The Elder Scrolls universe, the historians who will write this down on unrelated scrolls.
Duck: Yes. On younger, less religiously important scrolls?
Dia: Yes, on the younger scrolls. The Snorra scrolls. Sorry, that is a reference for two people. But those people laughed like hell. On the Snorra scrolls, you get, this is a huge deal. The prophesied hero came and saved us and the people who were in the cult were awoken and freed and they got to live their lives and the blight is ended. But for like you personally, this sucks.
Duck: You don't even get a pension.
Dia: Right. And that really, is my hot take on the Gardens of Gethsemane. This is the prayer section where you are going, Hey, I don't want to do this. This sucks. That is this entire game. And that's my religious allegorical reading of the Elder Scrolls. Take it or leave it. I did so much research. I am not taking questions at this point.
Duck: I accept your allegory. Thank you, I. You've given me much to think on.
Dia: I am opening the floor but not to questions if you have any further input while I open some Google Docs.
Duck: So I would like to express both my admiration and sympathy that you focus this mainly on Morrowind. Because I was--
Dia: Morrowind was probably the one more I read this and thought, oh, I have opinions. Thank God. Thank Christ.
Duck: I was, had been assuming you would pick on Oblivion because Oblivion the entire story of Oblivion can be read as an allegory of the harrowing of hell.
Dia: It can but I just didn't find it interesting as an allegory.
Duck: But that's fair. I'm not sure it is interesting, because it is just a bit one note.
Dia: Yeah, I didn't think I could talk about it for an hour.
Duck: Well, we've talked about Morrowind for two. So on that one, we have fulfilled the minimum requirements.
Dia: We I think we talked about other things for most of that.
Duck: I'm gonna do some editing, it's not going to be two hours long when we release it, we may or may not still be cancelled.
Dia: We are definitely cancelled. I think we were cancelled in the first minute when I said I felt like reading about the Elder Scrolls was like being beaten to death with a hardback copy of a Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master's guide.
Duck: To loop us full circle, have we got that in our list of texts, because we should really put Dungeons and Dragons in our list of texts.
Dia: It can replace this.
Duck: I’m down for this. I think that's a great replacement.
Dia: Okay, quickly just going to find the word elder, Elder Scrolls series, I am replacing that with any specific Dungeons and Dragons text or…
Duck: The concept of dungeons... Dungeons and Dragons, like brackets, core rules or something.
Dia: I'm going to just put a rulebook, we know what it means.
Duck: Eventually we'll roll it and if and when that time comes, it'll be much more interesting to look at it as a like,
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: A game than as any particular specific of its setting.
Dia: Yeah, I'm with you. Before we like get onto further admin notes. Do we have anything else to say about the Elder Scrolls and religion?
Duck: Despite everything we've been saying, I at least really like it.
Dia: Yeah, I feel like we do need to give some points to the fact that these are good games. Like none of the fact that I did not…
Duck: Enjoy not playing it.
Dia: I did not enjoy not playing these games. That's a good way of phrasing it. I did not enjoy asking people to explain these games to me at length, not understanding them, watching people play them, still not understanding them. And then reading summaries and still not understanding them. Because they're not designed to be read about, they are not built for that, they are built to be played and discovered and enjoyed.
Duck: Yes, and the lore is dense and and intimidating when approached as a wiki not so much when it's every 20 minutes or so you find a new little…
Dia: I think if I had a month to go away and just play the Elder Scrolls, I would have had a really good time doing this.
Duck: Yeah. I do think religiously--
Dia: Unfortunately, that's not the challenge we've set for ourselves.
Duck: Yeah, the internal religion of Elder Scrolls, I think is more interesting than a lot of generic fantasy.
Dia: Oh, yeah. If I had been doing like a reading of the religion in Elder Scrolls, I would have had so much to say, Yeah.
Duck: And, you know, in three years time, maybe we'll put it back on the list and come back and do that.
Dia: Yeah, it can go back on the list one I've like emotionally recovered.
Duck: That's fair. That's fair.
Dia: Possibly once I've made you watch Descendants.
Duck: You have the eternal, you have the Adra who aren't like the godlike beings. And you have the Daedra who are the devil like beings, but some of the Daedra who are basically good. Yeah. And the game acts in a way that I think is good, right, and Oblivion and Skyrim. Each of the Daedra has like a cult shrine, and send you on a little quest. So you get to meet, like, thematically, each of the Daedra. And their thing, and some of them are pretty nasty, and some of them are really not. But there's some kind of metaphysical thing that makes them on the side... They are classified in the same group, as my personal dimension is literally hell.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: Which I think raises interesting questions about who gets to call themselves a god. And…
Dia: Yeah, definitely.
Duck: The moral impact of me and my friends, brackets, Gods have decided things that are not quite as powerful as us are the bad guys.
Dia: Yeah, my sort of backup plan, which was if I decided rather than a specific game to do an overall reading, I was actually going to talk about this in the context of… So this is not quite allegory, which is why it was my backup plan, but the context of Christian readings of earlier mythologies.
Duck: Yeah.
Dia: Which is actually my field of academic expertise. And I would have had a lot more to say about, but unfortunately, it's not an allegory.
Duck: It's not an allegory.
Dia: Unless you mean an allegory for like the work of specific Christian named individuals.
Duck: Allegorical reading where you’re like, I have identified the St. Francis of this setting would be kind of cool.
Dia: Yeah, that was my backup plan. But I also thought it was a bit of a stretch on the phrase, religious allegory.
Duck: It's more a sort of historical reenactment at that point.
Dia: Yeah, I was thinking if I'd had like, maybe that's, I don't know what you'd call that. Is that a reader response? Reading? I guess, if you think of yourself as a reader, I got nothing.
Duck: It’s an interesting thought is what that is. Yeah, that's what I've got is I think that the, the setting’s religious, like lore itself, has some interesting stuff that is worth as a player paying attention to the things it can tell you about how people define good and evil in ways that are politically useful. And that's something that I think it's good to think about.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: But I also think it is also really interesting to think about prophecy and the requirements of prophecy, and the weight you put on it.
Dia: Yeah, I think that that reading the reading I went with, in the end, says a lot more about gameplay. And this is the thing I do find interesting about video games, as someone who doesn't play a lot of them like I am very much a like I build houses and Sims sometimes kind of person. Games with combat in them specifically, just don't work for me for mechanical, my brain's ability to focus reasons, I die a lot because I forget what I'm doing. And don't press any buttons, which is a bad idea in video game combat.
Duck: Oh, I sympathise so much I play everything on easy mode, because I routinely forget what the buttons do.
Dia: Yeah, I just, I'm bad at video games. It's a skill, I don't have it. My, but like, as long as he doesn't play a lot of them. I am really quite fascinated by the mechanical elements of storytelling. But it's the same reason that I actually talk a lot in person, not on this podcast, about stand up comedy, because I have a lot of theories about stand up comedy as a form of theatre, and how it relates to older forms of poetry. There are some things where just mechanically the medium fascinates me, even if I'm not the biggest, like engager with the text.
Duck: Yeah. And we didn't... This was sort of the only video game that we had on our list, I think. So in some ways it is.
Dia: I think I've got one, which is the only other video game I have played in the last decade unless you count Sims and Stardew Valley, which I do count, but I'm not counting them specific analyst in terms of plot. Yeah, on an analytical level, they're not the same category of thing. Right. I am currently as we speak, because I have had something to do with my hands all times playing Cookie Clicker.
Dia: Yeah.
Duck: I think similarly. Not, not narratively deep, deeper than…
Dia: I'm not going to name it because that would be spoiling the future episode. But there is a visual novel on the list, which I played as part of a setup with a friend where we both had things we liked that we didn't know a single other fan off. So we swapped and I made her read a series of children's books that I've been obsessed with since I was seven, and she made me play a video game, which I had to borrow a console for.
Duck: Rude, deeply rude.
Dia: But we both had a wonderful time. By which I mean, both of us. mildly annoyed the other with our opinions, which is, of course, the point of sharing things.
Duck: Good to have fun with your friends.
Dia: There are more video games on the list, but currently, no more Elder Scrolls.
Duck: There there is currently no more Elder Scrolls because we are tr-- well, because Dia is traumatised and I'm--
Dia: I’m so traumatised.
Duck: I'm willing to do to accommodate that. Because sooner or later, we're gonna get Supernatural.
Dia: Also, we've been cancelled well enough. Oh, don't worry. I won't make you watch all of Supernatural, which is what I felt like I was doing when I was watching Let's Plays for two weeks straight.
Duck: You're so good to me. Should we roll?
Dia: I will make you watch the worst episodes of Supernatural. Yes. Oh, it would be so funny. If you got Supernatural I really want to that to happen now.
Duck: I’m going to find out my--
Dia: Do you want to do analysis first?
Duck: Analysis first.
Dia: There are 19 left.
Duck: 19 left. Please roll… I'm using, you'll be unsurprised to hear that I’m using an online roller to roll itself one 19 sided dice, Two!
Dia: Jungian.
Duck: Oh…
Dia: Well this could go in any direction.
Duck: Anything could happen.
Dia: Okay, do you want to give us the 101?
Duck: 101… 52.
Dia: Oo.. what section is that on… Oh my god you got Yugioh. I’m so glad I brought it up randomly earlier that was foreshadowing actually.
Duck: The prophecy has been fulfilled!
Dia: Righty ho! Ah, a Jungian reading of Yugioh, this is going to be spicy. This is actually a really good text for this.
Duck: Excellent. I believe that's a million episodes of this so I'm gonna ask you to narrow it down for me.
Dia: Okay, quick question. Do you want? Okay, there's sort of three versions of YuGiOh Do you want horror manga, horror adjacent anime or kids anime with horror elements.
Duck: Whichever of the animes you feel is more suited to this analysis.
Dia: Okay, I'm going to give you Yugioh season zero, which is the precursor anime which is a lot darker and touches on a lot more of the horror stuff from the manga.
Duck: Excellent. We're going to take everyone's beloved childhood subject--
Dia: But it has less content of my son.
Duck: And do the dark reading of it.
Dia: Terrific. Okay. I'm sure you're very excited to tell us all about shadows.
Duck: Oh, I am…
Dia: And I'm excited to tell you all about the fanfiction I read when I was way way too young and should not have been allowed on the internet unsupervised.
Duck: Also a classic theme of psychoanalysis although this is not technically psychoanalysis, but you know what I mean.
Dia: It's close enough. I do think-- we do have like several different types. We have Freudian Jungian and psychoanalytic all on the list so like they are different this kind of perfect matchup was bound to happen eventually.
Duck: Yeah, I'm pleased, I'm looking forward to this.
Dia: Okay, I will send you a link to somewhere you can watch Yugioh season zero through entirely legal and ethical means.
Duck: Excellent. My favourite kinds of means.
Dia: And look on the bright side. You were one number away from getting a Jungian analysis of the musical Newsies. Which would have been so good. Okay, see you guys next time.
Duck: Bye!
Dia: Bye bye!
Duck: You've been listening to analysis roulette, a podcast applying a randomly selected mode of analysis to a randomly selected creative work, just to see what happens. Your hosts have been Dia and Duck. You can find us on Spotify or on YouTube. And if you'd like to get in touch, you can send us an email at analysis roulette@gmail.com. And remember, if you liked our show, share it with your friends. And if you don't like our show, share it with your enemies.