I was planning to post art and the alike, but refrained from doing so due to the whole ai gen shenanigans that are going right now in the world to say the very least.
Regardless, I hope you enjoy your time here!
#letter: this will be where I leave my reactions for stuff, so this is NOT SPOLIER FREE!!!
Gomenasorry if the quality and colours are off that is something I can NOT be asked to fix fight now (also because tomodachi life has taken over my life - Braun and Kim soleum still haven't gotten married and it's been weeks).
Man, I really enjoyed this week's chapters...not even just SahSol, but the amount of bsh crumbs is enough for me to pass away peacefully. Thank you, Baek Deoksu-nim... 🥹💖
For days, I was speculating about a particular type of darkness/disaster. Today's episode, a full explanation of what white rope/hose darkness is, solidified that my apocalypse theory may be right, and I would like to share it.
(Disclaimer: it may sound far-fetched & some may probably be a stretch, but still, please bear with me😢)
My theory elucidates 2 things.
1) What is the main cause & 2) How does the apocalypse happen?
Let's begin with identifying what this A-class darkness is.
It is a native darkness that resides in Namhae. Much before Daydream existed.
I speculate it was first discovered when this place was a mine. A place that digs up the minerals hidden underground.
Little did they know that it was not minerals but an unknown being buried deep down. They accidentally woke this ancient darkness. Things turned to chaos. The mine then became derelict, only to be bought by a money & darkness-hungry company.
Inferred from the explanation, this Namhae-residing darkness collects human juice for 1) storing energy & 2) converting it to a useful chemical substance, hormone.
Tyroglobulin, mentioned as one of the components of the liquidified human, is a precursor to Tyrosine, a hormone secreted from the thyroid gland & regulating metabolism.
Also, after the whole facility is encroached by this darkness, it transforms into a fully functional organ of a larger living organism, an endocrine gland.
Putting the given chunks of information all together, Namhae's darkness is turning into a thyroid gland.
As you can see from the human anatomy, the thyroid gland is located at the protruded area of the neck, which we call "Adam's apple".
Please remember this location for later.
To sum up, it is a darkness that:
1. Is hidden in the basement, underground.
2. Is Flesh & blood-based
3. Somewhat follows the cult's doctrine ("Join us & become one")
4. Related to the church's sectors (Lover of Paradise Sect)
5. Turns out to be a part of the giant organism
...Doesn't this sound familiar?
The "HAPPY ENDING Sector" from part 2?
The happy ending sector is located in the underground of Jisan Village, in a ghost story named "Final Ritual Center".
The basement is now in a strange space. A weird-looking corridor with crimson flesh pulsating.
A blood vessel connected to the head was elongated, reaching the end of the corridor. As if the thing itself has a suction power, it tries to absorb me....
(Chapter 234)
This ghost story ticks all the boxes from the list above.
It's an underground bunker (1),
covered with pulsating flesh & blood vessels (2),
contaminated by the same ghost story, based on the fish parasite that eats off their tongue & all voluntarily jumped into alcohol to become a human-brewed liquor, thus creating a sense of oneness (3),
...A human body has voluntarily turned into a part of the gigantic organism. (...)
(chapter 389)
tied to Happy Ending Sector (4),
... and located in something's stomach (5).
Let's put an emphasis on the "something's stomach/belly."
This part wasn't clearly explained & was just skimmed in Part 2, and we readers quickly moved on to the Sekwang City arc at the moment.
After Part 2, we don't really know what happened to the remaining Happy Ending Sector, and it seems that this place isn't destroyed. Meaning, information regarding the "Final Ritual Center" is still intact & can influence future arcs/episodes.
Moreover, it reads that this ghost story doesn't have a "FIXED LOCATION", "MOVES ALL AROUND THE PLACE," & EVOKING VARIOUS KINDS OF SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA.
What if Namhae's darkness is a variant of this ghost story?
Following the logic of Namhae's darkness, what if Happy Ending Sector's darkness became a fully functional stomach?
The underground of the Happy Ending Sector is functioning as a digestive tract, especially where the stomach & liver are located, since it's associated with alcohol. Alcohol enters the stomach, and the toxic substance inside is detoxed by your liver.
But here's the question.
Why are these darknesses creating a different organ, not the same one?
The answer is simple: It is waking up a gigantic living organism, currently dormant under Korea.
With that in mind, let's look at the map.
This is the map of Korea, each marked with the location of Namhae & Jisan Village. (According to Chapter 195, Jisan Village is located in the city of Cheonan-Asan, 30 minutes by bike from the station, and the circle is exactly where the city is.)
I am going to superimpose a certain image over this map.
Volia! You can see a humanoid being in the shape of Korea's coastline, all curled up.
(Pardon me, this was the best image I could find)
Namhae is located where the thyroid gland should be, & Jisan Village is located where the stomach should be.
There must be sectors everywhere in Korea, and the respective, but same-rooted, darknesses underneath must be creating different organs, depending on where they are (like a stem cell).
When all of the organs from all sectors are successfully created & developed, the organs will connect with each other and turn into a single being, FINALLY WAKING THE CREATURE, under Korea as a result.
This is how the APOCALYPSE occurs.
Soleum did mention the cause of the apocalypse before.
It happens because of the "CONTAINMENT FAILURE," & eventually everyone dies; NO SURVIVORS.
This NATION-SCALED HORROR definitely CANNOT BE contained when awake and would kill all of the living people on the land.
Then, who is this currently dormant cosmic horror?
As many speculate, I also think this being is related to Ireum-nim, the creator of this world.
The most prominent reason for this is that the Ireum-nim worshipping cult (Church of the Luminous Unknown) is involved. But this whole thing reminded me of a character from Korean Mythology, called "Mago Halmi or Grandmother Mago (마고 할미)".
Mago Halmi is a powerful, giant goddess who created the entire landscape of Korea, a goddess of creation.
Her urine formed rivers & her poop formed hills. She moved tons and tons of mud to create mountains and land to live.
Associating this myth with Ireum-nim, a creator god, sleeping after he finished creating the world, kinda makes sense logically & thematically.
Aaaaaand that's it! Thank you for listening to my LONG explanation of my apocalypse theory.
We'll probably never get any confirmation of this but I'm pretty sure Braun was at least inspired from Nyarlathotep if he isn't actually the Outer God himself. Hear me out on this lol.
I discussed this a couple of times with some of my mutuals when I thought of it but I feel like I should probably at least put it all into coherent sentences.
Right of the bat in the novel when we're introduced to Braun, we're told that he's merely a D-Grade Darkness but as it soon becomes clearly evident, that is not even nearly the case at all. While the Tuesday Night Talk Show may have been D-Grade due to its low lethality nature, we see that such is not the case for its Host.
Despite the Smiley Stickers doused in the enhancement potion, Braun is fully aware of Soleum trying to trick him into delaying a bit in order for their survival and he's not even mad about it, he finds Soleum all the more fascinating for it. Which, of course, we learn the reason for afterwards... cough 208 cough but that's not it.
During his first invitation into the Good Friend rabbit plushie, we hear a massive roar of titles and Soleum gets shit scared before it all shuts up so we can finally talk with our favorite show host. I'll just put the titles announced below:
"...the owner of a million masks, the lord of chaos, the pinnacle of madness, the dreamer of pleasure and play, the instigator of war, the father of science, the lowly quadruped, the desire of the one who dreams, the monarch of the stars, the abyss of illusion, the mouth of wisdom, the roar of impulse, the dark side of the moon..."
Sound familiar? This was the moment I first actually thought of this theory, once I actually processed all these titles. Of course, some of these are obvious signs of Braun being an Outer God/Eldritch Horror but what about some of the other weird ones? Why is an entertainer being called "the father of science"???
It's because he isn't an entertainer. 'Braun' is merely a disguise.
But entertainment and allure is definitely one of his aspects.
It'll make sense in a moment.
Because if you now take a quick trip to Lovecraft and the cosmic horror town and look at some of Nyarlathotep's innumerable titles, you'll find these:
Crawling Chaos
God of a Thousand Forms
Stalker Among The Stars
Black Pharaoh
Faceless God
Messenger & Soul Of The Outer Gods
Just read it over a couple times and you're bound to see the obvious similarities between the titles of the two characters. As for the last title of Nyarlathotep, he's Azathoth's servant/messenger/lieutenant.
Now for the father of science part, just take a look at this:
"I had never heard the name NYARLATHOTEP before, but seemed to understand the allusion. Nyarlathotep was a kind of itinerant showman or lecturer who held forth in public halls and aroused widespread fear and discussion with his exhibitions. These exhibitions consisted of two parts—first, a horrible—possibly prophetic—cinema reel; and later some extraordinary experiments with scientific and electrical apparatus."
"...But Loveman's dream letter decided me.... As I left the house I saw throngs of men plodding through the night, all whispering affrightedly and bound in one direction. I fell in with them, afraid yet eager to see and hear the great, the obscure, the unutterable Nyarlathotep."
Pretty on the nose right? He's an expression of allure and what is more alluring to thousands if not entertainment? Everyone loves it. Moreover, he's maddening convincing, a true showman despite the terror he invokes from people.
A couple of things to be noted about Nyarlathotep is that he's the ONLY Outer God who's capable of interacting normally with people. He's not trapped anywhere either, he's free. You could meet him at a cafe and exchange a smile and nod and get away with it. At the same time however, he could destroy just about everything with his will. The best analogy I can find for this is a kid at an anthill with some sugar and a magnifying glass.
Another thing I noticed was Braun's disdain towards the 'producers' of his show. The first time in the novel he shows open hostility in his face is when he's talking about the execs who 'cancelled' his show, saying that they "knew nothing" about show business and what they're doing.
And after Part 2 I can be sure about one thing, he was very clearly talking about Ireum-nim. He does a couple of similar fourth wall breaks later too.
To put it in terms, Nyarlathotep's the servant of Azathoth, his father. However, he despises Azathoth going so far as to give him the title of "The Blind Idiot God." And that's because Azathoth is literally that, a dumbass to him. As per later renditions, all of existence including Nyarlathotep himself exists within Azathoth's dream and to wake Azathoth would mean the ceasing of everything. But Azathoth himself does not interact nor know anything and yet all is at his whim.
I'd be frustrated as fuck too. Braun's this immensely powerful guy but he's not exactly at the top, he's subject to the whims of incompetent superiors (the writers; Ireum-nim) that he cannot affect in any significant way and so he does the most he can do with what he has.
That's where 'Braun' comes in imo, much like what one of his titles say, the entire persona of Braun is merely one of the millions of masks he wears, one of his thousand forms he takes up to achieve whatever unknown objective he has.
Or more likely, just another whim he has out of mere curiosity. Much like a kid at an anthill, he doesn't really have any reason to burn up the ants or destroy an anthill, he just does it because it's fascinating.
And all of that's just character based. It's even present narratively but I can't go into every instance so I'll just highlight some of them that I can remember.
He's a polyglot, he's capable of fluent communication in all languages possible and he's just as charismatic as his original in each one. And personally, I'm pretty sure both Braun and Soleum know very well that the form they see of each other isn't the 'real' one but they both play along.
"To Nyarlathotep, Mighty Messenger, must all things be told. And he shall put on the semblance of man, the waxen mask and the robes that hide, and come down from the world of Seven Suns to mock."
Canonically Braun knows that Soleum isn't from their world and is also a writer as a part of Ireum-nim but I'm not sure whether Soleum ever suspects that Braun has much more to him than merely 'Talk Show Host'. If he does, then I think I can hope for some Braun action in Part 3.
He also hatessssss intervening unless his intervention actually serves some narrative purpose, like I said before his whole job is about allure. A bad story is not alluring which is why he doesn't intervene until either it helps the story along or Soleum's about to actually die/get trapped forever. Which is the same thing really. An unfinished or extremely slow story is not an alluring one and no one wants to see that, especially not him considering he's bound to Soleum by contract.
Third Important Reblog of how everything in the GSGW world is basically Azathoth's dream (Ireum-nim's writing) is how all the stuff required to make potion have the word "Dream" as a prefix. On one hand it'd be understandable if it's just something the company came up with but it's ALSO used by the Cheerful Research Institute.
Another thing to note is that (got it from this post) is that the Necromonicon is able to exert almost its full force when Soleum is reading it even in knock-off form, because it is actually about Soleum(Azathoth).
Also, Braun and Soleum come hand in hand right? Wherever there is Soleum there is also Braun, bound by irreversible contract. Guess what? Nyarlathotep is the same, wherever he's mentioned, Azathoth is inevitably mentioned too.
Is the world without ghost stories a ghost story in itself? -> this is with the assumption that each 'egg' being a ghost stories in the cherry insution ...... + good friend summons an ghost story with restrictions. [Edit: the recent disater is a ghost story that surpresses ghost stories.. --adding this evidence to the pile]
Therefore, if the body has gotten rid of the seal like in 120s, it can return to its ghost story....[if i am understanding this properly..]
Is this another situation like the high school, where a story must play out? In that case, is the og wiki the real wiki? However, this fails to take account the meta-narrative with the cult along with the ability to edit. Perhaps, its another pardox/time shengings akin to the question of what came first (the chicken or the egg).
Actually, why are ghost stories depicted as eggs? It's like an artfical ecosystem....but it wasn't enough to contain it or was that due to the angel's sigh in that sceanrio...this might be an exception to the rule..?
As for the world without him, I want to say the containemts will keep it going, but logically, those are pieces of him he as accepted underneath the cover of humanity; as such, I doubt it could be there. However, there may be remants..
Edit: Shower Thought: the option to go back suggets that he came to think the world he got summoned to is a type of 'home' for him at some level (even equal since it was a choice)
GSGW PART 3 SPOLIERS
The shipping crumbs are more like shipping double doses........and pt3 had just begon....
ch.400: My deer is crazy... I assume its both a wordplay on dear and possivness...........
