since I first played Iron Lung, I've wondered about the question of whether everything else in the universe vanished or whether this one unfortunate region of space vanished from it. so with the advent of movie canon, allow me to (badly) illustrate my religious beliefs
that room will eat you! you can check out any time you like but you can never leave! you have always been here! the hole in your room is a hole in you! and on and so forth
when Clark first discovered the way into the Backrooms, and wasted no time wandering further into it, and nothing was said but everything in his body language and curious analytical approach to exploring it made his whole deal immediately crystallize for me like oh. buddy. you are never going to want to leave
when Mary escaped through the crack in the wall, and looked back at "Captain Clark" who couldn't fit and was making those sounds trying to reach her, and she got this look of Self-Recognition Through The Other on her face, and nothing was said but all the dialogue about loneliness/being alone started playing in my head. not just memory but the Backrooms moving in to fill the empty spaces within people. maybe it's lonely too. and Mary is never going to leave either, even if she leaves. the ending thus made me holler with glee
H/ouse of Leaves was a frustrating book because it had a great premise and a great gimmick and a ton of room to explore that, and it took several hundred pages to say and do nothing interesting or toothy with any of it. this movie had 1 hr and 45 minutes with same basic premise, and had the teeth to get deliciously nasty with the horror of giving your life away to the Idea of what you're Supposed To Do (job, marriage, kids) and ending up with nothing but bitterness and emptiness inside, and with the horror of The Family and The Home and its ugly specter of Mental Illness hanging over you like a shadow and eating you from the inside. the Jackson-esque Hill House Borges-esque Labyrinth of it all
@janusfnc14 I have a lot of thoughts about this re: Albrecht and Wally, and the post you reblogged. But this got stupid long, so into its own post it goes.
I feel like Warframe is making a case against the idea of ontological evil, and it's crucial for both Albrecht and Wally as characters. Which is why concepts like angels and demons are inverted - Tenno are often referred to as demons, while things like angels and archons are terrifying enemies and manifestations of rage and trauma. "Good" and "evil" and morality are entirely human concepts and affairs. If they exist, it is only because of what humans do.
This is evident in both the Infestation and the Indifference. They are antagonistic factions, but in a metatextual, thematic sense. They aren't "evil" or antagonistic because of what they do, but because they are a reflection of the world and of humanity. From a writing perspective, they are forces of nature, not characters or people, and their purpose is to hold a mirror up to everything else.
The Infestation is what it is simply because of what it is, beyond human notions of morality, like any pathogen. A virus or bacterium isn't evil because a human gets sick, regardless of any manmade factors that contributed to the illness. Most of the horror of the Infested results from what humans do with it. Even then, we see that the Infestation is still responsive to gentler influences, in its own way.
The Indifference comes from the Void, and the Void reflects what is put into it. And what has been put into the Void is centuries of absolutely wretched human evil.
Duviri and Thrax are a key example of this as well.
I don't think Thrax was even capable of being anything other than what he was - a manifestation of trauma - until the Drifter understood Duviri's true nature. After that, Thrax is able to act in unexpected ways and shows small stirrings of change (like in Eight Claw), and we are able to see glimpses of better things in Duviri here and there.
But that wasn't possible until the Drifter understood that Duviri was an extension of themselves, and understood what they were putting into it and how to take the first steps past that. And Duviri is almost all Drifter, with some other influences sprinkled in (very notably kindness from Euleria and Albrecht), so it's able to reflect and embody small bits of kindness and wonder in the midst of its endless loops.
Jury's still out on what, if any, degree of difference there is between the Man in the Wall and the Indifference, but I'm going to use the terms interchangeably for now.
The Man in the Wall, unlike Duviri, came from Albrecht at his worst, and has been shaped primarily by the Orokin.
One of my favorite bits of writing is in Albrecht's logs when he's talking about the nature of the Orokin. "We fear nothing," he says, and it's a literal statement of how the Orokin's immortality has warped them. But the Indifference is also the metatextual Nothing that haunts the Orokin. Not just the long, patient shadow of the end of all things, but the living embodiment of the consequences of their actions, the consequences that inevitably rebounded upon themselves and everyone else, no matter how much they tried to stave that off.
The Indifference is the consequence of the Orokin's imperialism and domination and violence and experimentation, concentrated thematically into a single body part - the fingers, replicated again and again and again, and used to empower terrible things. That consequence is still spilling over and raging and catching everything in its blast radius because the rusted gears of the Orokin Empire are still turning in perpetuity, long after the Orokin are dead, in what followed in their footsteps, Corpus and Grineer and Sentient and the few Orokin stragglers that keep raising their heads.
Voruna's Leverian is particularly striking with the concept of the Void's reflectivity.
So I think Wally CAN'T be anything other than what it is, not yet. It's not like a human being grappling with choice or the illusion of choice. To whatever degree, the Man in the Wall is the Void. It's a manifestation of the wounds that the Orokin inflicted upon both worlds, material and Void, and all it can do right now is replicate those injuries over and over and over again.
It's easy to empathize with Albrecht's reaction to what he saw and experienced in his trip into the Void, because he's a (relatively) regular human. Curiosity and fear aren't his crimes. Being Orokin is.
I think that's absolutely the point, that the fear was understandable and the finger-slicing was accidental, until Albrecht proceeded to double down and made it into a heinous act, when it didn't have to be. His crimes against the Man in the Wall, knowing and unknowing, are things that he has done or aided in doing to others or turned a blind eye to, and are a reflection of the Orokin's crimes as a class, like the cruelty inflicted against warframes: abandonment, theft, torture.
And Albrecht is keenly aware of most of this.
He regrets what he's done and is aware how much he has catastrophically fucked up, but I think he is in a similar kind of despair state as Wally. He acts as he knows how to act, as an Orokin would, still leaving a trail of pain in his wake even when trying to do good, and he doesn't think of himself as capable of doing differently. And so he doesn't, because he kind of does believe in ontological evil and has grafted that concept onto himself. But he is not ontologically evil, because that doesn't exist, and he has to learn to let that go in order to truly change.
It's possible that Wally can't actually change until Albrecht does, like Thrax and the Drifter.
I'm not sure if Albrecht really understands the depths of Wally's rage, that it's also likely personal (you woke me up into this, you created me, you abandoned me - things along those lines); I'd have to revisit some things and ponder.
But Albrecht at least knows that the danger the Indifference poses to the world exists solely because himself and the Orokin.
Also, importantly, I think the Man in the Wall is furious about existing at all, which is aligned with the game's focus on mothers and fathers and children.
On some level, Albrecht had a hand in bringing Wally into existence, and is its father and creator, which ties neatly into Albrecht's role as a missing/absentee father and grandfather and into the Orokin's role in creating and shaping their miserable little successors (Corpus, Grineer, Sentient).
A lot of Warframe is concerned with the act of creation and its consequences - the horrible act of creating warframes, the loving act of creating a child and that act being manipulated and warped into something awful, the manipulation of genetics, the strange and terrifying creation of new kinds of life with sapient pathogens.
Wally is a manifestation of all of that too - the awful consequences of life itself born into a rotten, pain-filled world, and the endless toxic waste of suffering that the Void can't help but reflect. Hence Wally's seething hatred of parents in particular, for committing that crime over and over again, and for the world as the Orokin created it and left behind. And it would be LOT of nasty metaphysical sludge that the Orokin and what they created oozed out into the Void. Not something that is easily shaken off.
So of course Wally longs for silence and stillness, for everything to stop and end. And not just because that is simply the Void's basic state.
The other half of the equation, to counterbalance the despair that Wally embodies, is naturally the Operator/Drifter: their kindness, their compassion, their willingness to look at the world and demand better, their capacity to carve out and defend little islands of goodness. Albrecht can't be the counterbalance because he is full of the same despair and because he is a source of it for Wally. No revenge on Wally's part, or giving act or apology on Albrecht's part, would enable Wally to become more than what it is, more than a thematic specter of the Orokin's consequences, more than a force of nature.
The Man in the Wall needs a reflection that isn't Albrecht and isn't the Orokin, a reflection beyond hurt and violence, and I think that's exactly what the Operator and Drifter are narratively building to.
I've been thinking about what Albrecht's 5D chess plan might be.
He is currently leading the Indifference on a chase throughout time, which ironically seems to be strengthening it. I'm wondering if Albrecht's plan is to lure the Indifference into becoming materially "real" enough to be defeated. He's created the Vessels, essentially giant biomechanical mechs, for the Operator to use - just as Ballas et al created the warframes.
Albrecht thinks that Operator/Drifter are especially empowered and suited to face the Indifference, and that they need to feel enough love/connection to resist being overcome by it, and that they need sufficient firepower to win. So it would be a matter of getting things into position to facilitate this great fight, but before the Indifference became too strong to defeat, making it a very dangerous race against untime, so to speak.
The thing about Operator/Drifter is that they are positioned as foils to Albrecht, right down to filling the hole he left in his family. They are following in his wake, befriending and caring for people he's hurt and abandoned. The first and only thing they've done with the Vessels is to correctly clock what was required to defend the labs from Wally - not violence, but gentleness, in an echo of how transference calmed the warframes.
A bit more "out there" speculation:
From the way time is described as the Strands of Khra, it almost seems as if the Indifference is entangled within those strands. I've had the thought that the chase may be meant to lure Wally into becoming even more entangled and/or stretched thin, and thus vulnerable. Leading to a situation in which Albrecht envisions Operator/Drifter giving up their now-individual selves to merge back into one person and thus collapse a metaphorical wave function of possibility on top of Wally to destroy it.
Or something. Who knows.
But Driftop are primed to aim for a secret third option. (Three versions of them are walking around, after all, not two.)
So I can see Albrecht's plan both failing and then ironically succeeding anyway.
Maybe Wally gets enough of an edge to surge ahead in the race, and gets a bit too strong before things are "ready."
Or a scenario where Albrecht's plan does succeed, in that Operator/Drifter are in position to defeat the Indifference/collapse the wave function/whatever, only for them to refuse and pursue the secret third option.
The secret third option is, of course, being niceys. In the same vein as Drifter going from anger to understanding and pity when looking at Thrax and really seeing what he is, as Drifter refusing to kill a defeated Rusalka or abandon the Hex, as Operator defending the labs with a gentle touch, as Operator calming Umbra, as Tenno getting through to the warframes not with violence or power but with love.
I think what Wally and Driftop ultimately need to do is beat the shit out of each other long enough to actually hear each other.
Taking the Cavia and the Man in the Wall as narrative blueprints for each other (beings who were suddenly awakened into traumatic awareness because of Albrecht, and subsequently abandoned)... the Cavia could speak, but only in Voidtongue, and no one could understand them until the Operator arrived. Wally can communicate with words, sure, but I think it's also too enraged and lost in the sauce to actually communicate. We can get an idea of why it's so pissed from what it says and how it responds to things, but it's all filtered through venom and violence.
I think there's a reason why the voca manifest as moans and screams. I think the Void has been screaming for a long time, only no one has really been capable of hearing or understanding.
And the Operator may have some idea already, considering the encounter in the labs. But knowing that a different approach to handle the Indifference might be necessary is not the same as knowing how to get there.
I think the Indifference's "weakness" to love is partially because it hasn't really experienced love and care, except for what we've seen in the smallest gestures from the Operator (an offered light). Wally is certainly too maddened to seek that out or accept it, or to listen to anyone or anything at this point, but the Tenno are able to "see inside a broken thing and take away its pain." The Operator has to figure out how to reach the Indifference, and the Indifference has to be able to listen.
I can see a titanic battle turning into the world's most epic transference sequence, and Driftop being faced with the task of taming what is essentially a wild animal, similar to the Orowyrm fight. With the task of being a different, steadfast, and kinder reflection of humanity, in order to gift the Man in the Wall with personhood beyond what's been imposed on it by the nature of the Void and the actions of the Orokin. Self-recognition through the other, etc.
And thematically, that would represent what Operator/Drifter have consistently been trying to do. Looking at the ugliness of the world and accepting that this is the world and the circumstances you've been given. Finding a spark of something better within the awful, and giving it a voice and a chance to emerge.
---
I'm admittedly biased towards thinking this way, because I hate when fiction assigns Evil to distinctly non-human/cosmic/eldritch beings, and thus abdicates moral responsibility for bad human behavior and suggests that ontological evil exists. It does not. It is man who is evil, because man creates the conditions for evil to exist.
I also think Eleanor's dialogue about being unnerved by the Indifference is goofy. Which is fine as a character trait, but it felt like the player was being cornered into agreeing with her. I simply don't feel scared or bothered by the apparent "indifference" of the universe beyond me or how small I am. I find it deeply calming and reassuring that such a vast world exists beyond me and beyond humanity.
---
But I would hope Warframe is heading in this general direction otherwise, since aside from the wonkiness of live service game limitations and a few weird writing choices, it's been consistent in presenting ideas like this about the Void as reflection and the specifically human nature and construction of evil.
Would you believe that Warframe not having aliens was initially a turn-off for me as a sci-fi tale, and now it's a thing I love about it? Because there's a real point to be made: that even the most alien-like creatures we encounter are ultimately the product of humanity, and that humanity has only itself to blame for creating evil.
THE INFESTATION COMES FROM THE VOID (NOT CLICKBAIT)
First had the thought while playing through Heart of Deimos and seeing the Infested try to get at the Heart to destroy it/close that open gate. It brought to mind the idea of white blood cells fighting off an infection or platelets coagulating. We have Kuva's similarities to blood, after all, and "Technocyte" invokes the imagery of cells.
Infestation and Void being opposites while also being exactly the same:
Fleshy and visceral biological phenomenon vs. ethereal and ephemeral world of thought and formlessness, but also...
Both of them a danger to individual existence, as a force that draws individuals towards a more collective/null state, as a thing that can absorb and mimic what it comes into contact with.
The Murmur and the Techrot are conceptually very similar as patchwork conglomerations of parts that have been stitched together, and invoke another dualistic mirroring: Murmur is sharper angles and geometrics wrapped around body parts, and Techrot is organic curves warped around technology.
In the 1999 ARG, we get these implications from the fictional "Digital Extremes," or whoever is behind the shell company, and the creation of Techrot.
Consider a concept:
Something in the world of Dust makes contact with the Void for the very first time, before Albrecht, before Kuva, before the Orokin, before 1999.
This triggers an instantaneous reaction of metaphysical platelets coagulating or metaphorical white blood cells converging, which successfully closes that wound.
But those "cells" remain stranded on the Dustward side of the Wall. Something like little wisps of Void-stuff or pieces of thoughtform, latching onto flesh and onto new creations produced by humans.
Over time, the "cells" morph and are shaped into what becomes Technocyte/Techrot/Infestation, evolving along an independent and Dust-embodied path.
If the Infestation has roots in the Void, this would explain why time is mostly a suggestion to the Infestation. You could argue that perhaps this is why it also seems to hate and fear the Void, why Infested beings refer to the Tenno as demons. If the Infestation comes from the Void, it has distinguished itself again and again into many strains and beings. For all that the Infestation is a hive-mind, the Void would pose a threat to its distinct existence as its own collection of entities. An offspring and creation resisting its creator, more or less, and another consistent theme. Progenitors and what emerges from them - everything comes back to the Orokin and humanity, and everything comes back to the Void.
Warframes and Tenno would therefore represent a reunion, and, despite everything, a peaceful one - disparate pieces of a whole joining back together in harmony.
Peepaw Hunhow being involved in Stalker stuff is so funny to me. when your troubles are 80% self-inflicted, and your dumb son who is just like you gets killed and re-animated into a nightmare, and your awesome daughter goes no-contact and keeps her adopted children away from you so you gotta find another dumb son to adopt and get involved in drama with HIS sons because deep down you just want grandchildren goddammit (but you tried to kill your daughter's kids one too many times so those bridges are currently burned </3 bummer)
i like playing warframe cause you can make a lil guy fly around like a loose bacon strip in a wind tunnel, and then go fishing for the millionth time to catch a 'wig bungus' to craft a fancy sword that circumcises the nearst beurocrat at 3am
Warframe is so funny to me. Sometimes a family is a robot pretendeding to be your adopted mother who then splinters into three separate but conjoined identities, her child she rescued from a shipwreck who got magic space powers from a god that made them kill their own biological parents for its amusement, an alternate timeline copy of the kid who never got rescued and instead was trapped in a magical fairytale world where they got executed and brought back to life on repeat for years before usurping the fictional king and claiming his power over time, their uncle/fighting instructor who hates their adoptive robot mother, a former mass murderer that regreted being a mass murderer and was turned into a glorifed virtual assistant for crime of not wanting to be a mass murderer anymore, a family of former royalty that got infected with a space virus that made them ten times larger and also meat flowers, the gay grandpa of that family who *isn't* infected but *is* haunted by the same god that made the kid kill their parents and is also the reason the god exists in the first place,-
(deep breathe)
-his butler/lover, their cat, three sapient talking animals, the alternate timeline copy's time-traveling polycule, the robot mom's giant robot dad, his estranged son that joined a cult, a single-minded killer that the robot dad also adopted(NOT a robot), his dead wife, AND their child that (as of writing this) seems to have somehow split into two alter egos that are locked in a deathmatch together that it causing mayhem across Venus.
we've had to tell several parents that summer school isn't being offered this year because there's no more funding for it. it was just a half-day program for a few weeks in the summer for kids to get extra reinforcement of learning if they were struggling, but there's no more money for that. oh well!
meanwhile the local charter school has GIGANTIC buildings and recently put up another one in record time. they repaved the roads around it in less than three weeks last summer. I didn't even know road work could be completed that quickly. I live on a little road off of a small state highway that recently had a single section repaved, which took about three months. when they were first building the school it was a hell of a time getting a usual contractor out for a plumbing issue at my mom's house because half the contractors in the area were booked up with the charter school schedule. yesterday I was talking to someone who had gone on a tour of the charter school since her granddaughter will be attending, and she was telling me about how nice the facilities were.
the public school I've worked at for six and a half years still has "temporary buildings." one of them isn't usable at the moment because of hurricane damage that happened uhhh -checks notes- 5 years ago. not to mention the regular issues with roofing, plumbing, etc. dozens of small building issues and shit that's never been updated or retouched. having a constant fight against staffing cuts. having to fight for getting enough support personnel. one time the district cut special education positions for no reason except saving money - positions that have since been restored after the cuts led to many problems. et fucking cetera.
my school is also 90% low-income, majority black, and has a high immigrant population. was the charter school built close by? no, it was built close to the "good" schools in the public school district.
and the state has the motherfucking audacity to publish shit like this.
to say that I regularly experience seething fucking rage would be an understatement.
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