Is the principal of the thing a bad person? and, Religion in "baldi's basics"?
(notice: this text will touch on [physical] abuse and harmful religion. may resemble cult dynamics, not sure, isn't directly stated. please take your own limits into mind.)
(additionally, plus is the game being referred to by default, unless otherwise specified.)
a topic i have thought about from time to time for some months now is the general morality of the principal. the common perception, as far as i can tell, is that he is strict at worst, but well meaning. very annoying in gameplay, though not as much as he used to be. frequently he is seen as a father to playtime because he does not punish her. and the eyes thing.
the more i consider it, the more i think all of these conceptions are wrong. well, except the gameplay thing, i can't really argue against that. however, i do understand the logical reasoning behind these ideas, and i respect them.
what he actually does in the game can be extremely detrimental to the player, but when you look at it on an objective level... 15 seconds of detention is comically short. one minute and 39 seconds of detention, at max, is like... are you serious? this guy wears socks to work and gives you detention in numbers of seconds. so, at worst, he could only be strict in the sense that he doesn't care about context when enforcing the rules. right?
playtime is frequently perceived as running. in classic, she is faster than your walking speed, though slower than your running speed. despite this, she is not punished. this pissed a lot of people off back when she was an actual obstacle, even more so when the principal started punishing the bully. why is the bully punished but not the girl who is running and is messing up my run. damn you, mcgonigal, i hate you. so, in the part of the community that liked the characters as characters, the conclusion was that playtime must be getting special treatment, maybe because she is the principal's daughter, or something. they both have weird looking eyes. they're probably related.
and people like a good wholesome relationship, especially the kind of people that liked the characters themselves in 2018. they didn't have much to work with, so the main reason you might get into it is because you are interested in this weird kind of offputting school setting. often this personal preference can be related to traumatic events, so having a nice comfortable father-daughter relationship in the middle can be appealing. i don't really blame anyone for enjoying a comforting thing.
however, when more factors are taken into consideration, i do not think that the soft and comfortable personality suits the principal's role at all.
one character that speaks about the principal directly is beans. there are two lines from beans which are frequently interpreted as a sign of physical abuse:
"I'll be sent to the guy of the Thing, smacking my head 'n' causing a ring!"
"Time to bounce, time to flee, before they throw the book at me!"
(however, i want to make the correction that "throw the book" is a phrase that means "punish as severely as possible". still relevant in my opinion. i haven't met anyone that has actually heard it before, so it may be regional.)
and i would also like to draw attention to this line:
"They're gonna be so mad at me, I'm so sorry!"
(because i heard it in a dark hallway in a mod once and it was one of the scariest things i've experienced in this god-forsaken game, but also,)
because it really paints this picture that beans is familiar with regular abuses from the school's staff, specifically the principal. if you look at his other lines, you get a similar feeling.
beans is also the character most likely to both be subject to and speak about this kind of issue, not just because he is made by somebody else, but also because he has been held back and is therefore older than other students. this is not just wiki trivia, he's also stated so directly in his own voice lines.
one thing that we know for certain about baldi's personality is that bad math makes him angry. lightning round citations in images below because i know people will try and fight me on it.
and episode 4 of the basically games podcast 1:16:55 leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone. okay? you have to trust me. Or else you'll be in for a BIG surprise! thanks.
so, if anyone were going to talk about getting smacked around, it would be beans.
my first reaction upon discovering this -- the same with most people, from what i can tell -- was that it must be, like, not true, somehow. because beans was made by somebody else. and this doesn't seem like something mystman would do. right? of course, he made THE scary teacher game, but this feels incredibly direct in a way that feels wrong and uncomfortable. even when "baldi hits kids" was the predominant idea, the game never directly showed or spoke about it, it just strongly suggested it. and this is not just a suggestion.
it directly contradicts the idea of the principal being this guy that doesn't really care or know what he's doing -- harmlessly. he can't be THAT bad. can he?
so beans is not listened to, for whatever reason people want to list. beans was made by a different guy. these lines are clearly just jokes and you are taking them too seriously. beans is just a stereotype of (xyz) so we shouldn't even really think about him. (not going to comment on that. not relevant here.)
other characters do not talk about anyone so directly. however, we can still extrapolate information about his character from how he treats them and how he is treated.
one interesting detail is that the principal will punish the bully for bullying, which people think is kind of unjustified because it is sort of just standing there. however, he also only does this when the bully says its voice line about bullying you, so it's not unjustified, really...
the reason i find it interesting is because, if any characters are going to actually be related to each other, it makes far more sense for playtime to be related to NULL, and the bully to be related to the principal. let me explain. long tangent but i promise it's worth it.
something about playtimes voice is that it is 8000 hz sample rate. most sounds in the game are a much higher sample rate. this means she sounds much lower quality, almost a little bit muffled, than most characters in the game. she also uses some distortion in her voice.
NULL, similarly, also uses 8000 hz sample rate and distortion. there are no other characters in the game that use this sample rate for their voices. even other characters with a lower sample rate will still be higher than 8000.
then, of course, they have the same colour hair and outfits, which is kind of dumb but you see why it would be relevant in this conversation. and, something most damning, is that it seems like both of them are targeted by 99.
99 will be better explained later in this passage. for now, what you need to know is that this thing acts both like a virus and also kind of like an army of trained snipers. and maybe like a celestial force. just focus on the snipers for now.
NULL has this extremely deeply encoded message which starts off with "they can't detect this", and by process of elimination it seems like "they" is 99. it very strongly appears like he is being actively censored, to the point where when he says a little too much he gets violently removed.
as for playtime, she is always accompanied by a music box melody of a children's song or nursery rhyme. typically this is "a tisket a tasket", in birthday versions of the game it's also what seems to be a modified version of "happy birthday".
99 is also associated with music box melodies and nursery rhymes. in the kickstarter promotional video, when asked about the "lore", a track named "99" plays which contains a messed up version of "mary had a little lamb". and, during the ninenine secret, a music box melody plays.
i am not saying that playtime is 99. i am saying she is being targetted in the very same way NULL is.
of course, they also have the oppositional attribute of NULL telling you to destroy the game, while playtime wants you to play a game (albeit, they're not talking about the same game...)
if we were to extend similar logic to principal and the bully, it is far, far easier to see these two as related than it is to see principal and playtime as related. principal and the bully's voice are extremely similar, to the point where people frequently mix them up. and, the principal enforces the rules, while the bully breaks them. they also have similar colour schemes, where principal wears a yellow bowtie and has blue captions, while it's a bully has blue sleeves and orange captions.
if anyone is related, i do really think we would see pairups like this. however, i do not have any evidence of actual familial relations existing, so these could mean something else, or even just be coincidental.
therefore -- i do not think that the principal makes special exceptions for people that he likes or is related to. in fact, he is just as hard on them, if not worse.
another good example, actually, is baldi and the principal. in the tutorial, baldi tells you to break the rules on purpose. he also tells you not to tell the principal that he said that.
the implication here is that the principal does not know that baldi is telling you to break the rules on purpose, and if he were to find out, he would not like it very much. this is also an aspect of their relationship that has existed since classic came out, as a text document written by baldi to help the player get used to the game contains almost exactly the same thing:
"Follow the rules… but only when the Principal is near! - It's always the right thing to follow your school's rules, but not in my game! You can do whatever you want as long as the principal doesn't see what you're doing! Listen for his whistles to know when he's nearby."
the principal is the second most important character in the game, the only npc guaranteed to be on every floor in every run. so, the general assumption is that he... probably likes baldi. yet, baldi is not exempt from his judgement, to the point where baldi feels the need to actively hide things from him. this will become more relevant later as well.
some other facets of his character are revealed through marketing. people have mixed opinions on whether merchandise should be taken as canonical, as fact, whatever. however, it is the closest we will get to explicitly stated facts from the guy whose name is MYST man. like, of course he's going to hide everything, he's the number one obscurity fan. or number 12. whatever.
in the description for the principal's makeship plush, his expression is described as "ever so slightly pretentious". expressions can be interpreted in a lot of ways, so getting a whole adjective is awesome. previously, he has been described as tired, or just kind of making a weird face. pretentious tells us that he is more of a judgemental character.
there's also a promotional post for the plush where mystman says "He's trying to convince me to add EVEN MORE school rules to the game."
(i like this post a lot because it's another instance of mystman viewing every character as alive. here's another post where he does that. and, of course, there's NULL, i'm sure you know what all i think about him by now...)
anyway, the actual relevance it has here is that it's more evidence that the principal is not nonchalant and uncaring, he actually cares quite a bit. he really likes his rules and he loves to enforce them and if it were up to him there'd be more rules to follow.
so, with all of this in mind, you can see why the common perception of the principal's character starts to bother me, no? not in the sense that other people are bothering me by thinking it, rather, this concept of a soft, unbothered principal who is nice and understanding to everyone, makes exceptions for people he likes... that's not really who he is. he cares about rules more than his relationships with people, more than anything it looks like. he is judgemental and there's no evidence of him being kind to anyone. he just looks dumb because he doesn't wear shoes.
and, of course, he's one of the most important people in this building.
please keep that in mind.
this doesn't answer the question: would the principal of the thing really harm a student? is he really that bad? sure, maybe he's an asshole, but...
i want to raise you a sort of dubious thought which could be right or wrong. but i think it will help you understand my perspective. because, in my opinion, the principal thrives behind closed doors. you have to use what you have to figure out what could be behind that.
in classic remastered, NULL keeps like.. descending. it's kind of weird. in the first ending, he is in baldi's office on the second floor. in the second, he is in the principal's office. and, in the third, he is in the basement.
him being in the office in party style is weird. this time, he doesn't want you to find him, so it makes sense that he would go to a floor that's difficult to access. but why would he be in one of the most important rooms, then?
a common conclusion is that the principal is punishing him on grounds of the "no breaking the fourth wall" rule. his very existence serves no purpose to the game itself, so, he is not really allowed to exist.
in the third ending, suddenly, NULL is concerned that he might not be allowed to close the game. despite the game being closed every other time he talks to you. this could mean that he wasn't doing it on purpose the other times, which is... like, weird, but okay. or, it could mean, that last time he did it... when he was in the principal's office... maybe he got punished for it?
(i'd also like to point out -- if you use the debug code during NULL [style], he just closes the game, no worries about if he's allowed or not. so it seems like there are some cases where it's fine, and some cases where it is not. as for why a debug code would exist if it's technically not supposed to, i have thoughts on that are severely out of scope for this post...)
in NULL [style], when you use the principal's whistle, he darts at you at full speed. this is really weird, because the principal isn't even here. additionally, why does he not just do that whenever he hears you? like, he can run really fast, but he doesn't. he decides this use case is the most important.
this could be because it is definitive confirmation that that's your exact location. you know, maybe running that fast is hard. and he needs to save it for when he's certain, or something. but there's nobody else in the school, couldn't he take anything as confirmation?
so, it seems like he really doesn't want to see the principal, for whatever reason.
of course, each of these points could mean something else, theoretically. it just makes far more sense when you view it as the principal specifically punishing him. making sense doesn't make it true, sure, but...
i mean, if one character is saying "the principal punishes me as severely as possible", that's one thing, but if there is reason to believe that two characters are being punished like this that's. you know. interesting.
i will go a step further: i think that abusive levels of punishment are a facet of not just the principal's character but also indicative of something about the game itself and the environment it creates.
see, both of these characters, if we are to believe what they are suggesting, are subject to punishments that the player never really sees. as i said before, some seconds of detention are like... dude, are you serious? if we're thinking about it from a real life context.
but in the game, not only is this a huge obstacle, it's also not what the other characters get. it's a bully, explicitly, does not go to the principal's office, it just goes like... somewhere else. beans talks about getting smacked until his head rings, NULL leaves you to assume the worst because he's allergic to clearing anything up. so, it is possible that this punishment only applies to you, or at the very least is only the option he chooses when you can see him. after all, he doesn't punish beans while you're around... curious... it's like he doesn't want you to see something...
and it's extremely likely that he knows this is a game. not only his proximity to baldi, but how else is he supposed to enforce the 4th wall rule?
this theme of secrecy is repeated on in a few different ways:
there are the globes, which almost exclusively show up in the principal's office and faculty rooms. the one chalkboard mentioning the world says that "the world is big. class dismissed" as though they don't really want to talk about it in depth. like, the globe is something only faculty are really expected to understand.
computers are similar, primarily showing up in faculty rooms, with information about them also being only on faculty bulletins. this could be argued to simply be computers not really being extended to students due to the alleged year the game is supposed to take place in, but students do ask for things like game controllers and floppy disks. of course, students also may not be alive, so it's possible these are like fidget toys to them.
characters, overall, do not really refer to each other. baldi calls all of them his "friends" in the tutorial, and that is also how the game's description refers to them. but they don't talk to each other, not even to baldi. the only one who does is johnny, and, well... that's also not within scope here okay.
now you might be thinking: chex this is like 3000 words already where does religion come into this. get to the point.
and like, okay. fine. here it comes. but it also means i need to stop talking about the principal for a bit. we'll get back to him once i lay it all out, okay?
the reason that all of this secrecy is important is because it seems like something really, really big is being hidden. NULL spent a whole game and arguably 4 real life years telling you that there's something very bad happening and we gotta watch out. and, repeatedly, this game makes it seem like something is deeply, horribly wrong, from how all of the characters exist in their environment, to how baldi is so insistent that his class lasts forever.
and one way you could interpret this, not the only way, but one that is possible -- is that this is a religious organization around the number 99.
i must first disclaim that it is very much possible that the religious themes exist because mystman is extremely christian. i think that my read has merit even if the individual lines i use to get there are actually for different reasons. just don't want to apologize after every single line... so please suspend your disbelief. for just a bit.
in plus' credits, there is a bible verse which reads: "Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." - 1 Corinthians 10:31
this could reflect mystman's ideals in life, of course, but it also lines up extremely well with how 99 presents in "Baldi's Basics". it is a repeated, intentional symbol, it is carved into trees, it is spelled out in rocks, it's on every single door of the school, and not only that, it permeates into not only projects mystman created before baldi's basics but also just random bullshit he was doing.
like, he would play games on his nintendo devices and get the prompt "nine", likely custom, and draw a creepy ass face. the number 99 can be seen in the full picture for chalkle's face, which is described as something he did with his sister where they'd pass a drawing thing back and forth. so it's not just in things he intends to show people. he does it when no one's looking.
there's also this creepy ass tweet he made on september 9th. so. well. that's fun.
i am not saying mystman actually secretly worships this thing instead of the christian god, rather, i am saying in the context of baldi's basics (and likely future projects, considering this will not be the last game in this universe) 99 strongly resembles an object of worship similar to a god.
listen. in party style you encounter a circle of chairs, which summons forth an absurd number of balloons with the number 18 inscribed in them as you see them, and the number 99 inscribed in them as they actually appear.
CHEX FROM 20 OR SO MINUTES LATER: I FORGOT TO MENTION! I FORGOT TO MENTION! DID YOU KNOW? THAT THE ONLY CHARACTER WHO SAYS 99 OUT LOUD ??? IS THE PRINCIPAL??????????? okay sorry goback to . like reading it. Thank you for reading my text. I appreciate it.
and if that is the case, how much is everyone "in" on this? how much does everyone know?
does playtime know she is directly targeted? does she know the extent of what that means? does she even know where she is, or what is happening? not in the sense that she is mindless, rather, does she know she may be taken advantage of or is it intentionally hidden from her? where are her parents?
when you read it like this, the secrecy becomes deeply sinister, an intentional sleight against the people who work (and live! because YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE, am i right?) here. they are not allowed to know what's going on, they do not really get to talk to each other outside of the way that is Allowed, when someone from the outside shows up they make it seem like nothing is happening and everything suggesting otherwise is something you shouldn't take seriously. don't worry about beans, he's just stupid. don't worry about the principal, he's just a normal guy helping me out. don't worry about that scary number. don't worry about it. don't worry man. it's fine. everything is perfectly fine.
and you know why the principal pisses me off so bad?
AND THAT'S REALLY MESSED UP, MAN.
that's really messed up of you to do.
let me ask it again: is the principal of the thing a bad person?
would the principal of the thing hit a student?
would mystman12 write about something really bad happening?
this is baldi's basics. you shouldn't take it so seriously.
this is baldi's basics, it wouldn't have abuse in it, because everything is a joke, and every character is nice to each other. i am a good person. i am a good person. i am a good person. i am a good person. i am a good person. don't write about bad things happening, it makes me feel bad. if you write about bad things happening i feel like a bad person. i'm not a bad person. i like good people. i am a good person. i am a good person. i am a good person.
we do not know at this time the full extent of what mystman is willing to write about because he has released exactly one finished story and it is weird. you need to read so deep between the lines that when you try and extrapolate a basic plot out of it the average person thinks you think too much and calls you weird and annoying.
we do not know the motivations for the characters' actions because everything is hidden on purpose.
and i know, that even when the game comes out, it will not be entirely clear what "the truth" is. because you have gotten a whole game, and we don't know jack shit. and because mystman has said that there are questions which will be answered in seemingly unrelated titles. and because he's garbage at making puzzles because he makes them impossible. i would know!
i do not want to say that Definitively, the principal of the thing is CONFIRMED! to hit children for NO GOOD REASON and he is EVIL. because he is not.
but this kind of story is the perfect ground to tell a story about abuse, because the problem with abuse is that nobody knows it is happening, and even when it's talked about it's often handled in the worst way possible. children are taken advantage of by charismatic parents and the people around them say "well, i like your parents, i don't see how they could be abusive". children are not taught the language they need to explain it to people and when they do they are not taken seriously. adults are treated as though they are crazy and do not know what they are talking about and must be wrong. because i know that guy, and he's literally nice.
do you see why, a game where everything is designed to look like it "isn't that serious" even though it has obsessive (/nonclinical but positive) levels of depth, is exactly the kind of game that COULD tell a very rich, thoughtful, tragic story about why people in abusive situations cannot get the help that they need?
and do you see why it PISSES ME OFF when people say things like "the principal CAN'T be abusive because he seems so nice", or "baldi can't be evil because he's actually a nice guy and we got him wrong this whole time", or "baldi getting angry HAS to be him being possessed or altered or manipulated or he has multiple personalities (/outdated on purpose) because he's acting weird and I Personally Don't Think He Acts Like That". like. listen. if you personally do not want to look at it like that, that's okay, it's upsetting, hell i might not be correct at all. but if this actually is a story about something really bad happening, these are the same arguments that prevent people from acknowledging really bad things happening.
and I AM NOT SAYING that if you do not think i'm right then you would SUPPORT ABUSE in REAL situations. obviously this is just a game to you, and that is okay. i know you would be more likely to consider a real situation with more depth than . you know. "baldi's basics". but you can see where i'm coming from, yeah?
Is the principal of the thing a bad person?
Religion in "baldi's basics"?
that's all i want to say.
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