The Secret of gods and Satan

Alright, I have a lot of thoughts about this one, and I will try to present them as clearly and coherently as I can. First, my general takeaways for readers who don't want any spoilers. This is not really a storygame at all. It's a manifesto, but more than that, it's a personal expression of what the other believes in an interactive format.

That said, it is very long and very linear, so that even if you only play it once, you will have read most of the words in the game. It isn't exactly riveting unless you came to read a sort of Socratic dialogue.

While the story does tackle some serious themes, it is not as dark or disturbing as the author implies, and is actually pretty suitable for most readers.

SPOILERS

Now, there are several things that bother me about the story, and unfortunately many stem from the meta context from which the story arose. I feel that I cannot honestly review this story without at least a small mention of those issues, so I apologize in advance to the author.

First, the author very clearly set this story up for scrutiny and criticism when he claimed that the story was going to be "a doozy." He meant by this that the story had rather extreme and divisive spiritual and philosophical significance. Now, for me, this both set my expectations low and my standards high.

Another rather meta thing that actually annoyed me very much about the story is the author's insistence on the mature rating and the claim that there were really dark themes throughout. Instead, it seemed like the story had actually been a bit sanitized. The deaths were clean, the description of the meat industry was remarkably pg rated, and you cut out the most graphic bits of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle." I would argue that the book was originally successful primarily through the shock produced by very accurate and rather upsetting imagery. I think you actually cheat your argument by cutting off any truly disturbing imagery. You could even include a bit from the recent butterball turkey shenanigans where some nitwit raped a turkey. Sometimes people need to really see the cruelty.

Now, I do realize that this was an attempt to address much more than just animal cruelty, so I will begin to address those points. The first thing that really bothered me about the story was the big todo about acoustic vs written media. Now, I'm no psychologist, so I will limit my critiques to a few key points. One is the extremely bold statement that panic is the primary emotion felt by acoustic societies. Anyone would be extremely hard pressed to prove this to any real degree, in fact, I remember a subset of sociologists actually believe that illiterate hunter-gatherer societies may have been happier for the most part before the agricultural revolution (also virtually impossible to prove but equally valid as a theory). In fact, I would probably argue that panic is actually insupportable as a primary emotion of a society. Perhaps anxiety if you are really stretching the definition, but certainly not panic.

There is also the wild inconsistencies with the author's treatment of acoustic medium that confuses me. First, when saying that writing produces organized thoughts whereas spoken word produces panicked disordered thoughts, what is an organization of thoughts. Now, I will grant that literacy certainly fosters a more effective development of thoughts, but things getting smaller in perspective toward the horizon was an observable fact far before any kind of formal Euclidean geometry. Spoken tales don't cause people to forget that.

The idea that acoustic societies were ruled by unchanging gods that weren't subject to linear time is also a little bit silly. It is, in fact, later monotheistic religions with written scripture who were the ones insisting that they worship a timeless, unchanging god.

Finally, it's clear that the author plays favorites with acoustic media itself, preferring the messages from some and rejecting others. Now, I certainly see the difference in merit in certain media as opposed to others. I even agree that the Star Wars sequels were terrible and a weird subversion of theme from the others. The issue is that the author set up a strong stance that auditory media creates disorganized thoughts. There was really no qualification set up for this. I'm not sure whether the exception in the mind of the author was for "good" media or for people who also read a lot.

Now, I will move on from that gripe. The other point that really got under my skin is a lot more simply addressed. Much of the storygame presupposes that humans and animals are equal and that the suffering of both is to be given equal importance. This isn't as obvious or evident to me, so it's hard to accept your statement that animal cruelty is THE issue facing humanity when child sex slavery, unjust wars, domestic battery and all kinds of truly depraved human evil is absolutely rampant in the world. You may hold some kind of belief that solving the animal problem will also solve this problem, but I see no reason to believe that. Belief that it's vengeful animal spirits making humans commit these evils is naïve at best, and I'm doing you the favor of not assuming that is what's being said.

All that said, I do believe that, at least in a metaphorical way Jesus' sacrifice had a secondary function for "creation." I do doubt that the Christian track record with domestic animals would be significantly above baseline, but there is certainly a mandate in Proverbs that a righteous person will be kind to their animals.

I think what you have wrote has a lot of thought and care put into it, and I truly believe that anybody just trying to write their worldview in a storygame would come off passionate and insane. There's certainly nothing evil in here, and while I don't think this has really changed my worldview anymore than Peter Singer did, I honestly am glad you made it. If nothing else, it could make your other stories interesting to read with this one in mind.

As a disclaimer to all of this, I am a rather terrible Christian, so don't let anything I said destroy your belief. Ideas in general deserve criticism. Keeps us healthy

I have a lot to say about this story. And I mean, a lot! I finished the game, it took me a while, and, well, let's get into it. I wrote the review as I read it, so some parts of the review may conflict with later parts, but that's because you(the author) resolved some doubts and problems later on.

Like Gower said in his review, at times, there are huge walls of text that can be intimidating to the reader and generally puts people off. It’s not often, but when they do appear, these large and dense paragraphs get really difficult to read through. However, I’m not really going to hold that against you as I really want to completely read and rate this story after seeing all those forum posts. I doubt that was your original intention, but you garnered a lot of interest in your story after your bold, ridiculous, and outlandish forum posts talking about how you discovered an entirely new philosophical idea, even if it’s merely the horrid fascination one expects to see upon observing a literal trainwreck in action. At least, that’s the mindset I had going into this thing. Whether you changed my mind or not, we’ll see.

First things first. Page 1. You're advertising to us with this page, there are so many times when I click off a story because the first page is dull. The tone that you’re starting off with is a bit preachy. Also, the forum writing sections aren’t realistic, I mean nobody talks like that. Also, who’s “they”. You post your comment, and then a “they” rolls their eyes at you. I don’t think you mean the anonymous commenters, does the manager go by “they/them” pronouns.

Also, the first 3 choices don’t really change the story, you get the same reaction regardless if you support trans-rights, express criticism of trans-rights, or simply get off your phone.

The story really does pick up after Merlin comes. The dialogue gets a lot better, which makes me feel that you have a stronger grasp and command over fantasy dialogue, rather than modern-day internet forum dialogue. I really liked the exchange between our main character and Merlin. It was also really creative how you brought Merlin back, and the set up for this story seems incredibly promising! More of those dense text-walls appear, but the actual language in each individual sentence flows well, you write descriptively and your writing is engaging for the most part, I would just fix the formatting. There’s definitely a nice rhythm to it, that’s for sure.

The mythology is creative, you intertwine moral philosophy within the fantasy quite nicely. Animals that are killed peacefully leave you alone, while animals you hunt come back to haunt you. To avoid being tormented by these spirit-animals/gods, you can sacrifice one of your own, and in return the spirit stops haunting you and you get the positive quality of your sacrificial victim. The sacrificial victim goes on to haunt the entire tribe, but that’s a small price to pay. This is an interesting analogy to how corporations in the modern world use people, consuming them until there’s nothing left. The lives these megacorporations ruin through their greed haunts them in the form of lawsuits and occasional public outcry, but they continue to reap the rewards of their ill-earned gains.

The story takes an anti-violence stance and anti-sin stance, that at times, borders on the absurd. At the same time, you at least have some nuance, acknowledging that people need to kill to survive sometimes, so that was a nice touch. I’m not sure if I agree with everything you said, but the point of the review is to assess whether you deliver your point of view effectively, and you definitely do. It fits within the story, and it’s engaging enough.
You also build suspense throughout, particularly in the “guilt-possession” scene. At this point in the story, we just met the inuit boy and you and him were almost attacked by a corpse, and then we get briefly introduced to a taste of what is yet to come. To the best of my knowledge, an Anirniq is a monstrous physical manifestation of our vices, so some monsters are fear actualized, others greed, lust, that sort of thing. We all have these negative qualities inside us, so when we die our ghosts come back and take the appropriate form depending on the specific vice we embodied. Can an Anirniq be a mixture of different vices?

In the seal sequence, you make a brief mistake when the shaman is narrating the story. He’s telling his flashback from his perspective, but the pronoun “you” is used. This is likely because you just copied over what you’d previously written in the other branch(where you leave the seal alone and the same things happen). Hey, I’m not judging you, but at the same time, watch out for those mistakes. But it was so creative how you used the seal as a metaphor for the dangers of “unbridled excess”; the ringed seal is a manifestation of the dangers of losing self control. The way you embedded your message was creative, although I don’t agree with the message itself because it seems to portray a very black-and-white view of the world(either you enjoy partying and you’re an uncontrollable drunk or you’re a pure and virtuous person). Maybe you’ll expand on that later in the story, hopefully introducing some nuance.

I really loved the inherent logic behind the design of the ringed seal. Particularly the idea that writing a story down gives it structure, and therefore gives the creatures within, structure and rules. That makes them more internally consistent with their thoughts and behaviors. But an auditory story, that is passed down from generation to generation, is a lot more vulnerable to alteration. It isn’t as fixed because the idea of this creature is shared among many people’s minds, but there’s no encoded tangible record holding all these details, so these creatures tend to act stranger sometimes, depending on which person’s imagination it’s following. Even if there’s just one person that’s literate, they can write ideas down and provide more order and structure to shared beliefs, since at least one person has it down in a tangible form. That was really novel, I got to give you credit for that. The way your explanation is received though will be divisive, some people will like it, others won’t. I can definitely imagine it not being received well primarily because it’s really dry. It worked for me because I was going into this story trying to understand whether your story was really all that you promised, so I was already in a more charitable mindset to understand and analyze it. You could definitely make it more palatable and fit it into a fantasy setting better, to be a bit more crisp and engaging.

As the story progresses, we get clear rules that delineate how the Gods in this world behave. The rules tend to be parables and sayings from Christo-judaic philosophy, and essentially, the story advocates for being a good and moral person, cognizant of the environment around you. At the same time, you don’t cross the territory into being naive. You do make the world a bit gray; sometimes, making the right choice results in the village starving.

I also really loved how the same spirits evolved over time into becoming Gods. The essential nature stayed the same, but as people adopted a written record, the outward manifestations of the Gods became more concrete.The way you portrayed the greek gods was creative, especially the damned souls of Tartarus(Ixion and Sisyphus). That was a new take, how they’re the sane ones and the gods themselves are crazy. The riddle was so good. I honestly found it by blind guess, but your explanation afterwards showed that it was really well thought out. I like the idea of Pan being the true leader of the gods, since Pan in ancient greek means “all”, so that makes sense. Fun fact: Pan originally meant “rustic” in Greek, but through a linguistic evolution later it changed to mean “all”. It was also really insightful that all the gods are driven by fears, and Pan causes panic, so in a way, he’s the true leader of the gods. This comes back later, when it turns out that Satan is simply a reincarnation of Pan, with the same cloven hooves and goat horns. The ancient Greek world feels panic because there’s so much that they don’t understand, so they invent myths to rationalize natural phenomenons like the weather, the cycling of seasons, or the night-day cycle.

So far, this story is incredibly well-written and researched. My review is really long, but there’s so much I didn’t get to cover. You touch on so many deep and complex themes: religious persecution, false faith, vegetarianism, animism, guilt, fear, power and although it’s hard to write a story with all of those, you manage to somehow do it. Ultimately, the story shows that embracing Christ is the only way to overcome the inherent undercurrent of pessimism present in all the other pantheons, that no matter how much we evolve, things stay the same. Unless you embrace Christ. I’m not sure how to feel about that final takeaway, but credit goes to you for the effort you put into this.

Yes, you made some crazy claims in the start, but I’ll say that you definitely delivered on some of them. You wrote the gods well, imbibing them with different qualities with deliberate thought. You also showed how the gods evolve over time, and that essentially, their inner selves stay constant, but as time changes so do their names and exterior qualities. The monsters even come back in modern times(20th century), as H.P.Lovecraft(yeah, he’s also in this story, I have no idea how you managed that!) externalizes his deep rooted fears into monsters of unfathomable darkness. You skillfully loop it all back to now, how with the advent of the internet and the rise of social media, people are no longer getting their thoughts and ideas from books but rather from social media, and news channels spreading divisiveness and hate among each other, which inevitably leads to panic. That was an insightful observation. But there’s an optimistic message about how all these monsters are, at the end of the day, created from our fears, flaws and insecurities, so they can be fought and overcome. Side note: I didn’t expect to see Qamulek(the creepy monster in the bag in Inuit times that causes the whole village to starve) as Slenderman, a modern internet legend. I know I’ve been saying this a lot, but that was creative as hell!



I also enjoyed the interactive sections, where you have to solve riddles and really think about it before picking a choice. Nothing in this story feels random, it is really well made. Just for the sheer creativity and ingenuity displayed, I’m going to give this one an 8/8. The premise of the story, visiting the ancient timelines guided by Merlin and observing how the Gods evolve from the Inuit gods, to greek gods, to norse gods, and finally to the Christian god was quite a journey to go through. It is a very original and thought-provoking premise to take, and I think you really ran with it! The ending: 3 main loops of the story are the Narcotic Loop, The reflection loop, the sin loop. Many dangers in modern society, of becoming self-obsessed, confining oneself to an echo chamber so you can no longer hear opposing viewpoints, and distracting one-self with easy dopamine-granting activities are discussed. And it all comes back to panic, humans try to deal with panic by engaging in those short-term gain, long-term harm behaviors. These loops are recurring throughout this work, told through various myths from various cultures, but all connect with each other in the end. That, in my opinion, speaks volumes about the care and time you put into designing this engaging story. This is a remarkable work, and you should feel incredibly proud of yourself for writing it. It is no small feat, that’s for sure! I’m really thankful that I got to read this story. It’s almost impossible for a reader to get all the meaning and insight this story could give in one reading. Unfortunately, I got the “sadly walk away in defeat” ending, I’m not sure what I did wrong. Regardless, this was a trip. I’ll definitely be revisiting it to see what I missed, and hopefully win the good ending where I defeat Pan once and for all.

Yeah, I think that by looking at the reviews, that the others have made a lot more succinct points than me. Skip this, read them instead.

I read your manifesto. From all things that bother me a bit, is that Christianity is placed on such high of a pedestal, the one religion that breaks the thought loops of Greco-Roman religions.

Don't quote me on this as I have no degree in social sciences or theology, but the reason why it's so important now, has in my opinion not much to do that it has a superior philosophy or something, but simply that the countries and cultures that adopted Christianity as its main religion became economically and politically the most important players of the world we live in today (at least from the industrial revolution to like modern day).

And I think the Zeus and Hera dynamic is kinda a bit too simplified. The city of Rome has kinda the habit to expand and invade it's neighbours and to adopt their neighbours' Gods into their pantheon. It is theorized that the reason why Zeus has slept with so many of these minor goddesses, nymphs and other people, is that lots of their neighbour cities worship lots of these goddesses as their main deity.

Rome's way to incorporate them into their mythology and absorb these other cultures into their own was to erm, have Zeus sleep/marry/or something with them and such. Is there a certain amount of sexism in this practice if you look at it from a modern lens? Yeah, probably. Still, it's kinda also a rather practical choice too.

And please for the love of God. My little Pony has disappeared from the cultural zeitgeist years ago. It didn't have the same impact as LOTR did for fantasy literature or Lovecraft did for cosmic horror and I doubt it will ever be. Even Twilight spurred a painful rise of YA romance fantasy books. The show may have had a profound impact on you, but I don't think it will stand the test of time. I cringe everytime the story tries to say that "my little pony" is on the same level of philosophical complexity as Lord of the Rings or even Star Wars.

WARNING: the following reviews will have spoilers on the story. If you have not read it yet, please do so first.

So the main issue that I have with this story, is that while it is thought provoking, there is nothing inherently “dark” or groundbreaking about it. From the way you were talking about it in the forums, I expected more. This is something a philosophy class freshman would turn in for a C. Not badly written, but unoriginal and mundane, treading over familiar ground, and overestimating its own self importance.

While your first page is interesting, the idea that we are important is subjective.
Some religions (my brand of Christianity, for example) believe that we are not important but that God provides purpose that we cannot create ourselves. Others, such as atheists, believe we have no importance other than what we place importance on. Ultimately, it’s nice that you place such a high value on the relevance of humanity, but a quote referencing the murder of a divine being in order to assert said importance… while not necessarily dark, it does reek of hubris, and the concept of your idea being important enough to kill for, ironic considering later subject matter.

The shreddit forum page, it says “Hoe do you respond?” I assume this is a typo and you meant how, but one of the options does include putting your phone away, so I had to laugh a little bit at the idea of a manifesto referring to the reader as a “hoe.”

The first two choices go to the same option… then why place them? Wouldn’t it be better to at least have slightly different dialogue depending on which statement you chose to make?

So… I agree with your concepts on literacy. Aside from structured thought, writing insures that the original thought or idea will remain true to its original source better than storytelling. However, it’s not exactly groundbreaking logic. This is similar to me saying a village whose members shit downstream of where they get their drinking water is going to be healthier than a village whose members just do it whenever.

The concept of ghosts as tricks of the mind? An interesting premise. Personally, I do believe that as we live our lives, things we do regularly or that we are attached to leave an energy residue after we are gone. But I suppose such a thing as “guilt possession” could be possible.

The qamulek story was partially inaccurate. Generally speaking, qamuleks tend to appear to people who wish to see them, hence the “you put me here” comment. They tend to offer gifts to people to get out of their way, as they must keep moving. The part about looking in the sack and seeing something inexplainable is accurate, but I am a little confused as to why nobody can take his place as a hunter, especially if their alternative is starvation.

“Gods treat us as we treat animals.” Mmm. I wouldn’t go that far. I’m not even entirely sure what you’re trying to imply. How can these beings treat us any type of way, if they are manifestations of our own guilt and fear. Unless you’re saying we punish ourselves for what we do to others? Considering there are deities in every culture of hunting, and many important festivals, and meat has been a staple of human food for thousands of years, I doubt humans are punishing themselves for killing an animal. I’ve hunted deer myself, some clean, some not so clean. No deer creature with a sack has bothered me before.

Hmm. The concept of Greek gods being archetypes of human experience is certainly interesting, although it is far from a new topic. Even many neo-pagans who worship the pantheon have beliefs of this.

The diatribe involving Pan was in fact a very interesting and outside-the-box concept. Even modern religions (Wicca) worship the idea of the Great Horned God, or the Green Man.

So while I understand that serious issues are serious, the opposition to the seal, Dionysus, Loki… there seems to be an overarching message here of anti-fun or anti-enjoyment. A type of Puritan message. “How dare you make jokes and laugh at that? Don’t you know that’s how the ENEMY gets in?” Like, the fact that you reference Satan, I have half a mind to think that you’re probably going to make him be the “modern version” of all these deities you’re opposed to, as they represent the archetype you think is the problem.

And immediately following my writing that part of the review, you bring up the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

There is however, several gross misrepresentations of the Bible. The Good Shepherd was a parable to explain to them how he was to be crucified.

The sparrows reference was to point out the same concept that Jesus later expands on: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?" If humans are more valuable than animals, why then would we be treated like them, or feel guilty for hunting them to survive?

He drove out the bird-cagers in John chapter 2 because they were selling things in Gods temple on the Sabbath, which was highly disrespectful, and a major sin. He openly states his wrath towards them is due to MONEY, not their caging of birds.

And… I called it on the whole Satan being Pan thing. As I said, this story, while interesting, is not hard to follow, nor particularly out of the ordinary. This manifesto is essentially just an essay on New Age thought processes.

The idea of Christ bringing forgiveness where a lot of old societies failed to do so is an accurate one, and it is why he is remembered and worshipped so widely. These are facts that do not rely upon belief to be known. I’m not entirely sure how Star Wars and MLP have anything to do with Christ, however, even with your “explanations.”

Ultimately, this does do a good job of captivating interest, and there are very few spelling errors. I will give it a 4/8 for clear effort and a decent showing.

Bird brained and ahistorical but kind of charming in its own way

My notes in review, as scattered as the purported theory this story was supposed to espouse and explain:

How is Qamulek/Qamalek supposed to be spelled?

Lots of weird wording or obvious incorrect word choice.

There are many reports of ghosts that simply move down a hallway or through a room.  How is that ghost driven by guilt, particularly when the ghost is unidentified or obviously significantly out of time.  This also presupposes that ghosts are real if we are to take the prelude and forum announcement seriously that this story has import to real world philosophy.

It is clear that on some of the decision branches whole paragraphs are just copied and pasted as they do not always mesh with the context of the story on one branch or there is an assumption that actions have been taken that may not have been actually been selected. Using the Badge or the not using the watch are fair examples.

Could do with a detailed proofreading or two.

If the definition of a perfect human is being free of sin and evil, how did the child sacrifices not also count as such?

Synthesisa is not something that can be played on.

The repeated Author's Notes felt unneccesary and jarring.

Biological sources are not the only sources of energy, perhaps you have heard of geothermal or solar power?

This is not only the most insane, weird, controversial, risky, potentially deeply offensive, spiritually serious, scientifically upending, philosophically inspired, personal, politically charged and mind-melting story that I have ever read, it is also the most insane, weird, controversial, risky, potentially deeply offensive, spiritually serious, scientifically upending, philosophically inspired, personal and mind-melting story that has ever been published by a living author.

I respect the sheer amount of ink that has been spilled here; the scope is impressive, and there's some interesting use of items to create innovative choices a few times.

However, it commits the cardinal sin here, which is that it is quite boring to read. I came to it with the intent to read it closely and comment on the merits of its plotting and so forth, but no, I couldn't do it. The sheer walls of text didn't do anything to advance the narrative as far as I could tell, and I found decent swathes of it impenetrable.

There's microlevel stuff (dialogue punctuation; having different lines of dialogue on their own lines, and so forth). But I think that's relatively minor considering my larger objection. I don't know. Maybe it's just not for me. I couldn't read all the way through it without glazing over.