Unlike what you might imagine without diving deeply into the subject matter, the litRPG series I’ve been reading, “Salvos”, is in fact one of the most profound works I’ve read. Sure, some of it is just funny and silly, but there is really deep philosophy and emotion there, too. For instance, probably the best elaboration upon the concept of “love your enemies” is the chapter 81: “Lord of lies” of the book 9, where Salvos the protagonist talks about her personal philosophy and motives with a terrible bug-demon, a lord of illusions and curses, who is smart, calculating and cruel, responsible for the deaths of millions; essentially, someone that makes Hitler look like a little bitch. She talks to him while they fight, and it’s not the kind of talk you would expect, where someone tries to make the enemy doubt himself in order to weaken him, trying to instil fear and doubt. No; she talks to him with her heart open, explaining why she does everything for selfish reasons, but her selfishness encompasses other beings, those she loves and cares for, within her own identity, while in his selfishness there is place for none but himself.
She strikes him down with a mortal wound to his chest, and kneels by his side, gently talking to him about all the things she loves, that make her act to protect them, and in his final moments he has a change of heart, remembers one truly precious and unselfish moment from his childhood, and dies.
There is no obvious afterlife for the characters, yet the impression you get is that she saved him, in his last moments, and she just keeps kneeling beside his corpse later, and you try to guess her thoughts – probably something along the lines of “we could have been friends or even companions, had you only figured this out in time”.
She is portrayed as a character that is primarily driven by pride and selfishness, and yet she expands her sense of self to embrace so many different beings of different races, that her selfishness feels like divine protective love and inexplicable kindness, that heals even the soul of a mortal enemy, in death. Her enemy tried to argue that they are both the same: they act for selfish reasons, to which she answers, as a rebuttal: “And yet, I am Salvos, while you are Belzu.”, meaning that their selfishness is not the same because their sense of self is not the same.
This sentiment, where she is forced to kill her enemy in order to protect the world and the people she loves, but she doesn’t do it out of hatred or anger, and doesn’t even separate herself spiritually from her enemy even when she is forced to kill him, somehow does a better job at explaining the concept of loving your enemies than most Christian theologians. “Salvos” does an excellent job of portraying love as something with real dimension to it; something alive and powerful and fierce and fun; kindness and compassion that wields the power of a thermonuclear warhead.
I’ve been thinking… how many people actually use their own minds to discern between phenomena, and not just depend on the label? Sure, the Christians understand the concept of Devil presenting himself as an angel of light in order to deceive them. However, it seems that they never consider the other option – that God might test them by showing himself in a form that is radically different than, or even completely inconsistent with, what they understand as God.
Would you recognise God if he showed himself to you in form of a demon? Devil? Your enemy? Some people, it seems, would have a serious problem if God showed himself as woman. What if God used non-biblical language? What is God allowed to do, or be? Do you even comprehend how silly this is? Sure, you can recognise things if there’s a correct label on the product, but what if there is no label and your destiny depends on getting it right? What if the label and the wrappings are the opposite than those expected for the content?
This is why “Salvos” is so good, because you have to figure out what the character is in their nature, without relying on silly hints, like demons with horns being evil, because sometimes a demon with horns is a being of pure love, and other demons with horns are selfish, cold, cruel bastards.
Interesting, I just finished watching Loki (TV Show).
While some episodes are written just to fill the season timeline, some are actually decent.
Loki is a god of mischief, adopted son with family issues and quite power hungry, constantly trying to get to some kind of throne which he believes is his rightful place.
Well, at the end of TV Show, he does get a throne – a throne that saves entire reality and while he was walking to the throne, he basically had to sacrifice all his desires and as he was getting closer, his dress started to form around him which includes, well … really big horns 🙂
And my first thoughts were “hm, ok, so a saviour of entire reality is now a somewhat demonic creature with huge horns” … but it was more of a mocking in a sense “oh great, there was no transgenderism raping in this show, just demonic creature saving all of us” … but in the same time I felt huge conflict because Loki actually sacrificed himself and used his powers to save entire reality – not quite demonic behaviour … and it reminded me of probably one of the best characters from World of Warcraft – Illidan Stormrage.
He became half-demon and “served” the enemy, while he was only looking for a way to destroy The Legion from within. He was so convincing he tricked even Sargeras (leader of The Legion) who showed him a vision of Legion destroying million of worlds. Illidan then wanted to prepare for Legion return, but no one believed him which resulted in death of several of his own :-), branding him The Betrayer and he was imprisoned for 10.000 years, only to be released when Legion returned 🙂
Anyway, he was not the kind to be fuck with:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td0pUwrBWjc
Full Illidan Story (not great storytelling, but could not find a more complete one as quickly)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORdE3xt4R5I
It’s interesting how emotional people get for virtual characters, in movies and video games. Apparently whole generations of gamers have very real PTSD from Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy VII. Play them a few notes from Aerith’s theme and they all start to cry.
I guess it’s hard to find such real-life characters. In fact, it seems to be harder and harder to find people for which one would feel admiration.
Life got too easy and it seems “too easy” only creates different flavours of pussies :-), in most part at least.
So virtual characters serve as placeholders to fill that void.
And if PTSD is real, I guess it counts 🙂
I’d say “real” is defined by how deeply you feel it, not how close it is to the way a rock is real.
(spoilers!)
Regarding this, there’s a part in “Salvos” that I find really emotional – the battle with Belzu at the Helbir plains, when the humans show themselves to be disjointed, disorganised and incompetent, and one sole Elite fighter, Mori Gladius, is left to defend the civilians and other defenceless people in a city, joined by six magical “clones” that Salvos remotely operates. Mori Gladius is one of the highest “ranked” humans and a wonderful person, but other than Salvos he is left there alone, without support, and they really fight great together, Salvos sacrifices the last of her clones to help him, fighting and saving people at the same time (and at the remote location she coughs up blood because she “ate” several deadly curses from Belzu), Mori is about to win, outmatching Belzu, and then another demon comes out of the blue and kills him, because he had nobody to watch his back.
And later when one human brags to Salvos about humans coming together against a common threat, Salvos’ friend later wonders why Salvos is in a strange mood. She’s thinking about how those very humans would try to kill her if they knew she isn’t human, and they were nowhere to be found when she and Mori fought, and the only person who actually fought with him so that he wouldn’t die alone was a demon.
The entire thing is very emotional but not in a cheap way, there is very deep thinking there and the feeling of real tragedy and virtue.