late night meta opinions rant ahead

mickmercury:

Not to be an english major and massively overanalyze a single improvised line (spoilers: that’s exactly what I’m going to do; it’s hard to avoid; John doesn’t actually have a lot of lines in the grand scheme of things) but when this happened in Story & Song p2

Merle: I’m not real good yet at the dad thing, but I’m learning. I’m getting better about it.

John: I’m not worried about you, Merle. You’ll get there.

it blew my fucking socks off because that one line is so different from everything John has said before.

Because this line is a hope. John is expressing a belief that something will get better. Moreover, he’s expressing a belief in a future. Merle can’t get better at being a dad if he and his children and their home universe have been destroyed and devoured by the Hunger. Ergo, John believes they’re going to win.

And like, just to extrapolate from this – John barely exists as an individual in his first couple of scenes. He’s uncertain of his own name, and Griffin makes it abundantly clear that he hasn’t really existed as an individual consciousness, as a person, since the Hunger was formed. All he really is is a mouthpiece for the Hunger’s ideas, even when he’s speaking as “himself” rather than the Hunger (and despite his claims, he does very clearly use “I” to refer to the Hunger, and not just “we”). He claims that he can’t remember the last time he felt any emotion except the utter horror at/hatred of existence that produced the Hunger. Griffin also clarifies that John doesn’t exist as an individual between Parleys, that he’s reabsorbed into the Hunger. John’s indistinguishability from the Hunger makes a lot of sense, if he hasn’t really existed as a person since the moment that he and his whole world believed so utterly in the idea that powers that Hunger that they literally physically became it.

So how the fuck has John changed so much between those two final Parleys? It isn’t stated canonically that he somehow regained or retained his individuality at some point in there, but I can only imagine that as the case. That’s partially because it really does seem like John called Merle to Parley, not the Hunger, since the Hunger very much doesn’t seem to approve, and because John specifically says that “I brought you here” because “I needed to say goodbye to someone.” How? Did his experiences with Merle in Parley somehow change him too much to fully reintegrate? Was it the influence of what Merle said in the last Stolen Century Parley?? How does that “Huh, I feel sad” he responds with play into this? What exactly did it take for him to call Merle there?

And he wants to say goodbye. This guy who disavowed friendship, who disavowed all concern for other people, who disavowed existence itself, now wants one more conversation with his worst enemy and only friend before the end. And moreover, he wants to help him.

And like I’ve said before, it’s so very, very hard for me to reconcile the creation of the Hunger with the story that the McElroys told. This is a multiverse where the most powerful force that exists is the bonds of love between people. Where the Super True Neutral goddess of fate Istus that you get in a Greyhawk sourcebook, known for her callous and capricious nature and her cynical, unfeeling followers, becomes a kind and loving friend and ally. Where on every world that the IPRE visited and warned about the Hunger, people who were faced with the possibility of their destruction kept hoping. They fought back. They found faith, or they continued trying to make beautiful things, or they took up arms, even with the knowledge of certain doom. There was always hope, or at least defiance.

So what the fuck kind of world created the Hunger?

John: I’m sorry you feel that way. You’re the first person who I’ve, sort of, talked about this to who hasn’t listened. There were– everyone listened, Merle. I’m not being hyperbolic. Every. Person. In the world was swayed. I don’t know why you’re different. But everyone else listened. Everything, everyone across our whole plane of existence- our- our shared vexation, with, life? Covered the world like a blanket. And soon every bird in the sky and every tree in every forest and every blade of grass, and grain of sand shared our fury. And it- it wasn’t long before… it changed us.

In what kind of universe was every living thing so willing to listen to John’s message, and to believe it with such utter conviction that they changed the fabric of their very existence into that idea? On what kind of world was there not one single person with hope, with even the slightest argument that life could be worth living? Because the only alternative I can see is that the Light of Creation fell on the Hunger’s world, and that universal conviction was some product of its compulsive thrall. Either way, that’s a horror story. That’s a nightmare. That’s the saddest goddamn thing I’ve ever heard.

I’ve struggled with depression for years. I’ve believed things that John said, about the pointlessness of life, about the emptiness of joy, about the terror of eternity. But I’ve always had wonderful, loving people supporting me, who helped me remember that those things aren’t true. The thought of the whole world telling me I was right to think the most awful, damaging lies I’ve ever believed is, on a very personal level, one of the most terrifying things I can imagine.

So no wonder John was so thrown by the thought that anyone wouldn’t immediately agree with him. Especially when that someone was Merle Highchurch – Merle Highchurch, who had seen the horrors of life and death and eternity more than anyone, often at John’s own hands, and who still cherished his family and the joy he found in the world so much. And I wonder, after a lifetime of utterly unchallenged despair, was that one man’s refusal to give up on happiness enough to shake the foundations of John’s philosophy?

I’m not exaggerating when I say that hearing that line was the moment that my entire perception of John as a character turned around, because this all kind of hit me then and there, and this is all I could think. That here we have a character who has just called Merle his friend, despite having previously proclaimed that friendship and joy and love and family are meaningless in the face of the horror of existing. He knows he’s not going to make it out. But he thinks Merle and his family will. And so he’s somehow called Merle here to have one last moment as himself, and he then dies horribly in that moment while desperate to tell Merle how to defeat the Hunger.

And I don’t think he did it out of spite knowing the Hunger was turning on him, and I don’t think this was just an end-of-Bladerunner “like tears in rain” moment where you save your enemy so that you’ll be remembered for the living, feeling person you were. To fight for a last moment, you have to in some way value your life, your experience of living. The Hunger didn’t, but in the end, John did.

Because I think it mattered that Merle Highchurch so relentlessly espoused joy and life and faith in oneself. I think it mattered that he unhesitatingly offered his genuine friendship to the very last being in all of existence who would have accepted it. Because John did accept it. I think, in the end, that John believed that there was a life worth living. And he believed that future would exist and that Merle would do well there, and he was right. Because in the Adventure Zone, it’s always right to hope, and to be kind, and to look for the happiness that exists in even the darkest places. And in the end, the real enemy isn’t the people who were manipulated by the Relics, isn’t the IPRE members who made terrible mistakes, isn’t the people who have been swayed by despair. It’s the Hunger, the voice inside us that lies and says these things aren’t true, that we’re wrong to hope and love and live and seek joy. And being the one person who stops to give hope and love and friendship to someone lost in their own darkness is the most powerful act in the world.

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(I’m half-deliriously exhausted and I hope any of this makes sense; far too exhausted to coherently transcribe audio; so shoutout to the TAZ Transcribed project for those quotes, theyre good cool people doing a good cool thing.)