New Gods: Failed Divinity | Fear & Hunger Lore

the gods to me are the most fascinating element of fear and hunger's expansive lore not only are they aesthetically very cool but they also represent some very fascinating subjects thematically the gods come in three categories the older Gods the ascended gods and the new Gods the latter of which are the most interesting to me personally the new gods are humans who have tried to claim the power of God but failed a testament to human ambition and greed they are more than human and yet less than Gods like the cabes of Hellraiser they are humans given in to their desires and who have now transcended beyond their Humanity yet almost always for selfish egotistical reasons this was my surface level analysis of these characters when I first played the first game and it was enough to Captivate me yet I knew there was more to them when I played the game which goes even further with its analysis and critique of human nature with the moon scorched and Rears disdain and jealousy of human deities Max durat is a channel I have followed for years equality lore Creator known for analyzing games and media through a highly intellectual lens especially via the subjects of alchemy and psychoanalysis recently Max posted a community post wherein it was confirmed by the developer himself that Max's videos had inspired the lore of fear and hunger too one of the video series being referred to here is Max's dissection of Carl yung's works most importantly his multi-part series on ION an extremely complex book which Max breaks down in a digestible manner I was not overly familiar with yung's work when I first saw this post but given I was already working on my own fear and hunger lore video I realized that it was a priority that I watch Max's videos on yung in order to educate myself thanks to Max's series on ION I now have a good grasp of the base Concepts and I've been able to read the book myself when you look at the work of Yung and understand the concepts of the ego the Shadow and the reconciliation of both into the self then so much about the second game in particular begins to make sense so in this lower video I want to analyze the go gods of fear and hunger through a unan lens in doing so I will offer my interpretation of the new and ascended God as well as the moon scorched and what they can tell us about Humanity as a whole I want to once again acknowledge Max durat here my understanding of Yung derives directly from Max's video series on ION I've only been able to read the book myself because of Max's videos without which this incredibly complex book would have been impossible to decipher but before before we dive into the dungeons any further we need to refresh our hunger meter with today's sponsor hellofresh hellofresh is a product I've been using myself for a year or so and personally I like the fact that it removes the hassle of meal planning with 45 plus recipes to choose from you never will be struggling for Choice aside from this it's really encouraged 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gods of fear and hunger through a union lens as I mentioned YouTuber Creator Max durat is a well-known lore Channel who has an in-depth knowledge of alchemy and psychoanalysis is Max often explains his lower videos with a reference to these subjects breaking down games and films and using these subjects in his analysis Max is particularly knowledgeable on the subject of Carl Yung and he went out of his way to break down one of yung's most complicated books ion in a 20p part series with each video in this series being dedicated to a chapter each Meo the developer of fear and hunger cited Max's series on ION among other videos as a source of inspiration that helped crystallize some of the ideas that were found in fear and hunger too and this does become apparent when you have an understanding of Union Theory okay so what is Ion ion is a book by Carl Yung which looks at the relationship between psychology Alchemy and religion the title itself ion essentially means Eon or ERA with a union ion being 2 years each in the book Yung analyzes the past 2,000 years which he calls the ion of Pisces and the importance of the figure of Jesus Christ and the important role he played in the development of the collective Western psyche during that ion and this is of course all based on yung's model of the psyche I will now attt to explain yung's model of the psyche in the most basic of terms and this is something he dedicates the first four chapters of ion 2 Yung believes that there are two elements of the psyche the conscious and the unconscious Parts the conscious part of your mind is the part that is in your immediate control and awareness the ego is the part of the conscious mind that we will be referring to mostly in this video as it's most relevant to fear and hunger to quote Max the ego is you it is the part of you that is aware and makes decisions and interacts with the unconscious elements of the world and of your psyche the unconscious is the elements of our mind that are not under our immediate awareness for example emotions there are various archetypes that exist in the unconscious part of our mind as Yung describes it the most relevant part of this for our discussion is the Shadow the shadow is seen as that part of our unconscious mind that we do not like for example it could be the source of your anxiety anger jealousy or any other kind of perceived weakness or negative traits that bubble up from your unconscious and affects you you believe that Perfection of the mind can only be found in the reconciliation of the unconscious and conscious parts of the psyche for example this would require us to confront the contents of our shadow so that we are somewhat aware of it we can then incorporate it and bring it under the control of the conscious limiting its negative effect on our life and conscious being this state of of balance between the Consciousness and the unconsciousness is what Yung would call the self the perfected and harmonious state of mind that every human aspires to Yung believes that Gods throughout history and cultures have represented this perfect state of man and that Jesus became this symbol in the West for the last 2,000 years this is also what Yun calls the amoda the god image and that we should all strive to match the harmonious state of the Gods however this is the ideal and the reality is that the interactions between the conscious and the unconscious self can go s later in the video we will discuss such situations as I believe both the moon scorched and the new Gods can both be seen as different instances of these conflicts going wrong with the new Gods being examples of ego inflation and the moon Scorch being examples of Shadow possession and again just an acknowledgement of Max the's work as I would never have understood any of this without his video series on ION and seriously you should go check that out for now however I would like us to return to the title of the book itself ion and how we can apply the concept of eons and eras to fear and hunger ion's title refers to yung's conception of eons which goes by the platonic month that is 2,000 years for Yung the changes of the collective Western psyche during the ion of Pisces 0 to 2000 ad were most influenced by Christ and Christianity however Within These great ions there are also important nodal moments in history which Mark further developments cited as being every 500 years or so some of the examples described by Max in part six of his ion series are Jesus's birth in 0 ad followed by the establishment of the first Monastery for founded by St Benedict in 529 ad and then in 1000 ad Max cites the development of Cults and heresies likewise the world of fear and hunger focuses around important nodal moments where the world seems to stagnate and a new Divinity seems to arise to push Humanity forward it is somewhat cyclical Almer also takes the role of Christ in this world and his Ascension marks the zero year of this universe Almer came to prominence during similar times to Christ a period of corruption and sin allmer is the being who restored Humanity to the old ways to the worship of more traditional Gods however instead of saving us from our sins he purged the corrupt elements of the human race in an apocalyptic Act of Slaughter given the Focus On Christ that ion has you might think that Almer is a shuin for this discussion and indeed meu does offer an interesting interpretation of of his universes Christ especially in regards to the developments of the lore in the second game and the splitting of the character between the sulfur and Almer characters we will return to that in the final part of this video but let us return to the timeline for now then in 809 at the time of the fellowship once again Humanity had reached a time of stagnation and death thus these four New Gods took control by the time of the first game which is set in 1590 the tides shift once again and a new group comes to the dungeons of fear and hunger from this event at least one new God and one ascended God would emerge once again leading Humanity into a new era then in fear and hunger too which is set in 1942 once again a new Fellowship comes together in a time of great Strife by this time the world has been brutalized by two world wars from this period of tumult two Gods can emerge the sulfur God and the Machine God these nodal events are directly referred to in the second game in a book called the four ages of history in this it describes the four different periods of modern history essentially four nodal events of this ion these periods are the age of alir from year 0 to 410 then the age of the new gods of Nash's time from from 410 to 809 and then we have the reign of the new gods of the fellowship from 809 to 1590 the fourth age is the age of fear and hunger which starts in 1590 the events of the first game and this is the current age that we find ourselves in in the second game as well the other pattern that one can detect within these events is The Souls of those who are involved Within These critical events in fear and hunger one you are required to claim The Souls of the fellowship in order to progress into the golden temple and then to the green Hue the soul of Torment from chambara the soul of the Endless from Nilan the soul of the enlightened from valte and the soul of the dominating one from franois however these are just the current holders of these Souls as the party members of both games are also in possession of these souls and in the first game each of the party members can become the new gods of Enlightenment torment domination and endless again these same Souls show up in termina and thus it seems as though these souls are drawn to important nodal events the new gods are constantly usurped and replaced and when we visit the Hall of the Gods we can see hundreds of different New Gods here likely representing how often these beings rise and fall perhaps this cycle is older than Almer himself and The Sultans and and kings that he overthrew were themselves New Gods the point of illustrating the eons of fear and hunger is twofold the first reason being that is simply interesting and a good foundation for understanding the waxing and waning power of the different gods of the world the second reason is that intentional or not we can already see the cycle of fear and hunger Loosely following the structure laid out by Yung in book ion the work that will be Central to my final analysis on the new gods and the moon scorched with all that said it is time we turn to the gods themselves so we may understand what the new gods are trying to tell us about Humanity one of the fascinating things about fear and hunger is the fact that there are different classes of divinity within its lore the old gods the new gods and the ascended Gods with each class represented by a different ritual Circle the old gods are the inhuman forces that seem to be as old as nature itself each an ineffable representation of a concept specifically they are representations of some of the most primordial Concepts that govern all life and the universe as a whole they are expressions of nature Gro goroth himself highlights the singular nature of gods that they are beings unaffected by the weakness of human desire and Minds as he says the following the old older gods are too pure for this world they are the true forms of the feelings and ideas that linger in men but humans they are too tainted by their own mind and ambition to understand Purity and this is certainly something we will revisit when we discuss the failings of the new Gods Gro goroth also lets us in on another truth the old gods are no longer here the elements of them that we face in both games are named as traces remnants of their power only considering these are some of the toughest boss battles in either game and yet represent only a fragment of the old God's power we can only imagine how Mighty their full forms are for example the two main old gods are grooth and syian who each represent the two bookends of Life creation and death specifically syian is the god of lust fertility love and creation whereas Goro is the one of death destruction chaos and blood while it is tempting to find groor as evil it is better to see him as a force of nature a force that represents the cruel but necessary Elements of Life it isn't cruel it is just unsympathetic and unavoidable just as death itself is however there is certainly a malicious element to one of the other old gods rare who inflicts his Madness and Truth upon on Humanity out of spite we are told by a couple of sources that rare is a jealous God that inflicts termina upon humans to keep them down and hinder their attempts to attain godhood however we will refer back to this subject later because it is a major aspect of our discussion on the moon scorched however rear still fits the mold of a force of nature as he is simply the moon and all the symbolism that comes with the moon again something we will return to later the other two main known older gods are the god of the depths and vushka the latter of which is the child of both Gro garoth and Sylvian vushka being the god of nature makes sense given his parentage as he combines their domains of death and creation and one cannot deny that nature is a system in which death and creation are the pillars the god of the depths is not referred to much but is actually the main antagonist of the first game it is this God's influence that is AFF ing the dungeon soul and it is from its corpse that the god of fear and hunger will ascend from in short these beings are inhuman they are so far removed from Humanity that we cannot conceive of their true nature indeed they predate humanity and it is told to us that Sylvian created Humanity whether Almer was the first or if he was just born among them they came after the old gods had existed the older gods are primordial and and far removed from Humanity the same cannot be said of the other two classes of God the ascended and New Gods New Gods are the most numerous and the class of deity that we know the most about because we can become one and we can also witness the Ascension of lagard firsthand we can talk to the new Gods themselves in mahab and they tell us why the new Gods came about in the first case it was the abandonment of the old gods that led to the first of the new gods to seek out mahab to become a new God one must travel to the ancient city of mahab this city is most likely the first city in all of existence as when we asked the new Gods about the city they reveal that this is the city of the old gods where remnants of the old gods still reside indeed this does make sense as the city itself seems to be connected to the void and the green Hue the true primordial Realm of the Gods referred to by the new Gods as true mahab thus it is likely this city was built on this spot by the old gods a terrestrial gateway to the void from when the gods originally came however we know that the new gods have over time added to the city as when we asked the new Gods about bethl we learned that it was he who built the grand Library ourselves and lagard can become a new God by setting The Golden Throne and traveling to the green Hue that's really it a human becomes a sort of demigod by entering The Godly void and transgressing on a realm not meant for humans which ultimately leaves one changed forever it seems even the predecessors to humanity the lizard men also find themselves thr to this cycle as when you ask about the greater blights of the Void the new Gods say the following before men the lizard men roamed as the dominating life form like us they too desired to ascend higher what remains of those ancient times are the forms greater blight is something that Rivals the powers of the new Gods even in this day and age it is truly curious how powerful those ancient relics were in their true Prime again this really supports what I said before that the new God cycle is far older than even Almer and Humanity as a whole the new Gods seem to have their reign in the terrestrial World they are then replaced and a new Cadre take their place as the active rulers when killed and their time is passed they ascend to the Great Hall a separate Dimension that the new Gods seemingly exist in in the second game Perell implies that the new Gods still pull the strings from the grand hall meaning the new Gods seemingly act as a collective once their active rulership is over indeed it is my opinion that the new gods are the force that direct you towards the machine God that want you to activate the three telectroscope and so that you can ultimately become one with the machine Gods Collective Consciousness the reason I believe so is because of the way in which we interact with the new gods in the second game we get drawn into the Great Hall twice if I'm not mistaken the first time is during the introductory sequence where we meet the janitor and rehea in re's realm to me this could be the new Gods giving you the opportunity to meet rehea so that you may follow the threads and a her in ascending the second time we come to the grand hall is even more telling it happens during the finale of ending a after we have defeated the platoon and before we meet Kaiser this time when we are drawn into the grand hall a text appears on screen which just says finally for a long time I wondered who is saying this but of course it is the new Gods themselves who are celebrating our arrival their plans have reached fruition in the birth of the machine God this makes toal sense as we will discuss later the machine God represents the end of Humanity's dependence on the old gods and marks a human God that has reached apotheosis through human Ingenuity alone and many of the new gods have desired Humanity to stand as equals to the Gods in the second game we do indeed see the fellowship taking their place in the Great Hall with shambara franois n van and Val all having taken a seat at the great table tables the new gods are far more powerful than their human kin with longer lives and great strength the most relevant to the lore of the first game are the new Gods who formed out of the fellowship the game is set in the late 16th century but the fellowship formed in the ninth showing how long they have been relevant the fellowship was a group of some of the brightest and best of that age who sought old gods according to the book of The Fellowship they first traveled there to find and confront the old God Gods as the world was seemingly going through a terrible period of corruption and decline each of these four gods are reflections of their beliefs and souls the new gods of the Great Hall being a good source for what each God believes in and thus why they are the way they are the most iconic of these new Gods is the tormented one once known as Ron chambara a poet who believed that true art could only be delivered when you experience great torment and suffering and as such he carries this Mantra on in a more extreme manner in his godhood having his flesh literally FedEd from his body and those who are unfortunate enough to enter his Temple are subjected to torture we could not conceive of the new Gods confirm that the red men are victims of the tormented one tragic beings that have been brutalized beyond recognition Meo the developer has said that the new gods are in part based on the cytes from hellrazer and you can certainly see this most keenly in the tormented one a human who desired to explore Sensations beyond what was available to Immortal this inspiration also highlights one of the main failings of the new Gods the cabes are themselves once humans humans who pursued greater Sensations Pleasure and Pain in a word they sought gratification they became what they are not for some Grand purpose but for their own selfish desires this hearkens back to something that Gro goroth said in the dialogue We examined earlier humans do not possess the purity of purpose that the old gods have they are tainted by their egos their ambition and selfishness this can be seen in so many of the new gods that we meet for example Francois the dominating one is so caught up in his own power that he attempts to prevent the next cycle of New Gods by locking the golden temple and guarding The Golden Throne against against any future Rivals though this is ultimately pointless as it doesn't change the fact that franois is not a true God and is unable to meaningfully affect the world something future franois eventually realizes in fact all of the fellowship seems to realize that they aren't true Gods by the end well except the tormented one who just seems to be so caught up in his own Sensations that none of this really matters to him they each realize in their own way that while they are IM mortal and have great power they don't really make any meaningful change they do not act upon the world like true gods and they are little more than powerful Kings let's take valel for example another new god of the fellowship who would come to learn the limitations of his power he is the current God of Enlightenment of the grand Library a Poss previously held by bethl and then nasra the new gods of the Great Hall tell us that each of the new gods of enlightenment chooses a particular subject to study at the Grand Library Val's journals and the new gods of the grand hall tell us that he spent his time trying to create life believing that the ability to create life is the main difference between New Gods and the older Gods valel is somewhat successful though perhaps not to the degree he would like he is responsible for the lord of flies a flesh based form of artificial life and he is also responsible for the mechanical uteri however despite being seemingly pleased with this initial success there is a flaw here one you might stumble across when you try to take the soul of a uterus or Lord of flies these beings have no soul we eventually find valel at the end of the Rope though still seemingly Immortal where he understands the Folly of his studies and that NOS ramus was right they are not true Gods able to affect true change rather they are just Kings for a time before being replaced I think nil van herself puts it best when we meet her within our dreams where she says this form of existence isn't the answer we were looking for for mankind to break free we need more we need someone equal in size and stature to them thus Nan is instrumental in a way that no other new God has been she sets in motion events that will lead to the first ascended God in 1600 years since all may himself she visited legard in his dreams M with him and gave birth to the girl a girl who has Divine parentage and is born with an ancient Soul within her she is destined to become the next great God and she has something that the new Gods lack Purity she is a girl who was born into the dungeons of fear and hunger she knows nothing of the outside world she knows nothing of joy of ambition or wants she has only known fear and hunger and with that said in the next chapter we will look at what actually makes a god both in the universe of fear and hunger and according to Yung so even before we dive into the yian thematics of the game we can see that the new Gods fall short for a number of reasons firstly just in terms of power while they are Beyond human they clearly do not match the influence of the older Gods who essentially govern Elemental aspects of life and whose mere fragments eclipse the power of the new Gods it seems that in general humans are also not pure enough to be true Gods because they are too Twisted by their own ego and this really is our entry point into the yungan discussion around the new Gods even if you do not believe in God consider what a God represents to society in an intellectual and moral sense they are the perfect being the template to which people Aspire as we discussed near the beginning of the video Yun called the perfected self the amoda the god image and that gods are often symbolic representations of this harmonious state of being Yung believes that Christ was that symbol for the past 2,000 years and to quote Yung directly he represents a totality of a Divine or Heavenly kind a glorified man un spotted by sin the perfected self is attained by reconciling the unconscious and conscious elements of our psyche into a state of balance I mentioned at the beginning of this video as well that there are interactions between the two elements of the psyche that can go wrong so let's take a look at some of those examples now and how we can apply it to the new Gods but bear in mind that these are only two examples of such conflicts the two that I find most relevant to the story of fear and hunger but again I would recommend Max's video series on ION if you'd like a more objective take on the ion book the first example of an interaction between the conscious and unconscious Parts going wrong is what Max calls the ego inflation scenario this is where someone gets an inflated sense of themselves and believe that they are the perfected self already believing they have achieved the aod D they begin to act in arrogant and egotistical ways despite the fact they have not attained the themselves and likely have many issues to address the ego consumes the self in this situation this is the scenario which I would apply to the new Gods beings of inflated selfworth who struggle to see the limitations of their position and how far they truly fall short of the true a magod d the second scenario is that of Shadow possession wherein unconscious elements of one's mind gains control over the ego to the point where it can influence and control the conscious self if we do not successfully confront the contents of our unconscious self and bring them under our control and limit its influence then the shadow can start to project itself onto the outside world the example that Max gives in his episode on the shadow regards social anxiety if one fails to accept and conf front this particular issue then you may begin to project these insecurities on the world instead of accepting it as part of you you may begin to see the world as awful and out to get you and that any issues you have with interacting with others is nothing to do with you but it's the fault of others you begin to project this element of your Shadow onto the conscious world and in time you may be possessed by the contents of your Shadow this is how I see the moon scorched the projections anxieties and traumas of the character coming to the surface and literally possessing the character in question their unconsciousness becomes the external affectation of each Moon scorched but more on that soon for now let us return to the new gods and examine how they fail to achieve yian balance via their inflated ego lagard is an excellent character study for this discussion as when we meet him in fear and hunger too over 300 years since he became a new God he too has recognized the fact he had allowed his ego to poison him in the first game upon Him becoming the yellow King he believes he is special even among other New Gods he clearly sees himself as a true God the next God who will lead Humanity into a new age that we will affect change unlike the other lesser New Gods demanding that we kneel before for him this certainly falls under Max's definition of ego inflation where the yellow King thought he was the attainment of human Perfection the god image of man however by the time we meet him as Kaiser in the second game we learn that his philosophy has changed he still wields tremendous power yet he seemingly understands that he allowed his ego to Blind him and lead him to believe that he was the one true God however he now claims to have abandoned the ego in the green hue and All That Remains is the self whether or not he has truly found balance between his conscious and unconscious self or whether he has just traded one ego inflation event for another remains to be seen however these clear references to Yan Theory reinforce the theory I have put forth in this video that the new Gods fail because they are flawed humans and most importantly the very type of Personality that would seek this power in the first place is doomed to fail as a god consider the fact that if you believe you can be a God that you deserve to be a God then you possess a certain ego and propensity to fall to Ego inflation you are doomed to fail in attaining the Y self franois was so convinced of his own dominance that he guarded The Golden Throne from any potential Rivals he believed he could Ascend to True mahab by sitting on the throne for longer than any other yet this was delusion insecurity Fran's dominance was fleeting and ultimately he himself saw that even encouraging us to go back in time in order to kill his younger self Val taale believed he knew what separated man and God creation he thought he would be the one to bridge that Gap and thus become a true God again this was a man who fa to Ego inflation not realizing that true creation can never be achieved by a new God being a new God is a sort of trap a trap for those who crave power and a way to stifle the Ambitions of humanity it allows Humanity to believe they have equaled the old gods and attain true divinity when in fact they still fall short New Gods are just another way of keeping Humanity down and beneath the older Gods those of ambition will be satisfied with a new God position and it prevents Humanity from looking for true means of Ascension nil van and NOS Ramos are two who recognize this fact nil van put plans in motion to help bring about a new ascended God telling us that being a new God wasn't the step up that she and her companions thought it would be the new Gods can't really change anything or Advance Humanity they are just powerful Lords really so instead she has taken steps to bring about a true ascended God in this way she does bring about meaningful change in which her her daughter becomes the first ascended God since Almer NOS Ramis the fifth forgotten member of the fellowship actually realized this truth far earlier on chapter 2 of The Fellowship book tells us that when they reached the city of mahab a seed of Doubt was placed in the mind of NOS Ramis now these books are clearly written on behalf of the fellowship with their perspective in mind and so the book says that he was Tred by the old gods because he was was a man of learning and Science and they manipulated this to spend him some Lies when in reality because he was a man of learning in science he most likely realized the Trap and the LIE of new godhood this of course would not serve The Narrative of the new Gods as a whole and so this is why a different story is spun in the fellowship books that NOS Ramis was instead tricked the reality is is that NOS Ramis realized the futility of becoming knew God early on that it's a trap and so he decided to carry out his own studies into immortality but on his own terms and indeed he must have had some degree of success because he is still alive as well in 1590 somehow managing to live as long as his new God compatriots but without godhood ultimately the new gods are glorified rulers demig Gods who do oversee humanity and do manage to pull some strings from the grand hall however they are not the real forces of nature they are not able to affect the fabric of reality like the older Gods can with the failure of the new Gods well documented it is time to turn to rear the old God who is most concerned with humanity and actively hampers their attempts at [Music] godhood we learn of R's views toward Humanity even in the first game when he was still just referred to as the moon God only we can meet one of his servants in the Tomb of the Gods the lady of moon this jellyfish appears from the green Hue telling us she is a servant of the Moon God and that he does not trust Humanity the new Gods tell us that the trickster God rear has many schemes to try and diminish the influence of the new gods and Humanity as a whole likewise we learn that pocket cat is a servant of the Moon God as well via the new Gods the new Gods also tell us that the moon God is one of the only older Gods who still observes humanity and he does so because he does not want Humanity to gain power via godhood now with the understanding that the moon God is chiefly concerned with interfering with Mankind's attempts at godhood the actions of both pocket cat and Lady of the Moon make sense as they are after one thing the girl the girl who would become the god of fear and hunger when I first played the game I just thought pocket cat was a creep and yeah he is but when you know who he serves then his actions clearly play a greater role in reare schemes he steals children because it robs Humanity of potential perhaps each of these children were destined to play some important role however in the year of 1590 both he and the lady of the Moon are after one thing the girl both he and the lady offer rewards for the girl but they don't tell us why they want her and if you never play the game through to completion then you may never fully understand the significance of this transaction this girl is to become the next ascended God a human born God who will be the most influential being for the next half century a being who will outstrip the influence of R himself thus it is clear that he has instructed his servants to intercept this girl for seeeing her rise as the god of fear and hunger yet he fails and the next half century is indeed dominated by the god of fear and hunger and thus we come to the events of the second game and the Festival of termina what's interesting is that even in game one you can ask the new Gods about the Festival of termina to which they tell you that it is an event organized by the old gods and that the moon God is often involved they tell us that it is a battle royale though they don't really understand its purpose though someone who had paid attention to the lore surrounding the moon God could would likely have guessed its purpose to keep Humanity down however while this is clearly the intent when implementing the termina festival it seems as though it is done unconsciously at the end of the game parel tells us that rare is actually no longer here like the other older Gods he has departed from the Mortal realm instead what is left is rare's traces and indeed we do fight this at the end of ending B per Keel tells us that the Festival of ter happens as a result of rare's hatred and suspicion of humanity even these traces of rare that are left in the Mortal realm have this aspect of his personality within him thus the Festival of termina is almost like a force of nature a result of that residual hatred towards Humanity so nowadays rare does not actually plan these events consciously they are an unconscious result of his view of humanity but nonetheless the intent behind these intense emotions is obviously to make Humanity suffer and suffer they do the termina events are utterly brutal with an entire city of people obliterated in a brutal Battle Royale a trace or no the remnants of rare that is present in this world and hangs over the chosen City during the termina festival has some extraordinary powers a very cruel power called Moon scorching Moon scorching is when people have prolonged exposure to rare's light in time this light will twist the person that's Afflicted twisting Humanity far beyond recognition and turning them into a beast but a beast that seems to reflect the darker elements of their psyche one of the most interesting lore items in the game is the book called The Truth under the Moonlight and it reads the following who of us doesn't cover their true face and hide behind a persona in the broad daylight we adopt a social role depending on the surrounding people we put on a mask that works as the public image of our true personality do we hide our face to avoid the Judgment of the people or do we look down in shame as the sun watches our every move a sun that knows our deepest longings and lustful thoughts only in the darkness of the night does the true and vile nature of men get revealed we share our decrepit bodies only with the select few under the Moonlight despite what lowly thieves covering in the shadows would like you to think the Moonlight hides no one what this is saying is that the Moonlight reveals the truth of who we are and if we apply this to Moon scorching then an interesting truth is revealed there are lots of moon scorched enemies in fear and hunger too almost every humanoid enemy in the game is Moon scorched from the villagers on the outskirts of prehal to the bobies found in the center of the town these enemies are all twisted in certain ways you could say that the basic Moon Scorch the villagers found in the outskirts are at the early stage where they're just starting to get burned and driven insane by the power of rear the bobies presumably were Law Men people who are obsessed with Law and Order and that carries on to their Moon Scorch forms however in this analysis I do want to focus on the contestants as their Moon Scorch forms are far more colorful individual and tell more about what moon scorched is really showing us I'd also speculate that the special Souls that each of the contestants have such as the radiating Soul the endless Soul the tormented Soul Etc has something to do with their unique Transformations they do stand Head and Shoulder above the other Moon Scorch found in prehal and perhaps their special Souls each one of them has had something to do with making their Moon Scorch versions even more par if Moon scorching truly shows what we are inside then surely The Souls of people would play a part in this transformation and those with more powerful Souls would have a more powerful transformation at least that's my interpretation of the more powerful Moon Scorch variant that we find of the contestants either way I see the moon scorched of the contestants as a reflection of their inner darker selves their unconscious mind it is the shadow of of the Union model coming to the Forefront let's look at Olivia for example Olivia is a character who is confined to a wheelchair and if you have mind read you are able to see that she hates talking about her condition and people pitying her when transformed into the mechanical dance Olivia cries at the player to not look at her and if we asked what has happened to her she says that she has always been this way referring to herself as an Abomination to me this is a manifestation of of how Olivia sees herself she says I have always been this way when in a literal sense she hasn't however her inner mind has always seen her this way a mechanical monster part human part metal reflecting her dependence on her wheelchair and her hatred for it there are certainly more simple examples there is Marco who becomes the giant fitting for a man who has tried to escape a life of violence but who ultimately sees himself as a brute then there is beloved Tanaka who takes the form of judgment a cutting commentary on Tanaka's Life as a salary man where he is effectively a slave to his Ambitions and his employers and how he always feels Under Pressure to continually produce results for his work I think you get the idea but let's just go through a couple more examples to Ram the point home Karen becomes the valkyrie the figures from North mythology who would scour the battlefields for worthy dead on the back of the valkyrie she carries deceased Warriors it all reflects the inner guilt that Karen has for her profession she is a war reporter and she feels the guilt of the war dead upon her shoulders she makes a living of War reporting and inside she feels like she makes a living from the death of others Samari becomes dysmorphia the very name of which implies that it reflects her social anxiety the Weeping scope is of course a manifestation of Levi's trauma of being forced to be a Child Soldier having a gun forced into his hands the Weeping scope literally has a gun welded to it as if he has no choice but to be a killer there are two exceptions to the Moon Scorch that don't follow this pattern and there are reasons for it and this is Abella and Dan to a lesser extent Abella has a elephant form and this doesn't seem to really reflect any elements of her personality as far as I can tell anyway instead I generally go with the community consensus that she has been infected by the woodsman's parasite and has transformed that way as for Dan he assumes a role that other people have already assumed which means it's not unique to him he becomes the pocket cat if he is indeed Moon scorched he is groomed for this role by the prior pocket cat but aside from this the moon Scorch contestants seem to reflect their inner Shadow given Meo the developer clearly confirmed that Max's series on ION inspired the lore of this game and the overt references to this yian Theory it isn't a stretch to conclude that the moon scorched as well could well have been influenced by elements of yian theory that they represent the shadows of our psyche brought to the surface and given Primacy over the ego and body after all the Moonlight shows us the truth of who we are dragging out the darkness within our unconscious of course Meo goes far further with the exploration of the yungan self in fear and hunger too via the machine and sulfur god let's start with the sulfur God as it ties into a character we have touched on already allar the Christ of the world of fear and hunger the sulfur God seemingly comes out of nowhere When You Reach ending sea perel reveals that rare is gone like the rest of the old gods and that in fact Perell does not serve rare instead he is a member of a sulfur cult who piggy back off the termina festivals in order to find new candidates for their order only the most violent and bloodthirsty of termina contestants will be granted an audience with the sulfur God there are hints as to the existence of this God before the ending of the game for example the murderer of the white mold departments appears to be a sulfur cultist with the symbol of sulfur carved into his living room floor it's clear these murders are a ritual sacrifice to the sulfur God and many believe that the murderer was rewarded by becoming the janitor who has similar face paint to per Kelly as an aside this face paint is said to be an identifying feature of the cult by the new Gods the season of sulfur is also mentioned in the museum as well as its symbol appearing on the clock but who is this sulfur god well our best answer comes from the man in black AKA black calev who claims to be a witness to Almer and he tells us about the relationship between Almer and sulfur this is a long quote but an important one so bear with me he says the following I stood next to your celebrated Christ allar the ascended one as he carved his Idol to condense his true Essence he carved that maab being from the depths of his subconsciousness to confront his shadow the unknowable the imperfection that obstructed his Pursuits of absolution as one the ascended one became two that was when Humanity finally reached the heights it had always strived for only it was not two gods that mankind yearned for now was it if the other one had been dug deep within Mer's subconsciousness it had to be sent back just as deep so it wouldn't obstruct the new found Order cast away so that true Absolution could be reached cast away deep all the way to the sulfuric pits but which one was it that got Cast Away the conscious or the subconscious of the ascended one so lots of interesting information here but again we get clear reference to yion principles the conscious and unconscious and this shouldn't be surprising given Christ is the central figure in ion the very book that inspired the developer in chapter 5 of ion Yung comments on the difficulties of aligning the Christian Jesus has an analogy of the self and I quote him now the Christ symbol lacks wholeness in the modern psychological sense since it does not include the dark side of things but specifically excludes it in the form of a luciferian opponent so while Yung believes that Jesus is a symbol of the perfected self for the collective Western psyche he recognizes that strict reading of the Bible paints Jesus as one half of his model whose opposite half is external to him he thus finds it easier to relate his model to the Gnostic or Yahweh concept of God which in both instances are closer to being a reconciled being of both light and dark or good and bad what is interesting to me is that the developer has taken this concept and integrated it into the lore the alare like Christ is the savior of mankind and the first ascended God of this world the first human to match the power and status of the older Gods yet he did this not by reconciling the two elements of his Consciousness but by splitting them thus all that would be left is the light the good according to the man in Blackmer then placed the other half of himself in a totem that he sculpted and buried it deep in the pit of sulfur in Hell In A lot of ways this Revelation by The Man in Black somewhat undermines the whole notion behind the all mror and in some ways it's like he cheated in order to attain godhood and as a byproduct created this being of ultimate Evil the Sul for God who demands blood death chaos and violence however you could see the external nature of the sulfur God as irrelevant and that together Almer and sulfur are the perfected Union self the system of balance between good and evil and I think this is the interpretation that I most like we also therefore have to consider the god of fear and hunger how does it fit into this universe of Union balance well I am not sure that it does and that this particular God is closer to the older gods and that she is beyond such human concerns when we ask the new Gods about the girl they tell us that she is a pure being and if you ask them about the ancient one then we are told that a special Soul resides within her that radiates the light of an older God whether this means she literally has the soul of an older God or just that she has one that is as powerful as one is unclear however what is clear is the girl is different from other humans she hasn't had much of a life beyond one of fear and captivity she is also a child and thus retains her Purity I therefore think her Purity reflects that of the older Gods she is born human but she has no ego or ambition she is just a vessel for a new God and thus the in Conflict isn't a concern of hers she is immune to the criticism levied by grooth She Is untainted by The Human Condition and thus is the perfect human candidate for godhood if anything we could stretch the yian analysis to suggest that she almost has no ego or sense of self and that she is there subsumed by the soul within her and that Soul happens to be remarkably powerful and of a singular purpose of course we can't wrap up these discussions on gods without discussing logic and the Machine God which is the most overt distillation of all of these ideas and the most clear aspect of the story inspired by Max's content and yung's work before we meet the logic we have to travel through the white bunker a bunker once held by the Eastern Union and now under the control of Kaiser and Breman this is just the central bunker and a system of underground bases that was originally created and used by the Eastern Union in order order to house their operation logic it was this project that Kaiser wanted to hijack what this project is and what it aims to do is more or less explained in two separate documents the first of which explains the three telectroscope that can be found throughout these bunkers great cables that connect to the central logic found in the white bunker this is a system that harvests collects and processes the consciousness of humanity delivering it to the central logic in a way that allows it to be used as a sort of collective human Hive node internally it uses this information to create a new digital world within it a shared Paradise think the ark from s the second document called brain diagram is even more overtly Yan even displaying an image of a brain split between the conscious and unconscious mind at the top the document discusses the limitations of both the human mind and the logic it states that the logic without a human element cannot ever fully comprehend the complexities of the human mind nor can the conscious human mind calculate to the same degree that an automated program could thus it implies that the logic should be integrated with a human who is in a lucid dreaming State at this point the conscious and the unconscious mind can be working together allowing the human mind to reach its true potential this human host would of course end up being Olivia's sister raaas who was originally an engineer involved in the original operation logic together the human and logic will become a processing machine that will contain all the power of the collective human unconsciousness in a lot of ways this is the union of the two sides of the Union psyche except for one key difference the obliteration of the self replaced by Logic and the collective unconscious of humanity when I first started this video I believed that these beings would be examples of the idealized self however each case subverts that expectation one separates his ego and Shadow one was born pure and without ego and the other unifies the unconscious and conscious by losing the self in the process should we then consider that none of these ascended gods are true Gods given none of them truly achieve the perfect self the aoda no it's not what I'm quite saying instead I think each of them are a unique illustration of humans trying to overcome the unan Quest for the perfected self between our conscious and unconscious self perhaps it instead illustrates that in the world of fear and hunger this balance just simply isn't possible for Humanity and thus they have to seek a way to go around it to work around it and find a different sort of balance I think that the machine God is an especially interesting commentary on humanity and the Quest for self-determination some wish to become gods for the sake of power or to join the older Gods as equals whereas Kaiser wishes to sever the apron string for Humanity to shed their dependence and subservience to the older Gods the machine God is the ultimate realization of that ideal it is the god of human Ingenuity creation and self determination its power doesn't come from Souls ritual Destiny or fate it comes from human hands the machine God is a combination of human invention and the Limitless potential of the human mind I love this and the Machine God even goes so far as to replace the green Hue of The Godly void as when the machine God invites you in to join the collective consciousness of mankind the area we enter is called the artificial green each of the ascended Gods represents a period of Humanity's developments a nodal event as per yung's concept of ions Almer is the human God of Faith a human who returned Humanity to the rule of the older gods and thus he is intrinsically linked to that period of human devotion and subservience the god of fear and hunger could be seen as the god of the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages when Humanity felt abandoned and they went through a period of immense suffering but also change finally the machine God is the god of the modern era of Science and invention and perhaps as a harbinger of atheism one of yung's observations in ion is about the rise of Science and how it eroded the traditional religious institutions of society yung's observation is not necessarily A criticism of Science in of itself nor from a religious standpoint himself but rather it's about the loss of that Central God image to which humans strive towards that moral ideal seeing Christ as a symbol of the perfected self and the totality to which we hope to match and strive towards perhaps the machine God is miro's attempt at indicating the end of fear and hunger's Christian era that the birth of this machine God is the end of the ion of Almer just as in the real world the rapid scientific developments of the 20th century indicated that the latter point of the ion of Pisces of the ion of Christ in fear and hunger the machine God is not just the union of the conscious and the unconscious self it is a symbolic representation of human scientific development marking the end of Humanity's Reliance and worship of the old gods and the erosion of their religious institutions and no doubt whatever remains of rare in the sky would hate such a development well I think I'll leave this video there as it's already gone far beyond what I expected it would and it is just a testment to how well crafted the lore of this universe is there is definitely a chance I've gone too far with the Union interpretation of this game however even if it wasn't the intention of the developer I hope this has started an interesting discussion nonetheless again I just want to give a massive thank you to Max durat my understanding of Y is directly a result of Max's videos on Ion I've only been able to read this book myself because I first watched Max's video explanation in full and I highly recommend you do the same if you'd like a more informed opinion on the subject and his videos will be linked below that being said my understanding of this incredibly complicated subject is very raw consisting mainly of Max's videos and my first reading of ion so if you think I misinterpreted anything then please let me know below i' would be delighted if you correct me and round out my understanding on this very interesting subject of course one final thank you to the developer of fear and hunger Meo for creating this incredibly rich and brittle world but let me know your thoughts on the gods below do you agree with my analysis of the new gods and the moon scorched that they are symbols of Humanity's failings anyway I will now leave you in the dungeons of fear and hunger please let me know what you'd like me to cover in the future but for now take care and keep an eye on your hunger and for your meters and I will see you next time

Channel: SmoughTown

Views: 234,909

Keywords: fear and hunger, fear & hunger, fear and hunger 2, fear & hunger 2, fear and hunger lore, fear and hunger story, fear and hunger story explained, story explained, lore, fear & hunger lore, new gods, old gods, older gods, prehevil, mahabre, mahavre, tormented one, rher, sulfur god, perkele, per'kele, termina, gro-goroth, sylvian, valtiel, nilvan, alll-mer, all-mer

Id: ZipvTbhjfJs

Length: 63min 18sec (3798 seconds)

Published: Thu May 16 2024