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Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacn
Posted By: UrsusArctosDate: 3/30/22 5:11 p.m.

In Response To: Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacn (Godot)

: Interesting.

: The Lovecraft story "The Rats in the Walls" has been mentioned in
: relation to the Gheritt White terminal but not the W'rkncacnter.

: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/gheritt.html

Thanks for the Story Page shout-out! I'd completely forgotten about the Gheritt White page in the meantime.

: The Lovecraft references/allusions are certainly ramped up in Marathon
: Infinity. So I am thinking this is Greg K with some help from Chris G.

: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/cthulhu.html

: Cheers
: Hamish

Ah, thanks for the explanation. Having had the time to become a fan of both Borges and Lovecraft between the time I first visited the MSP and now, I appreciate what Greg and Chris were doing with the story so much more.

Incidentally, Lovecraft was deeply influenced by his exceptionally vivid dreams and set a number of his works in "The Dreamlands", a vast alternate dimension entered through dreams, creating a set of works often called The Dream Cycle by fans. One of his earlier works, Polaris has the protagonist struggling to distinguish between dream and reality in a creepy variation of the famous Butterfly Dream of the Zhuangzi where Zhuang Zhou doesn't know if he is a man dreaming of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming of being a man.

And now we come to statements like this, from Page 4 of the Marathon manual -

Oddly , this is familiar to you, as if it were from an old dream, but you can't exactly remember...

If the Lovecraft/Zhuangzi trouble in distinguishing between dreams and reality is to apply, does the player character (aka the 10th Mjolnir Mk.4 cyborg) remember things as if in an old dream, or are they the dreamer making all these monsters come to life? If the player character is actually the Marathon counterpart to PiD's Dreaming God, it would help make some sense of the contradiction presented at the end of Marathon Infinity where a failed timeline makes it abundantly clear that the W'rkncacnter in L'howon's sun is very real and very terrifying, versus the statement of success -



The creature, or creatures S'bhuth fears are
either dormant or a myth--we've seen nothing
to account for his terror.

All of which casts doubt on whether on not the W'rkncacnter(?doubt) ever existed - while the player's actions actually determine whether Yrro tossed the thing into the sun in a previous iteration of The Garden of Forking Paths.

Anyway, I digress. It's been a long and rambling post and I've put up a whole lot of stuff that may be kind of wild, even by the standards of this place ;-)

Cheers,
Ursus

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnterUrsusArctos 3/26/22 6:49 p.m.
     Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnGodot 3/26/22 11:31 p.m.
           Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnUrsusArctos 3/30/22 5:11 p.m.
                 Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnGodot 3/30/22 11:54 p.m.
                       Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnBaileyi 12/1/23 8:53 a.m.
                             Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnGodot 12/1/23 9:42 a.m.
     Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnLion O Cyborg 3/29/22 1:05 p.m.
           Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnUrsusArctos 3/30/22 4:43 p.m.
                 Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnDurandal_1707 3/31/22 12:06 p.m.
                       Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnLion O Cyborg 3/31/22 1:47 p.m.
                             Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnUrsusArctos 3/31/22 5:29 p.m.
                 Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnLion O Cyborg 3/31/22 1:43 p.m.
                       Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnUrsusArctos 3/31/22 5:29 p.m.
                             Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnDurandal_1707 4/1/22 4:50 a.m.
                                   Re: Another Lovecraft reference with the W'rkncacnLion O Cyborg 4/1/22 2:48 p.m.

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