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I mean, like... all right.
I'm not here to debate politics, and it's not really what I want the thread to be used for. If I can, I'd like to request that comments keep the focus away from stating whether the game's messages are justified or not, and focus more on what those messages are. If it helps you be more comfortable to say something along the lines of "Eh, not sure I agree with what they're saying, but I think the authors are making a statement of _________ in this scene," that's fine, just make sure the focus is on the authors' statement.
That said, I admit that I myself am sending a political message in the creation of this thread alone, as it would be disingenuous for me to say that I'm interested in the game's themes as much as I am if I didn't relate to them on some level. So as a courtesy to the readers of this thread, I will say this much:
I do think the game is focused on real issues that are affecting real people, and I think that if your goal is to defend a particular political party or ideology, no matter which one you're defending, you have to have answers available to address concerns like these. But it's your choice whether to build that defense or not, and I personally won't think less of you if you choose not to get into it--it's a rough fight. If you DO choose to build that defense, I wish you good luck, but this thread is not the place to do it.
With that out of the way, back to the topic at hand: This game dumping on capitalism something fierce.
Dusk Star Themes, Part 1: The Revolutionaries
I think Mr. Chazokov's dusk stars are one of the clearer cases of symbolism being used in the game, next to the ending. And just as I think two of the game's major themes are death and capitalism, I also think the dusk stars are concerned with these two themes more than anything else, and they are a good representation of how these themes are explored throughout the rest of the game. There's not really an even split between the two themes, but let's focus on capitalism for right now.
There are three dusk stars in particular that are focused on themes of the oppressed fighting back against oppressors. The first is the dusk star representing the story of a king who told a peasant that his entire world basically meant nothing, so the peasant destroyed the king's entire world in return. The second story is the story of Simone, a soldier who managed to keep the slip of the enemy until she was able to amass a small army of people to storm the enemy's gates, at which point her army was annihilated because the enemy had better weapons and defenses. The third is the story of the big snake, which enveloped several towns and cities until the people in these places realized they were all being enveloped by the same big snake, at which point they were able to rally together and kill the snake.
So, outside of the dusk stars, there is already the recurring theme in the game of the rich oppressing the poor, or of the poor otherwise being immobilized because of their role in the capitalist system. I went over Bruce's story as an example of this in the previous post. I also alluded to the abuse of the miners in the town's past, how their rich bosses ignored the dangerous working conditions of the mines, refusing to acknowledge the workers' complaints until there were strikes which led to even more people getting hurt. Selmers's library poem is all about the sheer disparity between the rich and the poor, about how a lifetime of income to her is just a few seconds' worth of income to a select few, about how no one she knows has the opportunity to make more than the bare minimum they need to survive, about how she wants to burn the silicon valley to the ground. Selmers is not the only character in the game to express this kind of sentiment.
At the very beginning of the game, when Mae is recounting the year her grandfather died, you have the option of having Mae describe the highway. Mae notes that Possum Springs used to be in between two major cities, so people passing from one city to the other would have to pass through Possum Springs along the way, which brought some level of business to the location. But when the highway was built, it provided a more direct means of passing between the two major cities, so no one goes to Possum Springs anymore, which is a big part of what's causing the town to die out.
Later in the game, you have the option of going out to a field with Mae's mom. If you do this, she asks Mae to climb on top of a smokestack and describe what she sees. At this point, if you have Mae focus on the highway, you have the option of saying that the highway looks like a "big snake".
Okay, now back to the dusk stars.
If you haven't already made the connection yourself, I think Mae's statement is deliberate, and I think it's a callback to the dusk star of the big snake. I think the dusk star is a comment on how the forces of modernization, as defined from a capitalist standpoint of what modernization should be, are suffocating Possum Springs and places like it. The highway isn't the only example of this, even in the game itself--the town's mall and video rental store are both losing business to the Internet, and the economy of Possum Springs is also going downhill because of that. (I don't think the game is critical of the Internet, otherwise, which puts this argument on shakier ground. But the observation stands, nonetheless.)
So just as the dusk star of the big snake implies that people should fight back against these forces, I think the other two dusk stars align with the same theme. However, they look at it from two different angles. Simone's dusk star seems to be an acknowledgment that you can't really fight the forces of capitalism, not directly, because those forces are far too pervasive and powerful. You and everyone you know will get destroyed if you try. But on that level, it also seems to acknowledge that, if you're sly enough, you can evade the more destructive aspects of capitalism and maybe even find a way to escape from them if you try. You can at least survive, if you stay hidden.
I think the remaining story, the one about the peasant and the king (I can't remember if they had names), is less about how the fight against capitalism works, and more a commentary on why the fight is happening in the first place. The story begins by noting that the peasant had nothing to say to the king, which is why the king insulted the peasant and his entire family. The story ends by noting that the king had nothing to say to the peasant, after the peasant had killed the king's entire family. A parallel is being drawn here, suggesting that the reason the peasant had nothing to say to the king back then is the same reason the king has nothing to say to him now. The king was demanding the peasant's respect, but in the peasant's eyes, the king had done nothing to deserve it--and just as the king had wrecked the life of the peasant and everyone he knows just through his reign as king, and then had the gall to insult the peasant for not being thankful for it, the peasant decides it's only fair to respond in kind.
So anti-capitalism is a strong, pervasive theme here, both in the dusk stars and throughout the rest of the game. But how does it tie in with what I would define to be the other, stronger, main theme of the game: Death?
Dusk Star Themes, Part 2: That Which Refuses to Die
The quote used most heavily in the advertising of the game is "At the end of everything, hold onto anything." This is the conclusion at the end of the game, the conclusion Mae comes to in response to how to face her own death. It's a positive message. But I think it's also a description of the mentality that's causing the town to die in the first place, and I think Mae acknowledges this herself.
So death comes up a lot in the dusk stars--or rather, there's a lot of instances of people evading death. There is someone who stubbornly refuses to die despite being left to drown. Adina the stargazer doesn't really die, but just disappears. There is a spirit medium who is possessed by his own spirit after his death. The very last dusk star Mae sees, at the end of the game, is just a simple representation of someone building a fire to prevent himself from dying to the cold.
And, like these, there is also a ghost haunting Possum Springs, and this ghost also refuses to die.
To some extent, you can say that the ghost is a representation of Mae's fear of death--and it is. But more than that, given the ghost's connection to the cult, and given the mining helmet that it wears, I think it also represents the idea that Possum Springs is being haunted as a whole. More specifically, it's haunted by its past, in more ways than one.
In the simplest sense, Possum Springs is being haunted by its past in all the ways I already went over in my previous post. The mining industry died, and it left a big hole when it did. It adversely affected the economy and everyone in town is still suffering for it. So Possum Springs is haunted by its past in that sense.
But it's also haunted by its past in another way. After the town was initially developed to support the mining industry, it created the idea that this was the primary purpose that the town should serve. It created this idea in the population that this was the only thing the town could be. But this was in the past, and now it's the present, where the mining industry doesn't exist anymore. If the town is going to survive, it needs to fulfill some other purpose--but everyone still sees it as being a mining town first and foremost, and everyone is still measuring its success based on its ability to be a mining town. This is the other way the town is haunted by its past, and this is one of the primary things suffocating the town.
If you take Bea's route, Mae has a conversation with her at the end of the game that involves old people taking residence in a place, haunting a place, and refusing to leave to make enough room for the young people. They're specifically referencing the cult when they say this. The cult has this idea of what the town once was, and rather than letting this idea die and letting the town become something new, they're trying to resurrect what the town once was through artifical and unsustainable means.
As the cult represents mainstream conservatism, it can be tied to similar attitudes prevalent in that movement, more directly represented by what the town council is doing throughout the game. They fight to hold onto the specific buildings and businesses they think are important, because these buildings represent what they remember the town being, and in doing this they're blocking the way for new institutions to come in and define what the town can become in the future. In spite of this, they're also pushing out the homeless in an attempt to appease capitalist entities, to encourage the representatives of capitalism to come back and revitalize the town--but that's absurd, because capitalist entities are the ones that redirected business away from Possum Springs in the first place. Capitalist entities want nothing to do with Possum Springs as it exists now, and contributing to capitalism like this is only hurting the town further.
Going back to the dusk stars: Remember the one about the spirit medium possessed by his own ghost. Mae says that's stupid, because it's the same as being alive, but it's really not. The town also died and then became possessed by its own ghost after dying, and it left an emptiness that's affecting the people within it. And this is not the only symbolic reference made to this concept within the game. During band practice, if you weren't distracted by trying to keep up with the notes, you may have noticed that the lyrics tend to have some relevance to themes being covered by the game. Check the second song, "Weird Autumn", and notice how it's about a house that no one will move into because the people who use to live in it left some kind of strange, empty presence in it.
I also realized another connection to these themes while I was writing all this up. "Possum Springs". Possums like playing dead, without actually dying.
At a couple points throughout the ending, Mae says she feels like she relates to the cultists. She recognizes that they're afraid of dying, like she is, and that they're trying to hold onto something, like she is. But she also recognizes that it doesn't justify hurting other people in the way that they are. And she also recognizes that the end of the town isn't really the end in general. There's one more piece to this story, and one more dusk star I still mean to cover.
...I seem to be having trouble posting this all at once, though, so this will be continued in the next post.
Once again, I forgot the names, but one of the dusk stars represents a seer hired by a king to observe the stars and interpret their movements. Eventually, the king meets an astronomer who has a newer, more accurate interpretation of how the stars work and what they mean. As a result, the king throws out the seer, possibly even banishes him, I don't remember exactly.
Again, this is a representation of what's happened in the town. The town originally served a more significant role in the economy. Once newer technologies and businesses developed, the town became obsolete, and effectively it was abandoned by capitalism as a whole. The game illustrates this as a tragedy, but to be fair, I think the game also acknowledges that it was an economic inevitability.
But after the story of the dusk star is told, Mae asks a question: Did the seer really have to be abandoned? He can't perform his original job for the king, but isn't there something else he can do?
And this brings me to another major theme of the game: Birth after death. The cycle of life continuing on, even after old things have been lost. The Party Barn went out of business, so Gregg repurposed it into a place for band practice. The subway was flooded, so now people fish there. Floats from the spring parade were thrown into a storehouse to be forgotten, but miracle rats were born inside the remains. The Pastabilities went out of business, and even though this was basically the end of the world, it was replaced by a Taco Buck, which is the beginning of a whole new world. (They deliver!!)
When Mae and Germ look out over the parking lot, they talk about how nature is eventually going to take over everything someday. This may be what inspires the dream that Mae has after her near-death experience, the one where she walks back into town and all the houses are gone. When Mae describes this to her friends, she says that when she first had this dream, she was scared; but now she just feels like, if it happened, she could just build a new house.
And I think this is the message on how to respond to the cult, capitalism, and whatever else. The town is dying. Out of fear of this death, some people are trying to rewind time, trying to force the town to become what it used to be in the past. This is impossible--there is no way to prevent the inevitability of the town's past being lost forever. But this isn't the end. The town still has the option of becoming something new. If you want to, you could take the approach of becoming something that's relevant to the economy again, so capitalist forces have a reason to come back and revitalize the town... but given the rest of the game's themes, I think the suggested solution is that you figure out a way to survive that doesn't involve capitalism in the first place.
Put your life as a seer behind you. You can't have that back. You can try to impress the king some other way, try to get back into his good graces, but it might be better just to go find something else to do. Run to the woods, see where it takes you.
Other Stuff
I do think the game contains other messages, some tied into the ones I've already talked about, some not. I don't think I could describe them all in a semi-cohesive way like I did everything above, though. I might write up another post or two with the smaller, disconnected observations I've made of some of the stuff that happens in the game, but it's not a guarantee. Right now, all I know is I've once again worn myself out too much to continue at the current point in time.
So, yeah. Floor's open to you all, once again.
Actually, although I'm having trouble making all the ends meet for the same reasons you mentioned, my thoughts are that Eide probably represents Mae's grandpa as well. Going with the theme of being haunted by ghosts, it's definitely easy to say that he's a ghost that's haunting Mae, if nothing else.
His death clearly affected her deeply--it's the very first event described in the game, and she keeps mentioning him when she's going through the house's things. She talks about how she wishes he would come back to life, even writes about it in her journal. Mae's major plotline involves her struggling to come to terms with death, and it makes sense that she would do that largely through coming to terms with the death of someone close to her, and the only death she's ever really been personally affected by. Notice that her walking pace doesn't pick back up at the end after she faces Death itself... instead, it picks up after she lets go of the ghost that's been haunting her.
And to some extent, I can tie it in with the cult at least a little, because they're really haunted by the same ghost that Mae is. I mentioned that there was a second irony in what the cult is doing, but I didn't leave myself room to bring up what it was until now: Even though the cult does represent the types of people who would play the role of bosses and union busters if the mining industry came back, I don't think that's how they picture themselves. I think they want to picture themselves as representing the actual miners.
They love the town, and they recognize that the town's culture and economic success was largely thanks to the work that the miners did. They probably even benefitted from the unions themselves. They've mythologized what the town used to be and what the workers represent, come to see the miners as the main heroes of that story. Remember that when the mural in the subway is defaced, the town council refers to that defacing as a terrorist action. And because they're trying to ressurrect what the town used to be, trying to bring that life back, they want to believe that they're the same kinds of heroes that the miners were, even though they're not.
Also, a big part of the ending is Mae saying that she relates to what the cult is trying to do. And I think there are some visual implications that Mae is actually, herself, very close to falling in with the cult, because she's afraid of death in the same way they are. Just like I think the red and blue lighting is an intentional symbolic representation of political leanings, I think it's also significant that when the cult is talking, Mae eventually finds herself swirling around in a fog that's mixed with both blue and red clouds. Listening to them talk about the town's past, she herself is probably getting mixed messages about what it was her grandpa represented and what he would be fighting for. She makes her own decision on that pretty quickly afterwards, though.
So, yeah. Tying Mae's grandpa in with Eide is a little tricky, but I can believe it's what they were going for with the visual metaphors. I should probably play Lost Constellation again at some point and pay closer attention to everything that happens, see if it helps shed some extra light on this.
I am very interested in the symbology of the animal dreams. Does anybody have any ideas of the significance of the different animals in the dreams? The lights that turn on as she passes? What about the band?
Sometimes there are creepy blackened people - maybe that has some significance?
I also noticed that in the first dream (the bear dream) there were the constellations - Dohr and Castys.
If you'd read like, literally the next sentence they say that's not th e kind of question they're interested in, and will not be the point of the post. That's like next level lazy man!
lol, I skimmed over it not paying attention.
Thanks for informing a dummy, friend.