The Name of God

Son of a dolphin's picture
Screenshot from 2015-11-02 23:29:35.png

the name of god

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the name of god
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An event

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clyde's picture

This was interesting to me

This was interesting to me because I grew up in the iconoclasm of a protestant christian faith and when though I am not christian now, I interpreted the Old Testament commandment of "Thou shall not take the Lord's name in vain" as instruction to not have a name for God at all. This was corroborated for me by God's answer to Mose's asking of God's name: "I am that I am". Around the same time I was introduced to the concept behind a book called Conversations With God. I never read it, but what someone told me was that the book was basically the results of an author channeling the Holy Spirit by writing down a question and then praying on it until a response came to their mind. This had a huge impact on my writing and is still the main method of writing I use today. But instead of attributing the response that comes to mind to an omnipresent, all powerful, jealous, lighting-thrower who banishes people to eternal damnation, I attribute it to the concept of genius that Elizabeth Gilbert explains so well in this TED talk
Given that personal history and how it has made sense of itself in my mind, I see names for essences to be somewhat useful, but always heavily distorting and I mistrust them greatly with active skepticism.
All of this is very different to your treatment of the subject as a spy-movie trope, but it brought to mind my own thoughts on the matter which I explained above.

Son of a dolphin's picture

very interesting viewpoint.

very interesting viewpoint. i actually wasn't thinking about it in that way, this wasn't related to that commandment, at least not consciously. maybe the feeling i wanted to impart is that you don't know the name of god, and that if you do learn the name of god, you gain a certain power, and for some reason, the blue guy wants to prevent you from gaining that power, or preventing the red guy from sharing it.
in short, i wasn't intending it as a cheap joke around the old testament commandment, more as some sort of access to something mystical and strange that is cut off from you, without really knowing the motivation behind this rejection. i had a different ending in mind before, this one felt much better to me.

mkapolk's picture

i like the play of humor /

i like the play of humor / affect / flippancy and and spiritual power. the red guy take five frames of exaggerated pantomime to begin saying anything and the blue guy's response is immediate and emotionless.

nilson's picture

This reminds me of the novel

This reminds me of the novel the Stranger a bit, with a murder taking place in the sand. Camus said of his book "'In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.' I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game." You (the player) have to wonder if the guy gets stabbed because he had the audacity to "name God," or perhaps the murderer represents the notion that God cannot be known.

There can be a lot of different interpretations of this game, which is great~!

Son of a dolphin's picture

i haven't read that book

i haven't read that book yet, maybe i'd like it. yeah, i like stuff that provokes people to come up with their own conclusions, glad i could figure out something that sort of stimulated that, though that wasn't my main intention

Comix

Definitely had a comic-book/sequential art aesthetic to it this time. Keep up the tinkering! You're making steps forward.

I imagine, based on the layout of the frames, that the white-faced fellow was more of an afterthought. Had you been thinking of a way to have maybe a subplot or side-quest or something related to em?

Son of a dolphin's picture

The white-faced fellow was

The white-faced fellow was actually the first thing i did after making the title frame. it's just something i wanted to do, but also it serves as a small thing that people could potentially miss to give the game more of a feel of something alive rather than a straight path to the end. i think i mostly approached this the way i do comics, except for that one part. i genuinely appreciate the encouragement.