In Review: A Fool's Goddess - Chapter Thirteen
Hello. I’m going to start this off by saying I had a nice, long, wonderfully-written review typed up for you. It went over the opening bits of Chapter Thirteen, namely in its humor, before going into a cold dissection of the nature of Survivor Guilt. It was fun to write and I felt it would be fun to read.
And then I somehow lost the whole fucking thing.
I don’t even know what the fuck happened. I didn’t click the cancel icon, and CTRL+Z didn’t do shit, so I didn’t accidentally highlight and kill the article. I tried everything I could to recover it, but it seems like it’s gone.
An hour and a half of work—poof!
I’m annoyed, plainly. Part of me wants to just say fuck it and skip writing a review for this week. But…I made the commitment to add something every week to this website, so instead, I’m going to cool off and see if I can’t rewrite most of what I had before.
…
Well, I won’t say I’m over what happened, but I’m alright. At the very least, we’ve now got some fun context to work under, so let’s see if I can’t turn my displeasure into entertainment.
So, this chapter opens up with the same tense air we left off on. In the desire to try and soften things, we immediately get some humor, namely in Hed’s name. It means “echo” in Hebrew, which is more relevant to his character (seen later on), but I mostly chose it so I could make a bunch of stupid jokes (also seen later on).
Still, that first one about Lior thinking Tzofiya just called him “head” still cracks me up. It’s so stupid, but…
We then get that bit about Lior’s age. That one’s anecdotal for me, as people have a tendency to guess my age wrong. I don’t know if it’s them equating laconic tendencies to maturity or if working years on grave shift has ruined my face that badly, but most people seem to assume I’m at least in my mid-thirties.
…I’m twenty-seven, by the way, though I’ve been getting those sort of comments since I got out of college. Most people are pretty apologetic when they realize how off their assumption is, though I’ve had a couple call me out for lying.
It’s okay—my self-confidence died long ago. Accusations like that only hurt a little now.
Anyways, I then decided to use this opportunity to drop some dirty jokes. Because I have the humor of a middle schooler (which is really quite the dichotomy when you take that along with my perceived age), I like slipping in that sort of comedy where I can.
It was probably one of the sections I rewrote the most, primarily because my family would one day see it and I wasn’t quite as confident in my (im)mature writing back then. I think I originally had it more tame, but then redid it to be more ‘vivid’. I probably did at least twelve revisions to get that bit where it is today, and I’m quite fond of the closing remark about “pleasant dreams”.
And that about does it for my funnyman talk. Originally, I had some witty segue here to transition into my next, more serious topic, but since I can’t remember what it was, you now get this shit instead.
For those not aware, that is the guilt individuals may feel upon surviving an event that took the lives of others, especially loved ones. This can be guilt from living where others died or a sense of failure from what the individual did or did not do that allowed said catastrophe to happen. I originally brought this up alongside the concepts of the “call of the void” and “death before dishonor”, but as I now lack the patience to properly examine those ideas again, I’ll summarize them by pointing out they are instances where human emotion allows an override of basic survival instinct.
As living creatures, humans are hardwired to choose life whenever possible in the pursuit of future procreation and the continuation of the species. I could go into a completely different rant about why God has set our species on this path, but that’s not relevant here. What astounds me is the fact that our sentience has allows us to circumvent that survival instinct and elect for death—either in choosing to die an honorable death or succumbing to suicidal thoughts (in the case of the “call of the void”, it is the appearance of suicidal ideation in individuals who have otherwise shown no signs of desiring death).
Now, bringing it back to Survivor Guilt, let’s first lay out a hypothetical situation. It’s a nice day, so a man drives to the local park with his wife and daughter. A drunk driver blows through a red light and t-bones their car, killing the wife and daughter instantly. The man lives, the driver is imprisoned and ultimately sentenced to death, and the world goes on.
However, the man experiences Survivor Guilt. He spends his days lamenting the loss of his family, wishing that he could have died in their place. Even though the driver who killed them is on death row and the man knows full well that nothing can bring back his family, he still wishes he could trade his life for theirs.
In reality, this is the part where the man gets therapy, comes to accept their loss, and hopefully learns how to move on. Let’s say that happened for the sake of closure before stepping back and examining his mindset right after the accident.
What intrigues me most about that situation is how the man seeks to trade his life for that of his wife and child. Rather than beg God to rewind time and prevent the accident from happening entirely, it’s as if he’s accepted that a death needed to occur that day. Instead of wishing for a perfect alternative, he’s seeking to bargain with the Devil—giving up his own life so that his family could live in his place.
Why?
Why does the man settle on a deal instead of a dream? Neither situation is likely to occur as both Elohim and Lucifer are terribly uninterested in the affairs of man, so why even bother considering a weaker option?
I’ll pause here to point out that I’m not trying to insult anyone with Survivor Guilt nor wish to impose logical thinking on anyone in an incredibly stressful situation. Forcing machine-like thought onto someone under duress is beyond cruel, and anyone who does so deserves to be punched in the cock.
However, in examining the situation with cold objecticity, does it not seem strange that the man goes for a bargain? He’s likely undergoing the stages of grief and is trying to reason with an unreasonable world, but why does he he feel he needs to die in the process? Why does the emotion-swamped mind of the man consider for a second that his own death could be used to save his wife and child?
Obviously, the short answer is that humans are not logical. They do things wrong intentionally and lose their cool when something randomly deletes a review they wrote. Rather than look at the situation and act in mechanical fashion, our brains flood us with feelings that cloud our thinkings.
Those beautiful computers we call minds are the perfect joining of animalistic instinct and rational sentience. And while both systems work in tandem, they also trip each other up.
If you’ll allow the spitballing of an unprofessional, I’d surmise that part of the reason the man wishes for death is a subconscious (or even conscious) desire for his own death. He is clearly in pain at his loss, so why not rid himself of his agony and create a world where those he loved are alive with a single exchange? Trading your life to safeguard those you love—what is more noble on this Earth?
So, where am I going with all this? Nowhere. I just thought the fact that a grieving individual would seek an exchange was interesting. It’s as though we accept that a death must occur like some Final Destination bullshit, so we hope our life is worthy enough to be traded for someone else’s. Rather than seek a future where they all can live, the man wishes for some half-assed world where only some can live.
But I do think that irrationality is key to our nature as humans. We're not Tralfamadorians—we can't detach ourselves from loss with a simple “so it goes”. If that makes us flawed or foolish, then I'll gladly embrace our imperfection.
Well then, going back to the chapter, let’s quickly go over a few bits before I close out. Lior goes to live in a bakery because that was the closest building I could imagine to having some sort of kiln, his house doesn’t have chairs for any real reason, and I didn’t go into detail about Lior’s guilt because I felt like I covered that enough in Chapter Ten and wanted to move on with the story.
There. Review speedrun complete. For reference, I was able to type and proofread this in forty minutes, probably because I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to say, and I’m nearly salt-free now. I originally opened this article with some shit about being annoyed about Granblue Fantasy Versus still not having a Western release date, but after losing so much time and progress, I don’t really give a fuck about that right now.
Well, I hope you were able to enjoy my anger-tinged review here. I’m gonna go chill some more, maybe work on my next novel if I can dredge up the will. Regardless, I hope your day goes well and is followed by a lovely week.
And for God’s sake, please save your progress regularly.
