easy as pie...mmm...pie....

Talking with Wyatt last night about the recently (mutually) read novel, False Gods, we realized it would be pretty workable for some fun essay writing. Because I really am that weird, and would consider doing that.

One interesting duality we couldn't really resolve was whether the main figure of the novels (Horus) is expressing more of a Lucifer-allegory, or a Jesus-allegory. There are points towards the latter - messianic nature, father-son role, the end feeling of being forsaken - and that makes for an interesting, "what if Jesus was fallen?" story. But, I think the primary aspect of Horus' nature being ambition really skews it all towards a more Lucifer-ic archetype. And that, especially, when viewed in light of the overall epic (a failed attempt at usurping), though the pathos surrounding his fall is much more interesting than the fall itself.

From a different angle, I bet there's some fun Freudian analysis that could be done, especially with the sons (Horus and the other primarchs) and their desires and envies and conflict with their father (the Emperor). One might question, though, where's the female, mother aspect of that, though? Well! I say that can make a wonderful segway into the other aspects of the novel, such as the religion that springs from the ranks of the remembrancers, who embody a kind of feminine (as opposed to the warriors) in their poetry, music, and such, and moreover contain the only female characters in the novels in their ranks. Oo! I forgot the witchy gal that helped with Erebus' dream-manipulating. Mmm. That would also make a crazy, mother-birth angle. Anyway, I could go on.

-an interesting point; I wish I'd found it while I was using narcissism as my focus in literary theory, alas...
"Narcissus does not fall in love with his reflection because it is beautiful, but because it is his. If it were his beauty that enthralled him, he would be set free in a few years by its fading.”
~W.H. Auden

This actually happened to me, while working in the hospital. My reaction was a bit more sedate, though, as the first person I could tell it to was a gentleman suffering from delusions that he couldn't get his bed into the parking space quite right.