The Reoccurring Man

The Monomyth, Fractals and the techno-myth of both Marathon and Shin Megami Tensei

You know what a fractal is? It’s a shape that’s self-similar, no matter how much you zoom in and out. The fractal mathematically constant, and nobody has really decided whether we discovered it or we just invented it. It’s always fascinating to me because it was ~found~ visually by a man just trying to stress test some computers.

 Hell there’s even been theologies born from fractals; from Julia and Fatou sets being order and chaos, representing will, spirituality and our effects on the world. Even down to introspections of the main religions too, such as Bloom and co who read Jewish Mysticism as a self-similar “monomyth”. For Palumbo It always boils down to some sort of universal force, be it magic or a variation of YHVH. I tell you this because the same monomyth, the same sort of mysticism is strangely represented in a couple videogame series, conveniently starting around the same time.

 The first of which, is the order-chaos-reason-around-the-world-in-90-myths Megami Tensei series. By this I’m strictly referring to both the original Megami Tensei games and Shin Megami Tensei. Reasoning being because the spin offs like Devil Survivor and If… (And P*rsona) tend to have too much lore or connections to go into. Worth noting that Devil Survivor deliberately gives you the choice to play into the monomyth or not.

See the MT games have touched upon reincarnations of Japanese Folklore, but they never repeat the same story. Neither game nor novel are a modern, cybernetic re-telling of the original Izanami story. Despite being reincarnations, the series avoids ever touching that in a very direct way outside of some of the early games where their originators bless or pass down powers in a loose sense. Law, Chaos, Neutral, they all tend to be reborn in various different interpretations, or sometimes thrown out completely for human-projected-Reasons (Kotowari) with Nocturne. Even Shin Megami Tensei V which had trouble understanding if it was related to Nocturne or not still erred on the side of not making direct reincarnation references. Cycles have been a thing, yes, you can’t escape that with the Vedic-Hindu-Buddhism chain but it’s never quite a self-similar story. For example, MT2, SMT1 and SMT2 seem, on the front of it to follow the same pattern. MC -> Good Natured Friend (law) -> Eyerolling Hothead Friend (chaos) -> Heroine (Neutral), except they don’t always play these roles, and their personalities or genders get flipped or played with.

Take SMT2, taking place in a very god-fearing far-future world the game has the Heroine as a servant to you, and your friends are knights on the same duty to you. It mixes a sort of Christian fatalism with a duty based, involuntary structure that probably feels a bit strange for a western. All of this is in great contrast to SMT1’s where friends find their own path and may all find the edge of the protagonists blade depending on route. Not all of them die by Faustian deals of touching the metaphysical game they simply cannot comprehend. The commitment to never touching upon a monomyth, BUT still touching upon the endless plotting of YVWH, Lucifer and whatever thing in the centre of the earth is pissed off at humanity this time, the core is always very distinctly human. In all of its international faiths, myths, reasons, nationalities and big focus on technology as extension of the human soul, it touches upon something raw human. Perhaps, somewhere in all of his ramblings and poorly used German words, is the heart of Commander Gore in Strange Journey. Human, Gore was, all too human. You’ll never see truth unless you are human. Redux, interestingly struggles to come out with a “bad” epilogue for the natural end, only stating that humans will keep repeating and one time there isn’t a Gore. Which is great because that’s SMT’s rejection of the monomyth so blatantly, the human of all humans will not be reincarnated.  

Compare this, to a western series like Marathon, whose ultimate conclusion in Marathon: Infinite IS the monomyth in a more mystical form. A repeated, albeit disfigured “yerro” (or “hero” said funnily) which the player is supposed to be antagonistic to and eventually becomes one with as the “hero” or “yerro” himself. You can’t see at the start because you are so zoomed into the re-occurring fractal that you can’t see that you are part of the self-similarity. This all works within the playing of invention, discovery and “consciousness.” As in Emperor’s New Mind, Sir Rodger Penrose, plays with the “land of Tor’Bled-Nam” based around a Mandelbrot fractal. The idea in the book is to talk about properties, reality of real numbers, and other such consciousness-physics related concepts; What is “natural” (or discovered) or “artificial” (or invented) is consistently obfuscated. Take this quote, and mix it in with the years of arguments over one terminal in Marathon: infinite

“Later we find many other magical properties that these complex numbers possess, properties that we had no inkling about at first. These properties are just there…such magic was inherent in the very structure that they gradually uncovered.”¹

The properties of Yerro, the hints, the terminals that people have raked over for decades. It’s a combination of discovered by the player but in universe it is always the same, because the discovery is the same but invention different. Similar in a sense to SMT 3’s line about how humans are malleable but mortal, and demons are immortal but unchanging. The monomyth for Marathon is woven into this self-similar fractal where things change, but stay the same in their properties. This split is that you must discover it to see it, but also invent the story, Penrose further adds to this in response to the nature of Discovery/Invention:

“Or are mathematicians really uncovering truths which are, in fact, already ‘there’ – truths whose existence is quite independent of the mathematicians’ activities”²

 By the end of infinity, Durandal who gives the epilogue is the tool - the activities. He remains consistent, since he cannot invent but merely keep discovering. He can keep discovering the yerro, but never fully becomes or invents it. The player gets integrated into the monomyth, the hero of heroes through which all heroes are reincarnated. These properties have always been there for you, always in the stories and terminals. You can write all the essays and theories about Marathon: Infinity, but at the heart I believe is this type of strong, reoccurring, self-similar fractal monomyth.

Palumbo’s believing in magic, Caroll’s chaos magic, all play with the physical interconnectedness and the metaphysical results onwards, while still being “model-able”. These two are related in Marathon: It plays, directly with the chaos theory physical interconnectedness, with its stages and timelines. Where things happen physically, sides change with the hero, but it is always in the realm of the actionable across the timelines. You can make a neat graph pointing out how these interconnectedness of everyone involved. Remember that the other Ais, and Durandal at the start, can only work in this realm. They can give you information on the Yerro, and the weird mysticism around it, but never outside of the physical, causation realm. The much debated rat terminal in Marathon 2, is often seen as Durandal breaking free from the physical, realm of chaos into the monomyth, into the metaphysical understanding that humans – or at least the yerro – can reach. Which is ironic because the same terminal could be read as the Yerro facing its destiny in a monomythic sense. Both are mathematical, both are the “zooming” out of the fractal.

On the metaphysical side we look towards the Hindu Addavitta who suggest truth is a still ocean that is reoccurring in its patterns: 'Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names’. This is at the core, why Shin Megami Tensei rejects a monomyth while still being distinctly fractal-like with all of the interconnected myths, religions, and folk tales telling a common story. Marathon: Infinity adds that this is everyone's story, that the monomyth embodies essential elements of the human experience. Interesting to note that both of these games present a silent character, but one encourages you to name the silent character who is an avatar in his own world and the other a projection of you as a “hero” entering the fractal. The joy of this is that the avatar is forced to be active, listen and make choices to mediate the human-demon-technology world, whereas the projection is told to enter the thunder dome and simply survive. Any sort of metaphysical tendrils can be completely ignored by the Marathon player – that’s beautiful because you are still the yerro, still the monomyth.

 In this regard, every player, is the monomythic hero, and the journey of the hero is our journey. Again, departing from Shin Megami Tensei who may have symbolic creatures like the Mannikin or try to make grand statements about the human psyche but both Strange Journey and Nocturne provide detailed, precise “reasons” or at least are making a case for how their goodness leads to them. Marathon, and the monomyth throws that out, allowing them to be all connected. Or as American mythicist Joseph Campbell put it in A Hero With a Hundred Faces: "symbolic ... of the dynamics of the psyche solutions shown are directly valid for all mankind"³. In Marathon: Infinity you change sides constantly, you have different factions, you work under the different ruling AIs, but they’re all there. They are all canon, not distinct timelines.

The difference between fractal-like and monomyth, and probably Palumbo’s mistake is where one dies, beyond body-death. Monomyth allows a fragment of yourself to be immortalised within the story, the fractal-like preserves only one’s ripple, one’s connections not on its own. Do not confuse this entirely with whatever flavour of Buddhism you like (because even types of Zen Buddhism allow a type of one-ness with The One). The approach and interaction with technology is another way to cut this difference, and maybe makes this more digestible.

Earlier Shin Megami Tensei games had more of a focus on the technology, and had Stephen Hawking rolling around teaching gamers how to summon demons. I think it’s easy to mis-read the entire thing as a type of Derrida-Deleuze messiancity-apocalypse of deal, but that’s not really where technology lies. Sure, many of the angels are seen as robotic in nature, but it’s a distinct look from the technology that exists within humans, this is the magic of humans in a sense. Later chaos studies have always kept this feeling, Katherine Hayes paraphrasing Prigogine and Stengers:

“Humankind has always sought ways to come to terms with its mortality, and one of the ways that figured importantly in the his tory of science was to envision reality as a timeless realm purged of the irreversible changes that mark human experience.”⁴

Steven’s role in Shin Megami Tensei 2 is a grave reflection of that. Humanity is thrusted upon by the powers to be to become immortal in one of the faction’s eyes by wagering their technology. From the “friends” becoming caricatures of their boss in MT2 and SMT to Strange Journey where both Zelenin and Jiminez give up their (human) technology for their new found power. That somehow, be it Pazuzu or YHVH requires Steven to ensure either side can envision reality as a mouldable, chaotic but orderly plain that can be influenced (hence Pazuzu hiding in a game, in which a player’s will is asserted).

In the re-reading and editing of this article (it was originally conceived after my gripes with SMTV), I found an interesting collection of writing on SMT3 Nocturne which decried the Mannikins as “fascist”. I don’t know how much I’ll bite it, but in the sense of the above, it makes sense then, why the Mannikins of Nocturne cannot have a “reason” (Kotowari) since they are a “RETVN” type forsaking technology who – including their leader who was reincarnated -  wish to break from the fractal, they are supremacists. Futosmimi’s ability to see the future, his human and mud combo excludes him from technologically-induced "view of reality was motivated by a desire to escape from an existence that seemed all too vulnerable to the vagaries of chance"⁵. The Mannikins in themselves are self-similar to humans but instead chose to be monomythic. It is why when the Demifiend is on any of the neutral routes the Mannikins are beside him, because they are mud, constructed and - like a lazy fascist analysis - are just absorbing into the myth in power. Nocturne rejects the Monomyth, rejects the later Prigogine and Stengers’ view that science and technology were to bw “purged of the irreversible changes that mark human experience," and flips it completely. Nocturne wants you to embrace the human struggles, the whimsy of choice, even if it pisses off the moon while only being half-human. It is a break from the earlier more technology-focused games because you aren’t playing as a human, but you still have to find humanity. Hijiri helps you go through the cylinders and teleport because he’s human, Isamu’s hypocrisy of his reason is because in the end he depends on humans even as an avatar. it gives you an ending even if you say “nah uh”, it gives you an ending to simple do what you want even if it’s to go with Lucifer. It’s interesting that the teacher who had Arcadia as a response never gets a full reason because she can’t commit to it. Arcadia – which is also the name of a city in SMT2, is machine-pilled while still travelling through the network. She’s too rational, she’s thinking things through and trying to understand the metaphysics in a fractal, repeating way. She sees the freedom of Arcadia in a rational, strict and thinking way. Everybody’s reason is hypocritical, but she’s straight up denied for not relenting to the metaphysical game. You can’t fully rationalise and pull down to earth this fractal that weaves through all of will and human spirituality. Double down, says Shin Megami Tensei; make a god damn choice, even if it’s chaotic, or bizarre or silly. Perhaps that’s why there’s been so much pushback against the so called neutral-pushing in the later games.

It's interesting then, considering the monomyth being concerned with humanity coming "to terms with its mortality” - and, even more deeply, with its coming to terms with mutability, which Shin Mgeami Tensei always tries to push. Indeed, even the horrors and evil or the chaos endings are still open only for judgement from characters not-aligned you. In discarding the monomyth, and I think Shin Megami Tensei, must because it has to in order to throw out mortality and the way things by chance just so happen; Nocturne and Megami Tensei 2, are not “chosen-one” stories at the start but have characters who just so happened to fall into a chaotic plot of plans between various parties be it Pazuzu or Lucifer then become “chosen”. Even Shin Megami Tensei 2 whose opening jumps from being random-joe to a specifically made body and friends built-just-for-your-adventure. It’s not quite the same as Marathon where it’s a random soldier or many other sci-fi games where random joe janitor hacker ends up embroiled. Even Strange Journey keeps you guessing who may be what alignment ambassador, still ends up giving them a secondary form of their chosen alignment once they are “chosen”. It cannot help to strive to pull away these parts from the monomyth. Thus, perhaps, is why the spinoffs of the Shin Megami Tensei series tend to have had more sticking power in the west. Digital Devil Saga and Devil Survivor for example, tend to lean towards the monomythic fractal of G/gods as icons and not ends in themselves, but that’s for another time.

If you are sensing a bit of Jung in all of this, that’s because SMT/Persona/Kaneko in general is more explicitly Jungian. This is another distinction of the deliberate monomyth; Marathon: Infinity explores a much more baseline chaos-fractal-metaphysical space that has grounds to be Freudian/Jung but is something more strict and closer to the American mythists. In the between levels where you find other exits, the weird ‘ego’ levels that mirror different concepts of the depths of the cosmos that leads to “chaos” in a connective fractal sense. In this intersection you get all the pretentious philosophers that decades of Marathon blogposters bicker and quote;  Nietzsche's "abyss," Sartre's "le néant," and atheistic existentialism's "silence of God" – for as Campell says "myth is the revelation of a plenum of silence within and around every atom of existence". It’s vague, but self-similar so all your “schizophrenic” theories can be absorbed into it. I imagine it’s supposed to reinforce the idea of a million Yerros, a million players with different theories but the same properties – Dark Souls purposely plays with this; especially considering the monomyth is given a direct name in Dark Souls 3: The Soul of Cinder. In Japanese, it contains “具現”That is the same word of incarnation that is sometimes used for both embodiments of gods, but also a way of saying “avatar” as in Your-Second-Life-Avatar. It’s every single person who has ever lit the flame all in one, a hodgepodges of all your characters builds. It’s the self-similar fractal monomyth in humanoid form; People who like lore eat this up, play with it, the vague self-similarity allows you to slot in and out of it. There’s another discussion to have here about the weird joke that maybe Palumbo, who was a big proponent of monomyth and how the fractal nature of theology and folk tales echo into the realm of videogame lore as religious. Not saying that all videogames have the same story, nor am I saying that vagueness allows for whatever. But series like Marathon and Dark Souls represent a type of religion-like mythology with its lore and interpretation.  

If you really want to hard smoke the fractal pipe, don’t get me started on the nature of rogue-likes. No I don’t mean your Binding of Isaac or Slay The Spire. I’m talking MUDs, the Netscape, Powder, Dungeon Soup. Not the procedural generation on its own but the gameplay and the looping of the similar hero. Rogue Legacy counts but in a different kind of way. These old original Rogue games are of the same kind of repeated application of an algorithm, but closer to the Mandelbrot set represents. The infinitely lengthy line separating those points on the complex plane that are not in the set from those that are. The true randomness, and unfair starts or even the sometimes unwinnable or curb stomping starts in Pixel Dungeon are not chaos itself, but that elusive, infinitely receding boundary line between order and chaos. It’s not as metaphysical wankery you’ll find in the above paragraphs but a raw demonstration in terms of the gameplay integration. While this probably deserves expansion its own, it’s important to know the true self-simmilar fractal-like abstraction of original Rogue games has been gently lost. In existential terms, they are supposed to occupy a world between "being" and "nothingness”. Most games post The Binding of Isaac (although it has it a little in that it’s supposed to be something that the mind cannot visualize or guess) forget this. When you see certain room combinations in Enter the Gundgeon you have made a mistake. The infinite self-embedding of complexity of a true Rogue-like corresponds to something more innate. Something in which activities which Campell called “unfathomable realizations" which scratches some sort of itch that is "incommunicable."⁶ Randomisers I think fall underneath this category, I am a fan of max map DSvania randomisers where things are completely chaotic, random and you must scratch that itch. The seeds are self-similar under rulesets but the tile sets and geometry are random, it is a Mandelbrot set in nature. Yet the "void," "chaos," the "abyss," "nothingness," and the "silence of God" are but considered negatively-charged so eventually began to be scrubbed out into the “rogue-lite” genre. 

Let us not forget though, that between the cult following of both Shin Megami Tensei and Marathon, both fanbases can’t seem to agree on what they want, who was in the right or what went wrong with their respective games. Why Rogue became a genre. There’s a reason for it after all. Dante told us this in his last revelation, in the abyss of vagueness, self-similar fractals and realisations there is "the lofty Light which in Itself is true" - his inexpressible "vision greater than our speech.”

1. The emperor's new mind concerning computers, minds, and the laws of physics 1999, P.160

2. Ibid 161

3. The hero with a thousand faces, 1933, P.18

4. Hayes, Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science P.99

5. Ibid

6. Hero, P.385