#* the void

I guess I’ve seen some debate back and forth about the void and what the void is. I class it rather specifically separate, for stuff I will get too. I guess what always struck me about it, is it’s dualistic nature, that makes “void” an inappropriate word for it in some ways. The void as displayed in Dishonored shows more than simply destruction by consumption, or just emptiness, but life, as well. The raw spark, so to speak, in the absence of a creator God construct, it seems what we are given. It is the beginning and end of all things, after all. It must destroy, of course, because how else can you rebirth without death first? Oldest theme in the book hahaha. If it’s malicious, it is in that aspect. It must always consume and take in, it creates only to feed itself. I always think of the snake eating it’s own tail when I think of the void of this game.

I’ve seen the debate that it’s empty, that it only constructs itself where our protagonists force it too. which, yeah I am not sure about. I think it’s an infinite, and more than simply empty and full. It has places of intense life, ( Delilah’s Garden, what is seen in DCT, where life just teems over and over the top of itself, the mimicked places ) and then constant stillness (which is the place I think the whales swim), and then where we can’t see, of nothingness, which can’t probably be displayed because simply by being Corvo standing there, he is forcing himself to be constructed inside of it, so naturally it is no longer nothingness because it’s being forced to be perceived, etc, etc. ( you know, esoteric bullshit blahblahblah )

It clearly does not exist separately, the “Empire” and the “void” are more entwined than they seem. I always took to it, that the void has woven itself into life, and by doing so, caused life to be woven into it. The void in the hollows of eyelids, there is void in the seconds where a heart begins each new beat where for half a second you are split between life and death. In the empty seconds where lightning strikes earth. In return, we see these pockets of suspended time, the void and the empire are water and oil shaken together, they are in and around each other but they cannot truly mix. Only it’s the void it is woven in the sense of infinity. This is a tapestry that has no beginning and end, and this metaphor is limited to my description so just pretend I am talking in big hollow words, so of course you get images presented of past, present and future. It, as a force made to consume and regurgitate, has no concept of one space and time as perceiving in single moments with only the comprehension of a person’s limited perception of it.

It’s chaos, a chaos realm, neither good, nor evil. It is it’s whole existence, in the space of a singularity. It’s cradle songs, and screaming bleeding destruction. In the way lovecraft writes, so I always thought the same of how it seems to drive people mad.

Here’s where I guess the Outsider comes in, or will do in a second. Why I think it drives people made is that singularity issue. When you listen in close to it, it does not give you a single focus point for your mind to latch onto. Merely, the runes sing to the person the void’s infinity. Of course it drives people mad, makes them act questionably. Like a man who discovered that the Gods don’t care, they are presented with it all, and lose all that remains of their mind because they know endlessness, and rather than just know it, they comprehend it, in it’s fullness. Thus the “giving yourself to the Outsider completely” is not so much to give up your body in some profane ritual, but to split your mind open to that realm. The void’s true voice, if it can be called that, is not the Outsider, but that singing that expresses just glimpsing, fleeting notions of itself, and unfortunately, the knowledge given, just the edge of that comprehension, and it split those that it tried to talk to that way, apart.

Not that I think it was intentional really. When people first started carving bones and runes themselves, it wanted to be more active in how it was woven into this world, it was curious, hungry to know, because knowing and questions and wanting to have more is such a crucial part of the life it was suspended it, and was suspended in it. Because in themselves life created more life, more finite moments that made it up, because mankind is a beautiful and terrifying thing, so it hungered to understand that which it begot and mimicked it. By man’s nature, they reached back into the dark, either fear or love or power or need, take your pick, why man needs God is another debate for another day.

But in doing so, I’d wager the void found out this problem where it opened it’s great grizzling mouth and poured into someone’s mind and promptly left them a drooling, mind dead mess ( okay I really like Lovecraft here, but). In this construct, I don’t think of the Outsider as so much part of the Void, but as it’s mouthpiece. A metatron. Oh he knows the void, he knows it’s will and it’s thoughts and it’s infinities. What remains of him being human is kept not so much for the sake of emotions but the way to present itself to that which is finite. An issue for it, since it cannot construct itself as one finite, merely thousands that it tries to speak as, which fails it every time. The Outsider became a way to talk and ask and observe in such a way that perhaps yes, they still went mad, puny humans, but it was slower, and questions could be asked at least in the short term. It uses people, chews them up, sucks them dry, slurps the marrow from its bones and spits them back out again. In this way, the Outsider himself is no different. It kept only the skeleton of perception, ate away the parts that were not useful or that he-who-is-and-was did not hang onto, and in doing so, found a medium for it to speak through, that was both life and void.

In that the Outsider himself is the half way between. I cannot say for sure if the Outsider himself knows he will cease to be. Before more information was revealed, it was more that he himself is like the void but scaled down to centuries not all of time itself and what lays before and after, but aware of his beginning and end in the same breath. From the minute he became of the void, and the void became in him, he knew the time and place it would end. He is himself one foot in and one foot out. The bridge between, that narrows down empire and void, to what is relevant to a single person.

So in this, he’s the shell of a 15 year old boy, given just enough to be useful, trapped there. And the Void uses people, and picks faces for itself.