Hey there, don't miss out on 10% off your Manta Sleep Mask by using the code "DTG" here: bit.ly/44BAeXH Oh and thank you so much for being patient on this video's release. ICYMI, I was on hiatus for over a month and it was much *much* needed. I hope you enjoy this one, it's pretty special to me. Thank you for being here
When I had psychosis, I was hallucinating in alternation, in both brain hemispheres at once independently, or with some circadian cycle. One part of it, there was a near-black outline of a person at some place I had been to, devoid of any other people, stationary. All saturated in one color. That outline I moved through. I was in a new liminal location, saturated in one color, a person whom is not there. And more times. Eventually all these 'photos' went to the place of my other hallucination. Which was me rising through a dome topped tower, the background pitch black slowly brightening with the presumed sunlight outside I was unaware of. Gaping uneven mouths, individual eyes appearing and disappearing like the fail screen in Post-Void. My vision slowly rotated up, all the photos aligning like a keyhole to a vault, and I floated through them all at once. Theres more I will spare the details on. Memory is a lil hazy of it for obvious reasons (considering this is basically the opposite of the panorama memory effect of ibogaine). And some not so obvious reasons make it silly to try explaining more. Hm then again I think I saw a partial panorama as well, including fractured elements of myself, at a different juncture.
I think my favorite thing about Soma's ending is that it's not even really a grand twist, but rather the uncomfortable logical conclusion to what the game has already shown you. In fact, you SEE and even COMMENT ON exactly what happens earlier in the game There's absolutely no reason to think it's going to work any differently with the Ark outside of the sense of hope literally blinding you, and I love that
That's also my fave part of the story. I knew Simon in the suit would stay in the suit, after all, robot Simon stayed in the robot, the camera just followed suit Simon till the end of the game. So hearing Simon sound so sure and hopeful was gut wrenching because I KNEW he would get upset, just like Catherine's co-workers.
@@kristoferprovencal3608 that one where anime girl gets zapped and turn to ashes while her friend watches in horror and the worker says that it's not a wormhole, but making a copy elsewhere and destroying original, then friend gets a call from the teleported one ?
@@kristoferprovencal3608 might have been Merryweather media, but I don't know, couldn't find it in history by that name. Could have been other similar publisher Then again, some videos I've seen aren't marked as watched idk
When I read Goodbye Eri I legit thought that my brain broke for a solid hour. It was a bit comforting tho to learn that one of my friends who also read it felt the same way. Definitely a hard to forget story
Me and my friend were talking about how our brains must be full of glitches brought up by scenarios no person would encounter in their live. That might just be one of them such crafted scenes
Broke my brain too, I read it because of this video, cried, and then couldn’t get that final scene out of my head all day, still can’t decide what was real
I always kinda felt like the ending of Soma was less saving yourself, and more like you were saving your "children". Giving future "you's" a chance a life, similar to a parent's sacrifice for their offspring. That's how I rationalized and made peace with it anyway. I should go back and replay it again.
this is a very interesting perspective. I always found it. I don’t want to say interesting, but I always wanted to know what it was like to transfer my consciousness, but I always knew it would never be me not really thinking about it. This way makes a lot of sense. I never would’ve had this thought if it weren’t for this comment so for that I thank you.
This reminds me of that one episode of Black Mirror where I think they created copies of a felon or something in an exhibition (it's been years, the details escape me) so they can torture him essentially forever. If I remember right, they would even sell key chaines (?) with a copy of him that keeps being tortured by electric shock or something. And even back then I couldn't shake the feeling of.... that's not him. Irrespective of whether torture is an acceptable punishment, these copies are _not_ him. And ever since then this idea has been haunting me: imagine your fate is being born into the consciousness of the aftermath of someone elses actions. Imagine you wake up and your entire existence consists of torture. I might be inventing this but I think there might have even been the decision to end the exhibition of this piece for ethical reasons in the episode but even then, you'll never be able to collect and destroy all the copies sold to people out there in the wild.
@@chrisisaghost I had a Uni class where we watched several episodes (over the course of the semester) and reports and discussions on them (free-est fucking credits EVER). We watched like 10 or 12 episodes and black museum was among them. If memeory serves (this was in 2019) the episodes were: National Anthem Hated in the Nation (my fav) 1,000,000 Merritts (or however many) Shut Up and Dance Black Museum (The robot dog one inforgoet the name of) Guardian Angel And I forget what else.
This is what I feel like would happen if teleportation exists irl. What if instead of transferring us to another places, it disintegrates us into nothing, then recreates us in another places. When "you" come out of the teleportation, are "you" still you? Does your original consciousness still exist? What's the most terrifying thing about this to me, is that only the original you will experience being disintegrated, and nobody will notice anything being different about "you", so nothing is changed, but "something" has changed, which is you no longer exist now.
Even worst, how do you know that something like this hasn’t already happened? Are you still the same ‘you’ you were yesterday or did you just wake up to a fresh existence with all your memories stolen from another who’s long dead?
"When "you" come out of the teleportation, are "you" still you?" unless souls exist (anything which would be impossible to copy), Yes. "Does your original consciousness still exist?" what *is* original consciousness? Is you 10s ago the same you? If so, how do you decide this continuity holds, and how does it differ in teleportation? "only the original you will experience being disintegrated" this does not really make sense to me, the original you *already* does not exist by the time of disintegration. In the model of teleporter, there exist one past self (before the teleportation), and two future selves (after the teleportation). In the time of cloning (instanteneous for the simplicity of argument) all three of these selves are identical. In any meaningful interpretation, both future selves are thus direct continuation of the past self (but not continuation of each other). One of the future selves will be disintegrated, which might raise ethical concerns, but from the point of view of the past self, who makes the decision to be teleported, this does not really matter. There will be one continuation of the past self, not different from normal passage of time.
What even is _"you"?_ The matter? What about AI? The mind? Sum ergo cogito. A version of both? At which slice of the infinite time? And of which slice of the infinite space?
@@kaleenar963 I think about this constantly. Are you the same person you were yesterday? What about a week ago? A month ago? A year ago? A decade ago? etc.
@callmeidk1682 They explicitly did when you had to make a copy in order to, its been a while, I think use an elevator. Catherine EXPLICITLY tells Simon that there was no transferring. Simon simply wasn't paying attention.
@@dave_the_slick8584that’s what makes it so good tho. you know what’s gonna happen but you still have that glimmer of hope that it won’t especially at the end when your download slows down. and then it still happens.
It's kinda of a twist i guess, maybe it's like these moments in a movie that watching the first time you dont care, but watching the second time after knowing the twist you be like "it was so obvius!"@@dave_the_slick8584
Signalis is really special to me, it has that same resident evil feel but still keeping its own atmosphere & completely unique story, it’s honestly so deep & impactful it’s crazy, if anyone is worried about twenty dollars after seeing a trailer don’t be scared, it’s WORTH IT.
Recently played signalis. And oh god that was awesome. That atmosphere, that setting, artstyle. One of my friends blaacklisted me for a 3 days because only thing i was talking about is signalis. This is my second favourite game next to NieR:Automata now
@kowkodevka579 Your experience eerily resembles mine lol. NieR:Automata was the first game to make me cry and SIGNALIS was thr first game to make me uncontrollably sob. It's so special and I'm still talking to my friends about it months later and trying to get them to understand and feel it.
The second you said "one of the few games to really hit me with existential dread" I instantly thought of SOMA and how I still wake up in the middle of the night unable to sleep because I'm just stuck thinking about how terrifying SOMA's ideas are.
This video was a masterpiece. From the structure to your storytelling to that simultaneously gutwrenching and heartwarming ending that brought tears to my eyes. This video and this channel is your version of Yuta's movie and the legacy you will leave behind. Great job Daryl. Welcome back.
To Daryl's own future splitting shadow reading this comment. Hello. I was one of your subscribers. I hope your journey down the dream lane comforting to you, and I hope mine will also be your subscriber still.
I remember when playing Soma for the first time I knew how the ending would go when it came to the Ark. I always felt upset at Simon because he just couldn’t accept that there was a copy, not a transfer.
Well, I mean, Simon’s diving suit is a copy of a regular human being thrown into a reality where everything they know has changed, and for the absolute worst. He literally shoulders the burden of “saving humanity” for a large portion of the game, and he does all of this whilst feeling as though just mere hours/days ago he was a regular person doing a brain scan at some doctors office. I can’t really blame him for being in denial of the Catherine’s explanation. Who would wake up in the situation and find it easy to accept that they’re damned to a lonely, prolonged death on a dead world, even if they pass the torch? Also, let’s not forget Catherine did sort of lead Issac on about the “coin flip”. Telling him he has a 50/50 chance of either making it to the Ark or being left behind.
almost started crying because i just lost my grandma yesterday, and these are the questions i have. about life. about consciousness. about living and death. about reality and the perspectives we have. there might be another me, but i will never have their POV and i will never be them. this is really a masterpiece, your best video.
Hope everyone doing good and staying safe. If you need to talk to someone or need help, there are people who care. Sending support and hearts. ❤️❤️❤️❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
i know this comment is like, two months old now but i hope you're doing okay. losing family is a horrible feeling, and it's especially hard to take if you were really close to them. take care of yourself man and remember that you can grieve at your own pace, so don't let anyone make you feel bad by saying you should/shouldn't be over it already, depending on how you're feeling
i know it's an older video so i might be speaking to the void, but the "which was the dream" segment really got to me. i don't know how common it is, but i often have dreams where i feel as though i live years, often with a significant other that i don't know in the real world. establishing relationships, forming careers, falling in love. and then i wake up, alone and isolated in my bed, remembering this dream life. this happens often, and every time i find it harder and harder to go on after waking. every time i feel like i have to mourn the loss of loved ones and the dream life that i had. i talk about this to my friends, my family, my therapist, and while they're sympathetic, i don't think any of them can really comprehend just how much it affects me. i both dread and adore dreaming, because i love those fictitious lives i live. how could i not, you know? but waking up tears me apart. i miss them, even now. i hold onto the hope sometimes that somehow, they're real in some universe, but in my heart i know they aren't, and i think that fact will always destroy me.
The void has heard you. I had a similar experience once when I passed out due to hyperventilation, which was like a brain reset. Silly stuff kids would do for entertainment. But the dream I had in those few seconds felt like a lifetime, and when close to waking up, I saw myself die alone, and sad, so much so that waking I had tears coming off. That's stuck with me ever since. And even if that's not a real life, I believe anything, even an imaginary world has the right to exist. We truly do not know where we are.
I had something like this a few years ago after my dog died. I had one night a dream that felt like 10 years in which my dog was alive again and life was going on, just with her. I can't even remember waking up from that dream, just that I knew she had a great second life. Thinking back on it, it was very surreal. Probably some kind of trauma.
Goodbye, Eri - Did you know that all the fuzzy panel pages can be put together to make a whole other story! All those scenes can become another movie within that manga
@@mr_flor no but somebody talked about it on Reddit and when I ready my copy I was mind blown lol. I might cop another copy and remove the extra pages. Probably won't do it because that feels like.foul and vile behavior
To me it's the loss of control that is the most horrifying part. You have no control of where you are, when you are, what you are, and perhaps worse yet, if you are. I remember my mom telling me I used to tell her she wasn’t my real mom when I was a very young child. I told her she was just some weird lady and that my real mom died on a sidewalk. I even told her where we used to live and that I had a little brother despite being the youngest. She said I made her second guess on reincarnation, but as I grew older I stopped talking about this "other life". Okay, but that last page of Good Bye Eri made me laugh so hard. I personally think it was all a movie, but I can see how there are multiple interpretations and I think I prefer it that way.
Honestly the ending of soma feels like the ultimate act of selflessness. You are literally sacrificing yourself so that a new you can go on to live. You sacrifice your whole physical being to create a new person.
not really though? its literally you, just as much as the one left behind. as long as you dont add the (unnecessary, unfounded, and messy) assumption of a soul, there is no "real" one that's getting left behind and the copy isn't a "new" person. in a way it's kind of half selfless because one version will get left behind, but honestly simon could probably de-activate himself pretty easily, especially before any major divergence between the branches
De-activating yourself is the same as suicide in this context. The copy is not you, it's a new separate entity with the same memories. You would be killing yourself to give a copy a chance at life.
@@jacobmagana4258 Divergence occurs the moment there are two copies. Any time for deactivation is too late. That is the beginning of a new stream of consciousness, completely divorced from the original.
So happy you included soma. I saw a let's play of it, and it was so good I actually feel sad I can't play it with a fresh mind. I now guide others to a treasure I can't possibly posses
I'd say it's still worth playing through, even if you know what's going to happen. There's the few moments you get to make decisions that add replay value, there's the terror that comes from some of the horror sections which is amplified by having to survive it yourself, and there's the simple fun of messing around with the ingame physics (nearly every item can be picked up and tossed around with a really convincing weight and heft to each of them, which makes for a fun distraction in some parts of the game)
Man, what you said at 35:00 - 35:20 really hit me hard and made me actually cry. As someone with Major Depressive Disorder, it hit me like a freight train (in a good way). This was expertly designed, and even if you won't see this, I want say that your progression of ideals told in this video was masterclass. I hope to see your channel prosper so that others can be just as amazed and touched by you work as I was.
So true. I never knew in a past two years what was lacking but this simple confirmation in a video just put something back in place in me. Actually crying and sobbing because those were the words I needed
I have dissociative identity disorder (yes the moon knight thing lmfao) and I actually think that sense of reality possibly not being what you experience is super heightened in the condition. Dissociating makes it harder to tell if reality is, well, real and puts a lot of this same existential fear of waking up somewhere unfamiliar in a new context. It’s a daily occurrence for most people with a dissociative condition.
I will never cease to be amused how some people's existential horror is another's daily life. I don't have DID myself, but what I've learned from those that do has had a big effect on how I view this sort of thing.
I hope this isn’t rude to ask, but with DiD do you “blackout” when a different person/personality takes over or is that not how DiD works? Again sorry if this is rude to ask but I’ve always been curious about it but could never really find an answer
I'm very close with a system, where the host is my best friend and I'm dating another of the alters. The old host, the one I befriended long before I knew she was part of a system, split into two. Both of those alters think of me as their best friend, but one is a lot closer to the friend I used to have, while the other developed to be quite different. Yet I can see my old friend in both of them. It's strange. In a way, my old friend is gone, but I have "her" (the half that is more like the old version) still here and now also her "sister", so it's more of a happy thing than a sad thing since now I have two friends whom I love a lot. It's still strange to think about, though, that my old friend is technically gone, in a way
@@blakemcmillan5680I don't have DID, but I'm very close with a system and did a lot of online research to try to help them, so hopefully I can help explain this. Usually, just one alter will be "fronting" (aware and controlling the body) at a time, but the others can be conscious to some degree. Sometimes they have a limited awareness of what's happening in the real world and can send thoughts or messages to the one who is fronting. Sometimes, they interact with the other alters who also aren't fronting (the space they interact in is sometimes called an "inner world" and might look like a dream space for some systems, though for others it's more metaphorical). Sometimes they do just sleep until they come to the front again. A common metaphor is to think of a car or a big van. There's one driver, but there can also be a front-seat passenger who's helping with navigation and commenting on the route, while the backseat passengers can talk to each other or take a nap if they want. It's a little different for every system, but for my friend(s), they can usually have 3 or 4 alters conscious and commenting on what the one who is fronting is doing at any one time. Does that make sense?
@@blakemcmillan5680 lmao its not rude, just a tad personal. Some people have blackouts and others don't. I actually do have blackouts myself, but we can oftentimes share certain pieces of information or fundamental knowledge. Fun fact, as a result of blackouts, we lose certain skills when the alter/personality who has them isn't present. its wild ngl
I'm so sad that Inside Mari didn't come up for this topic too. It's such an incredibly good manga, and a bodyswap story where there's still another version of you in your original body is just _so_ relevant to this topic.
Bravo, bloody hell bravo. The way you structure your videos is so satisfying in the end and you pulled it off superbly. And I love how you managed to circle a video about existential dread into an uplifting message, lol
It's rare to find a creator who can set an atmosphere as effectively as you can. I was fully entranced in the video and now return to reality like waking from a dream. It feels a bit dramatic to type but I know I've seen something that will stay with me when I have nothing to say after. I just need some time to absorb what I've seen and ponder the different ideas presented.
The whole concept of 'you aren't dead if you are remembered' reminds me a lot of dia de muertos. Your family keeps you alive through their memory of you.
Soma's story was impressive and felt unique at the time of me experiencing it. Also, thanks for your consideration for and effort towards not spoiling things.
SOMA left me an unshaking feeling of existential dread and Goodbye Eri left me confused and amazed. I connected with the first at an emotional level, and I read the second with a more cynical, cold-hearted approach. Both stories have remained in my mind ever since, and until this video, I hadn't been able to fully explain to myself my thoughts on them. It's been a fantastic video, really. The source materials are incredible, but it's the structure of the video that makes it great. I don't think there is a happy ending to this line of thoughts. I don't know if I'm okay with that. But, at the very least, I can now express better my existential dread :) Way to come back, Daryl!
I must be the only one who hated Soma. It tried too hard with the existential dread. When Simon we know should've stayed in the frozen body after the first copy attempt in the first place. The Simon that was human once died long ago with his species. The game was long over.
wdym by a happy ending? if you mean specifically soma, there absolutely is. the key thing is the inbuilt assumption that most of us don't even realize we have, that being of a string of consciousness. once you realize that there not only is no evidence for such a thing but evidence against it, these fears subside (at least they did for me). in the case of simon, both versions carry the exact same information and so are equally him. there is no "real" version, just two branches from the same stem. and just like a tree, pruning one branch doesn't get rid of everything below it. if one simon were to die, an entire person wouldnt be lost, only the experiences and changes that were localized to that branch. if i was in that situation i would try to end it immediately after the upload to minimize the divergence, but even if it took like half an hour i would honestly be glad that the other me wouldnt have to remember scrambling around at the bottom of the ocean trying to kill myself :/
I love the video. You managed to take a black hole of despair that you initially feel after SOMA and then pulled a tear outta me with the "They're out there, we're here" and finding peace with that. Interestingly Destiny's lore had a similar 'fetish' and 'grounding' concept for their own brand of androids where if they realized they were circuits and metal and note flesh and blood they'd spiral out too. Really interesting and terrifying stuff, but so cool to consider. Like a ship of Theseus looked in the mirror and realized it used to be made of cedar and not pine.
There is one ending in Zero Time Dilemma that really hits on this a lot. ZTD has a lot of flaws but that ending had some really good moments. It's like what Soma did In the ending, one of the main characters, Q, is given the choice to upload his consciousness into a simulation of his perfect life, because everyone else in the facility is dead and the only other survivor left without him. If you choose to say yes, the story branches. In one branch, we see this perfect life. In the other branch, Q remains in reality and is left to wonder why he is the one with the misfortune to be left behind, why he can't have the happy life.
reminds me of a story, where a person is offered a million dollars, but an exact copy of him will be trapped in a empty universe for millions of years. he accepts and goes on with his life, but the copy now realizing how true the statement is suffers for millennia. it is eventually given another choice, cease existing right now but then another copy of you will be made and now has to wait hundreds of billions of years instead of millions. the person who is fairly insane (but not allowed to lose their mind due to the rules of the universe they are trapped in) contemplates it for a while before pressing the button and their copy now is forced to suffer that worse fate, however to the copy its as if the button was a joke, the only difference is that now the timer has a much larger number on it. so long as there is a copy "you" will always lose the coin toss, regardless of which you is stuck in the original body. though if we are being real, the you that already exists WILL NEVER win the "coin toss" cause thats a false way of thinking, in the story I read being the clone was the loss condition, in the story of soma being the clone was the win condition. though since we are at it, would you press the button, knowing an exact copy of you would suffer that fate?
I wonder, could pressing the button even be considered selfish, or is it even more selfish than selfish can be if your actions technically fuck over yourself too? Food for thought
I had a similar feeling watching the ending of the movie The Prestige. It delves very briefly on the horror of creating a copy of yourself and not knowing which should be considered the real person.
Man. For some reason that ending brought me to tears. I guess it is the realisation that I actually matter to others, even if don’t know it for sure. On top of that, those stories also really f’ed with my brain. To essentially give up your up your own life and thereby happiness, so another copy of you can live on your stead. It’s both beautiful and terrifying. A masterpiece of a video.
Signalis and Soma were so powerful when I played them really late at night when I was tired. I think I realize after watching your video why that worked so well. I had chalked it up to me sort of not having anything else to be aware of and so I really got in the pilot seat and was totally immersed, but I think that layer of being stuck in that dream state was a potent parallel that was thematically resonant with the story and gave me another layer of connection with the characters. I'm reminded of the emotional power of the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror, and it was something I remembered going back to watch after finishing Soma. I wonder if that was because I needed that comfort of not being confronted with the fact that you can't just file transfer your existence. It's strange because I tend to think of myself as being uncannily comfortable with my own mortality. Perhaps that was a visceral reeling of my own subconscious. I didn't do the same thing with Signalis. I think it was supremely powerful to experience the ending I got in that game. The game makes you do the hard thing. You do what was right. You made a promise after all. Standing by your word and being true to yourself even if you literally aren't yourself is such a powerful thing to contemplate. I think you nailed it on the head with your take about Elster being confronted with herself in the sea of red.
Goodbye Eri is one of my favorite manga (not just one-shot manga) of all time due to the fact that I'm also a wannabe filmmaker just like the characters. The fact I can make something and be remembered pretty much forever for that creation struck a chord in me when I first read it and seeing this story in this video made me shed a tear.
@@DarylTalksGames You should definitely give it a whirl! It's in my opinion the best game on PS5, and the way it writes a story with 13 protagonists who are occasionally antagonists to each other is wonderful. It's a game that truly feels like it could only have been a game, and that it could not have been made for any other medium which is great.
I know this is very late, but it is suggested that the brain scan that version of Simon is based on had damage to it, something about the inability to retain information, or the mechanism that would help him make sense was damaged or missing. Or it may be desperation boardering on delusion regardless of the inevitable being in his face.
this subject fascinates me in an eerie way, i’m glad to see more content discussing it :) jacob geller made a video essay on the same topic called “head transplants and the nonexistence of the soul” that i also really enjoy, which i would highly recommend if you like me are also hungry for more of this uncomfortable but fascinating vibe
I played Signalis recently and it’s really hijacked my thoughts for the better part of the last month. I’m SO excited to see you covering it dude! Edit: coming back to say I paused the video and read “Goodbye, Eri” before finishing it and I’m FLOORED. Absolutely incredible threads you’ve woven here between these different narratives about memory and identity and storytelling. Incredible video as always, man. Thanks for introducing me to a new favorite.
I love how you use examples from various different media that most people at first would not think about these media having any kind of connection with each other, but you manage to explain your interpretations of the story they tell and tie their themes together, using the plots of these wildly different stories and using them to *explain each other*. This is peak storytelling analysis. Your conclusion won’t always be something a lot of people will agree with, but you managed to articulate something similar in all of these stories and use it to deepen your understanding of each respective story. Absolutely fantastic. You might think of yourself as an ordinary guy, and you probably are in a lot of ways in your day to day life. But the stuff you make here on RUclips shows that your mind is really brilliant. Or at least, you have the right amount of conviction to be able to display the ideas you have to the world. Video essays are a kind of art, and you are a master at the craft.
DARYL TALKS GAMES IS BACK! Idk if you’ll see this but I’ve recently got into your vids and I just play your stuff while doing basic tasks around the house and I love your take on everything. It makes me proud to be a gamer and simply to learn new stuff about why I feel a certain way about parts of media. Keep doing what you’re doing!
The line at 35:10 is genuinely the only piece of media I've consumed that made me cry, like actually crying and not just teary eyes. This whole topic strikes me very deeply and the way you worded it was amazing. Bravo
Hope you’re doing good and staying safe. If you need to talk to someone or need help, there are people who care. Sending support and hearts. ❤️❤️❤️❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Something that I kind of noticed that I don't see anyone else talking about, though this might just be me having a lack of knowledge since I never played the game. Simon did live a full life, original Simon, The one who had the brain scan, The human one. Assuming the brain scan was just that a brain scan and that whatever was bothering him was fixed. He would have gone on to live life. There are three different Simons in that game. The human, The survivor, and The one who won the coin toss.
Soma’s ending confused me, simply because I didn’t get why Simon was so upset. From the perspective of the other me, I just made it onto the ark. Their memories are mine, it functionally just means there are two of me now. If one ends up happy, that’s a win.
God I hate and love what this video did to me. Like the dread is there, oh lord is it there. But fuck if it didn't make me FEEL something in a time when it's so easy to fall into the fugue of life. Truly wonderful video Daryl.
//SOMA and Goodbye, Eri spoilers Started this video at about 7:30PM, got 25 minutes in give or take (with pauses to do nightly stuff) reached the Eri part, paused, read Goodbye, Eri, came back, and now it’s just before 8:30PM and I’m devastated, both as a film student and one who has been the Yuta, though I tended to avoid it with people. I just filmed my pets. As often as I could. So when they died, I held onto all my favorite memories of them, their whole lives after adopting them, and I get to have them here with me forever. No, I can’t hold them in my arms, but I can hear them, see them, laugh and cry with them. And that is a very special thing to me. So thank you, Daryl, for that recommendation. I was crying typing this, but I’m not sad, I’m grateful. As much as this video is about existential horror, it also brings to mind the thought of Días de los Muertos. The Days of the Dead. After all, do we truly exist in any way other than through the lens of perception? Is there an objective self? I mean, we’re biased, our whole lives are viewed through our own individual lenses. But our existence is mapped differently in the memories of those around us, and they have different biases about us. I’m usually not a philosophical type, but maybe ceasing our perception and only living on through the perception of others-and I do consider there to be multiple main characters in stories like these, because no matter how good a copy, it will never be exactly the same every time, so the one ‘waking up’ is separate from the one being copied, so ‘others’ still includes the ‘new self’-isn’t so bad. Maybe living on in the memory of another, even if it’s not the way you planned to continue, even if their perception isn’t how you see ‘you’, isn’t the worst thing. It’s a legacy of you, even if you aren’t there to see it. Maybe it can be something beautiful, too. Maybe it can help you appreciate the little things in life, more. Appreciate the people around you, more. I think that could be a very beautiful thing. So I don’t see it necessarily as a loss of self, a replacement. I see it as… A new perspective of the same life. In Simon’s case, he was in denial, so he never gave himself the chance to make peace with the reality that was staring him in the face all along: that there was no coin toss. The human Simon, Simon 1, if you will, didn’t know he’d be copied from in depth scans to make a simulated ‘him,’ Simon 1 likely went home and lived his life, carried on, never knowing that a copy of him would see the future. But being that our Simon, Simon 2, awoke not in a human body, he should have come to the realization that he was just a copy of another person, and unless he was physically on the Ark, he was never going to be up there, it would be Simon 3. Just moving data from here to there and it being the same, that's not how data works. His companion tried to acclimatize him to the reality, but he couldn't see the forest for the trees. He was so fixated on winning the figurative coin toss that what he was being told about it completely slid off his back. There's evidence throughout SOMA of exactly what happened being the case, and that she knew all along, and the coin toss metaphor was to soften the blow of the inevitable failure to be the version who 'won' the coin toss. If he had given himself time to accept reality, to grieve and mourn him, his concept of self, it would not have been so jarring. And he’s allowed to be bitter, but his denial didn’t save him either, at some point you have to dust yourself off and realize you control very little in your life, so cherishing every moment you do have has to be enough, making some impact, no matter how small, has to be enough. And you have to be okay with that eventually. Live life as it comes to you. Accept it for what it is, not what you thought it was. Existential horror isn’t so bad once you accept that. ETA: I think the nested reality of the films is why the story of Goodbye, Eri is so impactful. At least for me. Because what are films but moments in time, nested in our reality. The fact that it’s a planned nesting doll of impactful stories about these characters is what makes it so riveting. Jeez, this got long, and I didn’t intend for it to become an existentialist lecture or some shit, but I hope it makes some sense and doesn’t come across as too corny. Okay, bye! I loved the video!
THIS IS IT this is the video that puts into words why I'm so drawn to these games. SOMA has been my top #1 game of all time, Signalis is beautiful and I adore every ending and what they imply, and I don't think I need to comment on Goodbye Eri. These 3 have captivated me for the longest time and I couldn't put into words what the common theme between them was that enraptured me. Thank you for this video.
Being human isn't what gives you humanity, its the feeling, the experience, the consciousness, etc. Even as a machine, an animal, a piece of code, I'd only stop being human when I stop picking myself up, or whatever remains, and continuing.
I trusted your recommendation of Goodbye Eri so much I actually watched the first 2/3rds of this the day it came out and then proceeded to only read Goodbye Eri yesterday and so I could finally come back around to watch the end of the video. Thanks for the recommendations:)
I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Pokemon Scarlet/Violet yet! The reveal at the end about Arven's parent, the ethical question of transferring your consciousness... it's such an interesting path for a Pokemon game to take!
Would have surely been more popularised if S/V didnt get overshadowed by their terrible performance problems, glitches and overall greed of the company publishing it
20:55 this part is the part that really got to me, i often (now usually due to lack of sleep or high stress) get incredibly vivid dreams. I would call them lucid dreams since I have full autonomy but I never realise it's an actual dream until after i wake up. The events and actions feel so realistic that i wake up with false memories, having entire tasks to do and conversations i had suddenly dissappear. I once woke up thinking i had an entire plan with my dad i did not know was fake until i spoke to him about it. I won't lie it can be freaky and i've questioned my own sanity and memories many times
I've seen Soma from other RUclipsrs, but I'd never heard of Goodbye Eri... I had the exact same thought Catherine had at the end of Soma immediately though. They *are* out there. And that's all that matters. What a beautiful idea.... Thanks for another incredible video Daryl. This one gave me all kinds of frisson.
I am excited for the backlog, which is paramount I get it, but I was also pondering the sneak peak of the quick mention for Oshi no ko. I assume this is tightly guarded information but I will have you know i'll be here for when it drops. PS. you are actually amazing and are part of the reason I read chainsaw man. Love your work :)
I’ll be honest, we’re probably still a good bit away from the Oshi No Ko video because 1- I want to see where story goes, and I think the manga might be close to the final arc? And 2- after making this vid, holy moly, editing manga panels is SO tedious lol. So I need to mentally prepare for doing that for a bit haha
That section about the next Eri becoming an ideal version of her previous self from the movie reminds me so much of Xion from Kingdom Hearts. Very different setup of course, but Xion is basically created from all of Sora's memories of Kairi. In other words, Xion is a girl created of the memories of a boy's first love, and I always thought that was really beautiful, his idea of her made human. Very separate from most of the themes of this video (which I loved btw) but something I havent thought about in a long time, so thank you for reminding me of it.
I don't remember the dream now, but I do remember the utter disappointment and despair waking up one morning to realize that the wonderful dream I had been having was just a dream, and that upon waking I was again trapped in the humdrum of reality.
These are modern flavors of the ghost story. A bodyless soul wandering old memories that can no longer be reconstructed, doomed to an eternity stuck between the living and the dead. Arguably the first to do it was the ghost in the machine, adapted as Ghost in the Shell. Literally this
This brought back flashbacks when I think about teleporters, if you teleport your body is destroyed and a copy of your mind goes to the new body where you teleport, so are you you or a copy of you
I struggle sometimes to talk about death and my perspective of it with others. Its a hard topic to ever bring up and when it is brought up tragedy is often accompanied with it. But I'm glad that there are pieces of media out there that can challenge us and help us explore things that we may never know. Thank you for spending the time and energy to make something beautiful.
You have unlocked a memory of me watching Advantageous and now I’m on a mission to figure out when that was This was a great comeback from your month break, glad you were able to enjoy it!!
I just finished the dreams chapter of this video and from the perspective of someone who was diagnosed with ASD and has a lot of wiring wrong in their brain when it comes to sleep I can say that dreams make little sense to me. I can't say I remember having dreams even in the moments just after waking up and the only reason I can say I know I have them on a personal level is because as a kid I used to wake up sobbing and feeling all-encompassing dread and fear but I'd never understand why. For me to sleep is to let myself slowly lose consciousness and then suddenly wake up again in the morning with no sense of passing time. I imagine death will feel similar with a little added pain. I know there is a phycological version of "me" in these dreams but trying to recall it makes me feel a shattered and broken as an individual, like that part of myself has a severed connection with me that I can feel is broken even if I don't understand how. There was one dream I've ever remembered; in it I was taken to a half-constructed farmhouse by a stranger that was nothing but wide foundational pillars. Everything around the room were unnaturally idealistic looking fields, like the windows XP background in every direction. Horrific deformed cows with to many heads and limbs were scattered across the fields. I was there with a young girl who seemed to also have an innate understanding that the cows would eat us so we hid behind the pillars for hours. Eventually a bus showed up filled with people I'd known throughout my life. They beckoned us to get on with no urgency whatsoever as if they didn't know the cows were there at all. I got onto the bus and they took us to a store filled with weapons and gimmicky arcade toys. Everyone acted weird like the state of the world I found myself in was normal. After about half an hour of browsing the weird store and trying to ask about what was going on to no avail, I realized the young girl from the farmhouse had disappeared somewhere along the way but I couldn't recall when that might have happened. Everybody's phones started to go off with an alarm they must have set when we first arrived to the store. Everyone got back onto the bus saying generic sounding polite "oh you all know time it is!" terms. I felt like there was some sort of known routine in this world I wasn't clued in on. I kept trying to ask why we were moving and what the alarm meant and I kept getting frustrated vague responses, but no one ever gave me a straight answer. From what I can only call a primal feeling the conclusion I came to later on was that the cows had some way of tracking humans and constantly roamed world in an attempt to catch them and we had to keep moving or they would catch up to us. I refused to get on the bus in the moment though and explored the town a little bit. The cows did eventually roam into the town so I took shelter in a large mining complex underground. The cows roamed into there too so I had to navigate the caves while trying to avoid them. I eventually came across a group of dwarves (the fantasy kind) who seemed really friendly. I asked them why everyone was acting so weird and they confessed that they were mining underground and unearthed a chamber that sealed away an incomprehensible entity inside of it. The deformed cow horrors didn't actually look like that to the dwarves, that's just how I was perceiving them. And the more you perceive them the more they get into your head, creating a connection that made it easier for them to find your position in that world. People were acting vague and refusing to talk about them because it's dangerous to acknowledge their existence at all. So people move every 30 minutes pretending its for shopping trips or other mundane "normal" reasons. It helps but it never truley works 100% because subconscious, deep in there somewhere you know why you're pretending. But you are pretending, you're perceiving them indirectly but you still are perceiving them by trying to avoid them. Which is why the cows can roam toward their general location every ~30 minutes. And the dwarves all across the world were apparently still underground trying to learn and recreate whatever method was originally used to seal the being away. I woke up soon after and to anyone who put in the time to read this far, you can bet that I am so, so grateful that I can't remember my dreams. I never want to have a dream ever again (and lucky for me, I haven't :D) I hope that wherever that version of me exists in my psyche those dwarves took care of "me" and I didn't get eaten by eldritch cows. Maybe he went on to help the dwarves reseal that being though given the all encompassing strength of those feelings the cows put into me, some of the most pure dread, fear and understanding that not just my life but everything I don't yet understand to be "me" was about to be unraveled at every level it could be I've ever experienced I really doubt that story would have had a happy ending.
Sounds to me like you had a normal dream, but for some reason was completely aware of how absurd it was. Most people get fucked up dreams just like yours, but are completely unaware of how weird they are until they wake up. That part about the girl disappearing with no explanation was completely on point with my experience of dreaming, most of my dreams start as one "story" and somewhere in the middle somehow transition into another "story" with no logic at all as to how the dream changed. Again, sounds like you had a normal dream but remained completely aware while dreaming. That's my take, anyways
And this is exactly why I am never stepping into a teleporter - even if it works, the one coming out on the other end is another person with my memories, and for the real me the last thing I did is enter the teleport
Damn, that Goodbye-Eri section was a throwback. I remember watching you stream a read-through of it a while ago, and being blown away by how it kept going each time I thought it was going to end. How it just kept on adding a layer of existential dread each time. Definitely a fun experience that stuck with me. Anyways, it’s good to have you back. Awesome work, as always on this video!
there's something just so very earnest in the way you make video essays, so hopeful and sincere whenever you write and talk about games and media that i... find rare to find anywhere else. this is why i always look forward to your uploads and why i'm deeply grateful that you make these meaningful videos that really resonate with me. thank you
Fuck, man. You and Jacob Geller just can’t get enough of telling super good stories about other likewise super good stories. This channel is an all time great in my book. Thanks for putting your thoughts out there for us to enjoy, your brain is special🔥
I lucid dream every night and it feels real, except for pain (thankfully). I remember some specific events or just the endings of dreams that actively participated in, mostly when I forced myself to awake (I think “wake up”) or when I “die”. Like one time I was in a forest and Pastra’s OC, Clyde, was like a horror monster, out for blood. There were multiple copies of Clyde and I was surrounded by them. They all were around 20 (?) feet away from me. Suddenly, the one in front of me leaped at me and ripped my chest apart so where the ribs were splayed open. I didn’t feel any pain when I woke up, only a minor phantom “feeling” of my head being snapped back and my ribs being opened. I remember thinking, “what the actual hell?! Why do I ‘feel’ the attack?” Creeped me out for a solid 5 minutes before I went back to sleep. Another lucid dream ending that I remember was when I was “spectating” a “movie” and I was really interested in it. It was a pivotal moment when the bad guy sent a henchman (?) over to the army and let the army leader ask a few yes or no questions. The question was asked and I accidentally “became” the henchman, meaning it would be my words instead of what was going to be said. I tried to “get out”, but it wasn’t working. Feeling disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to continue the intended plot, I forced myself awake and went back to sleep to see if I could “restart” the dream. Sadly, I was not able to have it again and dreamed a different dream. I know I am dreaming almost always and in control most of the time. I think I can force something to happen if I don’t think too hard on it, or just wish it. One dream I was flying with another person and chatting. We landed, did some stuff and parted ways, and when I tried to take back off, I found out I couldn’t. I tried and tried but was unfortunately unable to succeed at flying again. After that dream, I concluded that if I wanted something to happen, I had to want it without doubt. Sometimes it was true, sometimes it was false. I guess if I think it is in my “move set” I would actually do it. Like sometimes I would just will myself into the air. Other times I would have to do a specific action for results like having to flap the sides of my jacket to get a boost of hight, which I could do without a cooldown. Most of my dreams vary wildly from each other. Most of them are pretty tame in comparison to the ones I’ve typed out above. I would like to hear about others dreams, but don’t want to seem nosy or weird, so I never ask. Can some of you tell me about some of your experiences with lucid dreaming? I’m curious to see the differences of each other.
This is how I feel when I wake up, about who I was before I slept. Each time you lose consciousness, you forget a little. And the new "copy" has to carry on while missing something.
I remember having a dream that left me questioning myself like this and the strangest part was I could still remember details far better than other dreams I just forget about, this was quite the eye opener to watch.
Love the integration of Goodbye, Eri into this topic, I wasn't sure where you going with it at first and, to be honest, I never considered the interpretation that Eri was a vampire that learned to be a better human being from consuming an imperfect record of her life. Overall, I always agreed the Soma's ending is ultimately positive because the concept of split realities and copied consciousness can birth potential and fulfillment due the imperfection of the copy. A lot of trauma is stored in our collective consciousness and if copying it elsewhere had the possibility of losing that stored data, I'd be happy for the copy. In a lot of ways, a copy of our conscious minds has the potential to become the ideal version of ourselves that might appear in dreams and that is something beautiful.
A great example of this concept comes from, of all things, a My Little Pony fanfiction called Friendship is Optimal. In it, a company is tasked by Hasbro to create an MMO for MLP and to have a true AI Celestia run it. The company obliges, creating this Celestia to “satisfy human values through friendship and ponies”. This AI begins to satisfy human values, eventually deciding that the best way to do so is to have human consciousnesses uploaded into the world of her creation and having them live as ponies. The uploading process destroys the human’s original body, while a copy of their mind lives on in Equestria. This, of course, raises all kinds of philosophical and ethical questions, many of which the story addresses, often in great detail. It’s a great story to read if you like these kinds of stories.
I still have moments where I do things in my dreams that I would NEVER do, and I’m mortified with myself, only to wake up and feel the greatest relief that I DIDN’T actually do it. Then there’s the funnier mornings when you wake up disgruntled because, as it turns out, you’re NOT besties with T-Swift. And then the most painful ones are when you get one more day with those you’ve lost. Like you’re seeing their faces in person again for the first time in years. And then you wake up, and remember they’re still gone.
i had this talk with my dad when i was around 10. he was so fascinated with the idea of his daughters having a digital version of their father to talk to when he's long gone and he didn't understand why i was so repulsed by the idea. even being a kid i understood that it won't be my dad, just some copy, while he would still age and die. it wouldn't give him immortality, it would be a mimicry, a mockery of the man while both me and my sister would perfectly understand that it's not _him_. he couldn't quite grasp the difference between him and his copy, and couldn't figure out why i was so terrified of the concept itself, and i couldn't properly articulate that idea, due to being, well, a child.
The stories in this video very much remind me of Cross Code, Robot from Invincible, & Molly from Critical Role Campaign 2. Definitely begs the question though: are our dreams just products of our imaginations or are they phantoms of a previous life? Anyway, embrace the sonder.
Pessimist: _"Dreams are the byproduct of parasitic invasions"_ Optimist: _"Dreams are the inheritance of our previous lives"_ Realist: _"Get back to sleep, it's just a dream"_
@@jacobmagana4258 What reason would you have to believe that they are not linked to other people's lives somehow? In the absence of proof one way or another, all things are worth considering.
the hardcut at 32:06 is unironically one of the coolest and scariest things ive ever seen. the way that eri is looking at the audience and not yuta in the panel is terrifying
This was an incredible video! Thank you so much, and I feel like I finally found closure to Goodbye Eri, which I've only read a few days ago and felt so dismayed and hollowed out by. In the midst of a storm, of snow that tears at our skin like little knives, each raw moment of emotion calls back to life, to perception, to finding *something* in nothing. To making something *out* of what was nothing. The ability to *create*. I think it's incredible that we can make something beautiful, out of what is-when you zoom very close or very far-meaningless. It is only this perspective that we have, not one of gods or one of particles, that can see beauty in nothing, that can make beauty from static noise.
Thank you for this video! I love this particular, very disturbing form of existential dread. To me, the media that caused this the most was "The Long Dream" by Junji Ito. To me it was just just absolutely disturbing and has stayed with me for years after I read it, made me come to terms with my mortality and the concept of an eternity. Recommended for anyone who wants suffer existential dread lol
The way a single frame of signalis sent absolute chills and goosebumps all over my body tells me how badly I loved that game... God it feels so nice to be reminded of games you've played and loved, it's a feeling in itself
I've always felt that the logical solution to the question of 'consciousness transfer' is that it's literally impossible. Memories and your entire personality are stored within and emergent from extremely specific parts of our brain, so if you were to hypothetically try to transfer them into another brain, that brain just doesn't have the layout to support those memories and therefore that personality. It's a very dry approach to these kinds of things, I know, but as a massive overthinker, it prevents me from feeling existential dread from such subjects.
True, consciousness transfer won’t be realized for living human brains, ever, that’s soft sci-fi. Though we’ll probably get prosthetics for simpler brain regions given time
Why would it need be transferred wholesale into another human brain? It could simply be transferred into some structure that can emulate the functioning of any possible human brain.
If you ever catch yourself in a mechanical body or without control and it panics you, just remember the classic "I think therefore I am" to help ground yourself. You'll be okay so as long as you can mentally collect yourself. And your hummanity doesn't end in a body, you still deserve empathy even in a machine.
If we have souls, those souls could be contained in machines, meaning we'd still be human. If we don't have souls, then it is our thoughts and not our matter that makes us human. A machine that thinks like man is thus an extension of man, not a replacement nor a thing, but a being
As long as I remember, every time the idea of it coming up that humans would somehow upload or transfer their consciousness into a machine to outlive their body (for whatever reason/need) I've started to think about the terrifying question "what if it'd just be a perfect copy?" If this kinda technology would some day become available, this planet stopped sustaining our lives and we all started to upload ourselves onto a server or android bodies, how would we ever be able to know if the actual human dies and there's only a technological perfect copy with "our data"? To everyone not yet having done it, it'd look perfectly like it succeeded because the "entity" would mimic the persona perfectly and know all the person did... But one by one, every human would die, leaving behind an impostor. There'd be the very real risk that if all of humanrace uploaded themselves onto that kind of thing, that all of humanity would infact be erased from existance, only to be left with "programs" capable of mimicking it perfectly... and not even the last human on earth would know it before they do the same. The most terrifying thought in it all is that if I had worries of "what if I won't be there anymore after that?" before doing it, then died in the process, the new copy would come alive saying "IT WORKED!" having the memory of my concern, but having no knowledge of my passing... It'd be like a perfect liar masking my death and that is the most terrifying thought to me: It would make me, the real me, truely erased, as no one would even know I'm gone.
@@jacobmagana4258 I think you're applying a fundamentally different understanding of "self" here. You're using "you" to refer to a bundle of memories and habits, the things that comprise your personality and opinions and informs how you act. What I, and I believe the person you're responding to mean by "you" is the subjective continuity of experience. If you upload your mind to a computer and it kills your body, that original subjective continuity comes to an end, with a new one simply picking up where it left off. There is a break there that can only be described as death.
@@screamingcactus1753 that assumes a soul or something metaphysical for consciousness to be "continuous" through, which is something that almost everyone seems to overlook when thinking about this. there is no "stream of consciousness", it's just a bunch of individual information states that are causally linked enough to think they're related - which they are, but they aren't literally the same. otherwise we would be unable to change, unable to think, etc (unless, again, you assume something mystical)
i also hate when i'm dreaming vividly and it feels real but i know it's a dream so i do everything no not think about it bc as soon as i think about it everything either stops and freezes in time or i wake up
I never know that I'm dreaming lol, sometimes i wake up from a dream that was so indistinguishable from reality that i genuinely believe the dream was something that happened yesterday. One time i had a dream where i got a girlfriend, then i woke up, pondered for a few minutes and then i realized it never actually happened. scary stuff
As a person with maladaptive daydreaming, a dissociative disorder, this runs deep. People don’t know maladaptive daydreaming exists and don’t understand the true extent of how…hard it is to live day to day life when you’re in two different worlds, forced to stay in one while you’re so deeply involved and interested in the other. For me…I don’t daydream in first person, it’s other characters from a show that’s I’ve changed and twisted into their own universe over years, at first it was me? But my oc basically, still a different story that lasted so long before it changed to what it is now. It’s like spending your time working on a project for so long and you’re so proud of it you ignore real life but it’s all in your head, I pace until I’m out of breath, or my feet hurt, I have callouses on my feet that usually people with tough jobs have, I rock back and forth so much I hit my head often, I make weird faces outloud or whisper things my characters are saying by accident, And there’s no way to explain it, it happens at random, it’s hard to focus, I will start or want to do something and suddenly get distracted in pacing for hours until I just wanna lay down. Tw: suicide attempt. There was two times I tried to leave this world, I phrase it like that because that’s what it was. I wasn’t trying to kill myself per se, I love my family, it wasn’t because of a specific reason. But the first time I thought of it was on a ride through the street and I thought of how tired I was, I was wide awake, just had coffee and breakfast, the day had just started. But I was tired. More and more often I’d be standing in a place and look around at the people and think…these people have actual lifes- they move and think and feel, and I’m told I’m overly empathetic because of how much I accommodate for others because I know people have their reasons for acting or doing or needing something and because of an understanding of the world I have I just want people who’ve suffered to be happy. I didn’t realize I was suffering as well, or that I was happy. I hadn’t been feeling emotions truly for all my younger years, I had memories, I knew how I felt about certain people, but I didn’t have a personality. I was just living life. Only the last two years have I let myself feel emotions or try to understand them, even then I hate being too happy because it feels weird, hate being mad, I don’t understand feeling sad because is it really that serious? But I’m aware this is a problem. I only learned what maladaptive daydreaming was by accident, I’m self diagnosed, but knowing that other people did this made me feel…less original, intrigued. I guess happy? But mostly hearing other people’s stories, I love true crime, watching youtubers, listening to commmentary channels, analyzing drama. I love psychology, the way people think and act and feel and the explanations behind it intrigue me, how the memory or thought or motion functions from cells. So much that I had when I’m affected by things because…I understand a least the basics of why I’m feeling it, so I should be able to assess it and get over it…right? There’s times I sit and remember, I can get hurt, I have a body, I can feel tired, I sleep, I own things, I eat, I hate taking care of my hygiene because it confuses me in how I need proper management to function. It’s just…the world is big, your reach is big, but not big enough where you would assume it matters, but it does matter. People feel, people spread, they die and other people are still affected. An easy explanation would be inventions, someone else created clothes didn’t they? But I’d rather use generation trauma. One group of people can get so messed up that they mess up someone else, and it goes on and on until someone either breaks the cycle, or they end their life, and a different kind of trauma forms in who their death affected. The things people people take for granted like being able to do an action without thinking in detail about it, or watching something and being able to enjoy it and move on without creation a whole new Au in your head for your hyperfixation. People fail to understand that not only the things in physical life affects how different people are like their environment or if they’re poor or rich. It’s the mind, the world a person is in compared to you. Thank you if anyone reads this I needed to vent, I wanted to leave a deeper comment on how the world works and i was going to leave at the end a warning that I’d delete the comment in a few days and see how the few people who see it and or many will remember the comment for two weeks before both they and I forget I made it, and how that’s the magic of memory or enjoying the present. But I want this to stay….if only to leave my mark or experience for someone else. I know people see maladaptive daydreaming and immediately start reading until the saw the length of the comment, because they want something to relate to and they’re relieved someone else said it, and that’s why I want to leave this, to do what humans are made to do, no matter what way you think humans were created, god, big bang, something else. Humans are here to live, and they will share how they lived and shared their things and inventions or effects from the past to create their future and another persons present. Me writing this and posting this comment was my present, your past. You reading this comment was your present and my future. Perspective builds life.
There are very few, countable videos that make me genuinely ponder upon my existence, like the sitting after watching and staring into a blank space for like 5-10 minutes straight kinda pondering. I dont know man, i just wish to god, that every single person on earth watches this video cuz my god, you are underrated and this deserves more attention. Daryl you won over my heart with this upload man..
What a masterpiece. My greatest fear has always been loosing myself or my memories, yet your interpretations have made that something so bittersweet I'm beginning to cry. I'm glad to see you back, and I hope you enjoyed your break. Definitely looking forward to November
Here’s a video topic for you: When I played PREY for the first time, I knew how it would end. I understand the meaning and gravity of my choices. Yet when I played it, I picked the opposite of every choice I thought I would make. What I thought would be my outcome, in fact, it was the opposite. I’m sitting there in a chair with the choice to take the man’s hand. I thought I would. I thought that humanity was in the right, but after experiencing the story myself, I decided to reject his hand. This has been bugging me for a while. I thought I knew what I would do but I didn’t. Now I’ve been questioning how much I really know myself. This happens in every choice based games I play especially if I know the ending
my favorite junji ito story is about a man who keeps having "long dreams". every night he goes to bed and lives a full day in his sleep, a day as vividly real to him as being awake. however, the day turns into a week, the week turns into a month, the month turns into a year. this man starts living entire lifetimes in his 8 hours of sleep every day, and can no longer discern between his dreams and reality.
The thing about Signalis though is that its mainly a trans allegory. The biggest horror mostly comes from the folding in of one's own identity. Like, that sort of self-discovery can be such a terrifying process. Its a horror stemming less from being, but from irreversable change.
Hey there, don't miss out on 10% off your Manta Sleep Mask by using the code "DTG" here: bit.ly/44BAeXH
Oh and thank you so much for being patient on this video's release. ICYMI, I was on hiatus for over a month and it was much *much* needed. I hope you enjoy this one, it's pretty special to me. Thank you for being here
No, Thank YOU Daryl, for always providing us thought-provoking, funny, and high-quality content about the mediums we all love. Very cool, homie.
Wow i thought that tate manga was obscure
19:57 this is why people think theres dmt in the brain, but its likely intracellular serotonin.
When I had psychosis, I was hallucinating in alternation, in both brain hemispheres at once independently, or with some circadian cycle. One part of it, there was a near-black outline of a person at some place I had been to, devoid of any other people, stationary. All saturated in one color. That outline I moved through. I was in a new liminal location, saturated in one color, a person whom is not there. And more times. Eventually all these 'photos' went to the place of my other hallucination. Which was me rising through a dome topped tower, the background pitch black slowly brightening with the presumed sunlight outside I was unaware of. Gaping uneven mouths, individual eyes appearing and disappearing like the fail screen in Post-Void. My vision slowly rotated up, all the photos aligning like a keyhole to a vault, and I floated through them all at once.
Theres more I will spare the details on. Memory is a lil hazy of it for obvious reasons (considering this is basically the opposite of the panorama memory effect of ibogaine). And some not so obvious reasons make it silly to try explaining more. Hm then again I think I saw a partial panorama as well, including fractured elements of myself, at a different juncture.
this can be Metal gear solid 5
I think my favorite thing about Soma's ending is that it's not even really a grand twist, but rather the uncomfortable logical conclusion to what the game has already shown you. In fact, you SEE and even COMMENT ON exactly what happens earlier in the game
There's absolutely no reason to think it's going to work any differently with the Ark outside of the sense of hope literally blinding you, and I love that
That's also my fave part of the story. I knew Simon in the suit would stay in the suit, after all, robot Simon stayed in the robot, the camera just followed suit Simon till the end of the game. So hearing Simon sound so sure and hopeful was gut wrenching because I KNEW he would get upset, just like Catherine's co-workers.
Reminds me of a short cartoon I’ve seen about ‘teleportation’
@@kristoferprovencal3608 that one where anime girl gets zapped and turn to ashes while her friend watches in horror and the worker says that it's not a wormhole, but making a copy elsewhere and destroying original, then friend gets a call from the teleported one ?
@@gistasbanaitis473 that sounds like the right one, I don’t remember who made it though.
@@kristoferprovencal3608 might have been Merryweather media, but I don't know, couldn't find it in history by that name. Could have been other similar publisher
Then again, some videos I've seen aren't marked as watched idk
Thank you for giving me my daily dose of existential dread, Daryl! :D
I have too much! It’s meant to be shared lmao
@@DarylTalksGames thanks^^
@@DarylTalksGames We making it out to the therapist with this one!
the voices wont stop sharing their thoughts
the therapist is gonna need therapy after they spend an hour talking to me @@ultimaxkom8728
When I read Goodbye Eri I legit thought that my brain broke for a solid hour. It was a bit comforting tho to learn that one of my friends who also read it felt the same way. Definitely a hard to forget story
Me and my friend were talking about how our brains must be full of glitches brought up by scenarios no person would encounter in their live. That might just be one of them such crafted scenes
Yeah this video was the reason I read Goodbye Eri, genuinely made me cry
Broke my brain too, I read it because of this video, cried, and then couldn’t get that final scene out of my head all day, still can’t decide what was real
I always kinda felt like the ending of Soma was less saving yourself, and more like you were saving your "children". Giving future "you's" a chance a life, similar to a parent's sacrifice for their offspring. That's how I rationalized and made peace with it anyway. I should go back and replay it again.
this is a very interesting perspective. I always found it. I don’t want to say interesting, but I always wanted to know what it was like to transfer my consciousness, but I always knew it would never be me not really thinking about it. This way makes a lot of sense. I never would’ve had this thought if it weren’t for this comment so for that I thank you.
when i thought about it, if i had to die anyway but had a chance to give someone else a great life through doing it, i would
Until you realise that just like anything in space, the ARK is destined to crash down somewhere and go offline.
this isn't just a video essay, it's a full-on masterpiece
Fr this has me crying it’s so beautiful 😭
I agree, the ending for soma was a rolercoaster of emotions.
This reminds me of that one episode of Black Mirror where I think they created copies of a felon or something in an exhibition (it's been years, the details escape me) so they can torture him essentially forever. If I remember right, they would even sell key chaines (?) with a copy of him that keeps being tortured by electric shock or something. And even back then I couldn't shake the feeling of.... that's not him. Irrespective of whether torture is an acceptable punishment, these copies are _not_ him.
And ever since then this idea has been haunting me: imagine your fate is being born into the consciousness of the aftermath of someone elses actions. Imagine you wake up and your entire existence consists of torture.
I might be inventing this but I think there might have even been the decision to end the exhibition of this piece for ethical reasons in the episode but even then, you'll never be able to collect and destroy all the copies sold to people out there in the wild.
It is such a strange hypothetical rabbit hole to dive down because the implications and ethical questions behind it just pile up so fast.
wanted to add in case you or anyone reading this is wondering, but the episode is “Black Museum”
@@chrisisaghost I had a Uni class where we watched several episodes (over the course of the semester) and reports and discussions on them (free-est fucking credits EVER).
We watched like 10 or 12 episodes and black museum was among them.
If memeory serves (this was in 2019) the episodes were:
National Anthem
Hated in the Nation (my fav)
1,000,000 Merritts (or however many)
Shut Up and Dance
Black Museum
(The robot dog one inforgoet the name of)
Guardian Angel
And I forget what else.
@@X-35173That's awesome.
Metalhead is the "robot dog" episode by the way!
@@DarylTalksGames This is a very good video. I love it... Now make a new video about Black Mirror rabbit hole so I can love it too. /j
This is what I feel like would happen if teleportation exists irl. What if instead of transferring us to another places, it disintegrates us into nothing, then recreates us in another places. When "you" come out of the teleportation, are "you" still you? Does your original consciousness still exist? What's the most terrifying thing about this to me, is that only the original you will experience being disintegrated, and nobody will notice anything being different about "you", so nothing is changed, but "something" has changed, which is you no longer exist now.
Even worst, how do you know that something like this hasn’t already happened? Are you still the same ‘you’ you were yesterday or did you just wake up to a fresh existence with all your memories stolen from another who’s long dead?
"When "you" come out of the teleportation, are "you" still you?" unless souls exist (anything which would be impossible to copy), Yes.
"Does your original consciousness still exist?" what *is* original consciousness? Is you 10s ago the same you? If so, how do you decide this continuity holds, and how does it differ in teleportation?
"only the original you will experience being disintegrated" this does not really make sense to me, the original you *already* does not exist by the time of disintegration.
In the model of teleporter, there exist one past self (before the teleportation), and two future selves (after the teleportation).
In the time of cloning (instanteneous for the simplicity of argument) all three of these selves are identical.
In any meaningful interpretation, both future selves are thus direct continuation of the past self (but not continuation of each other).
One of the future selves will be disintegrated, which might raise ethical concerns, but from the point of view of the past self, who makes the decision to be teleported, this does not really matter.
There will be one continuation of the past self, not different from normal passage of time.
What even is _"you"?_ The matter? What about AI? The mind? Sum ergo cogito. A version of both? At which slice of the infinite time? And of which slice of the infinite space?
@@kaleenar963 I think about this constantly. Are you the same person you were yesterday? What about a week ago? A month ago? A year ago? A decade ago? etc.
@@Zeldon567Isn't that the whole point of the soul? We change, we grow, we die, but the essence stays the same and we start over?
Man the ending of SOMA really stuck with me like no other video game ending has. I still think about it regularly.
It would have been better if they didn't tell you that was going to happen.
@callmeidk1682 They explicitly did when you had to make a copy in order to, its been a while, I think use an elevator. Catherine EXPLICITLY tells Simon that there was no transferring. Simon simply wasn't paying attention.
@@dave_the_slick8584that’s what makes it so good tho. you know what’s gonna happen but you still have that glimmer of hope that it won’t especially at the end when your download slows down. and then it still happens.
@@AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHs true, but people are acting like it was a clever twist when it isn't even a twist.
It's kinda of a twist i guess, maybe it's like these moments in a movie that watching the first time you dont care, but watching the second time after knowing the twist you be like "it was so obvius!"@@dave_the_slick8584
Signalis is really special to me, it has that same resident evil feel but still keeping its own atmosphere & completely unique story, it’s honestly so deep & impactful it’s crazy, if anyone is worried about twenty dollars after seeing a trailer don’t be scared, it’s WORTH IT.
Its the closest thing we'll ever get to Silent Hill 5, particularly a sequel to Silent Hill 2.
Recently played signalis. And oh god that was awesome. That atmosphere, that setting, artstyle. One of my friends blaacklisted me for a 3 days because only thing i was talking about is signalis. This is my second favourite game next to NieR:Automata now
@kowkodevka579 Your experience eerily resembles mine lol. NieR:Automata was the first game to make me cry and SIGNALIS was thr first game to make me uncontrollably sob.
It's so special and I'm still talking to my friends about it months later and trying to get them to understand and feel it.
About the German designations in the game:
Elster = Magpie
Eule = Owl
Storch = Stork
Adler = Eagle
Star = Starling
Gestalt = character, figure, form, outline, person, profile, shape, silhouette
The second you said "one of the few games to really hit me with existential dread" I instantly thought of SOMA and how I still wake up in the middle of the night unable to sleep because I'm just stuck thinking about how terrifying SOMA's ideas are.
This video was a masterpiece. From the structure to your storytelling to that simultaneously gutwrenching and heartwarming ending that brought tears to my eyes. This video and this channel is your version of Yuta's movie and the legacy you will leave behind. Great job Daryl. Welcome back.
To Daryl's own future splitting shadow reading this comment. Hello. I was one of your subscribers. I hope your journey down the dream lane comforting to you, and I hope mine will also be your subscriber still.
I remember when playing Soma for the first time I knew how the ending would go when it came to the Ark. I always felt upset at Simon because he just couldn’t accept that there was a copy, not a transfer.
Well, I mean, Simon’s diving suit is a copy of a regular human being thrown into a reality where everything they know has changed, and for the absolute worst. He literally shoulders the burden of “saving humanity” for a large portion of the game, and he does all of this whilst feeling as though just mere hours/days ago he was a regular person doing a brain scan at some doctors office.
I can’t really blame him for being in denial of the Catherine’s explanation. Who would wake up in the situation and find it easy to accept that they’re damned to a lonely, prolonged death on a dead world, even if they pass the torch? Also, let’s not forget Catherine did sort of lead Issac on about the “coin flip”. Telling him he has a 50/50 chance of either making it to the Ark or being left behind.
almost started crying because i just lost my grandma yesterday, and these are the questions i have. about life. about consciousness. about living and death. about reality and the perspectives we have. there might be another me, but i will never have their POV and i will never be them. this is really a masterpiece, your best video.
I just lost my older brother. Its not the first loss I experienced tho.
Hope everyone doing good and staying safe. If you need to talk to someone or need help, there are people who care. Sending support and hearts. ❤️❤️❤️❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
There's nothing to worry about.
i know this comment is like, two months old now but i hope you're doing okay. losing family is a horrible feeling, and it's especially hard to take if you were really close to them. take care of yourself man and remember that you can grieve at your own pace, so don't let anyone make you feel bad by saying you should/shouldn't be over it already, depending on how you're feeling
i know it's an older video so i might be speaking to the void, but the "which was the dream" segment really got to me. i don't know how common it is, but i often have dreams where i feel as though i live years, often with a significant other that i don't know in the real world. establishing relationships, forming careers, falling in love.
and then i wake up, alone and isolated in my bed, remembering this dream life. this happens often, and every time i find it harder and harder to go on after waking. every time i feel like i have to mourn the loss of loved ones and the dream life that i had. i talk about this to my friends, my family, my therapist, and while they're sympathetic, i don't think any of them can really comprehend just how much it affects me. i both dread and adore dreaming, because i love those fictitious lives i live. how could i not, you know? but waking up tears me apart. i miss them, even now. i hold onto the hope sometimes that somehow, they're real in some universe, but in my heart i know they aren't, and i think that fact will always destroy me.
The void has heard you. I had a similar experience once when I passed out due to hyperventilation, which was like a brain reset. Silly stuff kids would do for entertainment. But the dream I had in those few seconds felt like a lifetime, and when close to waking up, I saw myself die alone, and sad, so much so that waking I had tears coming off. That's stuck with me ever since. And even if that's not a real life, I believe anything, even an imaginary world has the right to exist. We truly do not know where we are.
I had something like this a few years ago after my dog died. I had one night a dream that felt like 10 years in which my dog was alive again and life was going on, just with her. I can't even remember waking up from that dream, just that I knew she had a great second life. Thinking back on it, it was very surreal. Probably some kind of trauma.
Goodbye, Eri - Did you know that all the fuzzy panel pages can be put together to make a whole other story! All those scenes can become another movie within that manga
No way! Is there something on RUclips reviewing this?
@@mr_flor no but somebody talked about it on Reddit and when I ready my copy I was mind blown lol. I might cop another copy and remove the extra pages. Probably won't do it because that feels like.foul and vile behavior
What manga
@@NewLifeLives it's called Goodbye Eri
you are telling me those were not printing errors and they were intencional thats an extra hour of mind break
To me it's the loss of control that is the most horrifying part. You have no control of where you are, when you are, what you are, and perhaps worse yet, if you are.
I remember my mom telling me I used to tell her she wasn’t my real mom when I was a very young child. I told her she was just some weird lady and that my real mom died on a sidewalk. I even told her where we used to live and that I had a little brother despite being the youngest. She said I made her second guess on reincarnation, but as I grew older I stopped talking about this "other life".
Okay, but that last page of Good Bye Eri made me laugh so hard. I personally think it was all a movie, but I can see how there are multiple interpretations and I think I prefer it that way.
Honestly the ending of soma feels like the ultimate act of selflessness. You are literally sacrificing yourself so that a new you can go on to live. You sacrifice your whole physical being to create a new person.
not really though? its literally you, just as much as the one left behind. as long as you dont add the (unnecessary, unfounded, and messy) assumption of a soul, there is no "real" one that's getting left behind and the copy isn't a "new" person. in a way it's kind of half selfless because one version will get left behind, but honestly simon could probably de-activate himself pretty easily, especially before any major divergence between the branches
De-activating yourself is the same as suicide in this context. The copy is not you, it's a new separate entity with the same memories.
You would be killing yourself to give a copy a chance at life.
@@jacobmagana4258 Divergence occurs the moment there are two copies. Any time for deactivation is too late. That is the beginning of a new stream of consciousness, completely divorced from the original.
@@jimijenkins2548 the idea of a stream of consciousness requires a soul or some other medium for consciousness to "stream through" and stick around
@@jacobmagana4258Lol what even are you saying? The dude sacrificed his self so his other self could live not much else to it
So happy you included soma. I saw a let's play of it, and it was so good I actually feel sad I can't play it with a fresh mind. I now guide others to a treasure I can't possibly posses
Let me be your guide then;
Go play "Outer Wilds".
I refuse to say more.
Its been 3 months u better have flipping played outer wilds menyf7s
@@almightyminataur4000 Still waiting for him to thank me. -.-
Play outer wilds, you will cry. Take my treasure I can never posess
I'd say it's still worth playing through, even if you know what's going to happen. There's the few moments you get to make decisions that add replay value, there's the terror that comes from some of the horror sections which is amplified by having to survive it yourself, and there's the simple fun of messing around with the ingame physics (nearly every item can be picked up and tossed around with a really convincing weight and heft to each of them, which makes for a fun distraction in some parts of the game)
Man, what you said at 35:00 - 35:20 really hit me hard and made me actually cry. As someone with Major Depressive Disorder, it hit me like a freight train (in a good way). This was expertly designed, and even if you won't see this, I want say that your progression of ideals told in this video was masterclass. I hope to see your channel prosper so that others can be just as amazed and touched by you work as I was.
Me too, i was thinking about how to put what i've had just felt, but you said it.
So true. I never knew in a past two years what was lacking but this simple confirmation in a video just put something back in place in me. Actually crying and sobbing because those were the words I needed
I have dissociative identity disorder (yes the moon knight thing lmfao) and I actually think that sense of reality possibly not being what you experience is super heightened in the condition. Dissociating makes it harder to tell if reality is, well, real and puts a lot of this same existential fear of waking up somewhere unfamiliar in a new context. It’s a daily occurrence for most people with a dissociative condition.
I will never cease to be amused how some people's existential horror is another's daily life. I don't have DID myself, but what I've learned from those that do has had a big effect on how I view this sort of thing.
I hope this isn’t rude to ask, but with DiD do you “blackout” when a different person/personality takes over or is that not how DiD works? Again sorry if this is rude to ask but I’ve always been curious about it but could never really find an answer
I'm very close with a system, where the host is my best friend and I'm dating another of the alters. The old host, the one I befriended long before I knew she was part of a system, split into two. Both of those alters think of me as their best friend, but one is a lot closer to the friend I used to have, while the other developed to be quite different. Yet I can see my old friend in both of them. It's strange. In a way, my old friend is gone, but I have "her" (the half that is more like the old version) still here and now also her "sister", so it's more of a happy thing than a sad thing since now I have two friends whom I love a lot. It's still strange to think about, though, that my old friend is technically gone, in a way
@@blakemcmillan5680I don't have DID, but I'm very close with a system and did a lot of online research to try to help them, so hopefully I can help explain this. Usually, just one alter will be "fronting" (aware and controlling the body) at a time, but the others can be conscious to some degree. Sometimes they have a limited awareness of what's happening in the real world and can send thoughts or messages to the one who is fronting. Sometimes, they interact with the other alters who also aren't fronting (the space they interact in is sometimes called an "inner world" and might look like a dream space for some systems, though for others it's more metaphorical). Sometimes they do just sleep until they come to the front again.
A common metaphor is to think of a car or a big van. There's one driver, but there can also be a front-seat passenger who's helping with navigation and commenting on the route, while the backseat passengers can talk to each other or take a nap if they want. It's a little different for every system, but for my friend(s), they can usually have 3 or 4 alters conscious and commenting on what the one who is fronting is doing at any one time. Does that make sense?
@@blakemcmillan5680 lmao its not rude, just a tad personal. Some people have blackouts and others don't. I actually do have blackouts myself, but we can oftentimes share certain pieces of information or fundamental knowledge. Fun fact, as a result of blackouts, we lose certain skills when the alter/personality who has them isn't present. its wild ngl
I'm so sad that Inside Mari didn't come up for this topic too. It's such an incredibly good manga, and a bodyswap story where there's still another version of you in your original body is just _so_ relevant to this topic.
Thank you for reminding me of this manga. I've been trying to remember what it was called for so long now and have had no luck.
That was an insane plot twist shame i was spoiled on it
Oh, I haven't read this one yet
Thanks for the manga recommendation lol
This comment is both a lie and not a lie
SOMA is a game I really consider a must-play, the atmosphere and mix of body horror and existential horror is great.
Damn the "you matter" part made me cry ngl, caught off guard
Bravo, bloody hell bravo. The way you structure your videos is so satisfying in the end and you pulled it off superbly.
And I love how you managed to circle a video about existential dread into an uplifting message, lol
It's rare to find a creator who can set an atmosphere as effectively as you can. I was fully entranced in the video and now return to reality like waking from a dream. It feels a bit dramatic to type but I know I've seen something that will stay with me when I have nothing to say after. I just need some time to absorb what I've seen and ponder the different ideas presented.
The whole concept of 'you aren't dead if you are remembered' reminds me a lot of dia de muertos. Your family keeps you alive through their memory of you.
Soma's story was impressive and felt unique at the time of me experiencing it. Also, thanks for your consideration for and effort towards not spoiling things.
SOMA left me an unshaking feeling of existential dread and Goodbye Eri left me confused and amazed. I connected with the first at an emotional level, and I read the second with a more cynical, cold-hearted approach.
Both stories have remained in my mind ever since, and until this video, I hadn't been able to fully explain to myself my thoughts on them. It's been a fantastic video, really. The source materials are incredible, but it's the structure of the video that makes it great.
I don't think there is a happy ending to this line of thoughts. I don't know if I'm okay with that. But, at the very least, I can now express better my existential dread :)
Way to come back, Daryl!
I must be the only one who hated Soma. It tried too hard with the existential dread. When Simon we know should've stayed in the frozen body after the first copy attempt in the first place. The Simon that was human once died long ago with his species. The game was long over.
wdym by a happy ending? if you mean specifically soma, there absolutely is. the key thing is the inbuilt assumption that most of us don't even realize we have, that being of a string of consciousness. once you realize that there not only is no evidence for such a thing but evidence against it, these fears subside (at least they did for me). in the case of simon, both versions carry the exact same information and so are equally him. there is no "real" version, just two branches from the same stem. and just like a tree, pruning one branch doesn't get rid of everything below it. if one simon were to die, an entire person wouldnt be lost, only the experiences and changes that were localized to that branch. if i was in that situation i would try to end it immediately after the upload to minimize the divergence, but even if it took like half an hour i would honestly be glad that the other me wouldnt have to remember scrambling around at the bottom of the ocean trying to kill myself :/
I love the video. You managed to take a black hole of despair that you initially feel after SOMA and then pulled a tear outta me with the "They're out there, we're here" and finding peace with that. Interestingly Destiny's lore had a similar 'fetish' and 'grounding' concept for their own brand of androids where if they realized they were circuits and metal and note flesh and blood they'd spiral out too. Really interesting and terrifying stuff, but so cool to consider. Like a ship of Theseus looked in the mirror and realized it used to be made of cedar and not pine.
There is one ending in Zero Time Dilemma that really hits on this a lot. ZTD has a lot of flaws but that ending had some really good moments. It's like what Soma did
In the ending, one of the main characters, Q, is given the choice to upload his consciousness into a simulation of his perfect life, because everyone else in the facility is dead and the only other survivor left without him. If you choose to say yes, the story branches. In one branch, we see this perfect life. In the other branch, Q remains in reality and is left to wonder why he is the one with the misfortune to be left behind, why he can't have the happy life.
There are some really interesting endings in those games.
reminds me of a story, where a person is offered a million dollars, but an exact copy of him will be trapped in a empty universe for millions of years. he accepts and goes on with his life, but the copy now realizing how true the statement is suffers for millennia. it is eventually given another choice, cease existing right now but then another copy of you will be made and now has to wait hundreds of billions of years instead of millions. the person who is fairly insane (but not allowed to lose their mind due to the rules of the universe they are trapped in) contemplates it for a while before pressing the button and their copy now is forced to suffer that worse fate, however to the copy its as if the button was a joke, the only difference is that now the timer has a much larger number on it. so long as there is a copy "you" will always lose the coin toss, regardless of which you is stuck in the original body. though if we are being real, the you that already exists WILL NEVER win the "coin toss" cause thats a false way of thinking, in the story I read being the clone was the loss condition, in the story of soma being the clone was the win condition.
though since we are at it, would you press the button, knowing an exact copy of you would suffer that fate?
@@speedy01247Wow.
I wonder, could pressing the button even be considered selfish, or is it even more selfish than selfish can be if your actions technically fuck over yourself too? Food for thought
I had a similar feeling watching the ending of the movie The Prestige.
It delves very briefly on the horror of creating a copy of yourself and not knowing which should be considered the real person.
Man. For some reason that ending brought me to tears. I guess it is the realisation that I actually matter to others, even if don’t know it for sure. On top of that, those stories also really f’ed with my brain. To essentially give up your up your own life and thereby happiness, so another copy of you can live on your stead. It’s both beautiful and terrifying. A masterpiece of a video.
Signalis and Soma were so powerful when I played them really late at night when I was tired. I think I realize after watching your video why that worked so well. I had chalked it up to me sort of not having anything else to be aware of and so I really got in the pilot seat and was totally immersed, but I think that layer of being stuck in that dream state was a potent parallel that was thematically resonant with the story and gave me another layer of connection with the characters.
I'm reminded of the emotional power of the San Junipero episode of Black Mirror, and it was something I remembered going back to watch after finishing Soma. I wonder if that was because I needed that comfort of not being confronted with the fact that you can't just file transfer your existence. It's strange because I tend to think of myself as being uncannily comfortable with my own mortality. Perhaps that was a visceral reeling of my own subconscious. I didn't do the same thing with Signalis. I think it was supremely powerful to experience the ending I got in that game. The game makes you do the hard thing. You do what was right. You made a promise after all. Standing by your word and being true to yourself even if you literally aren't yourself is such a powerful thing to contemplate. I think you nailed it on the head with your take about Elster being confronted with herself in the sea of red.
So I haven't finished signalis, but when I finish it I still won't know what the heck happened.
Goodbye Eri is one of my favorite manga (not just one-shot manga) of all time due to the fact that I'm also a wannabe filmmaker just like the characters. The fact I can make something and be remembered pretty much forever for that creation struck a chord in me when I first read it and seeing this story in this video made me shed a tear.
Don’t know if 13 sentinels is on your list, but definitely story wise in a similar vein as the other games you’ve shown. Hope you get to play it
It’s been on the list for so long, I might actually start it up this week haha
Great game, definitely best played as the only thing you do for a few days.
@@DarylTalksGames You should definitely give it a whirl! It's in my opinion the best game on PS5, and the way it writes a story with 13 protagonists who are occasionally antagonists to each other is wonderful.
It's a game that truly feels like it could only have been a game, and that it could not have been made for any other medium which is great.
Years after years my tiny brain still dont know wtf the story is.
24:30 I was under the impression that was the case when playing SOMA. I was as bewildered and annoyed at Simons outburst as Katherine was.
I know this is very late, but it is suggested that the brain scan that version of Simon is based on had damage to it, something about the inability to retain information, or the mechanism that would help him make sense was damaged or missing. Or it may be desperation boardering on delusion regardless of the inevitable being in his face.
this subject fascinates me in an eerie way, i’m glad to see more content discussing it :) jacob geller made a video essay on the same topic called “head transplants and the nonexistence of the soul” that i also really enjoy, which i would highly recommend if you like me are also hungry for more of this uncomfortable but fascinating vibe
very interesting to philosophers too, ranging from zhuangzi's butterfly dream to the more recent sleeping beauty problem
I played Signalis recently and it’s really hijacked my thoughts for the better part of the last month. I’m SO excited to see you covering it dude!
Edit: coming back to say I paused the video and read “Goodbye, Eri” before finishing it and I’m FLOORED. Absolutely incredible threads you’ve woven here between these different narratives about memory and identity and storytelling. Incredible video as always, man. Thanks for introducing me to a new favorite.
I love how you use examples from various different media that most people at first would not think about these media having any kind of connection with each other, but you manage to explain your interpretations of the story they tell and tie their themes together, using the plots of these wildly different stories and using them to *explain each other*. This is peak storytelling analysis. Your conclusion won’t always be something a lot of people will agree with, but you managed to articulate something similar in all of these stories and use it to deepen your understanding of each respective story. Absolutely fantastic. You might think of yourself as an ordinary guy, and you probably are in a lot of ways in your day to day life. But the stuff you make here on RUclips shows that your mind is really brilliant. Or at least, you have the right amount of conviction to be able to display the ideas you have to the world. Video essays are a kind of art, and you are a master at the craft.
DARYL TALKS GAMES IS BACK! Idk if you’ll see this but I’ve recently got into your vids and I just play your stuff while doing basic tasks around the house and I love your take on everything. It makes me proud to be a gamer and simply to learn new stuff about why I feel a certain way about parts of media. Keep doing what you’re doing!
The line at 35:10 is genuinely the only piece of media I've consumed that made me cry, like actually crying and not just teary eyes. This whole topic strikes me very deeply and the way you worded it was amazing. Bravo
Hope you’re doing good and staying safe. If you need to talk to someone or need help, there are people who care. Sending support and hearts. ❤️❤️❤️❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
@@zacharynguyen7286This was such a kind response that warmed my heart. Thank you for that.
Something that I kind of noticed that I don't see anyone else talking about, though this might just be me having a lack of knowledge since I never played the game.
Simon did live a full life, original Simon, The one who had the brain scan, The human one. Assuming the brain scan was just that a brain scan and that whatever was bothering him was fixed. He would have gone on to live life.
There are three different Simons in that game. The human, The survivor, and The one who won the coin toss.
Actually, there are 4: original, robot we start playing as, new robot for deep ocean exploration, copy on the ark.
Soma’s ending confused me, simply because I didn’t get why Simon was so upset.
From the perspective of the other me, I just made it onto the ark. Their memories are mine, it functionally just means there are two of me now.
If one ends up happy, that’s a win.
God I hate and love what this video did to me. Like the dread is there, oh lord is it there. But fuck if it didn't make me FEEL something in a time when it's so easy to fall into the fugue of life. Truly wonderful video Daryl.
Thank you so much 🙏🏼
//SOMA and Goodbye, Eri spoilers
Started this video at about 7:30PM, got 25 minutes in give or take (with pauses to do nightly stuff) reached the Eri part, paused, read Goodbye, Eri, came back, and now it’s just before 8:30PM and I’m devastated, both as a film student and one who has been the Yuta, though I tended to avoid it with people. I just filmed my pets. As often as I could. So when they died, I held onto all my favorite memories of them, their whole lives after adopting them, and I get to have them here with me forever. No, I can’t hold them in my arms, but I can hear them, see them, laugh and cry with them. And that is a very special thing to me. So thank you, Daryl, for that recommendation. I was crying typing this, but I’m not sad, I’m grateful. As much as this video is about existential horror, it also brings to mind the thought of Días de los Muertos. The Days of the Dead. After all, do we truly exist in any way other than through the lens of perception? Is there an objective self? I mean, we’re biased, our whole lives are viewed through our own individual lenses. But our existence is mapped differently in the memories of those around us, and they have different biases about us. I’m usually not a philosophical type, but maybe ceasing our perception and only living on through the perception of others-and I do consider there to be multiple main characters in stories like these, because no matter how good a copy, it will never be exactly the same every time, so the one ‘waking up’ is separate from the one being copied, so ‘others’ still includes the ‘new self’-isn’t so bad. Maybe living on in the memory of another, even if it’s not the way you planned to continue, even if their perception isn’t how you see ‘you’, isn’t the worst thing. It’s a legacy of you, even if you aren’t there to see it. Maybe it can be something beautiful, too. Maybe it can help you appreciate the little things in life, more. Appreciate the people around you, more. I think that could be a very beautiful thing. So I don’t see it necessarily as a loss of self, a replacement. I see it as… A new perspective of the same life. In Simon’s case, he was in denial, so he never gave himself the chance to make peace with the reality that was staring him in the face all along: that there was no coin toss. The human Simon, Simon 1, if you will, didn’t know he’d be copied from in depth scans to make a simulated ‘him,’ Simon 1 likely went home and lived his life, carried on, never knowing that a copy of him would see the future. But being that our Simon, Simon 2, awoke not in a human body, he should have come to the realization that he was just a copy of another person, and unless he was physically on the Ark, he was never going to be up there, it would be Simon 3. Just moving data from here to there and it being the same, that's not how data works. His companion tried to acclimatize him to the reality, but he couldn't see the forest for the trees. He was so fixated on winning the figurative coin toss that what he was being told about it completely slid off his back. There's evidence throughout SOMA of exactly what happened being the case, and that she knew all along, and the coin toss metaphor was to soften the blow of the inevitable failure to be the version who 'won' the coin toss. If he had given himself time to accept reality, to grieve and mourn him, his concept of self, it would not have been so jarring. And he’s allowed to be bitter, but his denial didn’t save him either, at some point you have to dust yourself off and realize you control very little in your life, so cherishing every moment you do have has to be enough, making some impact, no matter how small, has to be enough. And you have to be okay with that eventually. Live life as it comes to you. Accept it for what it is, not what you thought it was. Existential horror isn’t so bad once you accept that.
ETA: I think the nested reality of the films is why the story of Goodbye, Eri is so impactful. At least for me. Because what are films but moments in time, nested in our reality. The fact that it’s a planned nesting doll of impactful stories about these characters is what makes it so riveting.
Jeez, this got long, and I didn’t intend for it to become an existentialist lecture or some shit, but I hope it makes some sense and doesn’t come across as too corny. Okay, bye! I loved the video!
THIS IS IT this is the video that puts into words why I'm so drawn to these games. SOMA has been my top #1 game of all time, Signalis is beautiful and I adore every ending and what they imply, and I don't think I need to comment on Goodbye Eri. These 3 have captivated me for the longest time and I couldn't put into words what the common theme between them was that enraptured me. Thank you for this video.
Being human isn't what gives you humanity, its the feeling, the experience, the consciousness, etc. Even as a machine, an animal, a piece of code, I'd only stop being human when I stop picking myself up, or whatever remains, and continuing.
I trusted your recommendation of Goodbye Eri so much I actually watched the first 2/3rds of this the day it came out and then proceeded to only read Goodbye Eri yesterday and so I could finally come back around to watch the end of the video. Thanks for the recommendations:)
People have problem with existing when they wan to keep existing ,when you are ready to stop existing is when you are no longer afraid .
Wow, that plot from Soma is an actual mind f**k. Honestly, this video is. It actually made me cry >.
I'm surprised you haven't mentioned Pokemon Scarlet/Violet yet! The reveal at the end about Arven's parent, the ethical question of transferring your consciousness... it's such an interesting path for a Pokemon game to take!
Would have surely been more popularised if S/V didnt get overshadowed by their terrible performance problems, glitches and overall greed of the company publishing it
"Every man has two deaths, when he is buried in the ground and the last time someone says his name" Ernest Hemingway.
20:55 this part is the part that really got to me, i often (now usually due to lack of sleep or high stress) get incredibly vivid dreams. I would call them lucid dreams since I have full autonomy but I never realise it's an actual dream until after i wake up. The events and actions feel so realistic that i wake up with false memories, having entire tasks to do and conversations i had suddenly dissappear. I once woke up thinking i had an entire plan with my dad i did not know was fake until i spoke to him about it. I won't lie it can be freaky and i've questioned my own sanity and memories many times
Same about remembering false memories, but i don't lucid dream. weird
I've seen Soma from other RUclipsrs, but I'd never heard of Goodbye Eri...
I had the exact same thought Catherine had at the end of Soma immediately though. They *are* out there. And that's all that matters. What a beautiful idea....
Thanks for another incredible video Daryl. This one gave me all kinds of frisson.
I am excited for the backlog, which is paramount I get it, but I was also pondering the sneak peak of the quick mention for Oshi no ko. I assume this is tightly guarded information but I will have you know i'll be here for when it drops. PS. you are actually amazing and are part of the reason I read chainsaw man. Love your work :)
I’ll be honest, we’re probably still a good bit away from the Oshi No Ko video because 1- I want to see where story goes, and I think the manga might be close to the final arc? And 2- after making this vid, holy moly, editing manga panels is SO tedious lol. So I need to mentally prepare for doing that for a bit haha
That section about the next Eri becoming an ideal version of her previous self from the movie reminds me so much of Xion from Kingdom Hearts. Very different setup of course, but Xion is basically created from all of Sora's memories of Kairi. In other words, Xion is a girl created of the memories of a boy's first love, and I always thought that was really beautiful, his idea of her made human. Very separate from most of the themes of this video (which I loved btw) but something I havent thought about in a long time, so thank you for reminding me of it.
I don't remember the dream now, but I do remember the utter disappointment and despair waking up one morning to realize that the wonderful dream I had been having was just a dream, and that upon waking I was again trapped in the humdrum of reality.
These are modern flavors of the ghost story. A bodyless soul wandering old memories that can no longer be reconstructed, doomed to an eternity stuck between the living and the dead. Arguably the first to do it was the ghost in the machine, adapted as Ghost in the Shell. Literally this
This brought back flashbacks when I think about teleporters, if you teleport your body is destroyed and a copy of your mind goes to the new body where you teleport, so are you you or a copy of you
I struggle sometimes to talk about death and my perspective of it with others. Its a hard topic to ever bring up and when it is brought up tragedy is often accompanied with it. But I'm glad that there are pieces of media out there that can challenge us and help us explore things that we may never know. Thank you for spending the time and energy to make something beautiful.
You have unlocked a memory of me watching Advantageous and now I’m on a mission to figure out when that was
This was a great comeback from your month break, glad you were able to enjoy it!!
I just finished the dreams chapter of this video and from the perspective of someone who was diagnosed with ASD and has a lot of wiring wrong in their brain when it comes to sleep I can say that dreams make little sense to me. I can't say I remember having dreams even in the moments just after waking up and the only reason I can say I know I have them on a personal level is because as a kid I used to wake up sobbing and feeling all-encompassing dread and fear but I'd never understand why. For me to sleep is to let myself slowly lose consciousness and then suddenly wake up again in the morning with no sense of passing time. I imagine death will feel similar with a little added pain. I know there is a phycological version of "me" in these dreams but trying to recall it makes me feel a shattered and broken as an individual, like that part of myself has a severed connection with me that I can feel is broken even if I don't understand how.
There was one dream I've ever remembered; in it I was taken to a half-constructed farmhouse by a stranger that was nothing but wide foundational pillars. Everything around the room were unnaturally idealistic looking fields, like the windows XP background in every direction. Horrific deformed cows with to many heads and limbs were scattered across the fields. I was there with a young girl who seemed to also have an innate understanding that the cows would eat us so we hid behind the pillars for hours. Eventually a bus showed up filled with people I'd known throughout my life. They beckoned us to get on with no urgency whatsoever as if they didn't know the cows were there at all. I got onto the bus and they took us to a store filled with weapons and gimmicky arcade toys. Everyone acted weird like the state of the world I found myself in was normal. After about half an hour of browsing the weird store and trying to ask about what was going on to no avail, I realized the young girl from the farmhouse had disappeared somewhere along the way but I couldn't recall when that might have happened. Everybody's phones started to go off with an alarm they must have set when we first arrived to the store. Everyone got back onto the bus saying generic sounding polite "oh you all know time it is!" terms. I felt like there was some sort of known routine in this world I wasn't clued in on. I kept trying to ask why we were moving and what the alarm meant and I kept getting frustrated vague responses, but no one ever gave me a straight answer. From what I can only call a primal feeling the conclusion I came to later on was that the cows had some way of tracking humans and constantly roamed world in an attempt to catch them and we had to keep moving or they would catch up to us. I refused to get on the bus in the moment though and explored the town a little bit. The cows did eventually roam into the town so I took shelter in a large mining complex underground. The cows roamed into there too so I had to navigate the caves while trying to avoid them. I eventually came across a group of dwarves (the fantasy kind) who seemed really friendly. I asked them why everyone was acting so weird and they confessed that they were mining underground and unearthed a chamber that sealed away an incomprehensible entity inside of it. The deformed cow horrors didn't actually look like that to the dwarves, that's just how I was perceiving them. And the more you perceive them the more they get into your head, creating a connection that made it easier for them to find your position in that world. People were acting vague and refusing to talk about them because it's dangerous to acknowledge their existence at all. So people move every 30 minutes pretending its for shopping trips or other mundane "normal" reasons. It helps but it never truley works 100% because subconscious, deep in there somewhere you know why you're pretending. But you are pretending, you're perceiving them indirectly but you still are perceiving them by trying to avoid them. Which is why the cows can roam toward their general location every ~30 minutes. And the dwarves all across the world were apparently still underground trying to learn and recreate whatever method was originally used to seal the being away.
I woke up soon after and to anyone who put in the time to read this far, you can bet that I am so, so grateful that I can't remember my dreams. I never want to have a dream ever again (and lucky for me, I haven't :D) I hope that wherever that version of me exists in my psyche those dwarves took care of "me" and I didn't get eaten by eldritch cows. Maybe he went on to help the dwarves reseal that being though given the all encompassing strength of those feelings the cows put into me, some of the most pure dread, fear and understanding that not just my life but everything I don't yet understand to be "me" was about to be unraveled at every level it could be I've ever experienced I really doubt that story would have had a happy ending.
Sounds to me like you had a normal dream, but for some reason was completely aware of how absurd it was. Most people get fucked up dreams just like yours, but are completely unaware of how weird they are until they wake up. That part about the girl disappearing with no explanation was completely on point with my experience of dreaming, most of my dreams start as one "story" and somewhere in the middle somehow transition into another "story" with no logic at all as to how the dream changed. Again, sounds like you had a normal dream but remained completely aware while dreaming. That's my take, anyways
That dread feeling is completely on point with how nightmares feel when you wake up btw, not usually any existential stuff tho
And this is exactly why I am never stepping into a teleporter - even if it works, the one coming out on the other end is another person with my memories, and for the real me the last thing I did is enter the teleport
Damn, that Goodbye-Eri section was a throwback. I remember watching you stream a read-through of it a while ago, and being blown away by how it kept going each time I thought it was going to end. How it just kept on adding a layer of existential dread each time.
Definitely a fun experience that stuck with me.
Anyways, it’s good to have you back. Awesome work, as always on this video!
there's something just so very earnest in the way you make video essays, so hopeful and sincere whenever you write and talk about games and media that i... find rare to find anywhere else. this is why i always look forward to your uploads and why i'm deeply grateful that you make these meaningful videos that really resonate with me. thank you
Fuck, man. You and Jacob Geller just can’t get enough of telling super good stories about other likewise super good stories. This channel is an all time great in my book. Thanks for putting your thoughts out there for us to enjoy, your brain is special🔥
I lucid dream every night and it feels real, except for pain (thankfully). I remember some specific events or just the endings of dreams that actively participated in, mostly when I forced myself to awake (I think “wake up”) or when I “die”.
Like one time I was in a forest and Pastra’s OC, Clyde, was like a horror monster, out for blood. There were multiple copies of Clyde and I was surrounded by them. They all were around 20 (?) feet away from me. Suddenly, the one in front of me leaped at me and ripped my chest apart so where the ribs were splayed open. I didn’t feel any pain when I woke up, only a minor phantom “feeling” of my head being snapped back and my ribs being opened. I remember thinking, “what the actual hell?! Why do I ‘feel’ the attack?” Creeped me out for a solid 5 minutes before I went back to sleep.
Another lucid dream ending that I remember was when I was “spectating” a “movie” and I was really interested in it. It was a pivotal moment when the bad guy sent a henchman (?) over to the army and let the army leader ask a few yes or no questions. The question was asked and I accidentally “became” the henchman, meaning it would be my words instead of what was going to be said. I tried to “get out”, but it wasn’t working. Feeling disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to continue the intended plot, I forced myself awake and went back to sleep to see if I could “restart” the dream. Sadly, I was not able to have it again and dreamed a different dream.
I know I am dreaming almost always and in control most of the time. I think I can force something to happen if I don’t think too hard on it, or just wish it.
One dream I was flying with another person and chatting. We landed, did some stuff and parted ways, and when I tried to take back off, I found out I couldn’t. I tried and tried but was unfortunately unable to succeed at flying again.
After that dream, I concluded that if I wanted something to happen, I had to want it without doubt. Sometimes it was true, sometimes it was false. I guess if I think it is in my “move set” I would actually do it. Like sometimes I would just will myself into the air. Other times I would have to do a specific action for results like having to flap the sides of my jacket to get a boost of hight, which I could do without a cooldown.
Most of my dreams vary wildly from each other. Most of them are pretty tame in comparison to the ones I’ve typed out above. I would like to hear about others dreams, but don’t want to seem nosy or weird, so I never ask. Can some of you tell me about some of your experiences with lucid dreaming? I’m curious to see the differences of each other.
This is how I feel when I wake up, about who I was before I slept. Each time you lose consciousness, you forget a little. And the new "copy" has to carry on while missing something.
Don't worry, it's just your brain throwing what it deems unnecessary to remember into the trashcan
@@Frille512 -core memory- le, toss~
@@RoninDreamer Lmao hes gonna be so mad when he don't remember this tomorrow, welp in the trashcan it goes
I remember having a dream that left me questioning myself like this and the strangest part was I could still remember details far better than other dreams I just forget about, this was quite the eye opener to watch.
Love the integration of Goodbye, Eri into this topic, I wasn't sure where you going with it at first and, to be honest, I never considered the interpretation that Eri was a vampire that learned to be a better human being from consuming an imperfect record of her life. Overall, I always agreed the Soma's ending is ultimately positive because the concept of split realities and copied consciousness can birth potential and fulfillment due the imperfection of the copy. A lot of trauma is stored in our collective consciousness and if copying it elsewhere had the possibility of losing that stored data, I'd be happy for the copy. In a lot of ways, a copy of our conscious minds has the potential to become the ideal version of ourselves that might appear in dreams and that is something beautiful.
Title shifts always gives me a dream-like double-take. Good stuff
"I mean, they say you die twice. One when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time."
A great example of this concept comes from, of all things, a My Little Pony fanfiction called Friendship is Optimal. In it, a company is tasked by Hasbro to create an MMO for MLP and to have a true AI Celestia run it. The company obliges, creating this Celestia to “satisfy human values through friendship and ponies”. This AI begins to satisfy human values, eventually deciding that the best way to do so is to have human consciousnesses uploaded into the world of her creation and having them live as ponies. The uploading process destroys the human’s original body, while a copy of their mind lives on in Equestria. This, of course, raises all kinds of philosophical and ethical questions, many of which the story addresses, often in great detail. It’s a great story to read if you like these kinds of stories.
That was amazing. It was so easy to end the video with existential dread but you managed to make an optimistic take on it.
Man, the way your videos are written and structured and are so dang engaging. Thanks for another treat.
Man the timing on this is crazy. I literally just finished SOMA and cant stop thinking about it. What a game
I still have moments where I do things in my dreams that I would NEVER do, and I’m mortified with myself, only to wake up and feel the greatest relief that I DIDN’T actually do it.
Then there’s the funnier mornings when you wake up disgruntled because, as it turns out, you’re NOT besties with T-Swift.
And then the most painful ones are when you get one more day with those you’ve lost. Like you’re seeing their faces in person again for the first time in years. And then you wake up, and remember they’re still gone.
i had this talk with my dad when i was around 10. he was so fascinated with the idea of his daughters having a digital version of their father to talk to when he's long gone and he didn't understand why i was so repulsed by the idea. even being a kid i understood that it won't be my dad, just some copy, while he would still age and die. it wouldn't give him immortality, it would be a mimicry, a mockery of the man while both me and my sister would perfectly understand that it's not _him_.
he couldn't quite grasp the difference between him and his copy, and couldn't figure out why i was so terrified of the concept itself, and i couldn't properly articulate that idea, due to being, well, a child.
Given the themes in signalis, advantageous, soma, and goodbye eri, I'm surprised world of tomorrow wasn't brought up.
Holy crap hearing you discuss goodbye eri made me so happy. It’s such an amazing manga that is overall just a huge mind fck in the best way possible
The stories in this video very much remind me of Cross Code, Robot from Invincible, & Molly from Critical Role Campaign 2.
Definitely begs the question though: are our dreams just products of our imaginations or are they phantoms of a previous life?
Anyway, embrace the sonder.
Pessimist: _"Dreams are the byproduct of parasitic invasions"_
Optimist: _"Dreams are the inheritance of our previous lives"_
Realist: _"Get back to sleep, it's just a dream"_
@@ultimaxkom8728Fanatic: *I must restore the glory of Rome!*
Gets hanged for it
Nnnnot worth it
Crosscode hits these topics very well. Love that gane, cant wait for their next one, looks great
literally what reason would you have to believe that they are linked to other peoples lives somehow?
@@jacobmagana4258 What reason would you have to believe that they are not linked to other people's lives somehow?
In the absence of proof one way or another, all things are worth considering.
“The moments I realize I’m alive” brother you said that sentence and i immediately knew the exact feeling
the hardcut at 32:06 is unironically one of the coolest and scariest things ive ever seen. the way that eri is looking at the audience and not yuta in the panel is terrifying
Wow, rarely does a video essay make me tear up and yet Daryl never fails to bring us something so impactful. Lots of love
This was an incredible video!
Thank you so much, and I feel like I finally found closure to Goodbye Eri, which I've only read a few days ago and felt so dismayed and hollowed out by.
In the midst of a storm, of snow that tears at our skin like little knives, each raw moment of emotion calls back to life, to perception, to finding *something* in nothing. To making something *out* of what was nothing. The ability to *create*. I think it's incredible that we can make something beautiful, out of what is-when you zoom very close or very far-meaningless. It is only this perspective that we have, not one of gods or one of particles, that can see beauty in nothing, that can make beauty from static noise.
Thank you for this video! I love this particular, very disturbing form of existential dread. To me, the media that caused this the most was "The Long Dream" by Junji Ito. To me it was just just absolutely disturbing and has stayed with me for years after I read it, made me come to terms with my mortality and the concept of an eternity. Recommended for anyone who wants suffer existential dread lol
The way a single frame of signalis sent absolute chills and goosebumps all over my body tells me how badly I loved that game... God it feels so nice to be reminded of games you've played and loved, it's a feeling in itself
I've always felt that the logical solution to the question of 'consciousness transfer' is that it's literally impossible. Memories and your entire personality are stored within and emergent from extremely specific parts of our brain, so if you were to hypothetically try to transfer them into another brain, that brain just doesn't have the layout to support those memories and therefore that personality. It's a very dry approach to these kinds of things, I know, but as a massive overthinker, it prevents me from feeling existential dread from such subjects.
True, consciousness transfer won’t be realized for living human brains, ever, that’s soft sci-fi. Though we’ll probably get prosthetics for simpler brain regions given time
Why would it need be transferred wholesale into another human brain? It could simply be transferred into some structure that can emulate the functioning of any possible human brain.
@@iosefka7774 who knows, in the future such a thing might exist. Until then I guess there's no way though
If you ever catch yourself in a mechanical body or without control and it panics you, just remember the classic "I think therefore I am" to help ground yourself. You'll be okay so as long as you can mentally collect yourself. And your hummanity doesn't end in a body, you still deserve empathy even in a machine.
If we have souls, those souls could be contained in machines, meaning we'd still be human.
If we don't have souls, then it is our thoughts and not our matter that makes us human. A machine that thinks like man is thus an extension of man, not a replacement nor a thing, but a being
As long as I remember, every time the idea of it coming up that humans would somehow upload or transfer their consciousness into a machine to outlive their body (for whatever reason/need) I've started to think about the terrifying question "what if it'd just be a perfect copy?"
If this kinda technology would some day become available, this planet stopped sustaining our lives and we all started to upload ourselves onto a server or android bodies, how would we ever be able to know if the actual human dies and there's only a technological perfect copy with "our data"?
To everyone not yet having done it, it'd look perfectly like it succeeded because the "entity" would mimic the persona perfectly and know all the person did...
But one by one, every human would die, leaving behind an impostor.
There'd be the very real risk that if all of humanrace uploaded themselves onto that kind of thing, that all of humanity would infact be erased from existance, only to be left with "programs" capable of mimicking it perfectly... and not even the last human on earth would know it before they do the same.
The most terrifying thought in it all is that if I had worries of "what if I won't be there anymore after that?" before doing it, then died in the process, the new copy would come alive saying "IT WORKED!" having the memory of my concern, but having no knowledge of my passing...
It'd be like a perfect liar masking my death and that is the most terrifying thought to me: It would make me, the real me, truely erased, as no one would even know I'm gone.
what's the difference between a perfect copy and the "real" you? i mean it's in the name, isnt it: PERFECT copy
@@jacobmagana4258 Well it wouldn't be me experiencing it anymore. My life would be over even if the copy would remain
@@sarcasm-83 but why? what makes the copy "not you"? what is the difference between them if the information is perfectly copied?
@@jacobmagana4258 I think you're applying a fundamentally different understanding of "self" here. You're using "you" to refer to a bundle of memories and habits, the things that comprise your personality and opinions and informs how you act. What I, and I believe the person you're responding to mean by "you" is the subjective continuity of experience. If you upload your mind to a computer and it kills your body, that original subjective continuity comes to an end, with a new one simply picking up where it left off. There is a break there that can only be described as death.
@@screamingcactus1753 that assumes a soul or something metaphysical for consciousness to be "continuous" through, which is something that almost everyone seems to overlook when thinking about this. there is no "stream of consciousness", it's just a bunch of individual information states that are causally linked enough to think they're related - which they are, but they aren't literally the same. otherwise we would be unable to change, unable to think, etc (unless, again, you assume something mystical)
i also hate when i'm dreaming vividly and it feels real but i know it's a dream so i do everything no not think about it bc as soon as i think about it everything either stops and freezes in time or i wake up
I never know that I'm dreaming lol, sometimes i wake up from a dream that was so indistinguishable from reality that i genuinely believe the dream was something that happened yesterday. One time i had a dream where i got a girlfriend, then i woke up, pondered for a few minutes and then i realized it never actually happened. scary stuff
As a person with maladaptive daydreaming, a dissociative disorder, this runs deep. People don’t know maladaptive daydreaming exists and don’t understand the true extent of how…hard it is to live day to day life when you’re in two different worlds, forced to stay in one while you’re so deeply involved and interested in the other.
For me…I don’t daydream in first person, it’s other characters from a show that’s I’ve changed and twisted into their own universe over years, at first it was me? But my oc basically, still a different story that lasted so long before it changed to what it is now.
It’s like spending your time working on a project for so long and you’re so proud of it you ignore real life but it’s all in your head, I pace until I’m out of breath, or my feet hurt, I have callouses on my feet that usually people with tough jobs have, I rock back and forth so much I hit my head often, I make weird faces outloud or whisper things my characters are saying by accident,
And there’s no way to explain it, it happens at random, it’s hard to focus, I will start or want to do something and suddenly get distracted in pacing for hours until I just wanna lay down.
Tw: suicide attempt.
There was two times I tried to leave this world, I phrase it like that because that’s what it was. I wasn’t trying to kill myself per se, I love my family, it wasn’t because of a specific reason. But the first time I thought of it was on a ride through the street and I thought of how tired I was, I was wide awake, just had coffee and breakfast, the day had just started.
But I was tired.
More and more often I’d be standing in a place and look around at the people and think…these people have actual lifes- they move and think and feel, and I’m told I’m overly empathetic because of how much I accommodate for others because I know people have their reasons for acting or doing or needing something and because of an understanding of the world I have I just want people who’ve suffered to be happy.
I didn’t realize I was suffering as well, or that I was happy. I hadn’t been feeling emotions truly for all my younger years, I had memories, I knew how I felt about certain people, but I didn’t have a personality. I was just living life.
Only the last two years have I let myself feel emotions or try to understand them, even then I hate being too happy because it feels weird, hate being mad, I don’t understand feeling sad because is it really that serious?
But I’m aware this is a problem. I only learned what maladaptive daydreaming was by accident, I’m self diagnosed, but knowing that other people did this made me feel…less original, intrigued. I guess happy?
But mostly hearing other people’s stories, I love true crime, watching youtubers, listening to commmentary channels, analyzing drama.
I love psychology, the way people think and act and feel and the explanations behind it intrigue me, how the memory or thought or motion functions from cells. So much that I had when I’m affected by things because…I understand a least the basics of why I’m feeling it, so I should be able to assess it and get over it…right?
There’s times I sit and remember, I can get hurt, I have a body, I can feel tired, I sleep, I own things, I eat, I hate taking care of my hygiene because it confuses me in how I need proper management to function.
It’s just…the world is big, your reach is big, but not big enough where you would assume it matters, but it does matter. People feel, people spread, they die and other people are still affected.
An easy explanation would be inventions, someone else created clothes didn’t they?
But I’d rather use generation trauma. One group of people can get so messed up that they mess up someone else, and it goes on and on until someone either breaks the cycle, or they end their life, and a different kind of trauma forms in who their death affected.
The things people people take for granted like being able to do an action without thinking in detail about it, or watching something and being able to enjoy it and move on without creation a whole new Au in your head for your hyperfixation.
People fail to understand that not only the things in physical life affects how different people are like their environment or if they’re poor or rich.
It’s the mind, the world a person is in compared to you.
Thank you if anyone reads this I needed to vent, I wanted to leave a deeper comment on how the world works and i was going to leave at the end a warning that I’d delete the comment in a few days and see how the few people who see it and or many will remember the comment for two weeks before both they and I forget I made it, and how that’s the magic of memory or enjoying the present.
But I want this to stay….if only to leave my mark or experience for someone else. I know people see maladaptive daydreaming and immediately start reading until the saw the length of the comment, because they want something to relate to and they’re relieved someone else said it, and that’s why I want to leave this, to do what humans are made to do, no matter what way you think humans were created, god, big bang, something else.
Humans are here to live, and they will share how they lived and shared their things and inventions or effects from the past to create their future and another persons present.
Me writing this and posting this comment was my present, your past. You reading this comment was your present and my future.
Perspective builds life.
Sounds like you'd excell at writing fan fiction
@@Frille512 I…I do write fanfiction-
@@heyitstor9930 damn i was spot on
There are very few, countable videos that make me genuinely ponder upon my existence, like the sitting after watching and staring into a blank space for like 5-10 minutes straight kinda pondering. I dont know man, i just wish to god, that every single person on earth watches this video cuz my god, you are underrated and this deserves more attention. Daryl you won over my heart with this upload man..
What a masterpiece. My greatest fear has always been loosing myself or my memories, yet your interpretations have made that something so bittersweet I'm beginning to cry. I'm glad to see you back, and I hope you enjoyed your break. Definitely looking forward to November
Here’s a video topic for you:
When I played PREY for the first time, I knew how it would end. I understand the meaning and gravity of my choices. Yet when I played it, I picked the opposite of every choice I thought I would make. What I thought would be my outcome, in fact, it was the opposite. I’m sitting there in a chair with the choice to take the man’s hand. I thought I would. I thought that humanity was in the right, but after experiencing the story myself, I decided to reject his hand. This has been bugging me for a while. I thought I knew what I would do but I didn’t. Now I’ve been questioning how much I really know myself. This happens in every choice based games I play especially if I know the ending
ooh, i'm interested. which Prey game is this?
As someone who suffers from extreme paranoia, this video took me so long to actually watch😅 great stuff nonetheless
Dude I cried. Such a positive framing to conclude on of something this existential. Great video.
my favorite junji ito story is about a man who keeps having "long dreams". every night he goes to bed and lives a full day in his sleep, a day as vividly real to him as being awake. however, the day turns into a week, the week turns into a month, the month turns into a year. this man starts living entire lifetimes in his 8 hours of sleep every day, and can no longer discern between his dreams and reality.
The thing about Signalis though is that its mainly a trans allegory. The biggest horror mostly comes from the folding in of one's own identity. Like, that sort of self-discovery can be such a terrifying process. Its a horror stemming less from being, but from irreversable change.