Darken Rahl and his Trip to the Underworld (or, eat it, antigamers)
We've seen a lot of threads lately involving "violence in video games". We've seen people saying that violent video games induce someone to be violent. We've seen claims that exposure to violent imagery and violent acts influences society to be more violent.
I have a violent sequence from a well-known series of books that makes the violence in today's video games look like an amateur sham. This WILL NOT go down well for some of you. This IS NOT something children should read. This IS NOT- not in any way- "nice".
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
In Terry Goodkind's "Wizard's First Rule", an evil wizard named Darken Rahl is trying to collect the three Boxes of Orden so he can rule the world. These boxes are, together, an item of magic, and they have specific rules for their use. Among other things, once the boxes are "put into play", as it is called, the player has one year from the date of activation to collect and open one of the three boxes. The player is also protected from harm during that period- the power of Orden literally makes them invincible during that year. Darken Rahl's year ends on the first day of winter.
Each of the boxes are identical and indistinguishable from another. They are dead black, a black that sucks the light from the room, a black that is so unreflective that to see them is to look upon a shadow at midnight.
These boxes are the black of the world of the dead.
Opening one box will kill everyone and everything in the universe. Opening that box will cause the world of life to walk through the ashes of death forever. Everything will live, forever, consuming itself; no death, no life, no ending- just an existence surrendered to the Keeper of the underworld. Everything that everyone knows will be forever changed for the unimaginably worse, a kind of death-in-life, and the children of the world of life will live nightmares forever.
Opening another box will grant the Player (in this case, Darken Rahl) complete and sovereign power over the world of life. All- all- will be compelled, forced, to do the Player's bidding. There is no reprieve. There is no appeal. There is no free will. There is only the Power of Orden, and nothing in this life or any other can alter or revoke it. Both the world of the life and the world of the spirits will do the Player's bidding.
Opening the third box will kill the Player, and spare the world of life. For Darken Rahl, this is the wrong box. For everyone else, it's the right one.
These boxes, by the way, have a completely legitimate purpose. Because it's a huge spoiler, I can't tell you why. Mea Culpa.
This is where the story becomes vile, repulsive, and obscene. In order to learn which box is which without using the book of instruction (which he does not have) that comes with the Boxes of Orden (said book being the "Book of Counted Shadows"
, Darken Rahl must travel to the underworld and directly consult the spirits. To do so "safely", if any such thing can be considered "safe", Rahl must have a spirit guide, to prevent him from becoming lost and losing his soul.
In the author's world, there are two ways to do this. One is by invoking the aid of a soul to whom the Player is already bound- a lifelong friend, a deeply cherished and honored relative, or something akin to such. The other way is to forge such a connection, and as with all such connections, there is a "good" way and a "bad" way to do it. Being an evil wizard, Rahl chooses the worst way possible.
To get to the underworld and discover which box is which, and to travel beyond the Barrier in the world of life, Rahl kidnaps a child and buries him to his neck in sorcerer's sand (said sand being the crystallized bones of long-dead wizards). Over a long period of time, Darken Rahl entices, induces, cajoles, and convinces this innocent child to betray his family, cast hate upon his parents, and accept Darken Rahl as his father, his authority, and his master in the world of life, heart and soul. Rahl feeds the child through a tube, magically changing the taste of the actual gruel he's feeding him into whatever taste the child desires, and, ultimately, feeds him a bowl of molten lead. Thus this innocent child dies, and the ritual begins.
Darken Rahl then digs the dead child up, dissects his body, and grinds the boy's heart, brain, and testicles into a paste, which he then eats. Consuming the child's body in such a fashion completes the forcible forging of the child's spirit to his own, making the child's soul, all unwitting and by force, into his spirit guide. Rahl then summons the child's spirit, taking the shape of a powerful underworld beast called a shinga, to guide him on his journey through the land of the dead.
So why did I tell you all this?
I told this story because no video game ever made would dare to go there, because of all you idiotic brickheaded spongeheads who think games are "the problem", are "too realistic", are "too violent". Video games can tell fantastic stories, but they won't tell this one, because of people just. Like. You.
They won't tell this story because of lying, pernicious, silver-tongued, spiteful, and above all jealous jerks like you, who can't ban books because you get laughed at, as. You. Should. And I demand- I demand, in your pathetic faces, in defiance of all you wrongly believe to be true- the same treatment for games. All of them. Every last one.
Go burn copies of "Wizard's First Rule" if you want to- excuse me- piss and moan about violent media. You're standing on the dungheap of history and calling it virtue, and nobody listens to you when it's about books. The same- the exact same thing- is true for games. Reality proves it, and no "studies" are necessary.
You've already been defeated a thousand times over, and always will be. We, the creative, the artful, the creators of content, have won, and we always will. We will win in spite of you. Forever, and for the rest of history.
So basically,
[font size="10"]FUCK YOU.[/font]
AND your dead fucking horse.
= new reply since forum marked as read
and the fact you call the sequence I've related here SCI-FI/Fantasy is telling. It is properly termed "adult fantasy", and your improper classification tells me you don't know what you're talking about, be it books or games.
In "Temple of the Winds", a later book in the series, the main character is forced to follow this double-bind prophecy:
"On the red moon will come the firestorm. The one bonded to the blade will watch as his people die. If he does nothing, then he, and all those he loves will die in its heat, for no blade, forged of steel or conjured of sorcery can touch this foe.
To quench the inferno, he must seek the remedy in the wind. Lightning will find him on that path, for the one in white, his true beloved, will betray him in her blood."
Again, no video game would ever touch this part of this story, mostly because of people such as yourself, who would never allow a game in which a man and man woman who are dearly beloved to each other to be forced into marrying other people, and then consummating that marriage then and there in order to stop a plague that would kill millions. They do: the man and woman beloved are paired to each other, but someone switched them, so they're together, but the woman imagines it being the other man, and in so doing, betrays her true beloved, thus opening the way to the Hall of the Betrayed and allowing her true love to stop the plague.
In both the case I related in my OP, and this case, the violence done in the name of saving lives, be it physical or emotional/spiritual violence, is entirely appropriate and necessary. Yet persons such as yourself consider such violence to be "inappropriate" and think this violence to be a "sordid little fetish".
The Bible has a great deal more violence than either case I've illustrated from this series, and yet parents gleefully expose their innocent and impressionable children to it weekly, telling them they will burn in hell forever if they don't take it to heart. They believe it, wholeheartedly. That way, madness lies. That way lies destruction. Yet, if you are a christian, you follow that path, in reality, where gamers do in knowing fantasy.
Gamers don't believe in their games. Christians knowingly believe in their Bible. Both are utter fantasy.
Who does the greater harm? Gamers, or christians?
My Steam library contains 172 game entries, covering every letter of the alphabet excepting N and O, and crossing every genre, from puzzle and quest, through pure story and simulator, to and through first-person shooter to casual (such as "Bejeweled" and well beyond. I am an expert in this field, if anything can be called an expert gamer.
Would you call someone with a vast array of films from every genre names?
It's the same thing.
"...the fact you call the sequence I've related here SCI-FI/Fantasy is telling. It is properly termed "adult fantasy", and your improper classification tells me you don't know what you're talking about.."
Nonsense! Embarrassing nonsense! First, a speedy Googling alleges that the books you're referring to are "epic fantasy":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temple_of_the_Winds
Some professor has a site up about fantasy - again, one of the first Google hits - under fantasy subgenres, this "adult fantasy" doesn't appear, although allegedly there are Contemporary, Dark, Heroic and High varieties:
http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/beyond/subjects/fantasysubgenres/index.html
How about Wiki's list of fantasy subgenres? Not there either, although "Young Adult Fantasy" does make an appearance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fantasy_genres
But this matters not at all. --- "It is properly termed 'adult fantasy'" you snort, as though I mistook a symphony for a concerto, or a Cezanne from a Renoir, as though particular knowledge about subgenres of contemporary pulp fiction is de rigeur for the well-rounded, fully-educated person of discernment.
It is to laugh! I'll have to admit, my education has grievous holes: I'm not particularly up on the difference between furries and plushies either. Or the variations of dubstep.
But then, maybe I'm not missing much --
"Again, no video game would ever touch this part of this story, mostly because of people such as yourself, who would never allow a game in which a man and man woman who are dearly beloved to each other to be forced into marrying other people, and then consummating that marriage then and there in order to stop a plague that would kill millions. They do: the man and woman beloved are paired to each other, but someone switched them, so they're together, but the woman imagines it being the other man, and in so doing, betrays her true beloved, thus opening the way to the Hall of the Betrayed and allowing her true love to stop the plague."
What juvenile, melodramatic rot.
Finally, I have to admit that though I guess I'm not missing much, I'm still kind of missing your point. I know that videogames generally these days are little more than every variety of gory murder obsessively repeated. So you're complaining that this constant gore isn't supported by the kind of turgid melodramatic backstory you find in certain fantasy books? Because we anti-gamers have prevented it? I'm sure if some game-maker wanted to serve his violence on a bed of fantasy (sorry, sorry! "Adult" fantasy) he would be able to do so.
Where's the beef?
I could easily imagine it as the premise to an expansion for The Witcher, for instance.
And I would probably play it, too. 
the writers put every book into a blender, set it to puree, dumped the individual words out on a table, and "wrote" a "script" they called something "inspired by an adaptation of a translation of the Sword of Truth".
It. Was. Awful.