Tales from the Dawn #3: "A Question of Life" (Hermes)

I mean, the point of the story is to show that Hermes feels stifled when expressing his feelings, that's mostly what the first part is about. He expresses doubts about life and the ancients' place in the star, and the final goal of it all, and lo and behold, he saw all of his fears confirmed by his pet project. Rather than trusting in others' doubts about his conclusion, he offered the same solution he feels they did when he expressed his doubts: stiflement.

Hermes was the result of a society that pushed his mental health issues aside or did not validate them. But unlike the mankind of the present, he was an ancient. Immensely powerful beings that can act upon their beliefs with such magnitudes of scale that are almost godlike. In a way, he was both the best case for why individuality outside of debates was 'forbidden', where his individualistic needs and issues could lead to him abusing his massive power in a manner that eventually doomed his civilisation; and the worst case for it, as it was that pressure to conform that caused him to bottle up and seethe in his ennui and depression.

Hermes is a fascinatingly written character in that regard, in my opinion.

Hermes could never be treated or validated. By his own words anyone around him was willing to hear him out and console him, but he just took this as pity and scorned them. The truth is he didn't want to be "helped", he bristled at the nature of reality and society and wanted it all to bend according to him. More than to get a new answer that would satisfy him, he wanted the Meteion project to prove his ideas right. Like Venat says, nothing Hermes could ever have been told, either by his peers or by some space aliens, was ever going to change his mind or make him feel any better. Personally I think his perspective was due to his nature more than anything else.

The plot doesn't really pretend any differently either. Ultimately the only way anyone deals with him is by inflicting pain to make him bow and conform, and lying to him to make him useful. And eventually once he's no longer useful, we just damn his soul to hell.

But narratively, Hermes' problem is that he ends up being the ultimate villain of a story that doesn't really want to have "villains". So there was never any hope for him to begin with.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Hermes could never be treated or validated. By his own words anyone around him was willing to hear him out and console him, but he just took this as pity and scorned them. The truth is he didn't want to be "helped", he bristled at the nature of reality and society and wanted it all to bend according to him. More than to get a new answer that would satisfy him, he wanted the Meteion project to prove his ideas right. Like Venat says, nothing Hermes could ever have been told, either by his peers or by some space aliens, was ever going to change his mind or make him feel any better. Personally I think his perspective was due to his nature more than anything else.

The plot doesn't really pretend any differently either. Ultimately the only way anyone deals with him is by inflicting pain to make him bow and conform, and lying to him to make him useful. And eventually once he's no longer useful, we just damn his soul to hell.

But narratively, Hermes' problem is that he ends up being the ultimate villain of a story that doesn't really want to have "villains". So there was never any hope for him to begin with.

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This sums up my sentiments on him as well... and on him as Amon. He seems to enjoy turning his own perceived failings into something to project onto mankind as a whole and condemn it for it.

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Originally Posted by Lustre

I can't stand hermes, dude's as deep as a puddle and comes across as nothing more than an over-emotional manchild who didn't deserve the position he held. This just confirmed what I already thought. They made him three characters in one and it was still hard to care about him, other than to express annoyance at the illogicality of his actions

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Agreed.

The Lore forums really be out here unironically claiming Hermes Lived In a Society, huh?

https://i.imgur.com/aBawWYL.jpg

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These short stories are rarely pure lore pure dumps of new information, and this year in particular has been more internal character studies, which doesn't make them invalid. And for Hermes- I'm thankful that he and Meteion got at least one (even if I am in the camp of wishing for some focus on any of the dozens of other options and societies instead of the Ancients - but if it had to be Ancients, Hermes was the only POV I think had anything remotely interesting or valuable to say at this stage. I want Ahewaan or someone from Yedlihmad or Palaka's Stand to have a short story, or at least Vrtra but I have a strong feeling his will be next year.)

Hermes as a character I loved his writing and his role, which this short story only enforced, even if I would not rank him in the top ten of a personal favorites list. And I know a key element to that is in my immediate family where no one is neurotypical, the sibling I am closest to has been hospitalized due to clinical depression more than once. Which is why every reveal of Amaurotine society was making my skin crawl, because even before EW and Hermes was introduced into the plot, I could see ones like him and their predictable anguish in a so-called Paradise. Hermes is a fantasy antagonist - but he is written where his coded depression feels far more realistic than Emet's pure fantasy's variation on an immortal's grief. Where Hermes's desperate actions -which he acknowledges are desperate and hypocritical (Not the Only Villain to Do This)- are harmful and hypocritical and the grasping to legitimize his feelings and existence.

My favorite minor details were the reasoning for Meteion's blue feathers and the spectrum of dynamis rich planets. But that's also the Green Lantern Mogo fan in me.

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Originally Posted by Veloran

Hermes could never be treated or validated. By his own words anyone around him was willing to hear him out and console him, but he just took this as pity and scorned them. The truth is he didn't want to be "helped", he bristled at the nature of reality and society and wanted it all to bend according to him. More than to get a new answer that would satisfy him, he wanted the Meteion project to prove his ideas right. Like Venat says, nothing Hermes could ever have been told, either by his peers or by some space aliens, was ever going to change his mind or make him feel any better. Personally I think his perspective was due to his nature more than anything else.

The plot doesn't really pretend any differently either. Ultimately the only way anyone deals with him is by inflicting pain to make him bow and conform, and lying to him to make him useful. And eventually once he's no longer useful, we just damn his soul to hell.

But narratively, Hermes' problem is that he ends up being the ultimate villain of a story that doesn't really want to have "villains". So there was never any hope for him to begin with.

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Oh my god. Hermes is the personification of Twitter geek community!

Thinking on it, there's one of 4 possible people for the 4th/final story. Hythlodaeus, Varshahn/Vrtra, Ahewann...and Azem.

So Hermes did eventually do what he was "supposed" to do, bury his negative emotions and conform to society's expectations.

And it looks like it worked, he became an upstanding public servant who worked for the good of the star until it was sundered. Even if his pain emerged generations later to cause even more destruction than ever.

I think there's something to be said about a society so demanding of conformity and blissful acceptance that someone can repress thier pain so hard that it emerges catastrophically generations later.

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Originally Posted by KariTheFox

I think there's something to be said about a society so demanding of conformity and blissful acceptance that someone can repress thier pain so hard that it emerges catastrophically generations later.

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It kind of feels like a stealth critique of Japanese society, though I don't think that was intended. I may also be reading into that too much.

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Originally Posted by RyuDragnier

It kind of feels like a stealth critique of Japanese society, though I don't think that was intended. I may also be reading into that too much.

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I don't think it's that much of a stretch to suppose that a Japanese writer, living in Japan, may have drawn from Japanese society in her story that talks about how societies collapse.

Edit: I also know anecdotally that from a few of my east asian friends that mental health issues are very much not treated well a lot of the time in those countries, to the extent that Hermes as A Character With Mental Illness might be drawing on that fact too as a part of real life inspiration.