DST Themes: Enlightenment vs Romanticism

[ModsterMash]

Starting with A New Reign, I believe Klei has been incorporating into DST the themes of Enlightenment vs Romanticism. As I research the lore, I’ve been making a lot of connections between DST and these themes. Whether all are intentional or not, I think they are fun to think about.

I am no expert in any of these subjects, and therefore am uncomfortable with writing out definitions. I will just link some of the videos/articles that really resonated for me. Feel free to seek out more information on your own! Maybe you will find your own connections to share.

To start, TV Tropes has a good article for this. Check out the Team Romanticism tab, especially.

This video also explains the “rivalry” between Enlightenment and Romanticism in less than 4 minutes, with some Frankenstein analysis to boot

Here’s another article. I especially like how the last sentence sums it up.

“In short, Romanticism seeks to find the role of the individual in a chaotic and mutable world, while the Enlightenment looks for the empirical and justifiable strictures of such a world.”

So I’m going to try to go through some additions to the world of DST from ANR through RoT that can be connected to these themes. I’m only going to focus on these additions and not everything that came before DST that may also fit, because we can be here all day with that!

Tragic Torch and Metheus

The reward for the Cyclum Puzzles is the Tragic Torch skin. This would later be necessary to start the Metheus puzzles. The fact that it is a “tragic” torch that is needed to find the “Metheus” puzzles is a transparent reference to the story of Prometheus. Most people are somewhat familiar with this legend, but if you want a little refresher, here’s a TED Ed video about it.

The figure wielding the Torch in the obelisk murals seems to be a tragic figure like Prometheus, and being a torchbearer makes it highly likely that they are Metheus.

The story of Prometheus and his stealing of the torch for man is a Romantic favorite. Torches can be seen as a symbol of Enlightenment, too. The concept of stealing fire is one that is shared amongst many cultures. This is because fire gives mankind the power to progress, whether it be for cooking food, forging tools and weapons, or simply providing heat and light. This is much what fire is used for in the game, as well.

Horace’s Odes

Horace’s Odes are involved in solving the fourth Cyclum Puzzle. Horace was an ancient Roman lyric poet, and he was an influence on Romantic poets.

“Horace modeled for the Romantics what it means to go back into time and use the past as a referential point for artistic creation. One of Horace's distinctive elements is that he turned to the Greeks for inspiration.  When Horace writes, Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes intulit agresti Latio ("Conquered Greece took captive her savage conqueror and brought her arts into rustic Latium"), it becomes clear that the legacy of the past is to be harvested and understood by the future generations.”

The Constant

DST named the setting of the whole franchise for the first time during the first Forge event in 2017. The word “constant” brings to mind the punishment of Prometheus. Every night, his liver grows back just to be eaten by the vulture again the next day. “Constant,” unending suffering. The game’s function of allowing you to start over in a new world after dying is sort of like the liver regeneration for the player/survivors. This makes me think that DS/T’s Constant is a punishment of sorts.

Ancient Mural

The Ancient Murals were added during A New Reign and gives us a bit of history for the Ancient Civilization. The story that the murals tell is of a once proud society destroying itself with the overuse of a fuel. Or at least, it tells us that they used fuel to the point that they did build a great city. It is implied elsewhere that this ultimately failed and the society fell.

The Romantics were very skeptical of technology and would criticize the Enlightenment’s ideas of a scientific utopia future. In response, Romantics depicted societies that introduced too much technology as dystopias, much in the way that DST does with the Ancient Civilization.

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog and the Sublime

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog is the main page image for the Wikipedia pages for Romanticism and Sublime. It was directly referenced with this promotional artwork of Wilson that was posted before Return of Them was announced.

The word sublime was used in the official description of Return of Them (emphasis mine):
“Charlie’s machinations have come to a head as she turns her attention towards the skies - and the mysterious entity that awaits there. Our Survivors will be forced to contend with terrifying monstrosities beyond their comprehension, and yet, there may be a silver lining: their minds and horizons will be expanded under the sublime light of an ancient moon.”

Sublime to the Romantics was a concept of sheer awe and terror at the power of nature. This was the concept that fueled their works of art which consisted of huge landscapes with sometimes tiny human figures, just there to show the juxtaposition of our tiny existence compared to the awesome might of nature. I feel this associates strongly to the Constant itself, an absolute nightmare world of nature and chaos that Romantics would just love to bits.

Gestalts

Gestalts seem to be based on the sci-fi hive mind trope. This is based on the name, which is defined by Google as “an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.” And gestalt intelligence is a synonym for hive mind according to Wikipedia. It is also convenient that they are Moon creatures because hive minds are a common theme with aliens. At least Woodie’s quote for them sort of implies a hive mind situation: “We're all connected, eh?”

The obvious connection to Enlightenment is the Enlightenment mechanics, of course. Now how this connects to Romanticism is a little shaky, but basically Romantics were afraid that the Enlightened would force conformity within their ideal societies. The Gestalts feel like a fantastical depiction of this idea. They all look the same, and they all speak telepathically. 

Because of this it seems likely to me that the Gestalts are Them, especially since they/them as a pronoun can be both singular and plural.

Wagstaff

Surprise, this one is not a DST addition! But! I am putting him here because I believe he was in a way created alongside Winona. Before he was made playable, the only other big development for his part of the story was within Winona's leaked speech file. In her unimplemented Adventure Mode quotes, she had a few references to a "bossman" who was pretty obviously Wagstaff. When he was added to single player DS it was a huge gamechanger lore-wise, for both DS and DST. He is also in Winona's short, so.

I'm including him on this list mainly because he is the poster child for a Romantic villain. His quotes reveal that he seeks to bring back resources from the Constant to the real world to "revolutionize" society. For Nightmare Fuel he says "I must find a way to return with this. It will revolutionize the world!!" Based on the Ancient Murals (which Wagstaff will never read as long as he stays in single player), this will not end well. He also created a robot who is evil (Romantics believe anything made artificially will go bad) and he creates inventions that destroy the environment (Romantics hate industrialization and what it does to nature).

What's also interesting is that Wagstaff makes a good Enlightenment villain, as well. This is due to his good intentions (using science for progressing society) kind of going to his head and making him take unnecessary risks. In addition, Wagstaff references his "destiny" in a few of his quotes. The concept of having a destiny is a wholly Romantic one that the Enlightened rejected. It's not rational.

These connections are what make the idea of Wagstaff being the ultimate big bad compelling to me.

[wigfrids hat]

neat~ i look forward to seeing how this idea pans out

[minespatch]

I look forward to future analysis from you. this is quite a read.

[ModsterMash]

2 minutes ago, minespatch said:

I look forward to future analysis from you. this is quite a read.

Thank you! I do have plans for more posts like this.

[Pikapikap]

bravo！ I like your thread！

[alanzoid]

2 hours ago, ModsterMash said:

Because of this it seems likely to me that the Gestalts are Them, especially since they/them as a pronoun can be both singular and plural

The moon is an entity which "uses" the Gestalts to communicate with the survivors as Maxwell states "it communes with us through them" but They/Them (with capital T) are not the moon (or the entity moon). The moon uses white magic and everything we saw so faw (from RoT) indicate that this is fundamentally different from the dark magic (which I believe Them is related to).

Other than that I really liked the connections you made between Enlightenment vs Romanticism. Those were awesome connections.

[ModsterMash]

7 hours ago, alanzoid said:

The moon is an entity which "uses" the Gestalts to communicate with the survivors as Maxwell states "it communes with us through them" but They/Them (with capital T) are not the moon (or the entity moon). The moon uses white magic and everything we saw so faw (from RoT) indicate that this is fundamentally different from the dark magic (which I believe Them is related to).

Thank you for pointing this out! The fact that the expansion is called Return of Them and has a lot of emphasis on the moon is what leads me to think that those are connected. I'm excited for RoT to deliver on what the title actually promises. We need more info!

(Also speaking of Maxwell, I just remembered that before RoT he always referred to the moon as the 'moon'... Tell us your secrets, old man!!)

[MondayNight]

If anything this was a nice lecture. The dichotomy soul/heart-rationality and by extension the feeling-thinking one is prevalent in a lot of works (hence Romanticism-Enlightenment). And science vs nature is an interesting extension likewise. These concepts could be very well driving the more metaphorical aspect of DS/T. Time will tell how this will pan out. Ty for the thread!

[Pine G]

What a fantastic, well-written post! It shines light (heh) on connections that you might not have made otherwise and really gets you thinking. 

[jpmrocks]

Uhhh... Romanticism was a part of the Enlightenment, specifically the latter part and the starts of the Industrial Revolution. Its Romanticism vs Realism, those were the two fighting movements.

[ModsterMash]

3 hours ago, jpmrocks said:

Uhhh... Romanticism was a part of the Enlightenment, specifically the latter part and the starts of the Industrial Revolution. Its Romanticism vs Realism, those were the two fighting movements.

I'm going along with the trope page that presents the movements this way. I suppose the full details of the relationship between them have been oversimplified due to being used to examine how these ideas are used in fiction.

[jpmrocks]

7 hours ago, ModsterMash said:

I'm going along with the trope page that presents the movements this way. I suppose the full details of the relationship between them have been oversimplified due to being used to examine how these ideas are used in fiction.

With good story writing and presentation, you CANNOT oversimplify. But again, the Trope of Romanticism vs Enlightenment isnt even correct, it's like saying Raw Egg vs Omelette, like, a vague comparison that makes no sense, because one is part of another.

[Monkey Cups]

1 hour ago, jpmrocks said:

With good story writing and presentation, you CANNOT oversimplify. But again, the Trope of Romanticism vs Enlightenment isnt even correct, it's like saying Raw Egg vs Omelette, like, a vague comparison that makes no sense, because one is part of another.

Would you eat a raw egg, though? You also can't use an omelette to bake a cake. Both may be egg but both are different.