Unfinished Addenda to On Moonlight

by Aaron Freed

Unfinished writings that I currently plan to add to the 2025 afterword of my book On Moonlight. I haven’t covered everything I intend to cover in either of the sections below, and I won’t add either until I do so.

Contents

1. «Νῷν αἰωνίου χοροῦ» (“Our eternal dance”)
   1. «Δῐκαιοσῠ́νη καί ἰσότης νῑκήσουσῐν» (“Justice and equality will prevail”)
   2. «Πᾰ́ντες τῠ́ρᾰννοι οͅφείλωσῐ δείσειν» (“All tyrants should beware”)
   3. “One deprived becomes an opponent”
   4. “Nature resists even a vacuum of balance”
   5. “The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone”
   6. “The more intensely that the light shone, the darker a shadow it cast”
2. Moonlight’s impact on cinema and culture
   1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse
   2. Nimona
   3. Other Films
3. Endnotes

«Νῷν αἰωνίου χοροῦ»

«Δῐκαιοσῠ́νη καί ἰσότης νῑκήσουσῐν»

The final stanza is also inspired by Eternal (which in turn is heavily inspired by a secret message in Marathon 2’s level “Kill Your Television”). In particular, the line «Δῐκαιοσῠ́νη καί ἰσότης νῑκήσουσῐν» (“Justice and equality will prevail”) is a direct result of Eternal’s deep connection to Egyptian mythology: it includes characters named after the Egyptian deities Hathor, Bast(et), Sakhmet, and Apep; directly refers to several Egyptian myths; and is heavily influenced by the Egyptians’ concept of balance, which, as I shall explain, was arguably substantially more complex than our modern one.

Some of our labels end up generalizing heavily about human history. “Ancient Greece”, at the short end, refers to a timespan of about 750 years (Ischia’s settlement in 785 BCE to the Roman conquest in 31-30 BCE); the upper end of typical usage encompasses just under two millennia (Euboea’s rise ca. 1200 BCE to the second Arab siege of Constantinople in 717-718 CE), although one could argue that because Aegean Greece (3300 BCE) qualifies as both ancient and Greek, “ancient Greece” should properly encompass a span of over four millennia.

Ancient Egypt is similar. Convention holds that it begins with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt ca. 3150 BCE and ends with its annexation by the Roman Empire in 30 BCE. That’s over three millennia – more than half of recorded human history. Therefore, everything I’m about to write will, by necessity, be a broad generalization. Interpretations of Egyptian mythology varied widely over the course of its history.

I think Ancient Egypt gets something of a bad rap. The Book of Exodus may be partly to blame for this. (Modern scholars mostly consider its account to be largely ahistorical: archaeological evidence suggests the Israelites to have been largely indigenous to Canaan, with an at most small group being exiled Egyptians. The Torah’s narrative may contain an historical core in having been contributed by this group.) It should go without saying that slavery is an atrocity, but people seem to hold it against the Egyptians much more than they hold it against the Romans and Greeks. You’d almost forget that ‘ancilla’ comes from a Latin word for ‘slave-girl’.

In any case, by the time of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, Egyptian law treated women much better than the Greeks or Romans did at the time, allowing them substantial independence and freedom to own property. This eventually influenced Greek and Roman law. To some degree, Egypt’s more progressive stance on women’s rights is also reflected in its pantheon, whose goddesses include some of mythology’s most fascinating, multifaceted characters.

That said, Egyptian mythology was less concerned with good and evil than with order and chaos. This isn’t to say Egypt didn’t have benevolent or malevolent deities. Contrary to popular belief, far and away their pantheon’s most malevolent deity was Apep, who might, in fact, be the most malevolent deity in any major pantheon. How many other deities throughout history have people prayed against? I literally can’t think of any.

Apep was the living embodiment of the phrase “chaotic evil”; his epithets included “Lord of Chaos”. He resented reality’s very existence and therefore sought to unmake it; the Egyptians believed the sun went down because Ra had to fight Apep every night to stop him from doing so.

Since the Greeks renamed much of the Egyptian pantheon, you may also know Apep as Apophis. Besides (possibly) Sobek, Bastet, and Apep, the Greek names are now better known: Thoth, Osiris, Isis, and Anubis are far more recognizable than Djehuti, Wesir, Aset, or Inepu. That said, a few of the names didn’t change:

(Note that many of these deities have multiple hieroglyphic⁽⁸⁵⁾ forms; I only printed one per deity. I also haven’t attempted to reproduce the original hieroglyphs’ vertical spacing; I’ve just written them left to right.)

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«Πᾰ́ντες τῠ́ρᾰννοι οͅφείλωσῐ δείσειν»

Speaking of Ma’at, she’s the main reason I’m discussing Egyptian mythology in such detail.

Ma’at is often characterized as the Egyptian goddess of order. This isn’t technically wrong, but, like many popular beliefs about Ancient Egypt, it’s also not the full picture. Ma’at was both a deity and an ideological concept. Isfet, her ideological opposite, wasn’t a deity and was instead personified by Apep (Ma’at’s theological opposite, to absolutely no one’s surprise). This is only natural: chaos is, of course, order’s opposite.

However, Ma’at wasn’t merely the goddess of order. She was also the goddess of balance, justice, reciprocity, harmony, ethics, and truth. And my reading is that, even more importantly, the Egyptians considered these concepts inseparable: to them, a fundamentally unjust or imbalanced society was by definition not an ordered society.

(I apologize if this gets confusing, by the way: we’re discussing ancient Egyptian concepts that don’t map exactly to English words, so my descriptions will be at best imprecise.)

I already mentioned that Apep is effectively the embodiment of chaotic evil. Let’s extend the D&D metaphor further. Ma’at is sometimes categorized as lawful good, but since she’s the goddess of balance, I think neutral good is a much better fit. Lawful good can lend itself to fanaticism.

I didn’t have to play D&D for long before I realized how much easier it is in practice to be neutral good than to be either lawful good or chaotic good. The latter two require consistent conformity to rigid behavior patterns that may not actually be pragmatic ways to accomplish the most good. Chaotic good characters might be unable to work within the system when doing so affords them greater abilities to create positive outcomes. Lawful good characters might be unable to work outside systems when they prove inflexible and resistant to actions needed to help or protect people. In fact, such characters might not even be able to consider such courses of action. Neutral good affords players the ability not just to consider both, but to do both.

In short, neutral good is the logical choice for any player seeking to provide the greatest good to the greatest number. D&D doesn’t reflect reality in every possible manner, but in this regard, I feel it’s quite on point.

If Ma’at, as the goddess of balance, is neutral good, then it follows that chaotic evil cannot be her only opposite. Lawful evil – in other words, tyranny – must be just as much her opposite.

This actually seems to reflect the Egyptians’ view. While they contrasted order with chaos, they also contrasted it with tyranny. But they also don’t appear to have seen tyranny and chaos as synonyms. And this is one place where I don’t think D&D maps precisely to reality.

We see order and chaos as a linear spectrum, but if the Egyptians saw order as balance, then they’d logically also see it as lying between two undesirable extremes. We often see opposites as points on two opposite sides of a circle or spectrum. But Ma’at is more accurately seen as the center of a circle or spectrum, and her opposites as points on either side.

The extreme on the other side of chaos can be seen as false order, as artificially imposed order, as law without justice, or simply as tyranny. It’s what a ruler attempts to impose upon subjects without actually solving their problems – without the actual work of governing. Thus, tyranny is as much an opposite of order as chaos is.

Although this doesn’t encompass all nine possible alignments in D&D, the Egyptian spectrum might be thought of as encompassing seven of them, wherein the closer you are to 0, the better:

-3. Chaotic evil
-2. Chaotic neutral
-1. Chaotic good
0. Neutral good
1. Lawful good
2. Lawful neutral
3. Lawful evil

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“One deprived becomes an opponent”

The principles of Ma’at, as written in The Instructions of Ptahhotep, called the rich and powerful to help those less fortunate than themselves rather than to exploit them:

Be generous as long as you live.
What leaves the storehouse does not return;
It is the food to be shared which is coveted.
One whose belly is empty is an accuser;
One deprived becomes an opponent.
Don’t have him for a neighbor.
Kindness is a man’s memorial
For the years after the function.

In short, the most important principle is to treat others benevolently and kindly. But to the Egyptians, the above passage was also a practical argument. Remember, they believed that for a person’s immortal soul to reach the afterlife, their corpse must be properly cared for – they considered mummification, buried goods, and funerary incantations necessary to preserve ka, the vital force within the soul. Without proper care, the deceased could suffer damnation to a realm of fire, chaos, and conflict (so, the Christian hell in all but name). This made proper care of their memorials or tombs a matter of paramount importance to them. So effectively, the above excerpt is a carrot-and-stick appeal to rich people’s pragmatism:

1. Stick: Fail to feed the hungry, and they’ll become unruly and rebellious.
2. Carrot: Feed them, and they’ll safeguard your immortal soul after you depart the mortal plane.

In another text, The Tale of the Eloquent Peasant, an officer, under the king’s direction, confiscates a nobleman’s wealth and gives it to a peasant the nobleman had abused. A third text says that a ruler who follows Ma’at:

educates the ignorant to wisdom,
and those who are unloved become as those who are loved.
He causes the lesser folk to emulate the great:
the last become as the first.
He who was lacking possessions is (now) the possessor of riches.

And The Moaning of the Bedouin, a popular tale from the Middle Kingdom, said that:

Those who destroy the lie promote Ma'at;
those who promote the good will erase the evil.
As fullness casts out appetite,
as clothes cover the nude, and
as heaven clears up after a storm.

Ma’at held that the spirit of justice was more important than the letter of the law. Egyptian rulers were held to high standards: the Egyptians believed rulers’ failure to act impartially and justly could cause a famine. Egyptian citizens were expected to act truthfully and honorably in their daily lives within all familial, communal, national, environmental, and religious matters.

Ma’at was also a close analogue of (and may even have inspired) St. Peter: in the afterlife, she would weigh the good a person had done against the ill they had done. Those who had done more good would go to the afterlife; those who had done more ill would have their hearts devoured by Ammit, and their consciousness would effectively cease to exist entirely.

This is an interesting contrast with Christianity, especially since I’ve already compared its hell to the Egyptian concept of damnation. The Egyptians believed you couldn’t even reach the point of judgement if your corpse wasn’t properly cared for – if you annoyed people badly enough, it wouldn’t matter how much good you’d done. Meanwhile, if people saw you as worthy enough to care for your mortal soul, but you hadn’t done enough good to outweigh your misdeeds, you just ceased to exist.

I’m not calling this better than the Christian afterlife, mind you. Nor am I calling it worse. It’s just different.

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“Nature resists even a vacuum of balance”

One of Eternal’s central themes is that both extreme order and extreme chaos are destructive and undesirable. If you have even a slight interest in playing it, you may wish to skip to “The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone”, but I’ll try to avoid spoiling anything more than the broad strokes of the plot.

The backstory involves a chaotic evil being (which is, not coincidentally, nicknamed Apep, although its true name is never revealed) and a lawful evil faction that increasingly resemble each other as the story progresses. In fact, while they purport to be at war with each other, we deliberately left it open to interpretation how true this is.

Apep wants to destroy the galaxy for not entirely comprehensible reasons. He claims to have come from the galaxy’s original timeline, and wants to destroy it so he can restore the original timeline. Of course, that’s not how it works. If Apep is truly that powerful, he should be able to just travel back to his timeline. We imply that Apep has Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe and has been left a bit less than fully rational. (Reflecting this, his sole message to the player switches between Early Modern English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Hungarian, Latin, Attic Greek, and Japanese, for no apparent reason.)

The lawful evil faction is dead-set on preserving history exactly as it occurred – the exact history that gave them their powers. (I’m sure it’s just coincidence; what tyrants in history have ever had selfish motives?) Unfortunately, that history ends when Apep destroys the galaxy. The lawful evil faction just doesn’t care because, by this time, they’ve escaped our reality. The AI Durandal-Thoth, one of the player’s main allies, thus writes in the game’s closing message that the lawful evil faction:

may consider themselves Apep’s opponents in theory; but their rigid fealty to a timeline in which the galaxy is destroyed gives that vengeful demon exactly what it wants, thus making them in practice stronger allies than it could ever have dreamt of. Failing to understand this is their tragic irony; perhaps they lack the needed self-awareness, but whatever the cause, it thus falls upon us to oppose both.

–Durandal-Thoth, “The Near Side of Everywhere”

Durandal-Thoth also calls the lawful evil faction “hardly distinguishable from” Apep, adding:

Call it enantiodromia, if you must: in the absence of balance, forces may become their very own equal and opposite reactions. Nature resists even a vacuum of balance.

–Durandal-Thoth, “The Near Side of Everywhere”

A related concept within Heraclitus’ writings was the unity of opposites, expressed in its successive form in the above quote and in its compresent form in his aphorism, “The road up and the road down are the same thing.” To Heraclitus, the only constant was change itself, which created a unity of opposites in that the universe simultaneously contained difference and sameness. In short, opposites are connected by their relationship to each other: hot and cold, pleasure and pain, moisture and dryness, are defined in relation to each other.

The important point is that, in the absence of balance, things turn into their opposites especially often. Another character in Eternal (I’m omitting her identity because it’s a major spoiler) writes:

Ma’at comes from living in harmony with nature and with each other, from being benevolent and kind, from being honourable and truthful, from alleviating the suffering of those less fortunate than us rather than exploiting their misfortune. Order cannot exist without balance or justice, and trying too hard to impose it results in chaos, just as trying too hard to fit a square peg into a round hole breaks the peg.

–[redacted], “We Met Once in the Garden”

Of the game’s two villainous factions, she adds:

Protest as they might, their clash is not a fundamental philosophical disagreement, but a mere fight to emerge atop a hierarchy. Both take as granted that in-groups will be protected but not bound by the law, and that out-groups will be bound but not protected by it. They are merely fighting to be the in-group. They may see each other as opposites, but they are merely two shades of tyranny.

The logical counterproposal, of course, is that the law must equally both protect and bind everyone, including leaders. No leader can truly embody the balance or justice of Ma’at unless bound by the law.

–[redacted], “We Met Once in the Garden”

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“The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone”

Most of the above Eternal quotes are my own words, but the line about in-groups and the counterproposal both paraphrase a now widely quoted comment that composer Frank Wilhoit (whom I acknowledge as an influence in the game’s secret credit terminal) posted to the website Crooked Timber on 2018-03-22. I consider it thought-provoking enough to quote it here in its entirety:

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millennia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr. All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

Then the appearance arises that the task is to map ‘liberalism’, or ‘progressivism’, or ‘socialism’, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.

No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:

The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

I don’t agree with every word Wilhoit writes here, but I don’t need to, just as I don’t care if others self-identify as anarchist or socialist or liberal or progressive or Marxist or syndicalist or mutualist or libertarian or Burkean, or even conservative, for that matter. I think he’s oversimplifying, at least if people like Edmund Burke qualify as conservatives. (Wilhoit may well be right about the debased modern political ideology that now calls itself conservatism.) Nonetheless, his core proposition is ultimately the core of every important point to be made about politics: the law is fundamentally unjust unless it binds and protects everyone.

I’d take it a step further, in fact. I’d phrase it in the following terms:

The law is fundamentally unjust unless it binds and protects everyone exactly no more and exactly less than it binds and protects everyone else.

Otherwise, we leave ourselves open to “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others”-type loophole abuse. My other political principles all stem directly from that core proposition, and if you can agree with it, I’m sure we can find plenty of common ground. (Burke might even agree, since, as you may recall, he wrote, “Liberty, if I understand it at all, is a general principle, and the clear right of all the subjects within the realm, or of none,” and, “Nothing is security to any individual but the common interest of all.”)

In short, if the law does not obey the principles of Ma’at, it is not just. Wrapped up in the entire concept of Ma’at, in fact, is the idea that the spirit of justice supersedes the letter of the law.

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“The more intensely that the light shone, the darker a shadow it cast”

One of the profoundest statements on mental health I’ve encountered is by the Welsh musician Ren Aryn Gill, who most frequently uses his given name as a mononym. His song “Hi Ren” has been called this century’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, which I think actually undersells it in some ways. It’s not actually as musically intricate as Queen’s masterpiece, which was constructed in the studio, with heavy reliance on overdubbed three-part harmonies. Then again, Ren also performed it live rather than constructing it in the studio. It’s just him and a guitar, and it’s a stunning performance; it is probably telling that it recently overtook Nightwish’s Wacken 2013 performance of “Ghost Love Score” as the most reacted-to musical performance in YouTube’s history.

More importantly, “Hi Ren” says things about mental health that I’ve rarely seen anyone acknowledge. It’s the most complete depiction I’ve ever seen of what the creative mind is actually like.

It’s also deeply reflective of the psychological theories of Carl Jung, who is largely responsible for repopularizing the concept of enantiodromia in the West.⁽⁸⁶⁾ “Hi Ren” is a deep examination both of enantiodromia and of another major Jungian concept, the shadow self. (Indeed, Ren closely paraphrases Jung in the song’s outro.)

The shadow is a repressed part of the personality that doesn’t correspond to the ideal self (ego ideal), leading to resistance of one’s own internal desires, psychological projection, and inner mental turmoil. While Freudian psychology thinks of the shadow as intrinsically negative, Jungian psychology does not: the Jungian shadow encompasses everything outside the light of consciousness, which can include positive aspects, especially in people struggling with anxiety, poor self-esteem, or false beliefs. (In fact, the Jungian shadow much more closely resembles the Freudian unconscious than the Freudian shadow.)

“Hi Ren” isn’t just a song, although it absolutely is that too. It’s a performance art, a short film, a one-man stage show. The visuals are inseparable from the narrative. The audio is an unspliced single-take recording, although the video was spliced together from four separate takes. (Ren most often does single-take videos, but he and his videographer Samuel Perry-Falvey didn’t have enough time on the video’s set to get a single take whose audio and video footage were both of sufficient quality. “Money Game” took them some 180 takes to get correct.)

“Hi Ren” is a back-and-forth between two sides of Ren’s personality. The first is his conscious self. The more cynical voice that responds is the shadow. At first, it seems like the shadow is completely wrong, is just bringing Ren down, and would be best shut out entirely. But as the shadow replies, “You gotta kill you if you wanna kill me.”

Midway through the song, a much more sinister voice with overtly satanic characteristics begins speaking. This is no longer Ren’s shadow; it is now the collective shadow. Although the shadow is cynical, uncharitable, and sarcastic, its motives are genuinely benevolent in that it’s trying to protect Ren from disappointment. There’s nothing benevolent about the collective shadow. Jung links it to dehumanization and hate crimes. In “Hi Ren”, it says, “I am sin with no rhyme or reason, sun of the morning, Lucifer, Antichrist, father of lies, Mephistopheles, truth in a blender, deceitful pretender, the banished avenger.” And underpinning all this is the interval most commonly referred to as diabolus in mūsicā (“the devil in music”): the tritone.

But the song continues. Ren repeats the first few words of the song, but he changes the line “since my therapist told me I’m ill” to “and I’ve spent half my life ill.” This is not poetic license. He got Lyme disease from a tick bite as a teenager, and it was misdiagnosed until a few years ago. He’s still recovering from it.

I tried describing what follows this in text, but it felt like a woefully inadequate response to one of the most powerful moments of any work of art from the twenty-first century. I’m simply going to urge readers to watch it for themselves. However, the song has no ending. It reprises the song’s wordless opening, but the chord progression never resolves to the root, creating the sense that the events the song describes will continue indefinitely. But although there’s no music beyond this point, the video is two minutes from over. At this point, Ren stands up and delivers a fourth wall-breaking monologue, which I’m reprinting in its entirety.

When I was seventeen years old, I shouted out into an empty room and to a blank canvas that I would defeat the forces of evil, and for the next ten years of my life, I suffered the consequences, with autoimmunity, illness, and psychosis.

As I got older, I realised there were no real winners and no real losers in psychological warfare, but there were victims, and there were students. It wasn’t David versus Goliath; it was a pendulum eternally swaying from the dark to the light, and the more intensely that the light shone, the darker a shadow it cast.

It was never really a battle for me to win. It was an eternal dance, and like a dance, the more rigid I became, the harder it got. The more I cursed my clumsy footsteps, the more I struggled. So I got older, and I learned to relax, and I learned to soften, and that dance got easier.

It is this eternal dance that separates human beings from angels, from demons, from gods. And I must not forget, we must not forget, that we are human beings.

This section undescores how much the entire song has been about enantiodromia. “The more intensely that the light shone, the darker a shadow it cast” is paraphrased from Carl Jung, and the line about the pendulum in particular seems particularly pertinent here. The further the pendulum swings, the more intense the shifts get.

I’ve mentioned before that people have a tendency to see themselves as the heroes of their own stories. I honestly view this as a mistake. We don’t think of heroes as flawed people. Real people have flaws. Being so determined to see ourselves as heroes makes it harder to see our own flaws, which in turn means we’re never going to correct those flaws.

Ren’s outlook strikes me as the correct one. We are not angels, we are not demons, and we are certainly not gods. Supernatural entities don’t get the kind of inner turmoil Ren describes here. We should neither expect perfection out of ourselves nor allow ourselves to be heartless monsters. As humans, we’re neither. We’re a mixture of both. And that’s beautiful in its own right.

If you open Eternal’s map in the map editor Weland, you’ll notice map writing on a lot of the levels, mostly in Latin (“Septococcal Pfhoryngitis”, “Dysmentria”, and “Enantiodromia” use Greek, since their titles are mostly or entirely derived from Greek words). Some of these are simply level design credits, but a lot of them are lengthy passages in Greek or Latin, followed by initials and dates. Most of these are translations of song lyrics. The last one for the game’s epilogue, “The Near Side of Everywhere” reads as follows:

Numquam verō erat proelium prō mē vincere. Erat saltātiō aeterna. Ac sicuti aliqua saltātiō, rigidor fi­ē­bam, difficilior saltātiō fiēbat. Magis exsecrābar vestigia inconcinna mea, magis lūctābar. Igitur ado­lē­scē­bam, ac discēbam mollīre, ac illa saltātio fiēbat facilior.

Est haec saltātiō aeterna quae dīvidit hominēs ab angelīs, ab daemonibus, ab dīs. Ac debeō nē oblīvīscī, debemus nē obliīvīscī, ut sumus hominēs.

–RG, MMXXII

It will probably surprise no one that this is a Latin translation of the last two paragraphs of Ren’s closing monologue. Given how closely his work tied in with some of our central themes, and how the very name of the game appears five different times in the song’s lyrics, I felt it essential to tie it in. In fact, «νῷν αἰωνίου χοροῦ» (“our eternal dance”) in “Vīdī rēs vōs hominēs nē crēderētis” is also a reference both to Eternal and to “Hi Ren”.

I recently translated the first two paragraphs of his monologue to Attic Greek. I’m less confident in the accuracy of this translation, but I still plan to include it in the map writing for “Enantiodromia” for the next release of the game.

Ὅτε εγώ ἦ ἑπτακαίδεκα ἔτη γηραιός, ἔκρᾱζον ἐς κενόν χῶρον καί κενόν λῐ́νον, «Νῑκήσω τᾱ̀ς δῠνᾰ́μεις κᾰ­κῐ́­ᾱς», καί ἐπῐ́ ἑπόμενᾰ δέκᾰ ἔτη βῐ́ου μου, ἔπᾰσχον τὰ ἀποβαίνοντα: αυτοάνόσον, νόσον, καί ψῡ­χώ­νό­σον.

Ἐν γεγήρᾱκᾰ, μεμᾰ́θηκᾰ ἦσᾰν οὐδέν αὐθεντῐκοί ᾰ̓ρῐστῆς καί οὐδέν αὐθεντῐκοί ἡττηθέντες ἐν ψῡχολογῐκοῦ πολέμου, καίτοι ἦσᾰν θῡ́μᾰτᾰ, καί ἦσᾰν μᾰθηταί. Οὐ ἦν Δαυῑ́δ κᾰτᾰ́ τῷ Γολιᾱ́θ. Ἦν εκκρεμής αἰωνίως πᾰλλόμενος ἀπό τοῦ ἐρέβους εἰς τὸ φῶς, καί λᾰμπρότερᾰ τὸ φῶς ἔλᾰμπε, σκοτεινότερᾰ τὴν σκῐᾱ́ν ἔφῠε.

Οὔποτε ᾰ̓ληθῶς ἦν μᾰ́χη πρός με νῑκᾰ́ειν. Ἦν αἰώνῐος χορός. Καί ὅμοιος τῐνῐ́ χοροῦ, ἄκαμπτερος ἐγιγνόμην, χαλεπερο ἐγίγνετο. Ὅ πλέον εγώ ὠνόμην ἀδεξῐᾰ́ ῐ́̓χνη μου, ὅ πλέον εγώ ἠπόρεον. Ὥστε γεγήρᾱκᾰ, καί ἐμᾰ́νθᾰνον μᾰλᾰ́σσεσθαι, καί ἐκεῖνος χορός ἐγίγνετο ῥᾴων.

Ἐστῐ́ οὗτος αἰώνῐος χορός ἱ̆́νᾰ χωρῐ́ζει ᾰ̓νθρώπους ᾰ̓πό ἀγγέλων, ᾰ̓πό δαιμόνων, ᾰ̓πό θεῶν. Καί δεῖ με οὐ ἐπιλᾰνθᾰ́νειν, δεῖ ἀνάγκη ἡμᾶς οὐ ἐπιλᾰνθᾰ́νειν, ἱ̆́νᾰ ἐσμέν ᾰ́̓νθρωποι.

–ΡΓ, ͵βκ̅β̅

“Mold will grow upon the surface, then consumes ’til it dies”

“Hi Ren” is not Ren’s only song to address enantiodromia: the “Money Game” trilogy also addresses it at length, particularly in part three. Part one just features Ren and Romain Axisa, his fellow guitarist in the band The Big Push. As I mentioned, it took them over 180 takes to film this. I’m going to listeners

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Moonlight’s impact on cinema and culture

As I expected, Moonlight has had a major impact on cinema. I’m not sure if it exceeds or subceeds⁽⁸⁷⁾ my expectations, but I certainly didn’t predict that its most obvious spiritual successors would be animated films.

Unfortunately, I can’t talk about any of these films in more than broad strokes without spoiling a large part of what makes them great. All of them have some pretty significant plot twists that are a major part of their power as films. As a result, I’m going to leave some things out of this analysis that I really want to talk about.

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Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Across the Spider-Verse

The most obvious examples are Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and its sequel Across the Spider-Verse. Co-director Peter Ramsey called Moonlight “the most sensitive and emotionally powerful film I’ve seen in decades.” It’s no coincidence that Spider-Verse also stars Mahershala Ali; co-director Bob Persichetti noted:

We had just seen him in Moonlight and how he related to the young kid; we saw a lot of parallels. We approached Mahershala about playing the role of Aaron, never thinking he would actually be interested in doing it. We gave a whole presentation and pitch to him and he said “Yes” there and then. His agent was there and was shocked that he was saying yes on the spot.

–Bob Persichetti, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – The Art of the Movie

The admiration is clearly mutual: Ramsey’s quote was a direct response to Jenkins writing on Twitter:

Certified hype: Spider-Man: #IntoTheSpiderVerse is magnificent! In being the best Spider-Man film ever, one of the best films this year period & best tentpole since Edge of Tomorrow! The things I felt watching this 👌🏿🙏🏿 Hats off to @pramsey342 and Miami’s own @philiplord & crew 🙌🏿

I was stupefied. I mean just tremendous, tremendous work, so grounded and full of verve; visceral. Saw it on the biggest screen I could find, just a viscerally enthralling experience. I salute you 🙌🏿

–@BarryJenkins, Twitter, 2018-12-22

It’s very difficult to talk about what makes the Spider-Verse films special without spoiling them. They are, bar none, the greatest comic book movies I have ever seen, and it’s not even a particularly close call. In part, this is because they are the only comic book movies I have ever seen that really feel like comic books. Their animation is genuinely revolutionary: Sony truly knocked it out of the park. The films fully embody comics’ diversity and beauty like nothing that came before them, and other studios are still trying to catch up. (There have been some good attempts, mind you; I’d name Puss in Boots: The Last Wish as an example of a film that would never have been made before the Spider-Verse films, and is all the better for its influence. Also, hot take: The Last Wish is the best film in the Shrek franchise, and it’s not even particularly close.)

Might a major comic book film of this quality have centered primarily on a black protagonist and his family before Moonlight? Perhaps. But it’s difficult not to think that Moonlight’s success made it easier for such a film to get made, especially with two of the film’s three directors singing its praises or citing it as an influence.

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Nimona

Nimona, the other film I wish to discuss, almost didn’t get released. In fact, Disney actually cancelled its production and closed down its production company, Blue Sky Studios, about six months before it was to be finished. If Annapurna Pictures hadn’t bought it out, it probably would never would have been. Three former Blue Sky staff members said Disney leadership had pushed back against the film’s queer themes and a same-sex kiss.

These were also a major part of the reason Annapurna acquired the film; its CEO Megan Ellison said, “I needed this movie when I was a kid, and quite frankly, I needed it right then and there.” Ellison encouraged the filmmakers to embrace the film’s queer themes.

Unlike Spider-Verse, I don’t have quotes from Nimona’s filmmakers explicitly stating that Moonlight was an influence, but there’s enough similarity in their approaches that I find it quite instructive to compare them. Shortly after seeing Nimona, I wrote the following text, which I’ve lightly edited, mostly by capitalizing words and redacting several spoilers. (A version with the spoilers is available here.)

I’ve been thinking a bit about why I immediately read the movie as implying a romantic subtext between Nimona and [SPOILER]. I think a big part of it was the physical contact, but there’s also the fact that they serve as a foil to Ballister and Ambrosius. In particular, the latter two demonstrate the value of listening and ultimately extending trust, forgiveness, and understanding to one’s romantic partner, where the former two demonstrate the horrible things that can happen when one doesn’t do that.

In the end, the one thing that I think really doesn’t work for me about the picture is that [SPOILER] is too young. Not only is she too young for romance, but she’s also young enough that [SPOILER]. That said, the movie clearly presents Ballister/Ambrosius and Nimona/[SPOILER] as foils, whether we read them as romantic or not. But while I would age [SPOILER] up, I think whether she and Nimona had a romantic relationship is more powerful if left as subtext: it’s one of those questions that doesn’t need to be resolved, and in such cases, I think it’s best to allow audiences to draw their own conclusions.

Indeed, one thing I found especially powerful about Nimona was that it knew which questions it didn’t need to answer. “What is Nimona?” ultimately isn’t important, and leaving the answer up to interpretation was the right choice. Leaving the only element of her background [SPOILER] makes her story more powerful than it would be if we had any further answers. Are there more like her? It’s unclear, and I think the story is actually more powerful for that. Sometimes details can make a story more powerful, but sometimes their omission can make a story more universal. Knowing which is which is an important element of storytelling.

This is one of several reasons Nimona reminded me of Moonlight, which, as I’m sure I’ve said ad nauseam, is my favorite film of all time. Both films shrewdly use details in ways that make their stories more universal, not less. Their narratives about alienation from society are another huge factor. Plus, of course, there’s both films’ queer themes, but it’s not just their presence, but also how neither really treats them as a Big Deal beyond their direct relevance to the characters’ lives, thus preventing either from feeling self-congratulatory. Queerness is just a natural part of life in both films, and neither draws undue attention to it.

Of course, one important distinction between the two films’ handling of queerness is that Moonlight directly addresses characters being bullied for being queer, while Nimona at no point implies that that kind of thing even happens in the society it depicts. I think there are things to be said for each approach, and I think each film actually took the best approach possible for the audience it was trying to reach. (Also, Nimona being a fantasy and Moonlight being… not that no doubt ties into the appropriateness of each film’s approach.)

In any case, Nimona’s same-sex relationships are not the sort that will make children uncomfortable. A lot of kids probably won’t even notice they’re romantic relationships, in fact; the film doesn’t draw any sort of attention to its characters’ sexuality at all. Its relationships are the sort that make adults with certain worldviews uncomfortable. Draw from that, and Disney’s response to it, what you will.

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Other Films

The list of films that could be said to bear Moonlight’s indirect influence is substantially longer. Might Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Kpop Demon Hunters have been made without Moonlight? Perhaps. Get Out was made the same year as Moonlight, after all, and even if it shares a lot of similar themes, it was a contemporary of Moonlight, not a successor.

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Endnotes