Freshman Theorycrafting 101: What is The Snarl?

[brian 333]

It is obvious that we do not yet know very important details about The Snarl, but it is described as a tangled mass of the threads of reality trapped inside the world.

What if it is the world?

Imagine: the gods Snarled up the creation of a world, then got out of the way while it destroyed everything. They waited for The Snarl to calm down, then combed out what they could and used the strands of The Snarl itself to create all of the subsequent realities.

The Snarl is not trapped inside a basket; The Snarl is the basket. Like your girlfriend's favorite wool scarf, they put it in the dryer on high heat and now no matter how they stretch it, it rolls itself back into a ball. An angry, animated ball.

[KorvinStarmast]

This implies that in strip 900 they are looking at the other side of OotS world in panel six. (Likewise with Blackwing before dropping the phylactery) but a problem with that is Laurin's not detecting sentience later on ...

[Metastachydium]

Imagine: the gods Snarled up the creation of a world, then got out of the way while it destroyed everything. They waited for The Snarl to calm down, then combed out what they could and used the strands of The Snarl itself to create all of the subsequent realities.

The Snarl is not trapped inside a basket; The Snarl is the basket.

That is somewhat inconsistent with all the reports about it lashing out from the Rifts ever. Which we saw it can do, I might add.

Like your girlfriend's favorite wool scarf, they put it in the dryer on high heat and now no matter how they stretch it, it rolls itself back into a ball.

(Also, some of us know how to operate a washing machine and how the sun and wind are perfectly good substitutes for another clunky device.)

but a problem with that is Laurin's not detecting sentience later on ...

Please, Korvin, we all know Laurin manifested the close range version of Detect Fish! All we know is that the fish all happened to be elsewhere!

[brian 333]

This implies that in strip 900 they are looking at the other side of OotS world in panel six. (Likewise with Blackwing before dropping the phylactery) but a problem with that is Laurin's not detecting sentience later on ...

That is somewhat inconsistent with all the reports about it lashing out from the Rifts ever. Which we saw it can do, I might add.

The basket can be hollow on the inside and, since every rift is in a part of The Snarl's body, it can be present at any rift and manifest its loose strands as tentacles reaching into the OotSworld.

The volume within the basket could be virtually infinite if we consider Men in Black's galaxy on Orion's belt. Or it could be finite but huge. We don't know.

What we do know is that the gods have not revealed everything they know, and that the gods don't know everything.

[Peelee]

Please, Korvin, we all know Laurin manifested the close range version of Detect Fish! All we know is that the fish all happened to be elsewhere!

Well there's her problem, she missed all the whales and orca pods!

[Metastachydium]

The basket can be hollow on the inside and, since every rift is in a part of The Snarl's body, it can be present at any rift and manifest its loose strands as tentacles reaching into the OotSworld.

The volume within the basket could be virtually infinite if we consider Men in Black's galaxy on Orion's belt. Or it could be finite but huge. We don't know.

I guess that's possible.

and that the gods don't know everything.

Well, we do know this.

What we do know is that the gods have not revealed everything they know,

But not this, so far as I can tell. It is fair to assume that much now that we have learned they withheld the fact that an ungodly (he-heh) number of previous worlds have been destroyed and such, but we don't know they know more than than we know they know.

Well there's her problem, she missed all the whales and orca pods!

Silly Laurin! But what do we expect of someone who thinks she can pick up Marids with close range Detect Fish anyhow?

[brian 333]

Well there's her problem, she missed all the whales and orca pods!

I'm still wondering how she missed out on all the plankton. Do you have any idea how many tons of algae and diatoms it takes to sustain a krill swarm? Plus all of the not-plant living things that eat the plants. The smallest fishes are macroscopic, and are veritable giants when compared to the vast bulk of living things in the oceans.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm still wondering how she missed out on all the plankton. Do you have any idea how many tons of algae and diatoms it takes to sustain a krill swarm? Plus all of the not-plant living things that eat the plants. The smallest fishes are macroscopic, and are veritable giants when compared to the vast bulk of living things in the oceans.

On Earth, yes. On that "as seen through the rift" world?
Who knows?
V has already clarified for us that the laws of physics have to go and weep in the corner, which means that they are not Laws Of Physics. There is no reason to believe that the Laws of Biology work the same in OotS world, or it's related "through the rift" world, either.

[Askthepizzaguy]

What is the snarl?

I do not know for sure, but this has been my head canon:

The Snarl is the manifestation of the full might of the divine power of the 4 original pantheons. They struggled with one another through direct brute force, and their powers resulted in the creation of a being in much the same way they combined forces and created mortals, and the planet.

However, because they fiercely disagreed and had no rulebook when they did it, there are no laws governing its mind or existence. It appears to be just pure chaos mixed with incredible magical power and physical might. It also seems to be angry all the time, or something even more primal, like hunger.

The gods interpreted this creation from their perspective: they saw the eastern pantheon disappear, they saw it consume the first planet, they saw it devour everything it possibly could unmake each time it did so. They believe all the souls consumed by the Snarl and the gods of the eastern pantheon are all dead and worse, unmade, unable to be re-created.

That is all they know. They also had no idea until recently that there was a planet inside the rifts, with the Snarl. They apparently have no ability to see inside the rifts, their power and omniscience stops where the snarl's planar reality begins.

So that's where the knowledge part ends and the speculation begins.

My thoughts on what this means:

If the Snarl is primordial chaos and hunger and destruction and nothing more, why is there a planet inside the rift where the snarl resides? Why hasn't the Snarl unmade that world, in its hunger and desire to destroy, or whatever truly motivates it?

Clearly, the gods we know misunderstand the Snarl and only see it as their enemy, because when it was made, the gods were enemies of one another, actually fighting with one another. That was basically the one rule they unintentionally created when the Snarl was created- it was made with an utter loathing of the gods that created it, because that was exactly what was on their minds when they did.

So they interpret the creature as permanently chaotic and insane and malevolent and destructive, largely because they don't understand the nature of their own creation. Why would they? They never actually see the creature except when it is released from the cage they themselves put it in. During the long periods between when the worlds are destroyed, they cannot even perceive the creature or what it is doing.

Think to how we interpret our own enemies here on Earth, typically, other human beings like ourselves, but usually these are the people we know and love the least, and also, typically do not even interact with on a daily basis. The ignorance forms the basis of fear, the history of enmity forms the basis of our hostility, and the ignorance and hostility never changes.

Much of racism and nationalism and xenophobia and religious bigotry and whatnot, all different words for prejudice and hostility toward the "other", is based upon this potent combination of a lack of familiarity, a lack of common ground, real or perceived, a state of hostility or history thereof, and a judgment of character made out of ignorance, lack of knowledge.

It's much easier to hate someone you don't even know, or have reason to feel sympathies for. The lack of knowledge and familiarity allows you to project your own fears and insecurities into the gap in knowledge and perceive your enemy to be evil and unforgivable and write off any idea of there being an accord, or peace.

I believe the author has made it very clear throughout the many years of making this story that the original creation of the snarl was about the conflict between the gods, and how the conflicts between the mortals in our current creation are largely based on old prejudices and a severe lack of knowledge.

Watch the character arc of our heroes knowing nothing about the plight of the goblins and seeing them almost axiomatically as enemies and treating them as such, even admitting out loud that they never thought to even ask the goblins why they were fighting. It never occurred to them to think of the goblins as potentially having a legitimate grievance to be addressed and a possible solution found, and a state of peace achieved.

Instead, the first assumption held that these were simply hostile creatures to be dealt with, and from their perspective that was often true enough. They were hostile and indeed dangerous. That's what happens when two peoples are at war. The humans elves and dwarves are absolutely as hostile and dangerous at times, when taken as a whole, they've actually been the instigators of this conflict unknowingly throughout all of this history.

However, when you see yourself, you never think of yourself as the antagonist in someone else's story. You simply see your own enemies as the antagonist in your story.

That philosophy and moral lesson has been oft repeated throughout Rich's story, from the way everyone except Roy treated the humanoids when he first met up with Durkon, where a nonviolent solution was found (in the prequel books), to the way the Sapphire Guard and its paladins treated the goblins in the Start of Darkness.

Then there were instances of the Order speaking to goblins incidentally, like the rebellious teen goblins in the first dungeon, where dialogue was possible. We also saw this in the prequel book about the paladin getting his scar, how the Sapphire guard treated goblins. They were all to be exterminated.

The lesson of that book was very, very clear- yes, there were antagonists among the goblins. And there were antagonists among the humans, both equally bloodthirsty and murderous and desiring of war and bloodshed and conquest, and then there were more rational beings capable of peace among each group. Usually in the majority. And it was seen clearly that friendships and even peace were possible between the groups.

The author has been beautifully but consistently banging this particular drum, from the start of the creation myth itself to the entire history of the planet and the injustices baked in, to the protagonists' story, to the gods themselves and their conflict, to every single prequel book more or less.

And that is why it is my conclusion that the author has been keeping the audience mostly in the dark about the Snarl, and the gods as well, but giving the protagonists of the story a tiny glimpse of what the truth really is.

My conjecture on the Snarl:

All the gods believe the Snarl is purely destructive, based on the gaps in what they know combined with what actual information they have firsthand. But there is indeed a gap in knowledge.

The prevailing wisdom that the Snarl is just destructive chaos is undermined by the existence of a planet in the rift. They also perceived the Snarl as being too chaotic to even understand when it is being trapped again by the gods weaving a new world around it. That may also be mistaken.

What they believe is mindless non-sentient chaos could simply be the mind of a childlike being who is hungry and angry.

As in, literally every single sentient being that has ever existed, shares the same sin that the snarl has. All beings with a mind are capable of being hungry and capable of being irritated, these are two things that help keep every living being alive. They're baked into all of us. All sentient beings experience pain or hunger or irritation as basic survival instincts.

These instincts are even shared by the gods. We've seen that even the gods are capable of starving to death.

We've seen the creators of this Snarl get angry, be fearful, irrational, be at war, be capable of violence. They all think they are better than the Snarl, and that the Snarl is somehow alien and different from them.

The Snarl is their first neglected creation. The Snarl is about as literally the child of the gods as any other mortal creation of theirs, or even their own godly offspring. See Hel, a child of Loki, who is more malevolent than he is (now) but he's clearly capable of being just as nasty in other circumstances.

All we are seeing is a child they made in anger and hatred, who inherited their own traits, and never got guidance, because the child they made was stronger than they were, so they were unable to grant it any wisdom or guidance.

What they perceive as the being being unknowingly imprisoned after it calms down each time it destroys the world is simply the child finally being fed.

And, by the way, the child is calmly watching when its parents work together in harmony to accomplish something together. It does not continue its rampage after it is fed, and its basic needs (apparently) are met. It quietly watches each time its parents work together to make a new world.

And so the Snarl has been slowly learning over the many eons how to create things, by watching its parents create things over and over again.

You can see the Snarl literally watching the gods make a world around it in the narratives told by the gods. Look at its eyes.

Now see we have seen firsthand an actual world in the plane where the Snarl resides.

Watch how the gods who become aware of this find it odd but still refuse to question their own assumptions about the Snarl. They never expected a planet to exist with the Snarl, but have no idea what it means, and since it is inconsistent with their understanding of the Snarl, mostly dismiss it. Especially since it is merely secondhand information they haven't even verified yet.

But watch how our protagonists react.

They SAW the planet that shouldn't exist if the gods' assumptions about the Snarl were true, and we've seen the Snarl is also real firsthand. We also saw current enemies of our protagonists also detect the planet on the other side of the rift and confirm that it appears to be completely real, with real water and everything.

Know also that a being of primordial chaos lacking sentience would have no ability to create a stable illusion, either. An illusion that follows all the rules of our reality makes absolutely no sense to a being of pure chaos. It would never conceive of making something, even an illusion, that is stable and behaves exactly as ordered as reality does.

That proves beyond any possible doubt that the Snarl cannot possibly be simply just a being of primordial chaos, as the gods believe it to be, and how the story was originally told to us through them, by the author.

The author did not lie to us. The author passed on the very real beliefs of the gods, from their perspective, without the gods even intending to lie to us. That's their incomplete knowledge and we, the audience, know FOR A FACT that knowledge is incomplete, it's a literal plot point. Entire comic pages were dedicated to hammering as canonical fact the idea that the gods have no idea what the Snarl is really up to.

So, in light of two things- The gods deeply misunderstand the Snarl itself, and its nature, but also, the Snarl is obviously capable of either creating its own worlds now, or, preserving one that someone else made, but I favor the former theory over the latter, because the gods would have witnessed the Snarl destroying all the previous worlds.

What we are seeing through the rift is a world the Snarl created on its own, after learning from its own creators how to make things instead of just destroy things.

The Snarl is clearly powerful, and it is made of 4 colors of divine energy or quiddity. Anything made by the three pantheons has been destroyed, pretty much, except the current world.

So the world we are seeing inside the rift is not a previously created world. It's a new one, not made by the three current pantheons, and not made by mortals either.

That leaves but two options, in my view. More if we made the narrative more complicated than it needs to be, but occam's razor tells me these two:

1. The Snarl made this world
2. The Eastern Pantheon somehow survived and made this world

Why I disregard the second as likely is twofold, the other gods apparently witnessed the deaths of the gods of the Eastern Pantheon, but, it's possible one or a few survived or hid from the Snarl while it was rampaging, by thinking to turn invisible or something, or hiding on the astral plane, whatever.

However, there hasn't been a sighting of a planet inside the rifts before, to anyone's knowledge, and a previous world, countless of them, had rifts. So someone would have reported such a planet if it existed before.

This means option two is almost certainly disproved.

That means the Snarl made this world, and I'm almost 100 percent certain of that.

And it fits entirely within the meta-narrative and morality of the story the author wants to tell. How we understand the Snarl, the greater scope big bad evil thing of this reality, is wrong. It's based in partial knowledge, partial ignorance. And the great conflict between it and the gods and the resulting destruction of countless innocent lives caught in between is one that is not intractable and could have been resolved had anyone put serious thought into trying that route.

It's also a literal plot point that the Gods are RESIGNED TO THE CYCLE. They are so stuck in their ways that they perceive NO SOLUTION other than just remaking the world over and over and accepting the perpetual struggle. They've not only stopped, for the most part, even thinking of doing it any other way, they've stopped thinking anything new could possibly happen.

It was shocking to them that a new divine quiddity could possibly appear. Maybe the Snarl itself is the source of this new divine quiddity, purple possibly being a mix of all the other colors together. It feeds on souls much like the gods who created it do, and the gods themselves believe in this snarl and fear it, not unlike mortals fearing and believing in the gods, and that faith powers the Snarl just as much as consuming souls does.

Basically, the Snarl is a god being, a child, but with more power than its parents. It is neglected, hungry, and sort of grew up in a household with dysfunctional parents. It learned from them, from the moment it was created, to have enmity and to use brute force to get what it wants.

But it is not motivated by evil. It is not motivated purely to destroy, any more than anything else that eats is.

This is evidenced by the fact that it made a new planet. It wants to create something, and it learned how from watching its parents actually work together, and every time the parents do that, the world they create is stronger and stronger.

The Snarl in turn has used the raw materials of previous planets, gods consumed, souls consumed, powered by the belief the gods have in it, and grown over time and learned to do something besides throw tantrums and destroy and consume things.

Kind of like every human child does, eventually. All of us start off doing nothing but consuming, "destroying" other things, literally. We throw tantrums, get angry, and so forth.

But a relatively long period of time later we are capable of doing other things. We are capable of doing something besides just consuming and destroying and throwing tantrums and being angry or calm as the only two major emotions we have as a baby.

At a certain point we grow up, learn to create things of our own, even have children.

The Snarl is not just a misunderstood child, it clearly is dangerous and destructive. But if it were purely evil like, say, Xykon, then it wouldn't have created something.

The Snarl doesn't need a planet to live on. It's done just fine treating planets and the things on them as raw materials, and existing in space pretty much.

So the planet is for something else. But "things" don't really have needs, beings do.

Therefore the Snarl created a planet, so that other beings could one day live on it.

This cannot be possible from a being of pure chaos, pure malevolence, or pure destruction.

This is, I stress, not to say chaos, malevolence, or destruction are not part of what makes the Snarl. All I am suggesting is that chaos, malevolence, and destruction are part of what makes the gods, and all the mortals we have seen so far.

All of us.

The Snarl is not wholly alien to us. The Snarl is not pure primordial chaos, nor is it pure evil. It cannot be, despite all it has done.

It absolutely is something more, and the Gods don't know that, and only the protagonists have even considered it to any degree. And even most of us in the audience, I'd wager, haven't considered it either.

But that's what is true, and it's been staring us in the face ever since that planet first appeared.

The Snarl is not only now also a creator God, it's learning how to create things by watching others. And it learns from us. So the solution to the Snarl isn't to destroy it or unravel it, it's to understand it and teach it something besides how to destroy things.

The Snarl is the literal child of our struggles. The struggle can end with peace or with our destruction and the choice is ours.

That's the story the author wants to tell, and so far, has told...

Spoiler

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...in my too-wordy opinion. Humbly submitted for your perusal.

[brian 333]

Spoiler: [QUOTE=Askthepizzaguy

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;26018809]What is the snarl?

I do not know for sure, but this has been my head canon:

The Snarl is the manifestation of the full might of the divine power of the 4 original pantheons. They struggled with one another through direct brute force, and their powers resulted in the creation of a being in much the same way they combined forces and created mortals, and the planet.

However, because they fiercely disagreed and had no rulebook when they did it, there are no laws governing its mind or existence. It appears to be just pure chaos mixed with incredible magical power and physical might. It also seems to be angry all the time, or something even more primal, like hunger.

The gods interpreted this creation from their perspective: they saw the eastern pantheon disappear, they saw it consume the first planet, they saw it devour everything it possibly could unmake each time it did so. They believe all the souls consumed by the Snarl and the gods of the eastern pantheon are all dead and worse, unmade, unable to be re-created.

That is all they know. They also had no idea until recently that there was a planet inside the rifts, with the Snarl. They apparently have no ability to see inside the rifts, their power and omniscience stops where the snarl's planar reality begins.

So that's where the knowledge part ends and the speculation begins.

My thoughts on what this means:

If the Snarl is primordial chaos and hunger and destruction and nothing more, why is there a planet inside the rift where the snarl resides? Why hasn't the Snarl unmade that world, in its hunger and desire to destroy, or whatever truly motivates it?

Clearly, the gods we know misunderstand the Snarl and only see it as their enemy, because when it was made, the gods were enemies of one another, actually fighting with one another. That was basically the one rule they unintentionally created when the Snarl was created- it was made with an utter loathing of the gods that created it, because that was exactly what was on their minds when they did.

So they interpret the creature as permanently chaotic and insane and malevolent and destructive, largely because they don't understand the nature of their own creation. Why would they? They never actually see the creature except when it is released from the cage they themselves put it in. During the long periods between when the worlds are destroyed, they cannot even perceive the creature or what it is doing.

Think to how we interpret our own enemies here on Earth, typically, other human beings like ourselves, but usually these are the people we know and love the least, and also, typically do not even interact with on a daily basis. The ignorance forms the basis of fear, the history of enmity forms the basis of our hostility, and the ignorance and hostility never changes.

Much of racism and nationalism and xenophobia and religious bigotry and whatnot, all different words for prejudice and hostility toward the "other", is based upon this potent combination of a lack of familiarity, a lack of common ground, real or perceived, a state of hostility or history thereof, and a judgment of character made out of ignorance, lack of knowledge.

It's much easier to hate someone you don't even know, or have reason to feel sympathies for. The lack of knowledge and familiarity allows you to project your own fears and insecurities into the gap in knowledge and perceive your enemy to be evil and unforgivable and write off any idea of there being an accord, or peace.

I believe the author has made it very clear throughout the many years of making this story that the original creation of the snarl was about the conflict between the gods, and how the conflicts between the mortals in our current creation are largely based on old prejudices and a severe lack of knowledge.

Watch the character arc of our heroes knowing nothing about the plight of the goblins and seeing them almost axiomatically as enemies and treating them as such, even admitting out loud that they never thought to even ask the goblins why they were fighting. It never occurred to them to think of the goblins as potentially having a legitimate grievance to be addressed and a possible solution found, and a state of peace achieved.

Instead, the first assumption held that these were simply hostile creatures to be dealt with, and from their perspective that was often true enough. They were hostile and indeed dangerous. That's what happens when two peoples are at war. The humans elves and dwarves are absolutely as hostile and dangerous at times, when taken as a whole, they've actually been the instigators of this conflict unknowingly throughout all of this history.

However, when you see yourself, you never think of yourself as the antagonist in someone else's story. You simply see your own enemies as the antagonist in your story.

That philosophy and moral lesson has been oft repeated throughout Rich's story, from the way everyone except Roy treated the humanoids when he first met up with Durkon, where a nonviolent solution was found (in the prequel books), to the way the Sapphire Guard and its paladins treated the goblins in the Start of Darkness.

Then there were instances of the Order speaking to goblins incidentally, like the rebellious teen goblins in the first dungeon, where dialogue was possible. We also saw this in the prequel book about the paladin getting his scar, how the Sapphire guard treated goblins. They were all to be exterminated.

The lesson of that book was very, very clear- yes, there were antagonists among the goblins. And there were antagonists among the humans, both equally bloodthirsty and murderous and desiring of war and bloodshed and conquest, and then there were more rational beings capable of peace among each group. Usually in the majority. And it was seen clearly that friendships and even peace were possible between the groups.

The author has been beautifully but consistently banging this particular drum, from the start of the creation myth itself to the entire history of the planet and the injustices baked in, to the protagonists' story, to the gods themselves and their conflict, to every single prequel book more or less.

And that is why it is my conclusion that the author has been keeping the audience mostly in the dark about the Snarl, and the gods as well, but giving the protagonists of the story a tiny glimpse of what the truth really is.

My conjecture on the Snarl:

All the gods believe the Snarl is purely destructive, based on the gaps in what they know combined with what actual information they have firsthand. But there is indeed a gap in knowledge.

The prevailing wisdom that the Snarl is just destructive chaos is undermined by the existence of a planet in the rift. They also perceived the Snarl as being too chaotic to even understand when it is being trapped again by the gods weaving a new world around it. That may also be mistaken.

What they believe is mindless non-sentient chaos could simply be the mind of a childlike being who is hungry and angry.

As in, literally every single sentient being that has ever existed, shares the same sin that the snarl has. All beings with a mind are capable of being hungry and capable of being irritated, these are two things that help keep every living being alive. They're baked into all of us. All sentient beings experience pain or hunger or irritation as basic survival instincts.

These instincts are even shared by the gods. We've seen that even the gods are capable of starving to death.

We've seen the creators of this Snarl get angry, be fearful, irrational, be at war, be capable of violence. They all think they are better than the Snarl, and that the Snarl is somehow alien and different from them.

The Snarl is their first neglected creation. The Snarl is about as literally the child of the gods as any other mortal creation of theirs, or even their own godly offspring. See Hel, a child of Loki, who is more malevolent than he is (now) but he's clearly capable of being just as nasty in other circumstances.

All we are seeing is a child they made in anger and hatred, who inherited their own traits, and never got guidance, because the child they made was stronger than they were, so they were unable to grant it any wisdom or guidance.

What they perceive as the being being unknowingly imprisoned after it calms down each time it destroys the world is simply the child finally being fed.

And, by the way, the child is calmly watching when its parents work together in harmony to accomplish something together. It does not continue its rampage after it is fed, and its basic needs (apparently) are met. It quietly watches each time its parents work together to make a new world.

And so the Snarl has been slowly learning over the many eons how to create things, by watching its parents create things over and over again.

You can see the Snarl literally watching the gods make a world around it in the narratives told by the gods. Look at its eyes.

Now see we have seen firsthand an actual world in the plane where the Snarl resides.

Watch how the gods who become aware of this find it odd but still refuse to question their own assumptions about the Snarl. They never expected a planet to exist with the Snarl, but have no idea what it means, and since it is inconsistent with their understanding of the Snarl, mostly dismiss it. Especially since it is merely secondhand information they haven't even verified yet.

But watch how our protagonists react.

They SAW the planet that shouldn't exist if the gods' assumptions about the Snarl were true, and we've seen the Snarl is also real firsthand. We also saw current enemies of our protagonists also detect the planet on the other side of the rift and confirm that it appears to be completely real, with real water and everything.

Know also that a being of primordial chaos lacking sentience would have no ability to create a stable illusion, either. An illusion that follows all the rules of our reality makes absolutely no sense to a being of pure chaos. It would never conceive of making something, even an illusion, that is stable and behaves exactly as ordered as reality does.

That proves beyond any possible doubt that the Snarl cannot possibly be simply just a being of primordial chaos, as the gods believe it to be, and how the story was originally told to us through them, by the author.

The author did not lie to us. The author passed on the very real beliefs of the gods, from their perspective, without the gods even intending to lie to us. That's their incomplete knowledge and we, the audience, know FOR A FACT that knowledge is incomplete, it's a literal plot point. Entire comic pages were dedicated to hammering as canonical fact the idea that the gods have no idea what the Snarl is really up to.

So, in light of two things- The gods deeply misunderstand the Snarl itself, and its nature, but also, the Snarl is obviously capable of either creating its own worlds now, or, preserving one that someone else made, but I favor the former theory over the latter, because the gods would have witnessed the Snarl destroying all the previous worlds.

What we are seeing through the rift is a world the Snarl created on its own, after learning from its own creators how to make things instead of just destroy things.

The Snarl is clearly powerful, and it is made of 4 colors of divine energy or quiddity. Anything made by the three pantheons has been destroyed, pretty much, except the current world.

So the world we are seeing inside the rift is not a previously created world. It's a new one, not made by the three current pantheons, and not made by mortals either.

That leaves but two options, in my view. More if we made the narrative more complicated than it needs to be, but occam's razor tells me these two:

1. The Snarl made this world
2. The Eastern Pantheon somehow survived and made this world

Why I disregard the second as likely is twofold, the other gods apparently witnessed the deaths of the gods of the Eastern Pantheon, but, it's possible one or a few survived or hid from the Snarl while it was rampaging, by thinking to turn invisible or something, or hiding on the astral plane, whatever.

However, there hasn't been a sighting of a planet inside the rifts before, to anyone's knowledge, and a previous world, countless of them, had rifts. So someone would have reported such a planet if it existed before.

This means option two is almost certainly disproved.

That means the Snarl made this world, and I'm almost 100 percent certain of that.

And it fits entirely within the meta-narrative and morality of the story the author wants to tell. How we understand the Snarl, the greater scope big bad evil thing of this reality, is wrong. It's based in partial knowledge, partial ignorance. And the great conflict between it and the gods and the resulting destruction of countless innocent lives caught in between is one that is not intractable and could have been resolved had anyone put serious thought into trying that route.

It's also a literal plot point that the Gods are RESIGNED TO THE CYCLE. They are so stuck in their ways that they perceive NO SOLUTION other than just remaking the world over and over and accepting the perpetual struggle. They've not only stopped, for the most part, even thinking of doing it any other way, they've stopped thinking anything new could possibly happen.

It was shocking to them that a new divine quiddity could possibly appear. Maybe the Snarl itself is the source of this new divine quiddity, purple possibly being a mix of all the other colors together. It feeds on souls much like the gods who created it do, and the gods themselves believe in this snarl and fear it, not unlike mortals fearing and believing in the gods, and that faith powers the Snarl just as much as consuming souls does.

Basically, the Snarl is a god being, a child, but with more power than its parents. It is neglected, hungry, and sort of grew up in a household with dysfunctional parents. It learned from them, from the moment it was created, to have enmity and to use brute force to get what it wants.

But it is not motivated by evil. It is not motivated purely to destroy, any more than anything else that eats is.

This is evidenced by the fact that it made a new planet. It wants to create something, and it learned how from watching its parents actually work together, and every time the parents do that, the world they create is stronger and stronger.

The Snarl in turn has used the raw materials of previous planets, gods consumed, souls consumed, powered by the belief the gods have in it, and grown over time and learned to do something besides throw tantrums and destroy and consume things.

Kind of like every human child does, eventually. All of us start off doing nothing but consuming, "destroying" other things, literally. We throw tantrums, get angry, and so forth.

But a relatively long period of time later we are capable of doing other things. We are capable of doing something besides just consuming and destroying and throwing tantrums and being angry or calm as the only two major emotions we have as a baby.

At a certain point we grow up, learn to create things of our own, even have children.

The Snarl is not just a misunderstood child, it clearly is dangerous and destructive. But if it were purely evil like, say, Xykon, then it wouldn't have created something.

The Snarl doesn't need a planet to live on. It's done just fine treating planets and the things on them as raw materials, and existing in space pretty much.

So the planet is for something else. But "things" don't really have needs, beings do.

Therefore the Snarl created a planet, so that other beings could one day live on it.

This cannot be possible from a being of pure chaos, pure malevolence, or pure destruction.

This is, I stress, not to say chaos, malevolence, or destruction are not part of what makes the Snarl. All I am suggesting is that chaos, malevolence, and destruction are part of what makes the gods, and all the mortals we have seen so far.

All of us.

The Snarl is not wholly alien to us. The Snarl is not pure primordial chaos, nor is it pure evil. It cannot be, despite all it has done.

It absolutely is something more, and the Gods don't know that, and only the protagonists have even considered it to any degree. And even most of us in the audience, I'd wager, haven't considered it either.

But that's what is true, and it's been staring us in the face ever since that planet first appeared.

The Snarl is not only now also a creator God, it's learning how to create things by watching others. And it learns from us. So the solution to the Snarl isn't to destroy it or unravel it, it's to understand it and teach it something besides how to destroy things.

The Snarl is the literal child of our struggles. The struggle can end with peace or with our destruction and the choice is ours.

That's the story the author wants to tell, and so far, has told...

Spoiler

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...in my too-wordy opinion. Humbly submitted for your perusal.

[/QUOTE]

Wow! I will have to do some thinking now. Thank you for this essay!

[KorvinStarmast]

The Snarl.

OK.

Having just collected $75 (US) from a few acquaintances since I bet the Boston Celtics sweep, and having spent most of today smoking and grilling various meats for the in-laws to consume for the Memorial Day Weekend food and alcohol event, I can only say this:

The Snarl is your Mother-In-Law.

She took what should have been a glorious day of uplifting spirits and pissed all over it harder than a cow pissing on a flat rock.

That's what the Snarl would do.

[WookieBush]

Im going to get super fourth-wall-y here. I think the snarl is a personification of the countless dnd groups that have ended their games for one reason or another. It really got me thinking about it when Thor was showing Durkon and Minra the gravestones from all the previous worlds, and how many thousands upon thousands, countless really, there were. Then it goes super meta and not only refers to different campaign themes throughout the comic, but it also refers to itself as a stick-figure fantasy themed comic. So then I thought, if the comic openly references all the hundreds of thousands of games that dnd players have started over the years, what would the snarl represent? And then I just thought to all the times I have had a dnd group fall apart through my own experiences. So in story, the snarl could mean something along the literal chaotic energies of the gods, but it sounds to me like the snarl is a metaphor for the disagreements or decline of interest or whatever that cause dnd groups to stop playing their campaigns.

[Mordar]

Im going to get super fourth-wall-y here. I think the snarl is a personification of the countless dnd groups that have ended their games for one reason or another. It really got me thinking about it when Thor was showing Durkon and Minra the gravestones from all the previous worlds, and how many thousands upon thousands, countless really, there were. Then it goes super meta and not only refers to different campaign themes throughout the comic, but it also refers to itself as a stick-figure fantasy themed comic. So then I thought, if the comic openly references all the hundreds of thousands of games that dnd players have started over the years, what would the snarl represent? And then I just thought to all the times I have had a dnd group fall apart through my own experiences. So in story, the snarl could mean something along the literal chaotic energies of the gods, but it sounds to me like the snarl is a metaphor for the disagreements or decline of interest or whatever that cause dnd groups to stop playing their campaigns.

I can definitely feel this, with a little twist...the pantheons as players, and the strife between and among them dooming campaign after campaign of all sorts of different games. The Snarl is those conflicts - interpersonal, time, real life, competing interests - that have ended millions of "worlds", each deserving of a monument.

Adding the fourth quiddity to bind the Snarl...could be representative of cooperation where before it was lacking (and rules of behavior aren't quite enough because the Snarl still leaks in), or bringing fresh perspectives and contributions to the group.

Or maybe it isn't, but that's certainly a good take IMO!

- M