From the “shadowcheck-1912” hint, I was led to Carl Jung’s theory on the “shadow” psychology, and from there I’ve been musing that The Architect and Ghost are aspects of the system’s psyche, rather than actual people. This is reinforced by a lack of names - just monikers.
Some psychobabble...
Jung originally wrote that the psyche is made up of 4 structures: the persona (what we project to the world), the shadow (our repressed self, weaknesses, etc), the anima/animus (“soul-image”), and the self (the unification of conscious and unconscious selves).
Originally I thought that these characters were particular archetypes, but after digging a bit deeper, I found something else.
Jung directly used the term “architect” in volume 8 of his collected works, “The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche” to describe how a psychological complex can behave independently:
That is why Freud became the real discoverer of the unconscious in psychology, because he examined those dark places and did not simply dismiss them, with a disparaging euphemism, as “parapraxes.” The via regia to the unconscious, however, is not the dream, as he thought, but the complex, which is the architect of dreams and of symptoms. Nor is this via so very “royal,” either, since the way pointed out by the complex is more like a rough and uncommonly devious footpath that often loses itself in the undergrowth and generally leads not into the heart of the unconscious but past it.
In the same work, Jung also wrote about spirits (ghosts) as projections of autonomous complexes:
Autonomous complexes appear most clearly in dreams, visions, pathological hallucinations, and delusional ideas. Because the ego is unconscious of them, they always appear first in projected form. In dreams they are represented by other people, in visions they are projected, as it were, into space, just like the voices in insanity when not ascribed to persons in the patient’s environment.
[…]
Spirits, therefore, viewed from the psychological angle, are unconscious autonomous complexes which appear as projections because they have no direct association with the ego.
(suggesting that people see ghosts because they cannot perceive their own complex as being part of themself, I think)
TLDR: Our characters, The Architect and Ghost, could potentially be autonomous complexes of the system’s psyche, acting independently of the system.
Throughout his life, until he died in 1961, Jung used architecture as a conceptual tool to study the structure of the human psyche. In fact, it was Jung’s dream of a multistorey house that helped him develop his idea of the collective unconscious. His exploration of this dream house proved so profound that Jung began to understand himself as a kind of architect.
So, in 1923, he designed another home in the town of Bollingen, around 30 kilometres beyond Küsnacht, nearly as far from Zurich as you can go along the lake shore. Jung visited his Bollingen house, which he called the ‘Tower’, to take refuge from the public, isolating himself to continue his engagement with his unconscious.
I posted Memory Timestamp Request instructions to basically every NMS subreddit but people on Reddit just don’t really seem to care about the ARG. At least outside of civilized space folks and real old-timers.
Yes. Much like fractals, we are all pieces of the same whole. Collectively we collect the disparate parts to bring them back to centre. In turn, we bring ourselves together in the same process of purification. Each of us contributing in our own way only brings us closer as a group, in sync, and laser focused.
The Tower archetype represents the upheaval of false structures, and necessary transformation. It symbolizes the collapse of illusions, ego, and unstable foundations. It is the 16th card in Tarot.
From Jung’s perspective, the Tower, and the Tower of Babel, is the ego facing off with the collective unconscious. And a purification of both through the union of opposites.
We are all collectively doing what Jung called the Great Work..
I think the thing that got me here was Reddit. I checked the ARG site a couple weeks before I actually joined here and got sketched out by the site due to security concerns lol.
I feel like most of the broader NMS community (except NMScord) won’t care until Sean comes out and says, “Hey guys don’t forget to participate in our totally-official NMS ARG!”
Which, as others have mentioned, basically didn’t happen at all in Waking Titan Season 1. In Season 2, maybe they only made it known because they had to ask people for their addresses, and we know HG but not A&S.
Granted it’s still possible it’s fan-made… though I really doubt it and have doubted it the whole time.
I honestly don’t care. I’m a little puzzled by how much significance people give to the question. If you served me a nice steak, I wouldn’t worry about whose cow it came from.
I care only insofar as that, if it’s fan made, it’s probably not inherently tied to any big game changes. I can’t pretend that the prospect of having a window, even a super cryptic and borderline religious-fable-style window, into the future of NMS / LNF isn’t exciting to me.
But 100% my attitude from the start has been: This clearly had a ton of effort put into it by whoever did it, and that deserves to be honored by the community engaging with it.
Commercial vanilla essence is made from the pulp of pine trees left over from paper manufacture. It’s never been near a vanilla pod. But it’s chemically identical to vanilla - it looks like vanilla, it smells like vanilla, and it tastes like vanilla.
i think this is is supposed to be a portal code because it mentions something about twelve numbers and you have to put in twelve glyphs to use a portal
Yes, we are trying to figure it out in this thread here.
My thinking was the 6 glitched reality uploaded photos that also came with 12 string hex names, have some relation to this as well, so that’s the approach I took, others have created full blown calendars and have come at it that way. Come join us
