Salvation

Today we found out that Dolores O'Riordian, the lead singer of The Cranberries, died. The cause of death is still unknown but after Googling around she apparently had an overdose attempt back in 2013, but said "I suppose I am meant to stay here for the kids." The news has really affected me and Diana but if I'm honest, I probably wouldn't have cared if this had happened two months ago. The big difference is that I heard the Cranberries song "Salvation" back when Dusty and I drove up to Richmond for his State Trooper exam in November. He rented a car with SiriusXM so I spent most of the drive listening to the 90s station (I think it's called Lithium) -- at some point "Salvation" came on and it immediately struck a chord with me. "Linger" and "Zombie" were cool but, man, "Salvation" really hit me. Now that I think about it, we were coming back from seeing The Sidekicks play through Awkward Breeds in Columbus and we stopped at a Pilot/Flying J during a snowstorm to sleep in their parking lot; while we were there, I recognized the song playing in the store at 2:40 AM and Shazam told me it was "Dreams" by The Cranberries. Considering my obsession with "Salvation," I felt like it was a sign.

My night/life right now summed up in one picture

A post shared by Collin Skeen (@zeskeenmachine) on Nov 1, 2016 at 7:13am PDT

Diana's been playing through Persona 5, so I was browsing around on Reddit when I saw a post in r/ShowerThoughts titled "The final shot of Game of Thrones should end by zooming out of Westeros and revealing that it's actually been a bunch of neckbeards playing a table top RPG the whole time." I immediately had a response ready to go but I scrolled through the replies and realized someone had already beat me to it -- that idea's the basic premise behind the last arc in Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters. Honestly, I often think the true nature of reality may not be too far off from this idea. Wouldn't it make sense that we, as humans, are so drawn to games because that's the very framework through which we exist? As they say: as above so below. Even Biblically, you could argue that human beings are just the pieces used to wage the war of God vs Satan, good vs evil, or Law vs Chaos in a giant game of Celestial Chess. Of course, I think there's a little more to it than that, but it's one potential reading of existence. This example just popped into my mind, but my own personal beliefs are probably closest to those found in Star Ocean III: 'Til the End of Time.

"All that we can see in our dimension, and everything we can touch..
It's all been a fabrication created for us to perceive.
And now they've disabled our perception of such things, effectively erasing them from existence.
Without perception, there is no existence.
And yet...
Even though everything around us was an illusion, I'm positive that our minds, which perceived that dimension, really do exist.
...
You're right.
No matter what they claim, our minds are the only things that were real.
Just believe.
Just believe we exist here and now.
We're not just mere data that someone created.
That's right!
Choose to live!"

Even now, I can't fucking believe that this kind of stuff is what I was feeding my brain as a 12 year old. Makes sense.