Talk:Restless Souls/Technology: Difference between revisions

==Discussion==

===Daodan===

Hi, I "accidentally" followed the link after one of your edits, and stumbled upon my own alleged interpretation of Daodan (etymology and philosophical/ethical meaning) near the top of the page. Just to make sure that you're not putting words into my mouth and exposing non-existing contradictions, here are a few moderatory notes.

*The "troublemaking" semantic and the Chinese origin of the word Daodan were acknowledged by Oni's authors (for what it's worth; obviously Hardy's words aren't sacred or anything). I merely looked up the actual kanji for "troublemaking" and noticed that the substantive form "troublemaker" uses the guǐ/oni kanji. The way it looks to me is, it all started with Hardy's Chinese-influenced "troublemaker" concept, and then someone noticed that the guǐ kanji looked cool on its own - and ''sounded'' cool in Japanese, too, with more than enough mystical lore to back it up. As we also know, Hardy's approach to the whole ghost/demon/ogre/monster distinction was rather fuzzy, so it makes sense that the good-looking and snappy-sounding "Oni" was picked for merchandising, and the Daodan moniker stayed in the story for almost sentimental reasons. That (the Daodan-to-Oni, Chinese-to-Japanese migration) is my personal conjecture, which is out-of-universe and has little effect on anything story-wise. But at the very least I would like to stress that the Chinese origin of Daodan, and specifically the "troublemaking" semantic, is strongly supported by Hardy, and is not something that I made up. As for the "day-oh-dan" pronunciation - if I had a dollar for every time a French or Latin word is butchered (per official pronunciation rule!) by English/US speakers...

*As for the "actual" trickster that's empowering Konoko's disruptive actions, it may very well be an imaginary construct (or archetype, yes), rather than some self-aware entity or an invention that "causes trouble by design". Trouble and loss of control are best seen as unavoidable ''side effects'' of the "hyper-evolutionary process" - something that would have been obvious to Hasegawa and Kerr even during their earliest research and development. If as Kerr says they "had never intended to implant those Chrysalises", then it made total sense for them to label the thing as "big-time trouble" - as a case of basic intellectual humility, rather than planned disruption.

*Whether Hasegawa eventually came to see the Chrysalis as a means to infiltrate and repurpose the Syndicate - that's an entirely different question, and a matter of storytelling choice. The Chrysalis certainly has potential for such an operation, but it doesn't mean that Hasegawa and/or Mukade ''initially'' devised the Chrysalis as an agent of chaos and change - and named the Daodan accordingly, with the trickster archetype in mind. For all we know, maybe the Daodan's name was coined merely to acknowledge its clearly troublesome potential, and the archetypal interpretation (in Hasegawa's mind and/or Mukade's) came later if at all: maybe Hasegawa perceived himself as a "trickster" while infiltrating/alienating the Syndicate, and maybe he didn't. We Do Not Know - but that's a fair possibility. Same for my earlier conjecture that the name Daodan may have been a tribute to his and Jamie's past as activists - that, too, is merely a possibility that fits in well with the general troublemaking semantic, but is also entirely optional, seeing as Hasegawa and Kerr had other reasons to acknowledge the Daodan as "trouble".

:I think you've forgotten the origin of Oni's title, which is undisputed: it was Brent asking his girlfriend what "ghost" was in Japanese, since he was thinking of Ghost in the Shell. Hardy wasn't anywhere near the project for another two years or more. Alex Okita likely supplied the kanji early on when he joined as (I believe) employee #3 after Pease and Evans. "Oni" was intended as a working title until they realized they couldn't think of anything better. It wasn't until Hardy joined in mid-1999 that the meaning became more literal w.r.t. the story – he looked up the real meaning of the word and incorporated it into the story, specifically as "monster" (there's also a nod or two to "ghost" in the game, for old time's sake).

:As for "Daodan" (which Hardy knew how to pronounce, but which was butchered in the recording sessions he wasn't present for), I don't think Hardy told us where on earth he got that word, but perhaps it was from looking up the Chinese meaning of the kanji that was already in use when he joined the project. If so, I guess we could say that he worked yet ''another'' meaning of "oni" into the game!

:P.S.: My proposed in-world origin for "Daodan" is the best one ;-> --[[User:Iritscen|Iritscen]] ([[User talk:Iritscen|talk]]) 20:38, 29 November 2022 (CET)

[[Category:Oni 2]]