Week 15: Faction Hollywood

Use Russell T. Davies as Brookhaven's visual reference?
Can Faction Hollywood be fleshed out to any real extent without risking libel suits and getting cancelled?
"Hollywood had been cut off from the rest of the world... by the walls of broken discard culture which had been accumulating there ever since the 1920's". "Hollywood, a town which can be considered the most aggressively superstitious tribal community on Earth".


The Guantlet
House Military academy located below what is now Kobe in the Maiji period, (1850).
Specifically chosen because the local dismissal of weird activity and behaviour as, "western" and the continued existence of the Shogunate hierarchies.
The .T.T. capsules may have been disguised as part of Commodre Perry's fleet.
During/after the Tokugawa isolation the Hokkaido Ainu hosted a powerful enemy force, (whether this was the enemy leadership itself and or it's, "reps" it's not known or agreed) for a short time passively observing the Timelord's Guantlet facility. (Is there anything in Ainu beliefs this could be referencing or is used elsewhere?).
Indirectly referenced, (hinted at in several, "additional" .G.C.I. Processor scenes) due to Cwej's interference and or the malfunctioning .G.C.I. Processor).
One of the Wartime powers left the Celestis meme mine in Hollywood.


Hollow Spectaculars
The, "witches" are Mal'akh with an oriental design?


Mount Usu Duel
Brookhaven knew who Cwej was or at least his name.
Lolita has been mutated with Yssgaroth taint, a .T.T. capsule Mal'akh. Probably self inflicted for some reason, (either seeking enhancements or it's Timelord's enmy symbolism) and the taint isn't all that difficult to find. The drilling project in, "Head of State" would be sufficient to get more ooze.
The Order of the white Peacock's presence in the movie is unexplained. Due to being inserted by the malfunctioning .G.C.I. Processor or that specific information/dialogue/scenes deleted by someone, (possibly the enemy) for some unknown reason.
The Ainu are enemy associated? Do their beliefs contain anything whomever wrote them would have used? They were included by Brookhaven or the malfunctioning .G.C.I. Projector as generic Hollywood natives.
The enemy, (Gods of the Ainu) appears as an absence similar to the Kaiwar entity but both Cwej and Brookhaven are appalled at the sight of it. It's voice is deafeningly loud but not angry.
"Who's future diid you steal?". Either the enemy is making a jab at Hollywood or the message isn't meant for them.
"The aesthetic's lost. When the coherency's broken anything can happen. When anything can happen then anuything can get in. Don't you know that by now?". So Cwej's interference/unbalancing the narrative enabled it to manifest.
Cwej pretty much confirms it's the enemy.
The absence, (the enemy) expands and either consumes or destoys Brookhaven. Possible through contact?
The something coming up from beneath the ground is a Guantlet reference/representation but it's never shown.

Harvey, Hermes
"It's the coolest character who wins", Brookhaven.
"The coolest charatcer is the one whose face you never get to see", the enemy.
"the Sourge" = "and the Scourge, (who's face tellingly remained perpetually hidden behind a silk veil)".
More proof that The Order/Cult of the White Peacock is enemy associated?

"Hermes". The black sun alchemy symbol is also one of the essential keys in the art of Hermes, the necessity of the living to revive the dead. The enemy wants to revive something or someone dead? Also vulgar gold is considered dead so the golden robed enemy in .8.D.A. Alien Bodies are dead or is that a coincidence?
So not just edgelord talk but possibly references?


The Mystery of Edwin Brood
"unless of course the Faction's prison has ceased to have any foundation in actuality and become, (like the house of the Grandfather or the ulterior worlds of the Celestis) a state of being rather then a location". I don't know what but there's something about this. House of the Grandfather does that mean the Day Empire reference or did he alter time state the physical Paradox house aswell?


Order of the White Peacock
No genuine members left by the 1950s? Not in actuality. Fictionalised then ionised or absorbed by the enemy?
Is to Hollywood evil/villain symbolism what Transylvania is to vampires.
"the same kind of shock and terror that a character in a short story might feel if he were suddenly and unexpectedly exposed to the plot of a full length novel"< Could someone please explain this one?
May of originated the idea for Faction Hollywood's Production Hell prison.
Responsible for pulp villians including the Scourge mentioned above.
Rough idea: They started out as the usual contrarian Yezidi subgroup, (or, "Dark sect") then there was some kind of visual contact or vision of the Timelords which led to them choosing to, "worship" the enemy which eventually degenerated into a love of the great and occult power of being an enemy. Then in the 1950's the enemy turned up and fictionalised then ionised or absorbed them? And they've effectively been enemy agents ever since.

https://www.reddit.com/r/factionparadox/comments/v5r1so/the_order_of_the_white_peacocks_forms/
https://www.reddit.com/r/factionparadox/comments/yztchd/yezidi_peacocks/
https://www.reddit.com/r/factionparadox/comments/z5m93t/yezidi_peacocks_cont/



The Devil Doctor
www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19142/pg19142-images.html
mporcius.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-devil-doctor-by-sax-rohmer.html

The Slayer of Souls by Robert Chambers
www.gutenberg.org/files/36281/36281-h/36281-h.htm
library.hrmtc.com/2011/05/31/the-slayer-of-souls/ <Hermetic?
www.pornokitsch.com/2009/01/underground-reading-the-slayer-of-souls-by-robert-chambers.html


Production Hell
"In these cases it's the anxiety of what the footage might contain which is all important". This anxiety over what might be there and the resulting importance give to what is, "missing" is referenced in, "The Book of the War” as being the existence context vital to understanding the enemy's nature, reinforced by the referred to missing entries by their nature and that they either directly relate to: the enemy, (ie: The Gods of the Ainu and S'tanim) and or their possible capabilities, (ie: Violent Unknown Events, Mohandassa, and Sixth Wave Defections).


Chad Vandemeer (1952-Present)
Okay if Russell T. Davies is Brookhaven who's this guy? ... Mark Gattis.
The .G.C.I. Processor, (Celestis meme mine) was found in an .U.P.N. Central Properties Store Room No.17* maybe locked into moments of absolute disaster.
*= Does this place exist?


What did we learn about the enemy?
97.During/after the Tokugawa isolation the Hokkaido Ainu hosted a powerful enemy force, (whether this was the enemy leadership itself and or it's, "reps" it's not known or agreed) for a short time passively observing the Timelord's Gauntlet facility.
98.Was able to manifest during the Hollywood Bowl shooting due to the aesthetic and coherency being broken.
98.Appears as an absence in recordings with a deafeningly loud but not angry voice, (sensory and film).
99.One visual form both Cwej and Brookhaven found appalling to look at.
100.It's motivation may involve a stolen future.
101.Tries to sound impressive and edgey.
102.Has links to the order/Cult of the White Peacock. May have absorbed/ficitonalised them?
103.Can directly consume or kill someone. But only through contact?
104.May want to revive something or someone dead/may consider themselves dead?
105.May have erased the Through The Eye of Eternity episode, "Miss Hiroshima".
106.Maybe have some association with the colour brown? 

Mujun: The Ghost Kingdom and the Mount Usu duel give us a lot to chew over, of course. For one thing, everything the Voice says deserves the same focus that we gave to the Rivera manuscript - although perhaps we should wait until we've read the Younger World Story?

In which the nature of the Enemy is revealed as Fury from the Deep... or The Phantom Menace (appropriate title).

The focus on the mundanities of media production is a cheeky meta wink to the realities behind Faction Paradox's genesis as an independent book-line. Production Hell indeed, how about spinning off entirely from the original property while it's stuck developing a movie deal or an animation pilot or even a new series? The way the Order of the White Peacock bleeds over from subtext into text about the nature of 'Enemies' in popular culture is an insightful moment, taking swipes at the way the Great Houses portray their Enemy, but also inviting the reader to analyse other works of fiction, to divine what prejudices are buried in what they consider evil.

The concept of lost media fits so snugly into FP's lore that it almost feels like it must have been partly an inspiration for the whole thing. Flickered memories of haunting images, lost to time's decay never to be seen again and only guessed at. The perfect hiding place for dark secrets and mysteries. The missing episodes of Doctor Who form such a fundamental part of understanding its origins as a television show that it had to make its impact in the psyche of Faction Paradox somewhere. There are times it starts to feel like the plot of Cannibal Holocaust, or one of those 'dark children's episodes' creepypastas, though with much more subtlety.

All the commentary on Film as a medium prefigures This Town Will Never Let Us Go's fascination with VHS. It's one of the funniest sections of the book, taking jabs at many obvious targets in the industry, from production down to fan reaction, all while still layering on interesting extensions of the FP mythology. It's like one last roundup, Celestis machines, Remote techniques, Faction goals, Great House censorship.


The Ghost Kingdom acting as one last obscuring layer of events in the War is a great punchline to this chapter. The choice to, as I read it, make a veiled analysis of what was a very recent moment in pop culture with the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and mix it in with the concerns of Faction Paradox is inspired. Now, it's far from a one-to-one focus on a single movie. The metaphor is a broad sweep attacking general blockbuster moviemaking trends of the late 90's. Brookhaven is no easy George Lucas parody either.

But to me the links with TPM seem to rise above other options. The title 'Ghost Kingdom' is a not-so subtle indication of what this chapter is aiming at, using the Phantom title of Star Wars' latest release to nicely mesh with themes of invisible enemies and unseen events. Not to mention potshots at 'GCI', a 1999 release date, comic relief characters who didn't go down well with the audience, and an overly large number of focus characters. Even the use of oriental tropes feels like an intentional mirroring of TPM's Asian inspired designs aesthetics (for Naboo, the Trade Federation, or the 'Eastern Mystic' flavoured Jedi Knights). It even gets ahead of the game and accurately predicts duels on lava banks and revealing vampiric faces, plot points that weren't made concrete until three years after the Book's publication (though they were part of the vague backstory lore of Star Wars for some time before the Prequels came out). Or how about predicting CG replacements of long passed actors for an eerily correct guess about the shape of things to come?

One gets a sense that TPM represents some kind of apotheosis as film, whether positive or negative, created in 'a computer' (or so the uninformed take would go), acting as a peak from which it can be never repeated. From a technical level, this is pretty much spot on given the way TPM's effects work has never really been superseded by new technology. Even today new films such as, to grab a random example, Avatar 2, is made in a similar way to TPM's use of bluescreen sets with digital creatures and environments. There really hasn't been another leap in visual fidelity in quite the same way.

All the same, it's far from a condemnation of the movie's ambitions. I vaguely recall some positive comments towards Revenge of the Sith from Lawrence Miles in an interview I once read, and its clear there's some sympathy for the aesthetic intentions of the Prequel Trilogy (which I'm a big fan of). The way the movie itself ended up, with creatives tied to it convinced of the project's failure even after listing some of its merits, is a mournful reflection of the movie's actual critical response.

Another key piece of the puzzle is that TPM, and the Prequels as a whole, is the story of the creation of an essentially manufactured enemy faction, cobbled together out of boogeymen to scare a state into enacting sweeping policy changes, beginning a huge-scale war, and devolving into the very evil they sought out to fight. When you take the time to really dive into the themes of the Prequels, a surprising number of themes come up that sync up nicely with everything Faction Paradox was doing at a similar point in time.
 

It's even more fascinating that this parody angle also hides foreshadowing for major events in the story of the War, predicting the downfall of the Eleven-Day Empire (Ghost Kingdom again). This is part of the audios, though I've sadly not been able to dip my toe in this area myself. The way characters can be identified as participants in the War is a great moment, almost like a little test at the end of the Book. Did you pay enough attention? Alright, figure out who these figures are meant to represent first and then you can get a reward of satisfaction. Even I'm still not sure who everyone is. I've seen posts detailing the matches before but would prefer to see what others here have to offer from their own close readings. Some characters, like Lady Wakai and her offspring for instance, are more obvious than others.

Unless of course there's another confusing meta-layer, and whoever we pin down could be a misdirect. Maybe Wakai isn't the candidate I'm suspecting, but another similar character, throwing all my assumptions out the window. I kind of like that approach. It would hardly be the first time something like that happened. No reading can ever be definitive. My Phantom Menace inspired reading of Ghost Kingdom may not occur to anyone else for example. Others can find equally valid analyses of the text that they find interesting, and that's something wonderful that Faction Paradox encourages.


Also, I may have missed it in the past few weeks, but is the point at which we can figure out and reveal the one chapter not included in the reading order list?

You hit the nail on the head here. We may have assumed that the White Peacock somehow represent or are associated with the Enemy, but that's not what the quotation supposedly from The Cult of the Peacock Angel at the head of the entry says. It says that the Yezidi more generally worship Satan/Shemjaza/heroic rebel angels, but the White Peacock are the "Satanists" of the Yezidi in that they worship Rassilon Urizen. It sounds more like the White Peacock are to the Enemy what the Faction are to the Great Houses: a renegade offshoot cult who gleefully embrace everything that would horrify their native culture.