Kevin's Watch

Some ideas came to me during a disturbed night's sleep...

Q. What makes LF so obsessed with perfection and order?
A. LF was originally a part of a being that is now split into LF and the creator (I'll call it God). God made the world to contain evil as well as good, this being unavoidable if freedom and change were to exist in the world. Freedom and change are fundamental to the world as the keystone of the arch of time is wild magic.
When the world was finished, God split (who knows why?) into a part that didn't want the world to ever be destroyed (the creator) and a part that was not even aware of existing until the creator started to get angry with it and blame it for making all the destructive evil (this 'victimised' part is LF). LF got hurled into the world and trapped. LF is defined by a primal trauma of being blamed for making everything imperfect and susceptible to destruction. LF's response to this is firstly to show off how perfect and orderly it really is (hence LF's obsession with perfection and order), to resent and lament being punished (hence being so obsessed with despair and spite) and of course to try and escape (hence the obsession with breaking the arch of time).

God split into two damaged remanents. The remanent called the creator is also damaged and I suggest cannot do any more creation while separated from the LF part (or at any rate, cannot create free, changing things- so nothing alive), and this is why the creator is still trying to save the world from destruction.

Q. In the LC, why has Linden not seen the creator?
A. The creator has sent TC and LA into the world and learned from their experiences there. The creator has come to understand that he is responsible for making LF the way that he is and finally realises that he and LF must end their separation- but not by destroying the world to release LF. The creator has decided to do this by becoming a real world person- Jeremiah in fact. This is why Jeremiah has made models of revelstone, gravin threndor and the arch of time; because the creator is now inside him (probably irreversibly so). LF has Jeremiah and so has the creator at his mercy- but has found that this does not help him to escape the arch of time, so must still plot his plots of world breaking (LF has not been moved by the creator's attempt to make peace with him).

I don't think Lord Four's obsession with perfection is anything to do with him being victimised... I think it's more likely that he loathes the imperfection of the Land's universe, so he made Foul's Creche as perfect as it could physically be.

If you want an analogy, imagine a long-term prisoner who decorates his cell with pictures of the outside world.

I don't know about Jeremiah being the Creator, but I think your insight about the Creator being unable to create without the Despiser is spot-on.

I am partly basing the LF idea on something from the GI (I will find the quote later if you would like- much later) that says LF has suffered and deserves dignity.

Since writing I have changed my mind about Jeremiah being the creator- although something like that might be right.

So if you agree about the creator now being impotent, does that mean you think LF was once part of the creator or do you think the creator and LF worked together to make the world but as separate entities with their own identities?