BTW, for those who have been avoiding Feelies lately, you may be interested to know that SIBob has asked for the insults and fighting to stop.
Message 12152866
OK, Freddie, is it safe to go back into the water?
Imagine my surprise--- not.
It's safe, Coby, if the water you want to wade in is the River Styx. The message over the portal to Feelies still reads "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here". It's not The First Circle, but it's in the neighborhood.
Feelies reminds me of the opening scene in CS Lewis' story "The Great Divorce"; the protagonist finds himself in a dreary grey city, waiting in line for a bus. All the people in the queue with him are bickering and fighting, even though there will be plenty of room for them all on the bus. A brightly lit colorful bus arrives to pick them up, and takes them to a beautiful park, perhaps something like Yosemite. The passengers are invited to stay, forever if they would like. But most of them continue to complain and squabble, and insist instead on going back to their dreary grey city.
Lewis built the story out of elements of Greek philosophy, where evil is defined as lacking substance, being the absence of the good, and where the good is defined as having all substance, as being the most real. And the title is intended to contrast with William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell |
