Your rebuttal is tinged with no small amount of enmity; let's try not to hold grudges, eh? I'm not mad at you. =P
Lavos Is Not Sentient
1. Back in the day Square sure did love to personify oblivion in the form of the Final Boss, and Lavos may simply be one of their more colorful attempts at this.
... And every representation at Oblivion has been sentient. What's your point?
You'd have to demonstrate that all those bosses were sentient. But, then again, I'd have to demonstrate that they
weren't sentient, so I guess it's a point of contention we can agree to drop.
2. If you look at Schala’s speech at the end of Chrono Cross, she goes on about this idea of a planet being a living egg and its life forms comprising a myriad of “spermatozoa,” any one of whom could inseminate the planet and create a new universe. (No comment) Since Lavos is the exact opposite, slowly killing the planet off and corrupting its life forms, that could provide a conjectural bit of support for the idea that Lavos is not a sentient entity who has its own sense of purpose.
This is entirely baseless, much like your feelings on the Diminishing Returns theory.
Saying something doesn't make it true. You'll have to do better than fling insults to prove your point. Like I said in that quote, Lavos' antithesis to the planet and to all native life on the planet is not direct proof of Lavos' insentience, but it does make for some interesting conjecture along those lines. If Lavos were sentient, its methodical ways of destruction would take on a different meaning than if Lavos were a force that could not be reasoned with, in that the essence of Lavos' villainy would be its intentions rather than its innately powerful nature. This ability or inability to be reasoned with is an important characteristic in drama. For instance, a volcano. You can't reason with that; you can only deal with it. There's no way you can convince it to change its fiery ways. This inability to reason adds a crucial degree of separation. Likewise, Lavos' inability to be reasoned with adds a crucial degree of separation between itself and humanity, thereby emphasizing its sheer alienness in terms of its nature as a foreign parasite—which is an important motif in Chrono Trigger.
I'm not sure what you're talking about by "Diminishing Returns." Assuming that's not just some insult, you'll have to clarify what you’re trying to say.
3. Some of Lavos’ actions were counterproductive, even plain stupid. But if you look at Lavos as a personification of oblivion rather than an evil mastermind, it all makes a lot more sense. Poke Lavos with a stick, as happened in 12,000 B.C. and 600 A.D., and it Unleashes the Dragon on yo ass. But otherwise it doesn’t actively do anything at all...it just gobbles up DNA (don’t ask me how that works) and seems to emanate vibes of sadness and anger that take root in sentient people’s minds.
600 A.D., it does nothing counterproductive. There isn't even anything to state that Lavos even had the intention of throwing them through time with a giant gate. Hell, Lavos probably had no clue that Magus was trying to get to him.
12,000 B.C., the Zealians' incompetency more than likely angered him. This is Square we're talking about-- even the known sentient evils in games are destructive. In every game. I don't see what's different about Chrono Trigger.
Perhaps the most straightforward argument against Lavos' sentience is that it had any number of opportunities to kill Crono & Co., and it squandered these opportunities. The heroes posed a serious threat to Lavos, and Lavos' sheer inaction demonstrates either an unawareness of the threat or an unwillingness to deal with it. In fact, the only time that Lavos
did kill someone was when Crono got up and provoked it at the Ocean Palace. This points very strongly to an instinctual response on Lavos' part. Notice that Lavos did not try to kill anyone else there. For all Lavos' fancy spells and powers, everyone else in that scene left the Ocean Palace alive. If Lavos were able to reason, it would have associated the other people present on that occasion with the threat posed by Crono's spontaneous attack.
Your premise "Lavos probably had no clue that Lavos was trying to get him" would have to be supported. You can't use unsubstantiated phrasing like "had no clue" when the issue at hand is whether or not Lavos possessed the ability to process clues. Likewise, your remarks about the "incompetency" of the people of Zeal and Lavos alleged anger at that cannot stand by themselves. Have you got any justification for your hearsay?
4. Lavos has no dialogue, just a primal screech. This may not seem important, but in a space-limited RPG, everything counts. I searched the CT script for every mention of “Lavos” and found absolutely no attributions of character, only continuous references to Lavos’ power, might, immortality, and sleep. Queen Zeal mentions Lavos’ “dreams,” but then corrects herself to “eternal nightmare.” She later says that “At last, Lavos awakens!” Lucca calls Lavos’ lifecycle the “ultimate in evolution,” but in context it isn’t persuasive to me that evolution is meant to be synonymous with sentience. I then checked the Chrono Cross script, and again found no attributions to Lavos of any of the faculties of reason. Lucca mentions Lavos’ “hatred and sadness,” but these are construed as raw emotions without rational thought behind them, and it is actually Schala who devises the grand notion to destroy existence. Nowhere in these two games is any sentient, reasoned characteristic imputed to Lavos.
I notice you ignore this paragraph almost entirely. If you want to assert Lavos’ presumed sentience, then you will have to answer the counter-criticisms that Lavos’ only demonstrable behavior is consistent with that of an insentient being. Lavos has no dialogue. Lavos carries out no elaborate schemes, let alone does Lavos indicate an adaptiveness to new circumstances. Lavos has no complex thoughts attributed to it whatsoever. Lavos is described only in terms of its power or its raw emotions, that would occur would rational thought behind them. Lavos’ behavior throughout the entire game lacks any deliberateness, instead resembling that of a simple animal. In 600 A.D., when provoked by Magus, Lavos briefly awakens and, much like a sleeping dragon, causes a big fiery roar that toasts to cinders those who would pester it. Then it simply goes back to sleep. That’s the behavior of an insentient animal. In 12,000 B.C., when attacked in the Ocean Palace, Lavos strikes back in a completely unorganized manner, failing to capitalize on its incredible tactical advantage and wipe the entire party out. Then Lavos lets out an even bigger, more fiery roar, and toasts the Kingdom of Zeal. And then what? It goes back to sleep. This is the behavior of an insentient animal. There’s no rhyme or reason to it…just plain and simple rote. Lavos takes no initiative, Lavos shows no intent, and Lavos demonstrates no intelligence. These are all criticisms that must be addressed if you are to persuade me of Lavos’ sentience.
I can certainly see how a non-sentient, banished being would want revenge... Seeing as how it's not sentient or anything.
Quoth Kid:
Perhaps it was the awakenin'
Lavos who pulled the Frozen
Flame back through time to it.
Maybe so that Lavos, who saw
the possibility that some young
adventurers might destroy it,
could create a backup plan.
Seems pretty conscious to me.
That’s a good piece of evidence. If you had a whole bunch more like it, you might have a case. But by itself I am not impressed. First of all, we’ve been talking about sentience this whole time, not consciousness. I am not debating that Lavos is unconscious. But I’m going to assume you meant “sentient” and simply wrote the wrong word.
My complaint with this piece of evidence is subtle. You are taking a Lavos behavior and claiming that it demonstrates that Lavos is sentient. In fact, this is mistaken. It demonstrates only that Lavos
could be sentient, which is why I say that more evidence like it would help make your case, but that by itself it doesn’t mean much. Nature is replete with highly precise behavior on the part of animals, and even the animals themselves are very sophisticated and specialized. But the thing is that these precise animal behaviors are the result of selection, as are the animals themselves. They still lack sentience, and their evolution also lacks an intelligent design. It just so happens that this is the way they happened to turn out.
Likewise for Lavos. It could be that Lavos’ preventative action described by Kid was not
preventative at all, but
instinctive, because such behavior has benefited Lavos or Lavos’ species in the past, or perhaps because of Lavos’ specific, DNA-absorbing nature. The instinct for self-preservation is endemic to all life, and this particular behavior on Lavos’ part of pulling the Frozen Flame back in time may simply be instinctual. Now, I can’t prove that decisively, but what I have done is throw enough doubt on your claim that it is no longer a sure thing. Could be a deliberate act…could be plain old animal nature.
Finally, I want to take a moment to point out that all of these speeches at the end of Chrono Cross are so abstruse, so fast and furious, and so insulated from the nitty-gritty pragmatic realities of the rest of the series, that they strike me as an instance of artistic embellishment in partial contradiction of the empirical conclusions that one would draw from the substance of the games—that is, from actually playing through them. This is not an uncommon artistic technique, and I would be willing to bet that the developers got so caught up in their message at the end of Chrono Cross that they didn’t fact-check everything for perfect consistency with the actual events of the games. (Indeed, it’s taken us Chrono fans years of nitpicking and corner-peeking to get this far in the debate.) What it all comes down to is that, even if Kid does propose that maybe Lavos did commit a deliberate act, perhaps she is wrong, or, more accurately, perhaps the developers were wrong…not artistically, but empirically. And in that limited regard, I would be more amenable to the suggestion that, for the duration of the speeches at the end of Chrono Cross, Lavos may have been more than an insentient death porcupine.
Just as Lavos, in an attempt
to save itself, summoned
Chronopolis from the distant
future...
This was done so that it
would serve as a counter-
balance against Chronopolis,
which Lavos pulled here.
Lavos’ attempts to save itself are not an indication of sentience. All living creatures act in self-preservation. And because of Lavos’ extraordinary transtemporal nature, the Chronopolis-recall may not be all that bizarre. If something in Chronopolis—for instance, the Flame or the people who had come into contact with it, or just the human population in general—had attracted Lavos’ awareness in the moments between Lavos’ destruction and the creation of that new future where Chronopolis existed, then Lavos may simply have reached out for that familiarity in a knee-jerk, completely instinctual reaction.
Belthasar:
Then, the Devourer of Time
will begin to consume all
space-time continua...
Despair and hatred...
To return all things to
nothingness...
That is what IT desires.
This “desire” he mentions is another one of those raw emotions with no rational thought behind them. “Raw” emotions, as you probably know, are independent of rational thought. A sentient will can combine the two for a vast amplification of emotional intensity and deliberate behavior, but that doesn’t change the fact that all brained animals have some level of raw emotions. Remember, emotions are just states of mind that served to a species’ evolutionary benefit at some point in the past. Anger provokes us to a more aggressive stance. Pleasure compels us to seek out things that bring us greater pleasure. Our sentient awareness of and reflection upon these emotions is quite different from the emotions themselves. Lavos’ “desire” to return all things to nothingness is as simplistic as a lion’s desire to kill a wildebeest for a tasty treat.
Furthermore, the Time Devourer consisted not merely of Lavos, but of Schala Zeal too, and perhaps even the Mammon Machine. We cannot discount the importance of Schala’s (and perhaps the Machine’s) sentient influence on Lavos’ raw emanations of emotional instinct.
A new species is about to be
born on this planet -- an
alien life-form even more
evolved than the old Lavos!
At the darkness beyond time,
the weakened Schala came under
the influence of Lavos, and
the two became one entity.
It is now up to you, the one
whom the Frozen Flame has
chosen as its '"arbiter"'...
You alone can decide how
the new Lavos, which has
encaged Schala within it,
will evolve from here!
Your actions will determine
whether in the future all time
is devoured by Lavos, sending
the world into everlasting death.
Belthasar foresaw this was
going to happen, in his world
in the year 2300.
And he was determined to
prevent it from happening,
no matter what it took...
Clearly, a non-sentient being would be unable to amass such terrific plans, and control the minds of people.... After all, how can it make commands if it's incapable of rational thought?
I just don’t see these “terrific plans” you’re talking about. The Time Devourer has a very simple bent: the annihilation of everything. For whatever rueful twist of fate could instill in any creature such a nature as that, it is still, simply, a natural instinct. But I am not even going to bother erecting an argument about the Time Devourer, because, like I said, that creature has Schala, which changes the equation completely. The original Lavos was just Lavos.
Like I said, I'm not mad at you. I appreciate your taking the time to spar with me. But that doesn't mean I think any more highly of your "Lavos is sentient" opinion. =P
