Holistic Design – Page 18 – A Piece, of the Sky

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The parable of “Majora’s Mask” explores the real-world concept of masks. Boss Remains are masks and the masks you wear in the game are all of the legendary dead. Masks are artifacts that seal the spirit of the entity, sealing also his, her or its power.

Wearing an entity’s mask gives you said being’s “other memory” (Dune), and mindstream. The spirit sealed in a mask can be good or evil. Sealing in general, much less sealing an entity to distinct physical form, takes a great deal of magic / chi (qi) / virtual energy. Seals can be place on pieces of paper, cards and amulets, as protection or to lock away evil spirits.

Masks are also sculpted to look like gods, and embody gods – who are really just immortal spirits – and dead heroes. In Jim Carrey’s ‘90s movie “The Mask,” the supernatural mask is of the Norse trickster god Loki. The film was based off a book series published by Dark Horse Comics (“Hellboy”). The soul of The Mask, like most masks, reacts to the soul and the state of the heart of whoever wears it, turning some into monsters and others into champions.

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See also: “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” by Erving Goffman.

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“Key,” in Minecraft’s Volume Alpha, is a song straight out of the liminal boundary between waking and sleeping, the real world and the dream world / dreamscape. It evokes floating on your back in water or drifting in blue-purple outer space, out to some distant star. Although other songs evoke nighttime, sleeping and dreaming (“Minecraft,” “Subwoofer Lullaby”), “Key” is important as the first track and for the metaphor of someone unlocking a new world, especially in light of Minecraft’s The End Poem, where Minecraft, and life itself, are implied to be the long dream.

By the end of “Key,” you are transported to your new world. The second track, aptly named “Door,” seamlessly continues the positive liminal theme. In imagining “Door,” I think of when I restored my old world after the Adventure Update. I slept in my old bed, in my old base, before waking up, opening the front door, going out and exploring the world. “Door” evokes that dramatic arc, and then closes with the first day ending, making camp and going to sleep.