Götterdämmerung: Difference between revisions

'''[[Nodwick]]:''' Virtually none... Magic has supplanted technology, and the secretive nature of its practitioners has resulted in most knowledge becoming lost. We're a feudal society, wars are common, and there's the monster problem. [[Medieval Stasis|Plus, constant conflicts between the gods ensure that little philosophical progress is ever made]].

'''Zorion:''' You people must drink a lot.

 

'''''Götterdämmerung''''' - German for "Twilight of the Gods"

Ragnarok was the story of how most of the [[Physical God|Aesir]]<ref>a tribe of the Norse gods, the other being the Vanir</ref> and the greatest [[Our Giants Are Bigger|Jotuns]] died in a battle against each other. Similarly, this trope refers to when the gods or [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens|sufficiently advanced]] [[Precursors]] of a story (and possibly their enemies) either die (if they are mortal) or are [[Sealed Index in A Can|Sealed In A Can]] (if they are [[Immortality|immortal]]), usually in a large battle or some other sudden event.

 

 

{{examples}}

* In the backstory of the [[Super Dimension Fortress Macross|Macross]] series, the entire galaxy was part of a Golden Age under the Protoculture Stellar Republic before a civil war destroyed them, leaving only their giant humanoid armies to roam the galaxy and continue fighting.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* This is basically the premise of [[Jack Kirby]]'s ''[[New Gods]]'' metaseries, which opens rather bluntly with the words: "There came a time when the [[Precursors|Old Gods]] DIED!"

** The New Gods themselves have suffered a few of these, [[Executive Meddling]] [[Death Is Cheap|being the only thing]] [[First Law of Resurrection|keeping them from playing this trope straight]]. We're still waiting for them to get better from ''[[Final Crisis]]'' though.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* Whilst it hasn't actually happened yet, the [[Discworld]] name for this is "The Teatime of The Gods".

 

* [[Xena: Warrior Princess]] featured Xena bringing on the Twilight by {{spoiler|killing the Olympian Gods}}.

* Between the old and new series of ''[[Doctor Who]]'', an offscreen conflict called the Time War erased the Time Lords and the Daleks from the universe, as well as a horde of various [[Eldritch Abomination]]s. It later turned out that [[Not Quite Dead|several million Daleks survived]] in a prison ship called the Genesis Ark, however, that's still a fraction of the ten million '''ship''' fleet that fought the Time Lords.

 

== Music ==

* Helloween's song [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIsg0RxULss Twilight of the Gods.]

* [[Amon Amarth]] live on this trope. See songs [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edBYB1VCV0k Twilight of the Thunder God], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aaOqUYG8Tw Destroyer of the Universe], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSELEgAYc84 The Last Stand of Frej], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPLMnoAxaKs&ob=av3n Death in Fire], [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORCELNDYYOw ...And Soon the World Will Cease to Be].. Basically telling this tale from everybody's perspective throughout their discography. And there are still people left in the myth...

 

== Mythology ==

** Interestingly, this ending has strong parallels with the Judeo-Christian beginning. Enough so that Dark Age monks and missionaries were able to draw upon these connections in order to win converts, much in the same way that pagan deities often became associated with saints.

*** In fact it's close enough to the Abrahamic religions creation myth that some scholars believe that the whole idea of Ragnarök is manufactured or at least greatly exaggerated. Also Líf and Lífþrasir could very well have been added later, since our main source for information about the Norse Mythology comes from Christian authors... Or so I've been told.

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* This is a cornerstone of the most fundamentalist elven religions in [[The Elder Scrolls]]. In The fundie basis of elven religion, it holds that reality is a prison that souls are trapped in by the trickster Lorkhan when he bound his fellow greater gods to form the Mundus, but was tricked in turn and killed. In more Man-based religions, it's held that the pre-creation divinity state was the prison, and the mundus is a proving ground in which to transcend beyond the original gods, with Lorkhan (or "Shor" as he's known to the most [[Rated "M" for Manly|manliest race of men]], the Nords) deliberately failing to do so himself in order for all else to "know how ''not'' to fail". In [[The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim]],the Thalmor, a [[A Nazi by Any Other Name|nazi analogue]] that seized power in Summerset Isle (the ancestral home of all elves), is attempting to unravel all of reality in some mad scheme to return to pre-creation divinity. How? Throughout all the previous games, several pillars holding reality together were destroyed or otherwise depowered (Numidium, Red Mountain, White-Gold Tower), and reality was basically being held together by reverence and worship in the first known person to have undergone such apotheosis: Talos. The Thalmor have banned worship of Talos to undo reality.

* All highly advanced technology in the ''[[Panzer Dragoon]]'' universe was created long ago in the Ancient Age, and the war-wracked world left in its wake is only alive thanks to climate control systems which are finally disabled in ''Saga'' in "The Great Fall". In a variation, the Ancients, themselves, realized that what they were doing was wrong, and so they created a fail-safe that was programmed to undo what they had wrought.

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* Referenced in ''[[Girl Genius]]'', where Klaus Wulfenbach uses this as a curse. Note that its heavily implied that [[Translation Convention|everyone is speaking German]], so its an interesting example.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* In ''[[Justice League]]'' episode "Twilight of the Gods," {{spoiler|[[New Gods|Darkseid]] is kind-of killed, but ends up coming back in a later episode..}}

 

== [[Real Life]] ==

 

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