The film Argo about the hostage rescue from Iran might be relevant. The CIA rescue team pose as film producers visiting Iran look for suitable locations for a future movie project, and the CIA team just happen to meet and recruit (and later extract) several escaped hostages while touring Iran. However, the CIA team become so involved with their fake story / identity (visiting film producers) they become distracted from their actual mission: rescue the damn hostages.
Update: there’s also this scene from Apocalypse Now.
The news team director was actually the film’s producer, filming the movie.
So, I watched the Conjuring 2 (2nd time seeing it) and noticed something that I’ve wondered about a little before.
You know how a demon’s name gives power over it and when you say it fully you can send them back to hell? Supposedly?
But the demon doesn’t want to go back to hell. It wants souls, right?
So why would a demon, even pressured, say what their name is? It’s their most vulnerable thing.
I read an article of someone who interviewed an exorcist. Idk how much of it to believe, honestly, but it did say that a demon will say it’s name when it’s weakened. If it doesn’t say the name, it’s strong.
But still, the demon is trying so very hard to stay above, right? Why would it even reveal its name?
That’s always been something I wondered whenever I watch exorcism type movies. I get it when the demon is pressured and actually weakened, but I don’t get it when the demon seemingly just tells it.
There’s a weird thing in the Conjuring where the demon goes to Lorraine Warren, she has an out-of-body experience, and it lures her to a place in her house and when she asks its name, it screams it to her. Why would it do that? It’s literally handing her the thing that would send it back to hell (supposedly). Is it like “okay, here’s my name, let’s see if you can beat me at my own game” or is it just…idk kinda stupid? Are demons not as smart, actually?
The only thing I could think of is that it’s just soooo weak, that in the face of an agent of the Church, it’s like, "omg, here! take my name! " Besides, the movie wasn’t a demonic possession but a regular ghost possession. That probably means the demon was so weak, it couldn’t even possess someone on its own. It needed someone else to use for the possession, so that, in the end, hopefully it could eat a bunch of souls. It didn’t get any though.
Made me think about the demons in my magical realism story and how different they are. They say their own names as a way to introduce themselves. Idk if I want to change that. They don’t even act like stereotypical demons anyway.
That’s the folkloric concept of “True names”. I don’t think Valak revealed its name intentionally though… wasn’t it like intuited by Lorraine? I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense for sure if it did
Hmm…it growled at her, and she started writing it down…well, scratching it down into her bible which she brought with her for some reason and didn’t just discard it. So, it sort of did? Didn’t it? Or, she somehow understands “demon” or her being able to understand it at all is a gift she has? Like, maybe she wasn’t even supposed to understand that he said his name?
I normally have names chosen before I write my stories, but today’s old NaNo start was no names planned, and it took me until this afternoon to know what I wanted for character names.
Are demons not as smart, actually?
" Besides, the movie wasn’t a demonic possession but a regular ghost possession. That probably means the demon was so weak, it couldn’t even possess someone on its own. It needed someone else to use for the possession, so that, in the end, hopefully it could eat a bunch of souls. It didn’t get any though.
