Trance said:
Walter and Aaz's attempts at explaining concepts in general relativity kind of made my eye twitch, but I definitely love the idea of the connection between the human world and its negative emotions with barytes.
Thank you. One of the things I find most interesting about it is that Miura seems to have somewhat modeled Barytes' relationship to the other elements around what Æther was historically believed to be. But instead of its connotation of purity and a "clear sky" (or a void), he went for the opposite. I'm eager to know more about how it fits in Berserk's cosmology.
Trance said:
An event like the Eclipse would draw an immense amount of barytes into one place, and perhaps the sacrifices release the stored barytes for use in obtaining evil power.
I'm always cautious when applying partial knowledge to situations we know little about. In this case, I would recommend to not try to completely redefine our understanding of the Eclipse (or other events) around Barytes. I don't think sacrifices work like what you're describing, for example. If you're interested, I plan to dedicate a thread to Barytes whenever I find the time (probably next week).
Trance said:
Interestingly, the extremal case of a gravity well, a black hole, even more closely resembles the Vortex because it is infinitely deep and acts as a sort of discontinuity in spacetime. The Idea of Evil resides within the bottomless depths of the Abyss, a place that is "filled with all kinds of blurred negative feelings." Is there any connection there?
I don't really think the Vortex of Souls resembles a black hole, to be honest. It's always interesting to wonder about things like that (e.g. Could the Idea of Evil be a kind of singularity?), and I have done so before, but we must beware of going too far with unproven ideas. In truth, I made that comment about gravity wells privately to Walter because the visual similarity was interesting, but I didn't really intend to mention it on the podcast.
That's because parallels are often superficial. In this case, my main problem with the comparison of the Vortex of Souls to a gravitational well is that a vortex, a whirlpool, does not need an outside explanation. It makes sense in and of itself. There is an ocean of souls, and there is a vortex in that ocean, in which lies the Idea of Evil. This is a matter of fluid dynamics, not gravity. In fact, in episode 83, the Idea of Evil is shown to be what creates/sustains the vortex (although that isn't canon anymore).
So even if we absolutely must include Barytes in the equation, and even though Barytes play a key role in the way gravity works in Berserk's universe, I don't think there's much to be made of the passing visual similarity between the conceptual representation of a gravitational potential field and that of a whirlpool. Sorry if I'm kind of a hardass here but I'm trying to be clear about what to expect and what's realistic or not.
If you are going to explain that in a full topic later, don't worry about explaining it here of course.
I especially liked the discussion about Barytes, very interesting. I enjoyed your talk about Puck and Magnifico's hilarious usurpation-gone-wrone, too. 
