#It's essentially the idea that the universe is chaotic and life doesn't matter/there's no purpose to life

[gxlden-angels]

the only person who was actually right about the world and human nature was Max striner everyone else is a fucking moron

Striner? I hardly know 'er!

Anyways, I'm not a philosophy expert. I'm just some guy. I like the egoist belief that there isn't a universal moral truth. I like the absurdist belief that, because nothing matters, we should be radically sincere. I like the christian belief in a place without suffering after this life. I like the Universal Random Number Generator idea my therapist and I talk about

All of them have their flaws though. Egoism gets used to condemn social movements and civil rights advocacy. Absurdism and the RNG can create a sense of existential dread and a loss of motivation. Christianity encourages the loss of identity and free will

I'm just some psych student with a weird ass therapist that understands my weird ass brain. He encouraged me to look into absurdism since I took a class on absurdist literature my freshman year of college and he said I might enjoy looking into the actual philosophy. And I do! At least a lot of it! I like the idea of a chaotic universe and us humans trying our best to control it. I like the idea of letting that go and living authentically instead of with a direct purpose. There's chaos and mayhem and entropy and I'm just here to react to it. And I can react in ways that makes others happier if I wanted just because I can

Egoism/egotism feels too disconnected from the human need to connect to me. It traps me into that feeling that doing something good for someone is selfish if you're doing it to feel good. I'm actively working to get out of that spiral Christianity put me in now

I don't know, though, anon. I'm just some college student with an ex-christian tumblr blog and a lot of trauma. I like to believe there's some Universe-sized Abstract Computer with a random number generator that causes the chaos we call home. I skim wiki pages and reddit posts and decided if I want to engage any further/look for textbooks. I could possibly be looking at the wrong page about the wrong philosophy. I'm honestly just on this earthly plane for the bit

[cursedcommutethoughts]

Void Backstory and Character

Someone liked the original post, so here's the follow through

For the character Void, I have a couple different possible back stories, but I'll mostly touch on the original backstory. He was originally designed in conjunction with Booster 2.0, the descendant//body double of Booster Gold. Booster 1.0. So essentially Booster 3.0. But whereas 2.0 likes the job, 3.0 found it mentally taxing, The pressure to be exactly like someone else severely hampered his ability to form his own sense of identity. Coupled with this is how he was trained to see people in the past. Essentially some people are more important than others, and some events have to happen even if they hurt a lot of people. (As an aside, Booster Gold does not seem to subscribe to this philosophy). So he might be unable to save some civilians and get shrugged at and told that's life, but letting a hero get slightly hurt might end in a lecture about preserving the timeline and some form of punishment duty. In a way his trainer had all of Rip Hunter's worst qualities with none of the redeeming features of the character.

Overall, Void would have suffered under a mentality that he has to behave perfectly, but have a really unclear idea of what that meant. Does that mean being the perfect Booster Gold, the perfect agent of the time traveling organization, being a perfect hero? The fact these can be conflicting ideas, and having next to no guidance on what the answer is, does not help him to form a stable sense of purpose or identity.

I also developed him as a character who enjoys fighting and is a little too enthusiastic about it, and that this enjoyment got him into trouble with his overseers a lot. However, that joy in fighting is actually a piece of his own personality who likes that physical exertion, and and that sense of outsmarting his opponents in real time. So once again, he is being told to repress one of the only genuine pieces of himself.

I see him as someone who started out very anxious but wanting to do the right thing, and through constant pressure, criticism, punishment, and exposure to terrible things, was shaped into someone more nihilistic and hopeless. His identity was stripped from him, and over time he developed an overwhelming sense of emptiness.

When he finally breaks away from the organization, it is with a mindset that nothing he does matters, that only some people matter, and that fundamentally that is unfair. He has also been exposed to the philosophy that the Universe/Time-Stream is self correcting, and is trying to figure out if it is. He also wants to know what would happen if he killed someone the Universe deems as “important” out of curiosity if he can accomplish it or if he would be stopped each time. He really wants to kill Booster Gold to see if that would impact whether he exists or not. He doesn't see anything morally wrong with his actions because he has never been taught to see people as people, but just pieces of an elaborate game that he can never hope to understand but he hates with a passion.

I also played around with idea he is not actually a descendant of Booster 1.0, but is instead a clone of Booster 2.0 with no memory of this. Just to multiply those underlying identity issues.

I also thought it would be fun to have him randomly impersonate Booster Gold whenever he can, primarily to mess with Booster’s allies and tank his reputation. But he would also struggle with taking on this role because he hates pretending to be Booster Gold with a passion. At the same time, it’s too useful a skill for him to stop using.

He's a very chaotic character, and I like that about him. But I do wonder if he's too much like the Joker. I don't want to think he's a ripoff, but how can I be sure?