#divine understanding

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

ὄλβιος, ὅς θείων πραπίδων ἐκτήσατο πλοῦτον,/δειλὸς δ’, ὧι σκοτόεσσα θεῶν πέρι δόξα μέμηλεν.

Fortunate is the person who assembles a wealth of divine understanding, but a miserable wretch is he who tries to manipulate his fellow humans with his conjectures about the gods.

—Empedokles (Ἐμπεδοκλῆς) of Agrigentum, Fragment No. 132 (attr. Theophr., Caus. plant. I 13, 2)(c 444 BCE)

[Robert Scott Horton]

[ryanranney]

The Paradox of the Spirit

For the words of the spirit Are insane to the world’s sane And sane to the insane Unrighteous to the world’s righteous And righteous to the unrighteous For the spirit of the word Is folly to the wisdom of the world And wisdom to the folly of man Bondage to the will of the world And freedom to the will of man For the love of the spirit Is darkness to the seeking of self And light to the seeking of…

[compassionmattersmost]

Interfaith Harmony: Ganesha, the Universal Remover of Obstacles

There is an ancient story, older than memory, that speaks of a gentle presence who stands at the threshold of each journey. He is called Ganesha, the remover of obstacles. In Hindu tradition, he is worshipped as a friend and guardian of beginnings, an embodiment of wisdom and gentle strength. His form is unmistakable—an elephant head, eyes deep with understanding, a body both round and rooted, as…

[wardensantoineandevka]

it's kind of funny that we're back at the start, as it was known from the very beginning, as the story always was, the old lore: "the Divine Gate was built in response to the destruction and suffering of the Calamity as the Prime Deities realized was far too much and, as such, they needed to also remove themselves from Exandria to protect it from the ruin that the gods dwelling here brings"

[blood-orange-juice]

Considering how in other expansions the leading Harbinger shares thematic similarities with the Archon of that nation, could it be that Venti's thing is actually revenge.

[nellasbookplanet]

I know that after Downfall the perspective of 'the gods are a FAMILY' has permeated fandom on both sides of the kill-all-gods argument, but frankly that isn't all they are and acting as if it's suddenly their only motivation flattens both them as characters and the narrative they (and bells hells) are in.

The Wildmother and The Raven Queen didn't 'let' Lolth get away with nabbing Opal and killing Cyrus because she’s their sister. Come on man, we've already seen that the primes are plenty capable of opposing and fighting their siblings on the side of mortals (is the calamity a joke to you??). I'm not saying the primes aren’t capable of picking the lives of their betrayer siblings over mortals (downfall showed as much) but that's not what the situation with Opal and Lolth was about in the slightest.

They let Lolth 'get away with it' not because she’s family, but because this is the very rare instance of them not only having the same goal, but of them actively fighting for their lives. As far as we know that has only happened once before on Exandria, and that time they also entered a truce to defend themselves. The vast majority of the time, the primes picking their siblings over mortals won’t happen because mortals can’t actually threaten the gods (normally), making the 'they're family argument' a moot point. The primes won’t necessarily agree with Lolth's methods, but they won’t go throwing away both hers and their own champions in a meaningless struggle when they need all their strength to stop the fucking apocalypse.

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

Part of Hans' deal, at least from my interpretation so far, is that he's envious of the freedom he perceives peasants of having, and Henry does seem to have a lot more freedom than most (the hinted at storytelling reason for why is ingenious, actually, because it feels like it'd make Henry just another special hero but really it'd make him a target).

Hans wants to go out drinking with his soldiers and court the daughters of the local artisans because he has a romantic understanding of their life and craves some of that freedom for himself. It's only through his relationship with Henry that he matures because Henry is the first person from that station he sees the entirety of and he starts understanding that Henry's not free either. I love Theresa's perspective for this reason too.

None of them are free but they persist and live and love anyway. If anything the war and the systems around them are obstacles they must puzzle through and overcome— it shapes them but doesn't define them.

[thatringboy]

haven’t finished Amphoreus yet but if they send Sunday down to the surface he’s literally gonna get confused for titankin with his funky clothes and halo he’s gonna get his ass beat by mydei and NOT in the way my current wip suggests

[lucifers-favorite-child]

"Eurylochus got the crew killed when he opened the bag-" but he literally did not??? Are we all forgetting Get in the Water? Where Poseidon's storm is trapped in a windbag so Odysseus can get home, so instead Poseidon waits until Odysseus is home to get his ass! Poseidon literally shows up by saying "ODYSSEUS OF ITHACA!" He knows where that man lives! Or when Poseidon tells Odysseus to get in the water or he would kill his family, maim his son, and drown his entire kingdom? In what universe does Poseidon see the crew get home safely after the Cyclops saga and think "ah dang it! guess I'll get them next time." (Odysseus and Eurylochus obviously don't realize this during the Ocean and Lightning sagas, but what is your excuse???))

Within the context of the musical, Eurylochus did not get anyone killed! It was absolutely a betrayal of trust and a big fuck up, but he was not responsible for the crew's death. Odysseus is! That's half the point of his character! He's complex and interesting! He messed up majorly because he is arrogant, he was emotionally compromised from Polites's death and killing Astyanax (the infant), he's used to being the smartest person in the room, and he's used to having Athena's divine favor!!! Removing his responsibility makes him less interesting.

While we're here. Every time someone gets mad at Eurylochus for saying they should leave behind the men Circe turned into pigs, I lose three days of my life. "Why is Eurylochus mad at Ody for sacrificing 6 men when he said let's leave the men behind-" Because Odysseus knowingly sacrificed their lives with prior knowledge and without informing anyone beforehand, while making sure he lived. Whereas on Circe's island a powerful minor goddess just transformed several men into animals. They had no way of knowing if it's even possible to make them human again. And they JUST got away from Poseidon, another god, who killed 550 men. Eurylochus wasn't saying fuck the crew. He was saying "your arrogance with the cyclops just got most of our men killed, and now you want to get in a fight with another god without knowing if you can win. you are going to get the REST OF US KILLED TOO. Also I feel immense guilt and don't want to see you die too."

[flowerbloom-arts]

The thing about being a non-american Simpsons fan is that as the show does all its reference humor it basically acts as a springboard and reason to consume/learn about the media it references, but the funny thing is that in doing so your brain recontextualizes a good chunk of American pop culture as a Simpsons reference.

Like, I was vaguely aware of 1961 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock "Psycho" but I didn't watch it until I read Skinner's wiki which mentions that he's an awful lot like Psycho antagonist with mommy issues Norman Bates, and therefore I watched 1961 horror film directed by Alfred Hitchcock "Psycho" to get a better understanding of his character (and in turn his relationship with Agnes), but now the film, to me, is 1961 film where Seymour Skinner's mommy issues are based on "Psycho".

Today I walked past a carnival shooting game branded with 1990 Mafia Movie "Goodfellas" (yes, I'm in that part of Europe) and all I could think was "Wowie, like the thing Louie Simpsons is based on!"

It's so funny.

[duskerot]

i disappear inside myself / my friends don't know it can't be helped

[Pure You - Nothing But Thieves]

[nymphiqueish]

me when I'm a pure and dependent angel with pretty wings who wants to sing praises and sit at a god's feet except I have to pay taxes and go to my full time job and do dumb human things like "drink water"

[oratoful]

hitaldi's basics in learning integral calculus.

[purplebutwarhammer]

Trazyn and Orikan still finding a way to feud with each other after all that is honestly impressive

[thenewbie28]

No one can annoy me more than people who hate on Shree Ram but call themselves Krishna Bhakt or vice versa. Or compare these two to prove one lesser than the other.

They're the same person for god's sake.

If you think they would disagree with each other's actions then sorry to break it to you, you're just being stupid and don't understand anything about any of them.

Same goes for the people comparing Maa Laxmi, Sita, Radha and Rukmini.

THEY'RE THE SAME PERSON.

[caeslxys]

Something I think is extremely interesting thematically when it comes to connecting what Downfall and the ideas it tackled to the overarching narrative of campaign three is that the things Downfall made a point to showcase of Aeor—Cassida, Hallis, the visual of an aeormaton proposing to her partner, the specific and intentional decision to shed light on a far from insignificant amount of the population being civilians or refugees—is that it plays in perfect parallel across from what is happening (and, really, has been happening) to the ruidusborn on Exandria in present.

Bear with me for a moment. Aeor is ultimately a city that was collectively punished for the decisions of its leadership. We could (and, judging by the amount of discourse around this particular topic already, probably will) argue about what the Gods’ motivation for all of this was—whether it be that they could not, in the end, bear to kill their siblings or that they were terrified at the prospect of mortality—for me it is a very healthy dose of both—but for this I am much more interested in the latter. They were scared. That, really, is the driving force behind both this arc and their role in c3 as a whole.

Why I point this out is: It is far more interesting to me, especially as we go back to Bells Hells this week, to dissect the Gods and their decisions not purely on sympathetic motivation alone but as beings in the highest seat of power in the highest social class in Exandria.

So, having established that the Gods (in relation to mortals) are more a higher social class than anything we could compare to our real life understanding of divinity and that Aeor was eviscerated largely because of their fear—what is the difference between those innocents in Aeor caught in the trappings of their autocratic government leadership and a divine war on the ground, and those of the ruidusborn being manipulated both by Ludinus and by the very thing that inspired such visceral fear in the Gods to start with. I would argue very little.

I think of Cassida, doing what she genuinely thought was right and good and would save people, her son, and the object of her worship—and how that did not matter enough to any of them to spare her because of the fear they held at the very concept of mortality. I think of Liliana and Imogen, one of which we know begged for the gods to help her or send her a sign for years on years, and how every single one of their largest struggles could have been avoided had the gods loved them, their supposed children, as much as they feared what they could be. I think of how the thing that did save Imogen, in the end, was a woman who herself existed in direct defiance of the gods will. I think of that young boy, sixteen years old, that Laudna exalted on Ruidus.

I think it’s completely fair to judge Aeor’s overall society as deeply corrupt—it was!—but its leadership and police force are not a reflection of every one of its citizens. Similarly, it is fair to judge the Ruby Vanguard as corrupt—it is!—but its multiple heads of leadership and even the god-eater further are not a reflection of every one of its members.

Notably, and what I think the Hells will latch onto, this did not matter to the Gods. It did not matter that Cassida was trying to help. She was still too much of a risk. Will it matter, what Imogen does? Will it matter, if that young boy is in the blast radius when they decide to take no further chances?

I’ve seen a lot of people say that the Hells will side with the gods and I don’t think I agree. Especially as Imogen has been scolded and villainized over and over for daring to try and save her mother—who herself has been seen by some as an irredeemable evil in spite of her drive being the exact same—her family—but when it’s the Gods it’s justified? When it’s the Gods, it’s sympathetic? Too sympathetic to criticize further than “they’re family”?

I obviously do not think the Gods should die or be eaten or what have you, and I certainly don’t agree with Ludinus (though I find him much more compelling than just a variation of hubris wizard), but when talking about the Gods in Aeor and in present it isn’t really at all about their motivation or their family. It can’t be. Too many people, including our active protagonists, lives have been effected for it to be as cut and dry as “they’re family”. These are your children. They are your family, too.