#shitpost taken seriously?

[shadesofawe]

(Can't believe I'm doing this, but comment space was too little, soo...)

I don't believe in an interventionist god (piano chords playing - sorry). Or any god. Not as an entity or with an agenda anyway. But let's act as if, for the sake of the argument. I feel like we have things to consider here, no? Because we have choice. We can chose actions, thoughts, values. Those choices shape our society. To expect a god to guide our every decision is to deny our own agenda, our responsibility. It feels very cheap, a lame excuse. There can be neither virtue nor vice, also no success, no guilt that way.

Like, I don't KNOW if we live in a deterministic universe or actually have free will, but it sure FEELS like we have, so we better ACT like we do.

So, I do think refugees drowning in the Mediterranean sea is on us on many levels. Homelessness is. Inequal wealth distribution. War.

The question of theodicy (why did you let that happen?) still arises around things we have no choice in, like natural disasters, illnesses.

Although, now that I think about it: the more we know, the more responsible we are. (Climate change, cancer causing chemicals, ...)

No, it's not fair that some people have to suffer for the actions of others, but if a god just fixes the outcome, why would the responsible people have to change anything?

Say, someone with diabetes is not responsible for their health issue, nor for the cost of the available treatment - but, for the latter, society is. It's on us to make an existing solution accessable and affordable.

Of course, apart from this post I consider myself an atheist living in a vast universe that doesn't particularly care about me, so I might be biased.

Now, if you're really saying, "given a god like that, we're better off without" - I don't disagree, I merely add "and we're also better off not being any god's fully controllable playdolls".

Even if and because it means being held accountable.

Sorry but if god was a real thing and we asked him "why did you allow this?" and he responded "why did you allow this?" I would kill him. You're the omniscient omnipotent one man. Next time you open up your divine mailbox to receive your followers' sacrifices expect a holy hand grenade in the mix

[artshine-exe]

The blind man who has seen the Horrors™ (Also: me, looking at my folder full of unposted Malevolent art, wondering where to start)

[mushroom-pal]

this is canon i think

[darnmand]

The thing for me is that Marius won’t let Armand have anything. Oh, Riccardo is your best friend? Let me whip him in front of you. Oh, you’re having an affair with someone other than me? Let me shun you and shame you for it. Oh, you met Lestat and he permanently changed who you are as a person and how you see the world? Yeah, he’s daddy’s favorite princess now. Oh you made your first fledgling? I think I’ll keep him for 50 years. Oh, you finally formed a meaningful and loving relationship with two humans and succeeded in not turning them into vampires? Well you see….

UGGGHHGGGGGGHH!1!!1!1!11!!!!

[antirepurp]

been thinking more about portrayals of naivety and how often it gets viewed on a surface level and further translated into "the character is vulnerable, childish, and must be protected, they are incapable of harm." it's an obvious pet peeve of mine, all similar acts of reducing a character to a single, likely prominent trait is, but it strikes me more with naivety because it can add so much complexity to a character when combined with other traits

for sonic characters, shadow is naive. he's naive all the way from sa2 to shadow 05, way too trusting of others for his own good, and it's not until after 05 that he really begins to acknowledge that tendency and consciously work against it when necessary. it is not his most prominent trait but it's an important feature of him and plays a lot into who he is as a person, but in his case it gets brushed aside because he's also dangerously cool, and for whatever reason the council has deemed naivety to not mix with that particularly well. so instead we get a portrayal of him as someone much more mature than he actually is, at least in terms of fan interpretations. there's nothing inherently wrong with that of course, but it ends up grinding my gears

silver has the exact opposite problem to shadow, where his naivety gets highlighted and played up to the point it drowns out everything else about him. that kind of reading fails to take into account how brutal and reckless he has the capability of being, how many of the choices he makes in 06 stem from a feral desperation to make a change, save his world at any price. he's naive, too trusting for his own good, with a remarkably black and white view of the world, what's right and what's wrong, but to reduce him to a child for it is missing what makes him so interesting in the first place. silver doesn't have the mysterious coolness to him that shadow does, and perhaps for the sake of being a foil to him his naivety is played up to a point of ridicule at times. perhaps some of that could be brushed up to his world being in a relative state of peace after the timeline reset, allowing him to grow into a person who doesn't have to live in a state of survival mode every moment of his life. either way is flattens him in a way that i despise in all honesty

other media also has examples of this kind of stuff, which is what's actually gotten me to think about this in the first place. it is, to a degree, interesting to see which traits people deem worthy of highlighting in any given character admittedly, and gives me food to chew on and ask myself why the characterization feels so off. it may not be a feast, but it gives me ideas on what the feast that i crave so badly consists of

[aromanthur-lester]

I could make a whole essay about how arthur lester is a perfect victim for every single tma entity, but i will make a shallow tumblr post instead.

the hunt? he's both the hunter and the prey. the eye? something is watching him constantly. the web? no bodily autonomy, also his choices are determined by outside forces (patreon). also kayne literally exists. the dark? dark. the desolation? the lighter symbolism. the corruption? so many worms and parasites... the lonely? he literally has no one apart from a voice in his head. the end? so many deaths. the slaughter? oh boy, yes. the spiral? kiy is literally the god of madness. the stranger? same as above. the buried? eh he does crawl around. the extinction? the entire earth could quite literally be destroyed in every timeline by a guy he knows. vast? so. many. holes. the flesh? mr faust.

[syn4k]

hey girl hope you're genderfluid cos i'm about to beat the she/it out of you

[tecceran]

hatsune etho....

this was inspired entirely by @omarithecat’s ‘hatsune ethu’ making me go “wait niigo!miku has white hair and heterochromia…i can work with this”

[smahell]

is there a villain in obey me?

yes. according to this simple search, diavolo is the antagonist we should fear. and date. and collect cards of. for some reason.

this was sent in a discord server I was in as a very very obvious joke (hopefully) and this result is surely ai generated, or google's done a whoopsie-doodle and taken something off of reddit.

yes, diavolo can assert himself as an antagonistic force, but all of his actions are always within logical reason. though it may be against the wishes of the brothers and MC, he always does what is right for the devildom, whether that may be putting lucifer on house arrest, or locking belphegor away from his brothers.

diavolo is literally just trying his best, and he's been doing that since his father basically dumped the responsibility of a whole realm on his shoulders and abandoned him to sleep at the bottom of the devildom. his past is genuinely so sad.

so, who's the villain in obey me????

you could certainly say it's belphie.. but you can also date him. belphie changes through our the story, and as of right now, he holds nothing against humans and anyone in general. though it was a short span of time, he has gained the (somewhat undeserving) forgiveness of everyone around him after trying to kill MC.

like yes, michael, but it's very obvious with him disguising himself as raphael, going against god's will, and even his manipulation of the brothers that he wants the brothers back, and still sees them as family. even if that may not be reciprocated.

you could say father. but in a sense, lilith broke the rules, and so did the brothers. they all needed to be punished accordingly. and the brothers still refer to him as "father" and not by any other name. they don't hate him as of now.

they feel sympathy. an attachment. a connection.

in the og where michael was mentioned once or twice, the fandom was quick to assign him as The Bad Guy™, but getting to know him through nb, he really is just like all the other characters in terms of role. and throughout nb michael is doted on fondly by the brothers. it's that sort of difficult familial love estranged families can relate to.

are these good decisions? no

but he's not a villain.

if you lost the loving family and friends you knew, and you had the power to get them back through such unconventional means... michael is just using the powers he was given.

"so then.. maddie's the bad guy." okay grandpa, let's get you back to your wheelchair..

she's barely even mentioned for starters, and from what I've heard, she's not even been mentioned in nb. all she's done is made mammon cry at some point, and tried to marry diavolo. she might be a shitty person, yes, but she's never even involved enough to make out lives, or even all the brothers's lives a living nightmare. she's a very minor nuisance, at most.

all the characters do something antagonistic. every single one of them. if there was a villain it would discredit the fact that the game isn't about heroes and villains and morality, but about people. and that's what makes obey me so good. and if there was (a villain), the story would've ended by now, long before the franchise's fifth anniversary. ****

every character is morally grey, and the fact that it leaves it up to the player to annotate what is good and bad makes the whole experience more immersive and personal than ever. however, it speaks volumes concerning a lack of media comprehension that anyone would try to assign a villain to obey me.

obey me is about dating silly demon boys, and watching people live, whether that be in peace and harmony, or in tense, on-the-brink-of-destruction moments. the story has no need of a true antagonist, when we have well developed and wide range of characters gets that impact the story no matter what. enjoy the game, hate or love the characters.. whether they're antagonists or not, just have fun.

****(because the devs weren't very good at writing the first game.. so I doubt they could've had the support to have written a second one)

[edit: this was brainstormed between @prettylittlelambs and i on discord :3 thank you for sort of inspiring me and going me come up with more ideas]

[ariadne-mouse]

Alert: this is a very stupid post and not to be taken seriously.

So when it was revealed the first attack on Keyleth was Ludinus trying to test drawing out Vax, folks were pointing out that Ludinus would have had to stay up to date on Vox Machina romances in order to have the information to make that plan, which is very funny. I posit an additional hypothetical: if the preliminary attack had accidentally been fatal for Keyleth herself (I say accidentally because Ludinus would want to wait to execute the plan in full later, so wouldn't have killed her then) then Ludinus would have lost his bait and would have to figure out another way to draw out Vax.

And you know what that means. Matchmaking. Get the sad bird man to fall in love again so he can threaten the new person. Ludinus using every iota of his skill in manipulation and patience and influencing of events to set up Situations, and he needs it because as a celestial champion Vax is not just walking around into your average coffee shop. He becomes the king of tropes. He reads trash romance to get ideas and runs into Caleb at a naughty book store in Rexxentrum and it's very awkward for both of them. With centuries of experience and villainy, HOW has it come to this-

[greatestmeepboie]

Mouthwashing if it was woke (this is a shitpost and not to be taken seriously)

I'm working on something, my brain decided to do this

[shitpostingfromthebarricade]

Jean Valjean and Thénardier's fates are connected in some way that I cannot exactly put into words but that certainly exists.

[growing-past-me]

Sometimes it’s really hard for neurotypicals to understand what schizophrenia feels like. Sure, you can list some symptoms to them like paranoia, hallucinations, etc, but it doesn’t really click to them. To which I respond, “Schizophrenia is like FNAF.”

[daka-d3monb0y]

Look at the way the Villians wear their dresses. Very cutesie, very demure.

(This story was cancelled, it was all for fun and I stopped having fun. Plus nobody read it lol)

[yardsards]

the fandom during balance: can this player character PLEASE adopt this child

griffin during steeplechase: i'm going to have my player character adopt this random child

[mysteriousbp]

Abstracted Kaufmo for some weird reason reminds me of the Waterwraith from Pikmin.

It doesn’t help that Jax goes down different floors and goes underground to escape Kaufmo. Like how you escape the Waterwraith.