#the gods walk among us

[intuitive-revelations]

This week in obscure Doctor Who expanded universe references the internet has found:

First, the pub has a beer called Llanfer Ceiriog Pale Ale. While there's some similarly named locations IRL, with the Ceiriog Valley being a valley in North-East Wales, there is no place actually called this. Instead it's seemingly a direct reference to a fictional Welsh village visited by Seven and Ace in Cat's Cradle: Witch's Mark, connected by a stone circle to a planet of fantasy creatures. Quite ironic, given how mocking the landlady and patrons are about people thinking Welsh villages are backwards and full of witchcraft.

Secondly, while this might be a coincidence, Kate's suggestion of a Sontaran's arrival inspiring belief in God could be referencing DWM 59's comic: "The Gods Walk Among Us", where ancient Egyptians indeed mistake a Sontaran named Styx for a god.

Bonus, because it's not actually a reference, but just a reused filming location:

The pub Ruby stays in is the same one in Countrycide. At least in this case, however, it's just a filming location coincidence. The external shots are completely different, they're in different villages, and the pubs have different names.

[wealmostaneckbeard]

Divine Figures in Mundane Violence

Athena should look like a woman in a military dress uniform or she's in a business suit with a lanyard around her neck. She is high ranking but unremarkable. She slips lost, old medals into the pockets of modern soldiers, marking her unbidden visitions around the world. In conversation, the goddess was polite and made references to lesser known decisions of great leaders. She claims to embody the art of warfare and honorable conduct. Thus she provides the service of evaluating treaties and design documents of mortals, her feedback is always useful.

Ares should look like a man adorned in battle armor and civilian clothes. As his kit becomes tattered and broken, he picks up replacements from the dead. During lulls in fighting he makes little trinkets out of the things he finds such as children's toys, shrapnel, bullet casings, and wires... Detritus from a conflict zone on one side of the world appearing in the trash heaps of another is evidence of his passing. He claims to embody the freedom and brutality of war. Thus the only service he provides is a distant distraction for the masses and indiscriminate population reduction.

At first glance, Athena definitely seems good and Ares certainly seems evil. But only a fool ascribes anthropocentric Christian values to Hellenistic metagestalt deities. After all, survivors have claimed that Ares is actually a cursed prisoner, always seeking to escape the chaos around himself yet spreading it wherever he flees. Meanwhile, conspiracists have accused Athena of being the true architect of several "meat grinder" military campaigns.

But this is all conjecture by unreliable witnesses. Objective observation of the God and Goddess are as follows:

Other than using a shotgun more often than an axe, Lord Ares has not changed much over the last century. During the same time span, Lady Athena has become pockmarked with various burn scars, her presence increasingly cold and also energetic. She'll ramble on and on about the designs for weapons to then suddenly stop and begin interrogating a petitioner about their personal life.

There are two competing theories regarding what is happening to the goddess, who has been attributed for the invention of atomic weapons and armored fighting vehicles. One theory insists that Athena is being corrupted by human cruelty but is resisting a transformation into a calculating genocidal being. The other theory argues that Athena is corrupting humanity with her knowledge. She is merely dropping her friendly facade as we drift closer to the fate she wants for our species.

We are unable to ask the goddes about her relationship with, and intentions for, humanity. This is due to the patrons of her temples, who are able to pay for the rituals that summon her. They care more about her technical expertise than her ulterior motives. Until they change their minds this debate about the true nature of the Goddess shall remain unresolved.

[immortalbumblebee]

You see an exhausted man with anger issues and a side of spicy trauma and think "I can fix him".

I see him and think "now there's a babygirl that will commit atrocities with me".

We are not the same

[ribbittrobbit]

jacob wysocki single most delightful human being on earth, clearly

[deepwaterwritingprompts]

Text: The autopsies reveal hearts and lungs devoured by mushrooms, six bodies in six days. Some low level decomp god is getting greedy, and its my job to put it in chains.

[doodleferp]

Question for the gods walk among us why do people fear Vash? What did he do to get the title dark god?

My friend, you are opening what Trixie Mattel would call "the Pandora Boxx of boxes". (cracks knuckles) Here we go. In this AU, Vash’s nicknames include The Humanoid Typhoon, The Dark Walker, and The Living End.

Since all the Plants are worshipped, Vash is no exception. However, since we have to adhere to canon, he is seen as a dark and/or chthonic god -- essentially all Four Horsemen rolled into one dude. The Stampede is seen as a harbinger of death, and if he shows up to your town, everything you know and love will be destroyed. But because Vash is Vash, the people of No Man's Land have unwittingly made someone's lie into truth by panicking and trying to fight him whenever he comes near a town. I want to think that because he isn't treated like the other Plants, Vash is considered low on power compared to the rest of his kin. And because the Plants are all generally kind entities, they call him to them whenever he's nearby so they can give him some of their own energy to heal him. While it heals him physically, it can only cause more damage to him since the townspeople believe The Stampede is here to kill the gods. I don't think the other Plants can travel, just because I wanna keep Vash and Knives as independents. If they can walk, I don't think they'd be able to go very far out of their oasis, either by their own will or by the people protecting them.

Speaking of Knives, he's much less genocidal in this AU! Because he believes that Plants are above humans, seeing humans so blatantly subservient to his species gives him a big ego boost. He sees humans doing all they can to keep Plants happy and healthy, and it makes him happy -- but he wants to keep things the way they are because he believes that if humans didn't deify Plants, they would abuse and work them to death. So he uses his own abilities and the Eye of Michael to further the illusion that Plants are gods. He's also the reason that there's so much hostility towards non-believers and followers of other religious movements. These groups run the risk of breaking his illusion and showing the "truth" about Plants, so he wants to get rid of them. Knives has a public figure as one of the rare Walking Gods, so he’s seen by humanity as something ethereal and they generally have a good opinion of him. He has his people at the Eye of Michael going behind peoples backs and trying to take out non-believers, though — like Wolfwood. The Eye of Michael is probably the biggest Plant sect on the planet and it has an astronomical amount of followers.

Meanwhile, Vash is much more withdrawn and lonely because he has to remain hidden at the cost of his own life at the very least. Like, the second someone thinks they saw The Dark Walker, it's sounding the sirens and sending everyone from the middle of town to the next three towns over into a massive panic, people get out guns and weapons and attacking anything that look suspicious. It’s to the point where Vash is used to sleeping out in the desert because there’s like a one in a million chance that he’d be able to sleep at the edge of a boonies town without being physically attacked. Nobody has any idea how it happened, not even him, but people are so viscerally terrified of Vash in a way that makes the canon look like a playground. There’s terrible stories about Vash that he doesn’t even remember happening to him, but he hears about them so much that he’s starting to accept them as truth. He's rarely able to let loose and let the adorable extroverted bbygirl in him come out to play and he’s just…resigned to his fate.

[i-blindside]

An absolute chef's kiss of a man

[kuromi-hoemie]

i love being a stem i love being flamboyantly masculine it's so fun. (*ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ꕤ*.ﾟi had a good outing this afternoon getting RSOs and then checking out the mall here n getting a cinnamon roll finally omg.

I've been craving one so bad for a few days aksjak i was anxious abt going to the mall bc i haven't been to one in Months or maybe a year, but i didn't need to be 🙈 it's the middle of the day on a random Tuesday, of the relatively few ppl who were here they were gassing me up 😤💕

[tiddiesoutwhenthetisout]

not me curling my laptop charger wire the way you curl band equipment cords HAHAHA god i miss it

[ardenssolis]

@nvrcmplt said (inbox):

She wasn't to force him to talk, but she didn't like that look upon his face as she approached without a smile to her presence. Fingers gentle in running over his shoulder, sliding on his clothing to the neck where she'd cup his jaw and settle herself upon the arm of his seat. She'd speak nothing, but watch him, stroking the thumb in place and leaning down to press her lips to his crown and rest her cheek upon it afterwards. A hug for his head alone in the moment of thought and low needs being met.

WAS HE DOING ENOUGH? Would his reign be recalled for ages to come? A silly thing to mull over when he was still young, but death came so swiftly to those that lived within this vast desert. The young died every day – some even younger still, and that was normal. To reach an age where one could be called ‘old’ was a blessing that should earn respect. His father had been old, not quite wrinkled or with a back that ached, yet by their standards, Seti’s foot might as well be halfway towards the shores of the Duat. He was probably being too hard on himself. There was forever a worry lingering deep within over a plethora of wholly unnecessary things, but that was merely a part of who he was. How many times had he been told by loved ones to merely move forward without hesitation? He needed to continue to keep that in mind, even as his feet might want to sink into the mud and stay put. Pulled from his reverie, he blinked, taken aback by the soft touch of his love as golden eyes came to rest upon her form.

     Something about Zateros’ presence always improved his mood even long before she had become one of his wives, a faint, small smile tugging at his lips as she sat upon the arm of his throne. Words were not needed, for he knew she understood his quiet. Rather than break it, she graced him with affection, holding his head close so that what warmth she had could envelope him. Eyes closing, Ramses allowed all his thoughts to leave him for the time being. The future and all that entailed could wait another day (or several). At this instance, he would place his attention on the here and now. After all, a king must look ahead, this is true. However, it is the present where their gaze should truly lie. This was something he would remember…although, he had a feeling that Zateros would always be there to remind him of this as well in case he ever forgot.

[emi-matchu]

been experiencing a real kick in the gut from the recent episode of Dimension 20, in which the cleric gets a talking-to from their ex about like

the ways in which yes they rejected being the chosen one of a fucked-up god, and went to create meaning in the wilderness…

but ultimately they don’t actually want to create meaning, because that’s hard; they just jump from thing to thing and abandon them when the hard parts come

and in their heart they’re still waiting for a god to choose them and make things easy for them again, because they just think easy is what they’re entitled to

and I’m just like. whuh oh

---

like I really do just have a short-circuit in my mind that, when I notice that something doesn’t sound outright straightforward, completely rejects the possibility, as if it were beyond me

a learned helplessness that is very much against my values but also very much baked into my wiring, that I don’t usually notice as such because it quickly moves on and directly resists memory-formation and reflection

it has me waiting on external saviors who are not coming

because only those who I’ve named as my enemy are well-resourced enough to Just Save Me

---

…and the oof especially hits because like

under my spirituality, this metaphor isn’t even metaphorical; I was chosen by evil gods to work their will, and had most of the other logistics of life made laughably easy for me—I don’t mean this in an aggrandizing way of suggesting I am Actually Special in some meaningful sense; it’s just a common tool of everyday evil, in which entire classes of people are routinely Chosen by the mundane gods who walk among us, because having disciples is useful

it’s all just. yes this is what happened, this is what I have done and am doing, fully textually, spoken directly into the camera in second-person language

whuh oh

[edennill]

To be quite honest I strongly doubt the Eldar would have any distinction between philosophy and theology.

[novaraptorus]

you jnkw whag rbey sag! "noooo dint fjkinvg do tbag please"

[bigolbard]

I just finished a book that made me cry and then opened Spotify and it was like “here’s a song you might like sire” and the art was pretty so I listened to it and it perfectly encapsulated the sorrow and mood of the book and my soul in both its music and lyrics and idk maybe there are gods out there and maybe one of them is looking at me

[doodleferp]

In God's among us if knives and his followers take out the non Believers what does he do to heretics?

He takes them out similarly to the non-believers. His number one priority is ensuring that PLANTs stay on top of the food chain, and he has no problem murdering whatever he has to in order to keep it that way. We’re talking smear campaigns, assassination, the works. Anything to keep people believing that the PLANTs are their only reason to keep going.

[spaceman-spaetzle]

dressed up nice to go see a show post-hair bleaching and im told i look like arthur kirkland

this is what karma looks like after years of gently roasting him