crouching_sin | [Video]

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[Today's video finds Naoya sitting and drinking a cup of coffee. He's bundled up in a green sweater, and he looks fairly amused.]

I thought I'd tell you a story today, for those of you who care to listen. This is a story about the Norse gods, and mistletoe. Let me define a fe things before I begin, for those of you who do not know those terms.

Gods are like… very powerful beings. Think of them like very rare, very powerful Pokemon. Gods in most traditions are similar to humans in the sense that they live out their lives, look similar to people, and have relationships. Generally, they're thought to have certain domains of power.

Mistletoe is a plant with white berries that looks similar to this.

[He pauses to lift up a picture that he's drawn to illustrate it.]

There's a tradition to meet under it to kiss people.

'Norse' refers to a people in my world that lived in the far north. Their culture is mostly known these days for being one that was full of warriors and raiders.

Now, on to our story. One day, the queen of the gods, Frigga, had a dream about her son Baldur - the god of light - dying horribly. Baldur had the same dream, and Frigga set out to see that it didn't happen. She traveled all the realms, making each and every object swear that it would never harm Baldur. Every object swore an oath - except for mistletoe, because Frigga thought it too young and unimportant to swear an oath.

The gods heard of all of the oaths sworn, and played a game where they threw things at Baldur and watched them bounce off. However Loki, god of fire and mischief, heard of this, and found out that mistletoe had not sworn that oath. He took mistletoe and made an arrow of it, and handed it to Baldur's brother, the blind god Hod. Hod threw the arrow at Baldur, which killed him.

Frigga went to Hel, the mistress of the dead, and pleaded for her son back. Hel agreed, on the condition that every living thing in the world weep for Baldur. She went to every living thing and begged for them to weep, and all did - except one. That was the giantess Thokk, and because she would not weep, Baldur did not come back to life.

[He takes a sip of his coffee, before speaking again.]

It's unclear whether Thokk was Loki in disguise or not. Certainly, he'd never tell one way or the other, god of mischief that he is. The fact remains that, though many see mistletoe as a symbol of love, it's in fact the reminder of a dead god.

... Though said god did reappear recently, though that's a story for another time.

I hope you all learned something today.

[Aaand the video clicks off.]

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wait
the dead god came back?

Edited 2015-12-19 13:11 (UTC)

As a demon, yes. In my world, when the one known as 'God' to most people nowadays - whose name is "Yehowah" - took control of the world, He cast down all of the old gods and spirits as demons. Some of those had a fragment of the previous ruler, Bel, inside of them.

Baldur was also known as Beldr, and took part in the War of Bel, where every demon with a piece of that old ruler came together to fight to take the other fragments and become the King of Demons.

It was said in the Norse traditions that he would come back at the end of days anyway, and the world did very nearly end.

oh
well that sounds shitty
did anyone win or did something else take place

Someone won, though he made a poor decision as to what to do with that power.

dont we all
what happened after that though
i mean you said the world almost ended so was it ok after all
or did you have to like
rebuild and stuff

He chose to become the Messiah - which put the fate of humanity's free will in God's fickle hands. If humanity does not act the way He wants, He will take away everyone's free will as an act of 'benevolence'.

whoa ok that is SOME BULLSHIT
the fuck does he want a really boring game of sims???
even my universe with its stupid time fuckery and predestination crap doesnt pull shit like that like we still have choices and shit
mostly

Agreed, it's incredibly stupid, considering free will is what makes humanity what it is.
Even his other options of what to do with that power would have been fine, as long as it wasn't running away. I would have preferred my plan, but even just keeping the power and sending the demons away would have worked.

what even was the benefit of doing the messiah thing that sounds idiotic

I don't know, he didn't give me his reasoning.

what does it even mean to do gods will anyway
its not like any religions ever been clear on the topic

Keep people in line, mostly. Punish the 'sinners'.

lame
dumb and lame
this is why all religions are such bullshit they dont explain anything and so many of them are wrong
or at least wrong in my universe i guess since theyre real in yours

They may be 'true' but that doesn't mean the stories don't get messed up in the most fucked up game of telephone ever.

yeah i hear that
we had all this greco roman and welsh shit just popping up out of nowhere in our world and also all the zodiac signs turned out to be representative not of perfectly reasonable made up myths about star pictures
but of some kind of caste system for the aliens that created our universe
it was pretty disappointing all around

That's... very odd, but I suppose I can't really judge another world on its oddness, given mine.

nah dude judge away
im pretty aware of what rampant bullshit my world was and frankly what ive mentioned isnt even a fifth of it
yours sounds like it has some internal consistency at least even if that messiah thing sounds whack

And the internal consistency of God being... essentially a dick, really. It has been a constant pretty much since the beginning of His existence.

Setting people up for failure, placing impossible tasks in front of them, limiting humanity's potential...

Edited 2015-12-25 02:32 (UTC)

sounds like any world no matter if the big g god is around or not

[Bitter bitter bitter bitter rockin' everywhere.]

I suppose that's true. Not that I have much experience with alternate worlds, I'm afraid.

take it from me theyre mostly all the same
right down to how nothing matters and then you die
the differences mostly lie in cosmetic details
for example on what they call twelth perigees eve some aliens pseudoparental symbiotes apparently go out hunting and bring back the biggest piece of shit they can find
and i mean that literally
their haul is literally a giant behemoth turd
and they bring it inside and decorate it like a christmas tree
the more things change right

I'd call bullshit but that's pretty much what it is, isn't it?

yeah see youre catching on to what makes my universe go round

Of course. I think it makes most universes go around.

probably
but anyway thanks for explaining about mistletoe
seventeen years old and i never heard that shit before i mean christ what do they teach us in schools these days

It's considered 'literature', I guess, and many schools just don't cover it like they should.

wait do schools actually cover mythology in reading class?
huh
i was being sort of ironic because i havent seen the inside of a school since i was thirteen on account of the world ending and all

Some of them do, usually under 'classical literature'. At least the Iliad and the Odyssey.

But yes, that would definitely stop school from happening.

i dont have to take make ups or anything do i
i dont remember schooling being a big part of the pokeworld zeitgeist

There's a Trainer School around but that's voluntary and focuses on Pokemon, so no.

good
i reserve my right as a lawless orphan in this video game world to be as uneducated and feckless as i want

It would only be traditional, wouldn't it?

and im all about respecting the great traditions of this world
especially the ones that align with my total lack of interest in experiencing what human high school is actually like

It's not fun. I was incredibly bored during all of my high school classes.

they had high school 5500 years ago?

I graduated from high school about six years ago.

[Private]

But no, they didn't.

it took you 5500 years to graduate high school?

[Well, he can see why Naoya would want that private...]

No, I reincarnated.

oh
that makes sense
well shit dude i hope you didnt have to go through high school too many times
that sounds like it would probably suck

After the first few times that I had to do it I started to just get moved up to the advanced classes, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

wait
isnt this not how reincarnation works
i thought you werent supposed to remember past lives
like only your karma gets transferred on and not your memories and stuff

Karma isn't really transferred so much in my world, but yes, that's how it's supposed to work.

I'm somewhat of a special case, unfortunately.

oh
so do you have grown up memories when youre a baby
because that seems like itd be supremely frustrating

They seem to be somewhat fuzzy before I'm a few years old, but most babies don't really handle memories well. But then yes, when I'm first really aware of myself I have all of those memories coming back.

[...]

does it suck as much as it sounds like it sucks

Pretty much. It's a literal and metaphorical headache.

sorry that happens to you then
and keeps happening
id be pretty pissed off at god too if i believed in that stuff

He'll pay for it eventually.

uhh
how...so?
i mean
isnt god by definition pretty much unassailably omnipotent

All gods can be defeated. They're powerful, but not insurmountable. The King of Demons is the only being with the power to stand up to Him.

that kind of sounds like a bad thing though

Why? Oh, the King of Demons thing? It depends who's got the title, doesn't it?

i guess????
arent some things just bad news no matter how you slice them though like
i dunno i wouldnt feel too secure about anyone titled destroyer of souls and im pretty sure king of demons lands in the same category
unless im misinterpreting something

He's my cousin. This incarnation's cousin, at least. And he was supposed to fight God or do anything but what he did which is what I told you above.

ohhhh
ok
so the king of demons is
also the messiah

that seems sort of unfair i mean what if other people wanted some badass titles ahead of the apocalypse

Well I hear the four horsemen are looking for assistants.

You could be the courier of pestilence or something if you really want.

hahaha shit
ok if we had to translate that into my worlds terms i think thatd come out to something like the page of doom
but im
i was the knight of time so im already covered

Knight of Time, hm? That's a pretty impressive-sounding title. What are the perks?

ignominious death mostly
but also i could go back in time

Oh that's fun.

How far back could you go?

im not sure actually
i never tried going more than a day because everything i needed to do had to get done within a short timeframe
i could maintain a whole fucking lot of loops simultaneously though
at one point there were at least thirteen of me running around at once

[Um.]

That's... rather impressive, actually.

meh
it got shit done
anyway i cant do it anymore obviously

I can't cast magic here anymore, so I think there's a lot of people who don't have their abilities here.

what kind of magic did you do

I knew a lot, but I mostly kept a healing spell, a shielding spell, and a 'blow everything up' spell equipped.

oh yeah the fuck shit up spell
always handy in a crisis
that was more my sisters area though

It's very helpful, considering it's like dropping a small nuclear bomb on something. It doesn't always kill demons, but it tends to cut through most elemental resistances.

What sort of magic did your sister do?

uhh she had sort of general dark magyyks at one point
like she looked too long into the abyss or something and the eldritch gods living there poured their space lobstery business into her brain so she talked gobbledegook for a while and leaked smoke
apart from that she just sort of shot light at things with her knitting needles and they exploded

That's probably not good, she should get that looked at.

That's useful, though. It might be somewhat limited in applications, but still useful.

its fine
she got better
now she mostly just sees the future and drinks a lot

That's better, I think.

Not good.

But better.

yeah

anyway thats my family

Honestly considering my family, I can't even say that's weird.

also were weird time clones

What?

john
thats my friend
he went up to the veil which is the fancy name for a bunch of meteors hanging out outside where our personal planets were
there was a space lab up there and like a total doofus falling ass first into some important plot heavy shit he just put on a science coat and pushed buttons like there was no tomorrow
which i guess in a pretty literal way there wasnt
anyway pushing the buttons allowed him to obtain paradox slime imprints of our guardians which the machine then analyzed to create baby versions of said guardians
then john pressed another button which mixed the slime heterowise and those mixtures made me and rose and then john and jade
the same john whose pushing the buttons i mean except babies
everything is babies

so johns swamped with infant versions of ourselves and our biological parents
except theyre sort of not our biological parents since the actual biological babymaking process was not involved at any point in this its all dna recombination and ghost slime and sci fi machines
i guess the closest thing we can call them is our genetic donors who also happened to raise us
anyway it turns out that not only are these babies genetically identical to us
they also ARE us
and the mechanics of our universe are set up such that we were always already conceived thirteen years after wed already been living on gods good earth

Edited (wow) 2016-01-10 03:12 (UTC)

so in order to avoid a truly janked up chronological paradox the universe sends baby us back in time and scatters us through space such that we go back to late 1995
or spring of 96 in johns case
and land in our respective us states and or uncharted pacific islands
and our guardians get sent back even further so theyre proper guardian age when we land and thus can take care of us and raise us to be the badass little fuckers we are

oh by land i mean we were sent back on meteors
mine crushed a record store and a pony

and thats why i dont have a mom

I didn't even ask about your mom.

... So I guess my only response to this weirdness is that I'm Cain. As in literally him. And Loki hangs around me which makes most of this bullshit sound like not actually bullshit but a thing that could happen.

cain
like the 2006 shane woodson film with flavor flav playing slim jim?

... No, like the Biblical figure. That one.

oh that one

[Well that's less exciting.]

i guess that makes more sense with your being fifty five hundred years old and all

[Sorry about not knowing Flavor Flav.]

Exactly. At least you come from a world with that story - I've had to tell it a few times.

[Even if it doesn't get everything right...]

yeah im like
vaguely familiar
church wasnt really a thing in my household as you can probably tell from speaking to me for like five seconds

That's fine, church is pretty useless anyway.

thats the impression i always had of it

actually

can i ask you a question

You're already asking a question.

But yes, go ahead.

so religions basically there to explain the unexplainable right
you know like all the stuff science hadnt/hasnt gotten to yet
spiritual questions and shit
but i never believed in that and i dunno maybe it doesnt apply to my universe at all
but it seems at least some things are true where youre from
so

in your world
what happens to people after they die

Essentially, souls are wiped clean of memories and recycled. Certain things remain - like the essential, core personality, it seems. Occasionally spots can be 'missed', which is why some people seem to recall past lives.

so
there isnt really an afterlife or anything
you just get on and ride again

Not from what I've seen.

Then again, I wouldn't know. I'm trapped on the ride until past the point where I've heard 'It's A Small World' over and over and I've gone past the insanity point, it's mostly just boring now.

well
yeah your situation sucks but from a certain perspective
at least something happens
i guess

I guess so.

I'll escape some day, though.

yeah
i really hope it works out for you man

... It's appreciated.

You know, I've always been curious if this story has any relation to why Mistletoe is associated with kissing now.

There's a number of theories - some say that it didn't have berries until Frigga wept, and her tears became the berries so they signify a mother's love. Some say that Frigga decreed that the plant should no longer bring death, but love and life. Others say that that part of the myth isn't Norse at all, but Celtic, and it's associated with Christmas because of the Celtic solstice traditions that were brought into Christmas, and the kissing part was because it was associated with fertility in Greece and negotiating between enemies in Rome.

It's one of those parts of legend where there's no clear story, because one or all of them could be true.

Makes sense, most stories like this are mish-mashes over time. It's kinda funny to think of how it must look from the outside-in though.

Of course. Some myths happen to be true, but even then the subjects of those legends are rarely forthcoming with those sorts of answers. ... Either because they're tired of people acting or just because they're dicks.

[Thanks, Loki.]

"Just because they're dicks"

I like that. I haven't meant many divine beings but the few I have fit that billing pretty well.

Oh really? How many have you met?

Just the one. And he's not really a mythical figure. More like a cog in the afterlife machine where I'm from. A big cog. But still very not human and also a huge dick.

... You've died before, then. Did you reincarnate? No, you wouldn't have remembered if you did... interesting...

It's... complicated? But yeah, I died. But in my world some people get a chance to fight for a chance to revive. But if you lose you get Erased. Which I THINK means you just get broken down and used in making new life. So kinda like reincarnation- or recycling or something. I don't know a lot of the details, and my Game was apparently a lot different then most.

... Interesting. It doesn't work that way in my world. Not that I'm aware of, anyway, and I'd think that I would have heard of it by now.

To be fair I hadn't heard of it until I actually, you know, died.

[Aaaaand up goes the private filter.]

I've died quite a few times, but I'm somewhat of a special case, i guess.

[He takes note of the filter, but doesn't say anything]

Special case? I mean, I expect every world's afterlife to be pretty different, just from talking to people here. Being dead isn't even a huge minority here.

Most people don't remember after they've come back. They just get reincarnated as babies and don't remember anything from their previous lives. That's... not the case for me.

Mistletoe is a parasitic nuisance for trees, they're quite disgusting when you think about it.

[Yep. That's...that's all of Botan's input for that. Of course she'd have that kind of knowledge about things that drain the life and nutrients out of another living thing.]

So I suppose it does make sense that they'd be connected to a deceased god.

I suppose. Dying didn't remove his weakness to it, either - I saw him defeated with a mistletoe phone charm of all things, which is hilarious.

Pffft--

[Botan it's rude to laugh at gods, but--]

A phone charm. That's like warding off vampires with a ceramic garlic bulb!

Heh. Exactly. The one I saw recently was defeated with a vial of magical powder, but I wouldn't put it past him to be defeated by something stupid like that.

Sounds like it. You think you know a demon or vampire or whatever, and then they get taken down by something like--say--a whistle.

[Firsthand experience there.]

A whistle? I haven't heard of that one. What happened?

As a worker in the Spirit World, I'm assigned certain tools for my use in the field. One of them is a whistle whose radius is determined by how much spirit energy I put into it, they're supposed to call demons to you since only they can hear it.

[...]

But apparently Hiei was too close and ended up getting knocked out by the noise instead.

Like a dog whistle, but for demons. Interesting. What sort of demon is this 'Hiei'?

Hiei...hnnnn, how do I describe him?

[No, really, how can she?]

Let me start this off by saying even among other demons, Hiei's an abnormality. He's a fire demon born to an ice demon--unfortunately for him, the race his mother came from is all female, so when Hiei was born they realized she had interacted with a man and threw him out.

[It's actually quite sad, though Hiei in truth scares the hell out of Botan and she trusts him about as far as she can throw him.]

He rose up the ranks to S-rank and committed petty thievery over the years, eventually installing the "Evil Eye" onto his forehead, an extra organ that enhances his power and allows him to find whatever he wants. So, what this creates is a demon that can manipulate fire, has three eyes, is very short and very violent. Besides all that, he looks pretty close to a human and spends his time now pushing out humans that accidentally wander into the Demon World.

... That's... quite the strange demon. I suppose it doesn't surprise me that someone like that would strike out into thievery and acquiring power. He doesn't sound quite like any demon I've run into, but I suppose it makes sense for different worlds to have diferent demons.

I have a feeling this god of mischief wasn't particularly popular with the others.

Not so much, no. He could definitely be a handful to deal with...

Do any other legends say why he'd make so many enemies like that?

[She can't imagine any parent taking well to someone purposefully ensuring the murder of their child...]

Some say it was because he was born different - not the same species as many of the other gods, but of the jotun, enemies of the Aesir, which is what most of the gods were. I don't know if I buy that. I'm sure most people know at least one person who likes intentionally pissing people off.

[You're talking to one, after all.]

One would think that going against gods would make that a much more dangerous hobby.

I don't know, sometimes it can be fun... depending on how much you can get away with.

I'm guessing this is something you know from experience?

I have a lot of experience with demons - and many demons are cast-down gods.

Really? I didn't know that. I suppose it makes sense in a way, however.

I don't know if it's true for other worlds, but it's true for mine at least.

Do you have to deal with them often?

I was hired to make a Demon Summoning App, so yes. Frequently.

I'd be incredulous but that sounds like it'd be doable back home if demons were a thing there.

It does sound like a bad idea however.

Look, haven't you ever had a contract or a job to do something that sounded like a bad idea?

[There's a long while before a reply comes.]

I think I've been on the receiving hand honestly.

[Oh.]

That does happen, unfortunately. Nothing I say will make that better, I suppose.

It happens.

At least demons weren't the cause behind it, right? I can count myself lucky there.

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[Private Text] 1/why did you do this to yourself

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