#Gods to the Godless

[livingunderaclassicrock]

tbf “didn’t have to do it, only did it for fun” was basically Keith’s mantra for 90% of everything he ever did.

[justarandomlambblog]

mmm thinking about an au where Narinder runs away after being defeated and eventually finds himself being taken in by a kind soul in a distant village beyond the borders of the Old Faith. He begins to learn how to just... be, after a rocky start. Slowly easing into village life, taking over the kind person's role once they get too old to continue working (Narinder quickly realizing he himself isn't aging) and somehow accidentally fitting himself into the role of this person's son.

Years pass by and he's fully settled as a member of this godless village, unaware of the power vacuum left by the crowns and the war the Lamb (& Co, he's unaware that his siblings have been brought back) are fighting, watching the generations being born and aging. Maybe a whole generation has come and gone in the time he's been there, and over those ~100 years he becomes a pseudo-leader/protector for them.

Maybe a stranger comes to the village one day. A stranger from outside. Narinder was once a stranger from outside too, and like the kind soul who took him in he does the same, and something... starts between them. Something warm, something he's never felt before. Painfully aware of his own mortality, yet.... a family sounds nice. He's watched everyone around him start their own, he's even helped widowed parents and orphaned children....

So he starts a family. And they're happy.

Until they're not.

The power struggle from the land of the old faith spills over their borders, wannabe gods looking to expand their power, and in the dead of night Narinder's peaceful little village is attacked.

so much is lost- not a kit, thankfully, Narinder protects them with everything he has, and by now he has discovered he can still use magic so protect them he does. But the village is under attack and Narinder's partner is among those who are lost.

He lashes out with his magic, essentially rotting every heretic in the village alive in his grief, and afterwards they rebuild with a few dozen new graves, well cared for, with Narinder pretty solidly stepping into the role of leader. He doesn't introduce the idea of gods to these people- they're his people now, and they don't need gods. He can take care of them himself, god or not.

Those who are capable of magic, he teaches to use it. Those who are not, he teaches to use weapons and runes. He won't let the outside world harm them again.

Fast forward ~15 years, the village is thriving and the people are happy. His kits are teens/young adults now and his people are capable enough to defend themselves, so he's started joining hunting parties and trade groups, interacting with other villages outside of the Old Faith lands (they're spread apart, and Narinder's village is at this point the most prosperous... due to magic reasons, not that Narinder will reveal this). He very, very much refuses to go anywhere near the Old Faith's lands, and has in no uncertain terms forbidden his kits from even approaching the border.

No one knows who he really is. Unfortunately, skeletons don't stay in their graves when the Old Faith is involved.

Narinder is away with a trade group when the Lamb and the Bishops, who are searching for a rogue heretic faith that attacked their cult, stumble upon the village. It's the only one for miles, having been days since they've seen another village (Lamb laments the fact they can't just teleport out here, since there's no warp stones set up out here). The villagers are cautious but friendly- very clearly not warriors, but clearly not about to lie down and let themselves be harmed.

They talk amongst themselves, knowing the people out here don't speak their language, when someone greets them in their language. It's Narinder's oldest kit, a polite thing who definitely plays the rules on their lines; "Father says we cannot go into the Old Faith lands but he said nothing about inviting them to dinner." Ofc this kit has no idea who these people are, and they have no idea who she is, but she greets them nicely and lets them know her father is the village's leader and they cannot offer anything more than water for the road but there is room at their table if they would like to join them.

The Bishops and Lamb are tired and have been on the move for weeks now, trying to hunt down the rogue heretics who managed to escape, and honestly, dinner and a place to safely sit sounds nice, and it's not like any of them can actually be killed if things go south (Lamb would just bring them back and they know it). So they agree to stay.

And then Narinder returns. Impromptu family reunion :)

[maegalkarven]

So we have two companions with actual bombs in them (Gale and Karlach), two brainwashed companions with their gods being tyrants (Lae'zel and Shadowheart), two companions with some shemy patrons (Gale and Wyll), two companions with magical wounds (Gale and Shadowheart), two former slaves companions being tracked down by their former masters (Astarion and Karlach), and Dark Urge, who is both a child of a tyrannical god and is his slave, basically a bomb of his own.

And then Jaheira, Halsin and Minsc are...normies. Two old druids and a dude talking to a hamster.

[minniiaa]

Trafalgar D. Water Law - A Faithless Man’s Journey to Believing

After Doflamingo was defeated Law was just living on borrowed time.

See, Law gave up on that day. He thought he was dead, he probably should have been. But Luffy stepped in and saved him, promised him he would defeat Doflamingo and even without knowing it, he took on Law’s promise to avenge Cora. The promise that had become his reason for living in this world that had only brought him pain.

Believing was not something he did. He had believed in god as a child he supposed, thinking the tales his mother wove were true but after his family was destroyed before his very eyes, after all of the people he had ever known were killed, he decided that there was no way god could exist in a world this cruel. He regained a bit of faith when he met Corazon, a strange man who put his life on the line to save the dying child who was Law even though he had no reason to. Then on the day Doflamingo pulled the trigger and murdered his own brother in cold blood for betraying him, Law lost what little faith he gained.

Meeting Strawhat Luffy was the thing that made him start to believe again. He didn’t know when it happened. Maybe it was the first time they met when he witnessed the boy captain punching a celestial dragon in the face. Perhaps it was when he watched in horror as emerged from Imepl Down, a place where escape was supposed to be impossible, to rescue his brother Fire First Ace from execution. He took shoulder to shoulder with the greatest in the world and succeeded—almost. His brother was killed by Akainu and Luffy’s half-dead body was dragged away by his allies.

Law didn’t really know why he decided to save him. Perhaps it was a whim like he had told everyone else. Perhaps he believed that a man this insane would be able to save him if he played his cards right. He nursed Luffy back to health and went on his way without looking back. He would find out one day what the purpose of putting his own life on the line for that boy was.

Then he reunited with Luffy on Punk Hazard where he just showed up and did whatever he wanted and somehow ended up on top with his insane strength. Was he just lucky? Was there some sort of divine intervention? Law didn’t know. What he did know was that this irresponsible idiot could make miracles happen.

Law decided to hedge his bets and forged an alliance with Luffy with the intent of manipulating him into defeating Doflamingo. Luffy found out about it Law’s plan soon enough but it didn’t really matter to him. He had already decided to defeat Doflamingo anyway. Like the warlord was simply a stepping stone for him that he was confident he would overcome. Law broke off their alliance and was defeated by Doflamingo so easily the first time. Then for some reason Strawhat came to his aid and rescued him despite his claims he would kill him. Luffy threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and pushed forward, rallying the people of Dressrosa behind him and gaining the favor of pirates who should have been his enemies, all without even trying.

Then they reached their goal. Law fought Doflamingo again and he failed miserably, his arm cut off and about to be crushed under the massive man’s boot. It was only by some miracle that Strawhat showed up and stopped him with his foot inches away from Law’s face.

Law made his most insane gamble yet and entrusted Luffy with his promise to avenge Cora. He decided he would stand by his side until the very end because he had already accepted this place would be his grave. There was no point in living if Strawhat died anyways, Law’s mission wouldn’t never be accomplished after that.

He watched as Luffy won. It felt like a dream.

Law didn’t die that day. He was a man who had planned every move out painstakingly but he had no plan for what to do if Doflamingo fell. He had bid farewell to his crew and accepted his inevitable fate. Yet here he was, alive and well, taken in by the Strawhats who seemed to forget he was an enemy pirate and treated him like one of their own. They just moved forward, persisting, and cutting a path through everything that stood in their way. Law was convinced they must all be fools.

He just stood by, reuniting with his crew and watching as Luffy allied them with the Samurai and declaring they would take down Kaido without much thought and without asking Law he opinions He just simply expected he was going to go along with this plan, they were ‘friends’ after all.

In the end, he was right, Law did go along with his plan. What else was he supposed to do? He never really wanted to become the pirate king, his journey to find the one piece was only meant to serve as a way to defeat Doflamingo and he couldn’t even do that without Strawhat’s help. What was he even living for now?

So he went to Wano. He helped devise the absolutely insane plan to defeat Kaido that even he didn’t really believe would work because he had no idea what else to do. Of course, Luffy showed up and threw his plan out the window from the second he stepped foot on Wano because why wouldn’t he? Luffy did what he always did, razing the path forward by his sheer will and insane luck and once again Law just sat by flabbergasted. He got pulled along in the current that was Monkey D. Luffy.

Somehow Law ended defeating a fucking Emperor with the help of the idiot Eustass Kidd. He, Trafalgar D. Water Law the man who couldn’t even defeat Doflamingo took down Big Mom. What the hell was going on?

That wasn’t the craziest thing that happened though. Luffy lost to Kaido. He was defeated.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. Law believed this quote. He decided Luffy must just be insane when he declared he wasn’t giving up. He would defeat Kaido.

The result was the same but even worse this time, Luffy died. He fucking died. Law thought it was the end for them, that it all had been for naught. An insane fool who died an insane death.

Then the biggest miracle Law had ever witnessed happened—Luffy came back to life. He wasn’t convinced it could be real until he Law watched in awe and horror as Luffy’s inhumanly large body, blindingly white and as beautiful as the sun itself, burst through the ceiling eyes popping out of his head like some cartoon character. He thought it was a dream. It wasn’t. Luffy had become a fucking god.

Maybe Law had unconsciously known he was a god. Perhaps he started to worship him long before he even knew it himself. Law had mostly accepted that Luffy would probably end up as the pirate king after the crazy things he had seen but when Luffy took down Kaido on that day, Law knew it as fact. He would become the god of this world.

Where was his place in all this? What was he supposed to do with his life now? He had just been riding Strawhat’s coat tails this entire time. There was something about seeing Luffy overcome all odds and accomplish the impossible that inspired Law to live again. He believed in not only Luffy, but himself. For the first time in years, he believed in his own damn self.

So he picked himself off and dusted the cobwebs off of his hopes and dreams. He had the same mysterious middle initial as Luffy, the pirate king, and a few other people who defied all logic in this world. He had always wondered what it meant. There was history to be uncovered that Law wanted to learned but he pushed that dream aside in lieu of revenge and inevitable death. He could pursue now that he was free from the shackles of his past. He was a pirate with two road poneglyphs. He could go find the one piece and discover the secrets of this world, the meaning behind the ‘Will of D’. He took his crew and set off, his faith renewed.

Strawhat still considered him a friend and Law vehemently denied it as they departed. They weren’t friends. Luffy was his savior, the reason he decided to live, the one who inspired him to pick himself up and do something with this time he had been given. Friends was not a powerful enough word to describe what Luffy was to him. However, Law was prideful man and a pirate first. He would never admit this to that to the young captain. He would probably like say something like “Yeah, I already knew that Traffy,” with a big stupid grin on his face.

And so, Law closed the book on the first part of the story of Trafalgar D. Water Law, a godless man who saw god for the first time. What would become of him now, he did not know.

[dirtyatheist]

[defleftist]

Last week I had to go to the ER due to an unfortunate run in with a bat and worries about potential exposure to rabies. This trip to the ER was a fascinating anthropological study of human behavior while under stress. Maybe the most noteworthy thing I noticed was a man sat near me in the waiting room who brought with him a book called Classical Christianity. He read the book briefly before casting it aside to watch videos on his phone. After an hour or so of waiting (it was a very busy night in the ER we all had to wait a long time) he jumped up, book in tow, and went up to the front desk where he proceeded to yell and flip off the front desk worker before storming out of the ER in a huff. Just saying, that didn’t seem like very classical Christian behavior my dude. But hey, I’m just a godless heathen who would never dare to treat overworked and underpaid healthcare workers like that.

[a-typical]

It is, when you think about it, remarkable that a religion should adopt an instrument of torture and execution as its sacred symbol, often worn around the neck. Lenny Bruce rightly quipped that 'If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.' But the theology and punishment-theory behind it is even worse. The sin of Adam and Eve is thought to have passed down the male line - transmitted in the semen according to Augustine. What kind of ethical philosophy is it that condemns every child, even before it is born, to inherit the sin of a remote ancestor? Augustine, by the way, who rightly regarded himself as something of a personal authority on sin, was responsible for  coining the phrase 'original sin'. Before him it was known as 'ancestral sin'. Augustine's pronouncements and debates epitomize, for me, the unhealthy preoccupation of early Christian theologians with sin. They could have devoted their pages and their sermons to extolling the sky splashed with stars, or mountains and green forests, seas and dawn choruses. These are occasionally mentioned, but the Christian focus is overwhelmingly on sin sin sin sin sin sin sin. What a nasty little preoccupation to have dominating your life.

[ilynpilled]

Jaime & prayer

[mhk-87]

You can admire it endlessly! (^_^)

[moltengoldveins]

Plagued with Thoughts (The Ungodly Marriage of Gothic and Brutalist Architecture)

[kurumayu]

[n1ghtwarden]

"Eilistraee and Lolth finally elected to play a divine game of sava, with the stakes being the very fate of the drow and loss meaning death for one of the goddesses."

eilistraee when i catch you

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Or, you know, just the people who claim to speak on his behalf would be sufficient.

[fopgender]

Not going to lie, being transmasc and having a breeding kink on this website kinda blows hard ass considering how misgendering kinks invade literally every other segment of the ftm nsft tags and really, truly, I respect y'all that're horny for it, but oh my god, be considerate of the motherfuckers for whom this content ends up being self harm.

[slutpoppers]

Kamikatsu: Working for God in a Godless World

Got it from IG: @Shirtless_anime_boys

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

"I am much afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell, unless they diligently labour in explaining the Holy Scriptures, and engraving them in the hearts of youth. I advise no one to place his child where the scriptures do not reign paramount. Every institution in which means are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must be corrupt." - Martin Luther