#i’m sure it was all in the contract

[sobecomesomethingelse]

maybe paige’s god’s name should be vaughan, since one could make the argument that vaughan was the seed of the wound tree

[soath]

Of Contracts Between Gods and Men

On the Aeorian Kinsey-Deicide scale I’m a solid 5 (near exclusively god-preserving) which may seem surprising to my many dear associates who want those fundamental truths of existence wrecked. Without digging in any further, let’s do some quick religious history review on the question: Do you owe anything to the gods and do they owe anything to you?

The answer is not as universal as many raised in the nigh inescapable miasma of Christian theology may think! Reciprocal (or even unilateral) responsibility in religion comes and goes across history and geography. The Norse Aesir, for example, created humans but don’t owe them nada and only rarely bothered messing with them. The Greek pantheon are significantly more touchy on the subject of their pride but a person could manage offering no prayers or sacrifices as long as they didn’t promise any prayers or sacrifices. Probably. Compare this to Mayan theology, wherein both gods and humans have significant co-responsibility in maintaining balance; with ritual and sacrifice key to the continued safety of the polity. Divine-mortal relationships can be classified as nondirectional, unidirectional, or bidirectional with various advantages and disadvantages to each model. Gods come in lots of shapes and the demands they make aren’t universal!

A phrase that will often come up in any divinity studies is “covenant”. Originally a translation of the Hebrew berith or Greek diatheke, and also present in Islam, the Bahai’i faith, and possibly historical Phoenician religious practices, covenant theology has metastasized in Christian scholarship to the point it was genuinely hard to research this piece while dodging blogs by guys named Richard. But, broadly, it’s the idea of making an explicit deal with power(s) greater than yourself where you both have sides of the bargain to uphold.

Contract law is not the solution to every problem on earth or in fiction, but when the issue is a large disparity in power and mutual fears of future adverse behavior…. to quote Kate Bush “I’d make a deal with (the) god(s).”

Vitally, compared to other bidirectional pacts in world religion, Exandria has some advantages. For one thing, they have a godeater they’re right now helping to suppress. As long as the gods remain behind the divine gate they need mortal champions to effect their will—but that only holds true as long as the Divine Gate stays up. And unfortunately the problem with a fence someone else has erected is that you don’t know if they’ve kept a key.

If I was mortality’s lawyer? I’d ask for a second layer to that divine hamsterball I’d ask for anything left of the godkilling spark to be kept by the temples of Vasselheim—if they can’t be trusted with it no one can. And I’d promise cooperation from people of a certain degree of civic responsibility, not coerced or threatened out, whole hearted. But terms and conditions may vary.

Anyway, I guess the thesis is that it’s a terrible sin to destroy something you can’t comprehend with no idea of what the outcome will be (and a lot of you don’t seem to get the inconceivable joy of having/knowing/being a god, even just in fiction) but you can bring any monstrosity to the negotiating table. Don’t kill your gods, unionize against them.

[shizunitis]

Why do you talk like what a Gen Z believes a victorian poet to sound like? /j

don’t harrass the bereft jester and thought peddler, measks. mebegs, even. he cries easily and there is no shizun to comfort him.

[babycharmander]

I was looking at Miss Pauling’s contract voice lines on the TF2 Wiki and was delighted that she has some that depict her hanging out with the mercs! …Except for Pyro. (Unless the Wiki’s missing any lines?)

So uhhhh… I tried to imagine what a line with her hanging out with Pyro would be like, and wrote this:

[fire crackling] “Hey, it’s Pauling! I’m uh, roasting marshmallows with Pyro, and it’s been really great!” [voice strained] “…Until I found out some of my very important paperwork was being burned!” [Pyro cheering] [muttering] “Note to self—get those fire-proofed next time.” [normal voice] “But, here. I managed to save a contract for you.”

[saveitlikesasuke]

Chelsea fans: “MASON MOUNT IS A SNAKE AND A TRAITOR HE HATES CHELSEA AND HE DISRESPECTED THE CLUB AND FORCED HIS WAY OUT AND HE’S NOT EVEN THAT GOOD ANYWAY AND HE PISSED ON MY NAN’S GRAVE AND-”

Every other clubs’ fans: “wow Chelsea really fucked up by replacing Mount’s earlier offer with a 1 year extension, what a signing for United, great player”

[kakejiszkas]

.

[eastendies]

theres talk on ww reddit and twitter that he supposedly got axed because he's an addict and despite warnings has kept taking drugs at work. people are hinting class a so prob cocaine. idk if its the truth but the sun saying it was his party lifestyle (aka drinking or drugs) and reposting about him having a car accident 2 weeks ago sounds like theyre hinting at substance abuse tbqh. if its true the axing was sadly justified but with all the trauma hes been through the last 3 years hopefully he has a lot of support. he retweeted a video from joe tracini last week that included talk of su*cide which doesnt look good

so this ask made me do a bit a digging and while I found stuff abt the car accident I couldn’t find stuff abt him being an addict/having a substance abuse problem. Tho there is like an article from a writer on the show saying that his drama or smth distracts from the drama on the show, so the rumors may have some weight

Honestly I’ll bet it’s a lot simpler than that. most likely they don’t have anything for him planned and his contract negotiation didn’t go well. Maybe he wanted a bigger role and more pay compared to 2023 and the producers said no, and also that they don’t want someone with bad press to have a big role on the show. This is a job and sometimes things go wrong, and while we can speculate all we want, it was a corporate decision made for a corporate reason.

I’m sure Bowden has his own support system to rely on, and that he’ll find another acting gig soon cause he really is just that talented. I mean the man’s famous atp. It really is a bummer to see him go, but he wasn’t going to stay on the show forever. Maybe he’ll even come back someday.

[ocdhuacheng]

yoshida saying 'you wont be able to walk right away' and then like 3 pages later we find out theyre gonna fucking amputate denji's legs like. that shit hurted

[releaseholiday]

.

[fingertipsmp3]

I feel like I’ve lived through at least a month just in the past 3 days. I checked the date just now and damn near had an out of body experience when I realised Monday was only two days ago

[falinscloaca]

ok ok ok yuko might, biologically speaking, be in a similar state to how Power was when she (or rather, her blood) was allowed to access Pochita’s strength. A devil insofar as a fiend(/contractee?) whose devil “dna” has been allowed one way or another to eclipse the human parts despite maintaining the same consciousness. in both power and yuko’s case, by having their original bodies almost entirely destroyed and being regrown from a fraction of what’s left, resulting in a high enough ‘ratio’ to be functionally just an entire devil. actually makes me wonder how many seemingly full-fledged “devils” might have started out as fiends(/weird non-fiend edge cases/victims) that outgrew their own bodies.

[7yearsofdele]

Why are we talking about Checo having a contract for next year?

I’m sure Nyck had a contract too and we all saw how they’ve treated him.

[megandzane]

I really hope I don’t get kicked out of Ed treatment again

[viverridae]

does anyone have any thorough references or examples of contracts regarding reproduction of custom art….

[h0neyfreak]

***

[butterflyeffectiooon]

I just realized swifties’ “ttpd” is the same kind of thing as my ip1 and ip2 and I don’t really have any other thoughts on this except for that I still think ip1/2 was earth shattering groundbreaking life changing etc. and I know ppl feel that way about ttpd but be honest with yourselves for real.