#souls of the purgatory

[mysterious-secret-garden]

Carlo Arienti - Souls of the Purgatory, 1840.

[illustratus]

The Boat of Souls (Dante's Divine Comedy) by Gustave Doré

[alaynestone]

these trials...they're purifying me.

[royalarchivist]

After completing the Nether minigame, a short video plays showing some of the last things the Eggs did before they disappeared.

[Muted the irrelevant cross-talk because it was loud and distracting.]

[tubchunk]

sorry but q!tubbo seeing q!bagi go up in ninho herself and then after a bit passes, he starts panicking when she doesn't come back down, and when she appears at the spawn waystone, he instantly runs up to her saying that he thought he lost her. she was the only other person who woke up back on quesadilla island when he did and if she was gone he couldn't bear it. blue team doesn't leave anyone behind after all, and by the end of it, q!bagi was now family.

[mangofanarts]

The leader of the Soul Fire team and the two unofficial co-leaders in my heart

[kai-keda]

Me Finding Out Protestants Outright Believe Praying for the Souls of the Departed is a Sin:

THIS WHY YOU GUYS GOT SO MANY GHOSTS

Y’all never thought that praying for people who have passed could be a good thing???? You think that’s a bad thing??? Bruh Purgatory fucking SUCKS and y’all just leaving people there with no epic anime friendship speech??? You leaving them there on their own????

…

WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU GUYS DON’T BELIEVE IN PURGATORY?!

You think as you are now you can face God? If a meteor crashed directly into you right this second, you think you, in all your tumblr using sin can face God and not EXPLODE?!

Buddy if you can’t handle looking directly into the sun after getting your eyes dilated by the optometrist then you sure as pickles can’t handle looking directly at God without having a buffer

[kaijuparfait]

Excuse me for still being a little hater, but if there was one thing I wanted after Purgatory 1, its that q!BBH and Dapper's radiation got worse

now. i'm a ghostie, my favorite egg is Dapper, i was always cheering for bbh- and for that reason, I so badly wanted both of them to get so visibly radiated and ill that everyone else felt terrible that they didn't help them get to the boat. I was rewatching some clips and just

phil going "we should've gone for Dapper" YEAH YOU SHOULD HAVE??? it would've been so cool and so angsty- because we know the radiation got to Dapper, she made a joke on one of the Dapper's Times that the way the christmas lights on her were staying on was because of the radiation- that egg was full of radiation!!!

of course i didn't want Dapper to die from it, eventually she'd get healed or like. figure out how to utilize the radiation to her advantage BUT STILL. we saw how bad it got for bbh, he was so sick and barely walking, forgetting his friends, skeppy, his own kids, we could've had it all,,,, and it would've been such a cool egg model fjdklsfjsdk

[nocreativityfornames]

So one of my recent posts on Solomon ended up getting a lot more attention than expected. A lot of people chimed in and shared their own thoughts on his character and actions and made very good points both in his defense and against him.

I myself got to think more about his character and went to revisit some lessons in the og game to try and understand him further and I wanted to share some of those things here.

So let's get into it:

One of the main things I want to talk about here is one of the points brought up by other players in defense of Solomon and his "this is how demons are usually treated" line. Basically that we don't know how other humans treat demons they have a pact with and that MC might really be the odd one out here.

To discuss this point, I thought it was important to go back and remember what exactly a pact is and how it's most commonly formed. And this, this is something Levi explains in the very first lesson of the game when we ask him what a pact is.

And this is what he answers:

So I think it's safe to assume that this is or was one of the most common ways of making a pact. A human wants power (the demons' strength, as Levi puts it), and they summon the demon to get it. But in exchange for that power, they have to give away their soul and be bound to that demon for the rest of their lives.

There's one thing missing though, right? Because that's not the only thing a human gets when entering a pact, as we know of course when pact is made a master x servant sort of dynamic is formed between the human and demon involved, and a power imbalance is put into place.

But...not quite? Because in this specific case, the human is giving away their SOUL, their very being, and very likely only ticket to get into heaven. And so on one side we have a human giving away their soul and simultaneously a life in paradise, and a demon giving away their freedom to serve said human for as long as they stay alive on the other.

And looking from this perspective, it doesn't seem that unfair of a deal or that much of a power imbalance. And if it does, it weighs more on the demon's power over the human, since their soul will belong to them for the rest of eternity to be used however said demon wishes (to eat, enslave, have as companion, or whatever). And of course the human has the ability all of that as well, for as long as they're alive that is.

And that? That on paper I think creates a very good dynamic. Because the human will know not to abuse their power being aware that at some point tables will turn and the position of "master" will be passed on to the demon. It's a promise: "I won't misuse my power, and in exchange, you'll do the same when I die".

But as I said, that only looks good on paper, because we don't know the consistency on which said promises are followed through. Since of course, the demon could simply ignore the human's actions and be a "cruel master" regardless.

And I'm thinking these promises were probably most often broken than not, considering how Solomon views demons and seems to bare a fair amount of resentment towards them, and how most demons still view humans as "food", "lesser beings" and "not worth connecting with".

And this here is where I bring the second method of making a pact into the table (that Levi also explains how it works once MC tells him they don't want to give away their soul):

My theory is that this second way of making a pact became popular once humans started to realize the first one wasn't working on their favor.

"I won't give you my soul, but I will give you something you want in exchange for your power."

And so pacts as we know came about, a human wants a demon's power, and in exchange, they have to offer the demon something they find worthy enough to be willing to give away their freedom to get it.

And this is exactly how MC's pact with Mammon was made. They find something Mammon desperately wants (Goldie) and offer it to him in exchange for a pact. And I guess you could see this as manipulation, considering MC and Levi pretty much pressured him into doing it at the moment (something some of you brought up to defend Solomon, "the way MC made a pact with Mammon was also bad so you gotta question their morals too").

But anyway, my point is: pacts became an exchange of something, rather than a soul. And with this in mind, I can see how a human could manipulate a demon into getting a pact with them and maybe even abuse their power over a demon as a way to retaliate over the treatment humans were getting from them.

And going back to Solomon again... we have to acknowledge that he grew up in a time where the 1° method to make a pact was most common, a time where demons walked freely through the human world doing whatever they wanted. (it's not that way anymore because the passages to get to the human world have been shut down by Diavolo, as Lucifer explains in the next screenshots).

Right after he says this Mammon brings up the fact that only Diavolo, Lucifer, and Barbatos can use that method freely nowadays and that he wishes HE could go to the human world whenever he wanted as well. To which Lucifer answers:

And although Lucifer says this decision was made because Mammon kept causing trouble in the human world, the way I saw it this line was much more him trying to drag Mammon down than actually stating a fact.

"We had some problems up in the human world that necessitated a change in our policy."

Problems, problems... demons doing unspeakable things to humans, perhaps? Something that definitely didn't fit Diavolo's vision of peace between realms once he took over the kingdom? Very likely, yes. So they shut down the main passage between the Devildom and the human world to stop or at least decrease the number of atrocities caused by demons who went there seeking bloodshed all around (there are still other ways to travel there, though they're much more complicated).

But Solomon, yes, Solomon at this point had already seen it all. At this point he had already developed hatred and distrust towards demon kind, and a want to make humans be seen as more than prey in the eyes of demons and poor little creatures that need to be protected in the eyes of angels.

So we understand his reasons. He grew up in a time (and lived through thousands and thousands of years) where demons walked freely through earth. This man witnessed all kinds of horrible things being done to humans in the hands of the demon kind, and it was during those times (or a short time after) that he met Asmo - one of the most powerful demons in the Devildom, brother of Lucifer himself - drunk out of his mind on a tavern.

Solomon immediately went starry-eyed at the realization, what he had there was a one in a million chance. An opportunity to grow even more powerful, to get closer to Lucifer and get more recognition, to be the human who can represent humanity as neither prey nor weakling, to be the first human both worlds respect and see as a force to be reckoned with.

It's a chance to bring his dream closer to reality.

So he doesn't care about the moralities of it, he really doesn't. This in front of him is a demon, and demons have done terrible things to humans over the centuries!

And so he manipulates Asmo into making a pact with him. There it is, that's how we got here.

If you think all of this excuses his actions, it's up to you. And if you think all of this doesn't excuses his actions, it's up to you as well.

[descendant-of-truth]

No because what the heck was this

Why did all of their eyes close when they started being lifted. what disturbed the animation loop. Are they finally free from their stock dialogue? Where are they going, we know they're not just recordings because they turned back to normal briefly, are they being absorbed by the Prism or something??

...is that why Nine was able to make those robots. is Sonic's line here going to be relevant and not just a moment of misunderstanding on his part

I feel like I'm going insane

[piecanl]

Do you think Tubbo would recognize the path Bad is going down, because it's one he's already walked down on?

This self-destructive behavior coming from a broken heart?

He hasn't seen Bad at his best, before the eggs got kidnapped. He's seen him a victim to grief more than a father. It's why the blue staining Bad's being isn't out of the ordinary.

But suddenly he starts carrying flowers to remind him of the love he lost, suddenly the void calls out his name even louder and suddenly Tubbo sees himself in the older demon.

And it's scary, because suddenly he sees what he has become, how it affects others.

And for the first time of many, he sees Bad walk down a road he's paved. For the first time of many, Bad is the one repeating Tubbo's mistakes.

[tired-demonspawn]

okay so on a whim decided to watch the hbo his dark materials thingy and all i really feel the need to say is that everyone out here fightin for their lives, killin god and shit, while god ol doctor mary just went on a nice hike throughout the multiverse, then chilled with roller-scating elephants for a few months, played the role of the biblical snake by talking about her gay crush which helped restore the aformentioned multiverse and came home with a nice pet bird

[zeb-z]

Phil showing off his wings to Foolish without question, without hesitation, when they finally reunite, going through the effort of taking off his backpack and letting them out to share them. Wearing the gas masks, a reminder that they’re united, trustworthy, always on the same side. Something about how he did so when Foolish was showing his newly grown fins, like a hybrid to hybrid ‘here are my traits. I trust you and want you to know this’. Reassuring Tallulah that he trusts Foolish implicitly - they went through a lot together, after all.

[emotionally-clumsy-soldier]

next

[royalarchivist]

Etoiles: Oh, finally we had a funny moment in Purgatory, let's go. Oh, let's go! One week of wait to have a funny moment.

Roier always knows the best way to diffuse a tense situation.

[angelsdean]

i really love reading older meta posts, especially ones from when the show was airing. seasons speculation, episode recaps and analysis. so so good. all of this was also part of why i loved the spnwin era and all the week-to-week theorizing. and why i can't wait for the s16 revival bc i just love love love connecting dots, analyzing, speculating, unraveling, finding patterns and symbolism and collectively posting abt it and bouncing ideas off each other and being excited. it's what fandom is about at it's core, community and collaboration and shared joy in this show we love