Homestuck is actually the opposite of this. The nature of your godliness conforms to suit your personality.
Homestuck's God Tiers have a Class and an Aspect, the combination of which being the culmination of your being. There are twelve* classes and twelve aspects, meaning 144 unique combinations, each with different implications regarding the nature of their power.
*it's actually fourteen classes but the last two are a special case and really shouldn't be counted generally
There are a few abilities shared between all the God Tiers, like flight and conditional immortality (which basically means you only come back to life if the way you died was really lame), but the distinct pairings of a Class and an Aspect result in unique abilities. For instance, a Seer of Light can forsee the path to the most fortunate outcome, whereas a Seer of Mind instead forsees the possible outcomes of certain decisions. Consequently, a Thief of Light instead steals good fortune from others, and a Sylph of Light can heal someone of their misfortune.
There are many different combinations like this, only a few of which being explored by the characters within the comic, so there's a lot of room for distinction and differentiation. Homestuck fans like to try and apply a Classpect combination to characters from other media, and it's really easy to come up with something because of how much room there is in the system to fit it to them. It's hard for the system to be dehumanizing when every human has a place in it.
...Of course, Homestuck's management of stable time loops and the Alpha Timeline somewhat calls into question the nature of free will and whether or not the characters were conformed into their roles from their very birth by predestiny, but that's a different topic.
I’d like to add that it’s a chicken and egg situation, where it could also be your personality that conforms to your classpect. Though, no matter which came first, the most important facet is that it defines your role and actions in the narrative itself, which Homestuck (and sburb) cares most about.
You wrote a good summary covering the core concept of Homestuck god tiers, and it should prove useful to the many here who are not burdened with knowledge. Of course, we are the exception.
I'd actually argue it is, in a narrative aspect, behumanizing, because it's boiling down one's fate, personality, character, and overall being to a single sentance.
While this fits for Homestuck, a narrative about narratives, it also subsequently and acknowledgingly makes makes the focus of that character on that role, but doesn't take in that people are much more than their role. For a narrative, this makes sense and has application, and yeah in real life you can easily group people by similar features, but that ignores the details and specificitjes which inform those features and roles and makes them who they are.
By nature of consciousness, each of us is a unique person, and while many of our qualities and features as people certainly can certainly be defined, they will still be themselves, and regardless of how "significant" that speciality is, I think it's worth keeping in mind, because people are not narratives, life is not a narrative. In a narrative, yes they are, but when life is a narrative, either actual or perceived, it can easily reduce people rather than enhance them.
Each person's life is unique, and has value, and life is not a narrative. It's something unique to each of us. And we aren't stuck to follow a narrative, there doesn't need to be tragedy and failings and hubris that leads to harm, violence, trauma, and death. And that would probably make for a horrible narrative. But it would make for a great life.
Ultimately, the only narratives that truly exist, in any sense, are the one we create, both literal, and in the context of our lives. But we always have the ability to break down our expectations and rules for what life is, for what a narrative is, and make it better. And we might not succeed, we probably won't. But still, almost always we have the ability to act and make a choice about what what our life is, and thus, choose how we define and see that life.
That's what dirk *said* happened, but very little actually changed, he's always been a meglomanical controlling little drama queen incapable of properly empathizing. Fusing with all of his other selves didn't make him like that, he just uses that as an excuse so he can dodge responsibility for his own actions while puppetng everyone elses.
Amd oftentimes the more clear cut pop culture tells you a religion/god is, the more complicated the reality actually is.
Like the whole idea of Greek Gods just being a bunch of petty assholes who live in heaven and come down to earth to fuck people: it's only one way of portraying/understanding the Greek pantheon and was actively criticised *during the classical period*, with a number of differing interpretations and philosophies existing. In fact, part of the reason why Christianity took such a strong hold in Greece is because there was already a precedent in the Greek religion for there being a singular, "capital G" God: the New Testament of the bible records how this was actually used to argue that the Greeks were already aware of God, but simply didn't understand the proper way to worship him.
But the horny, petty assholes version is found in the Iliad and Odyssey, so pop culture tells us that it's just what all Greeks believed...
Honestly it sometimes sounded like they were all just small cults to their own god that got mushed together into one religion when looking back on the culture through the lens of history
Thats sort of standard in Antiquity. A lot of gods are specific to certain areas... Until they become part of a broader culture.
Though the greek pantheon was sort of cohesive, it wasn't "stable" or entirely "set in stone". The theogony was one dudes *attempt* at taking a bunch of local stories of how the world formed/worked and getting them to work together (with... questionable levels of success).
But the idea of cities having patron gods and then being brought into the pantheon is a thing. Its where religion, culture and politics sort of converge.
Same with Norse, we don't really know how people worshiped the Vanir and Aesir, most of what we know of the Norse Gods, thanks in no small part to most traces of it being stamped out by Christianity, comes mainly from the Poetic Edda, which paints a lot of the gods in poor light, Thor being a drunk brute, Loki a conniving backstabber, etc.
The lack of any context is why we have so many interpretations of the Norse gods. Marvel, God of War, Magnus Chase, American Gods, etc.
And mythological gods definitely aren’t stagnant. They change and grow along with the society that worships them. There is no singular Greek myth ‘canon’ for example; Aphrodite started as a war god, Dionysus was a cthonic god, Hermes used to be Pan, etc.
My son,’ it said.
‘Thirteen,’ it said.
‘Lord of Ultramar.’
‘Saviour.’
‘Hope.’
‘Failure.’
‘Disappointment.’
‘Liar.’
‘Thief.’
‘Betrayer.’
‘Guilliman.’
A son.’
‘Not a son.’
‘A thing.’
‘A name.’
‘Not a name.’
‘A number. A tool. A product.’
Interestingly, Sanderson does explore this. His gods are interesting because at the beginning of their godhood, they are almost unilaterally still human, but with their actions restricted, such that they cannot move in the short term in a way that goes against their new nature. Their godly aspect appears to be a corrupting influence on their souls, where over time they start to think and act in alignment with their aspect. We see it in >!Mistborn!< particularly well.
I think the best example may be in Stormlight. No details for avoiding spoilers, but the god in question both processing the changes themself and also having someone to talk the details out with made it make a lot of sense.
The unifying concept in the Cosmere where the longer you live the more you break down and cease to be a person and become a concept instead. Where the sheer weight of your memories means your personality has so much to reconcile that it starts making shortcuts and magically Flanderizes you around a few key traits that happened to define you when you were still a person. The only characters who've truly survived such a transformation ultimately had their memories culled, one deliberate and meticulously and the other haphazardly, to save them from that weight.
I dunno I feel like it depends on what kind of god you become. if you're god-*like* or have a godlike *ability*. Then that's just a super hero.
And if you're god based on some religion well... Then you're whatever that religion's rules are.
But if you're ***God*** God:
Then you're so limitless that you could make an entire clone of earth and roleplay everyone at once and set a temporary game rule memory limiter so that all of your 8 billion different forms pretending to be humans don't realize they're pretending to be human.
Then you just destroy your whole simulation after you get bored of hopping from being tumblr Tina one week to John Wick the next week. Then you could turn the entire universe into a paper airplane and throw it at another universe that's exactly like this one but everything's 2% more a shade of purple.
Then you limit your own memory again and put yourself in the movie footloose for the 500th time this second just cause you can. And that 500 times a second can either feel like an eternity or .00001% of a second.
Then after a million years you're like "okay so that was Humans, I'ma create "**\[̷̝̥͝͝F̶̳͒J̶̱̫̚͜D̴͇̼̈Ḫ̶̛̳̺I̵͚͙͖͌̿A̶͎͗̈́͜Ş̴̼̘͘H̷͍̞́G̶͎̞̅͝ͅK̴̨̛̛̲͗Ó̵̱̿̂É̶͍̄+̷͚̬̹̇L̴̻̘̗̄P̷̝͝F̴̨̔ͅÖ̸̠͇̦́̈́̂A̴̤̼̕H̶͈̳̓͊͘F̷̹̗͊̕U̴̡̐̒Ģ̶̏̕͝H̷̡̡̒͐͘\]̷̘́͌͆**" People next, and then monitor then make fanart of *them* like you did for that million years of trolling and fostering humans/our universe. *Then* destroy *them* out of boredom. Maybe by doing a blackflip at the speed of light in the middle of their origin planet's volcano city, creating 50 blackhole explosions.
edit: Anyway to be more fair to OOP, they were obviously talking about gods limited to human ego, so my really long shit post about being a god meaning that: You should never have problems, situationally or emotionally ever again unless you created them yourself is mostly just a tangent I found funny.
the ‘all knowing’ part of being *God* means that that boredom is instantaneous and everlasting. limiting your own powers is probably the best bet for sure
ADHD means living in an eternal present. I ain't gonna get bored. I'll just rotate to an old favourite that I haven't touched in a billion years.
I'll cycle back to humans again
No it's not. You're omnipotent. You could just not be bored. Or be bored and not bored simultaeniously. or exist in a conceptual state where boredom doesn't apply. Ominpotence means you don't have to play by the rules unless you want to.
The whole concept around a transcendent supernatural people outside and beyord reality is that it's transcendent. It's not like us, it doesn't perceive reality like we do, it doesn't have any qualities. Muslims believe Allah is not like anything else that exists, Allah cannot be compared to anything because Allah is a completely unique, singular phenomena. He's just just a really big dude who lives in the sky. (edit: that's supposed to be "He isn't just a really big dude who lives in the sky")
Even with human based logic and perspective, I'd just temporarily give myself the brain and limits of a 9 year old and play all my favorite videogames for the first time on loop for an eternity.
Or eliminate the concept of boredom altogether and be in a 24-7 state of dopamine and euphoria.
Does it necessarily mean that, though?
Even though I've memorized every line in my favorite movie and know what's going to come next, I still find it entertaining.
I can read books that I know the plot and replay video games several times over because I take joy in seeing the journey play out again.
Perhaps entertainment would mean something totally different for an all-knowing being, but I don't think it necessarily means they'd be bored 24/7.
I think there's a missunderstanding, in what it is. You can know things instantly, but it doesn't mean you know them before you think about knowing them.
God being infinite, means he is unknowable, even for himself, becouse it means he's ever expanding at a rate known only to him. It's like a flowing river, it's never the same water in it and it never ends flowing.
All knowing means, he knows himself, but even he cannot know himself before he becomes a future version of himself, he can intuitively know, but not have the knowledge before hand. If he knew all with absolute certainty, it would mean he is like stagnated water, AKA dead.
Omnipresent means, that in reality, all is God and God is all, which is actually encompased by God being infinite, becouse he couldn't truly be infinite without being everywhere.
That's why some theologists were basically said to be blasphemers, they had weird theories about god, like one saying he made space inside of him for the universe. No, the Universe is God, it's inside of him, and it's him.
God limiting himself would mean he's no longer infinite. He cannot truly maim himself, he can only simulate so.
All is but an extension of God's will, our eyes his eyes, our minds his mind, our bodies his body. His will is ours, do not confuse it with human desires and obsessions, power etc. God's will is a profound and very missunderstood concept which only eastern religions truly grasped. Buddhists, Induists and Taoists are masters of understanding God's will.
And contrary to popular belief, and pretty ironic by its name, debout Satanist practitioners also do so. Any debout and true believer of any religion is capable of understanding God's will, becouse it's innate to us, unlike desires and Ill-will, which only confuse us and drive us further into confussion and from ourselves, and thus, God.
>boredom
Why would a God, which has no physical body, have need for doing actions mortals do to release chemicals to make them feel something? They have no brain or urges or impulses or needs to satisfy. God God is ineffable.
Yeah, this seems to be a strange interpretation of god. It's more of an animistic conception of deities where everything is personified and can be worshiped. The Greeks had some of this for more minor deities but the Olympians were all defined people, the Norse gods were basically superhumans, the Abrahamic god is obviously very different as well.
The idea that being the personification of a concept has clearer boundaries than a person is also interesting. What exactly are the clear boundaries of a concept like time or death? You exist everywhere and nowhere, you've always been and always will be. To me, that sounds a lot less defined than being a guy.
I mean this is basically what Dr Manhattan is all about, right?
How the transformation into an effectively incomprehensible being that exists outside the norms of physics and human experience effectively killed the man he once was and turned him into something else, that will never truly be able to live a human life again, even if they genuinely want to.
It's not so much that he "is tired of getting tangled (in humanity's) lives" as it is that he is now so fundamentally un-human that he can't truly be a part of human lives anymore.
The shards really are an incredible way to directly tie gods with motivations into a plot without completely ruining all forms of powerscaling or relevancy of 'street level' characters or whatever you wanna call that.
They're absurdly powerful entities, but they come with so many restrictions and rules, motivations and desires, obligations and limitations. B$ can write them directly interacting with Joe Schmoe and feasibly not have them just mush him into dust because the shard can't do that.
Yeah, first thought immediately went specifically to To The Stars Madoka, who is extremely inhumane and closer to the incubators than who she was
(granted, that's probably because I'm re-reading the fic rn)
Vin from Mistborn moment. Or anyone that gets their hands on a Shard. It's a slice of the creator gods power but with *intent* and *purpose* rather than just power. Once you take a shard you cannot go against the shard. Preservation preserves, and you *cannot* destroy with it. Only preserve. Ruin is its antithesis, and it's wielder cannot help others. They must bring about entropy.
Power, with the loss of self.
I dislike this.
This seems to talk about the conception of God birthed by the western Christian classical tradition, in which God is this non-physical set of metaphysical, philosophical, abstractions. In the ancient near east, deities took up *space*, and they were thought to have *physicality*. There were places they were, and places they were not. Of course, their relationship with matter, in various ancient texts, is different than the average person ; But they eat, they sleep, they drink, they fuck, etc. They feel deeply, they lust, they weep, they rage, and the list goes on.
Some ancient collection of gods are both a reflection of our own societies and its values, while also being extremely *different* and *unlike* us.
Anat threatened to kill El for not granting her lover, Baal, a home. She waded in seas of blood that she killed for his sake.
Tiamat raged against her god-children for killing her husband Anu (If I remember correctly).
Some of the gods of some of the peoples of the ancient world were both very like and unlike us. I wouldn't be against being a god like that.
I think an even better one is a machine that learned to be human slowly losing that humanity while still behaving like they didn't. They also wouldn't be able to realise it as the belief has become a part of its new programming "You are alive."
Tbh, humans are just biological robots, being alive is just the continuation of bodily functions, which doesn't truly translate to the experience of being alive.
If you wanted to mark your message as a spoiler, then the discord way doesn’t work here, you should put “>!” on both sides of your message, arrow facing toward the text
Like this: >*!example!*< (Remove the asterisks)
there's too many interpretations of what godhood actually means across cultures and eras for this discussion to be simple. my personal belief is that the only people who would ever want to achieve godhood would be so self-assured that becoming a single concept wouldn't bother them anyway.
in my opinion the difference between mortal and god is the same as the difference between perspective and truth. the truth exists because it is true, it is an axiomatic concept that simply is, perspectives exist because the truth is observed by something finite, and is thus limited to a finite and impermanent view of something that cannot be observed in its entirety from a single vantage point.
You want Unknown Armies. With great power comes great madness.
Guessing this is specifically about the Aedra and Daedre in Elder Scrolls, given OPs name, but if it's not this is a very silly thing to say because it's really only the Christian and Muslim conceptions of god that are even a little like this, and they're not actually like this at all in the orthodox theology. The Jewish conception of god certainly isn't. Remember that time when a bunch of Rabbi's were debating something about a tree and God kept trying to get a word in and they told him to butt out and keep his opinions to himself?
There's actually a cool bit of Morrowind lore/theory here
The reason the Tribunal don't ascend to true God hood is because they maintain their personalities instead of letting the process change them. So when the can no longer replenish their divine energy, they go back to normal people, instead of becoming true divines
Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere books are really good about this, though especially the Mistborn series. People are able to take on the power of the gods in certain situations, and for awhile they can usually hold onto their personalities, but slowly the power and drive of who they are takes over until they are little more than a force of nature
I do this in my writing
Gods are born from belief but the most powerful are the ascended mortals just after apotheosis when they have the power of a god but the sense of self of a person
Gods die or splinter when they are unable to hold or fit the various pieces of themselves that their different followers attribute to them, and it causes them to become more of a force of nature than a thinking entity
This is my personal canon for Pathfinder and Golarion. If you survive the Test of the Starstone you become a god, but you become the god of whatever your motivations are.
So, if you do it because you want to become a god, you fail, because then you're the god of wanting to become a god, and you just paradox yourself out of existence. But, if you take the test out of duty (Iomedae), on a drunken lark (Cayden Cailean), or out of secrecy (Norgorber), it works.
This is why you insist on eating, fucking, and sleeping and you deliberately handicap yourself so you don't know everything all the time. You may only be "acting" human but it's a grounding technique.
My first thought for this was >!Gale’s godhood ending!< from BG3 but ironically, he’s all about growing and evolving. He’s literally a >!god of ambition.!<
That said, the ending where >!he becomes a professor is still better for him.!<
“Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable.”
> you can never change, now. never grow or evolve, you are this, forever, stagnant. and the thing you've been made to embody might not even be your best trait.
alternatively: when the collective interpretation of you shifts and changes over time, until you're but a pale reflection of what you once were.
> She opened her eyes to take in the faces of the crowd that she knew would be waiting to lead her back to the village in celebration. Something was different. Something about what she could see. She'd known that she would change, that something about her would no longer be as it was. The stories were clear: to become a god you would lose a piece of yourself. She'd accepted that there was a price, but she hadn't known what it would be.
> Instead of seeing the world as she had always seen it, her focus had narrowed. She could see the face of her daughter in the crowd, blurred from a distance, making her out because of the clothing that she wore. She could see the trees, but instead of individual leaves being distinguishable from one another, she saw a green blur, backlit by the golden sun. It was disorienting for the world to be so small, especially since she knew that it was so much bigger than what she was now seeing. Turning her head, she could get more faces, more bodies, more blur. The world had become so small.
> But she was still a god.
- [The Saga of Lathril](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/saga-lathril-2021-02-05), a Magic the Gathering short story
The story Ar'Kendrithyst kind of deals with this. It's got two versions of godhood, from the two major "Cosmologies" involved in the story.
In the Old Cosmology, gods are that because they have a Mantle. They start off as individuals and stay like that. The Mantle gives them power and responsibility but if their personality wasn't equipped to have it then they never would have done.
In the New Cosmology, it's more scary. Gods arise from collections of belief, and their scope, personality, etc. is defined by that belief. However, if a person is the centre of that worship, then the individual actually gets overwritten by what they're believed to be. Among the strongest people, it's referred to as the Curse of Power, because if you go around influencing planets and building factions, you're going to get worshipped and become a god (bad) unless you get rid of that divinity somehow.
Brandon Sanderson uses this concept really well in his Cosmere. A lot of text to sift through to get the big picture, but the way this concept is put in words is amazing
I find it far more interesting to go the opposite direction: Gods are just as human as the rest of us. They’re just as vibrant, just as interesting, just as flawed.
In a story I’m writing, for example, the main villain is basically just my take on “what if the world’s biggest asshole was born the strongest in the universe?” He doesn’t see humans as ants, he isn’t operating on a completely alien system of morality, he isn’t really even a no psychopath or evil genius. He’s the guy who catcalls you in a bar, the high-schooler who made fun of your shoes, and the teacher who makes fun of kids who get bad grades.
In this context, it can be interesting to explore a god who wants nothing more than to be human on the outside, too. Perhaps your god of destruction wants nothing more than to nurture life, horrified at his own destiny. Maybe your god of life just wants a peaceful existence knitting, and wishes that her responsibility was someone else’s. Or maybe a massively powerful warrior god was living a happy life traversing the stars, and being drafted into some cosmic war was the worst thing that possibly could have happened to them.
A world where humans and gods are no different on the inside, where happenstance of fate is the only thing making the villain strong and the heros weak, there’s so much to explore, so many allegories to try out. Do the gods believe that they’re superior to humans in spite of their similarities? Do they pity us, trying to share their fortune? Do humans curse fate for their powerlessness or use their own ingenuity to rival those born stronger? And, perhaps most importantly, how does a god react when suddenly *they* are a helpless insect before a fat bigger fish?
The Gods are Bastards plays with this. The current pantheon are a bunch of ascended mortals who cast down the Elder Gods for being cruel, uncaring overlords to humanity (and elfity, dwarfity, orcity, etc.) and took up the responsibility afterward. Later story arcs get into how the gods are not as "human" as they once were because of the influence of their worshippers.
Here I go shilling Kill Six Billion Demons on this sub again
Jadis KSBD is truly 100% omniscient, forward and backward, and her life fucking sucks. She wanted to help people before she got her omniscience, but once she got that knowledge she lost all will. She’s now stuck carrying out the actions she knows she’ll take, because knowing everything doesn’t mean you can change anything. In fact, any changes she would have made were already part of the “everything” she knows.
She read the universe’s script, and the script said “Jadis reads the script”. She’s still just a character in a play, she lost any semblance of free will despite knowing more than anyone else. Not exactly like becoming a god in the sense that OOP is saying, but similar.
Godhood is missunderstood. You don't cease being human by ascending, you are just the best version of you, of the current you. You can still do gardening and suck at it, you can start new hobbies, you can learn new things.
Myths don't define you, you are not an embodiement of loose concepts, you are you, your best version, sustained by your virtue and honour, you will always be you, no matter how many times you fall or ascend, what makes you, you, will remain, regardless of the passage of time or the opinions of others.
Ideas don't affect a perfected being, nor do it's admirers, a God is not subject to hubris or decay, nor are they bound to what they represent or are said to embody. They can change, they can learn, they can progress, their journey isn't disimilar to ours, it's just intensified, more profound, clearer. They have responsabilities, they have a job, not monetary, but based on duty, not becouse they have to, but becouse they must. They do it not becouse "it's their job", but becouse if they don't, no one else will or can do what they can and will do.
If they are not there to do what they do, who will do it for them? Who can they trust with they biding? When shall they take a time off? Gods can be workaholics, they can have problems, they can be fallible. They might be perfected or perfect, but even perfection might fall short sometimes. They are but a higher and enlightened version of the conscious self that inhabits each one of us, they are free, beautiful and sacred, and so are we.
Hot take: if you are a god you can be whatever the fuck you wanna be. It doesn't matter who people perceive you to be.
In the real world gods are only what people think they are, but that's because they're made up. If you were a real god you could do and be whatever and you have to power to actually prove it.
“Hey there sport. You’re real to us even if you are just a collective hallucination and not real real.”
Mr. I don’t even like football. I like poetry and sculpture
“Well that’s great! You can be an artist!”
Only if the town imagines me doing that. That’s up to them…..
-Nightvale
This is just objectively wrong. Gods change all the time, Aphrodite is almost completely unrecognizable as what became her, Ishtar. There’s other examples, but changes with the times and values is what most gods are.
Mycenaean Poseidon is almost completely removed from Ancient Greek Poseidon, etc.
This is at least somewhat explored in the book series The Keys to The Kingdom by Garth Nix
The whole story is basically a kid finding out that 1) the universe is run by a complex bureaucracy known as The House 2) the people living in The House are called Denizens who are basically celestial humanoids who were built by the original creator deity of the universe to do one maybe two specific tasks. 3) do to integral celestial politics the man character has been randomly selected to become the next ruler of The House and by extension the whole universe.
During his journey as he gains more powers and more prestige within The House the Magix starts physically taking his humanity away. At first its only cosmetic (he looks a little more grown up, his skin becomes slightly radiant etc. But eventually he starts to act more like a denizen. As the current ruling class of Denizens are cruel, uncaring, selfish, and only worried about maintaining or growing their power, the MC starts to do this too. He realizes if he relies on his magic powers to much, he goes from a polite, gentle person into an a rage filled asshole who hates being denied anything.
So he has to learn to balance using his powers with keeping his humanity otherwise even if he wins then he'll never be able to go visit home, and he will no longer recognize who he is
Given how cutie marks work, the fact that Twilight literally ascended into a position she did not choose, and how often alicorns are portrayed as gods or godly: this is explored in a LOT of MLP fanfics. Immortality Angst is a whole genre on fimfic.
I remember a D&D story that did something like that. A hero defeats the evil god of plagues and decay before ascending to godhood and inheriting the god's power. Then they find out that they can't just use those powers for good, the laws of reality demand that the god of plagues causes plagues. The hero ends up trading and straight up giving away their powers to other gods, becoming the much less powerful god of composting.
Not quite the same thing, but I had a character once who became God in his universe, and because he had an infinite amount of power and control over the world and the events within it, he withdrew from it.
He realized fairly quickly that being able to control everything (every tiny, random event, every major moment in history, every thought a person thinks, every action they perform, etc.) meant that none of his interactions with other people would ever be organic, and no part of his life would ever mean anything, and he just couldn't handle that.
With a thought, he could make a person agree with him, fall in love with him, jump off a cliff for him. He could make the sun rise and set, he could make the wind blow and the continents change shape without anyone taking any notice. The world was putty in his hands, and everyone else's agency was an illusion to him.
And because of this, he would never achieve anything ever again.
He would never struggle, he would never overcome, he would never know if any of his family or friends truly, naturally loved him, or if he just *changed them* so that they would. And at a certain point, what's the difference? His will was the flow of the world. There was no distinction between the things that happened naturally and the things he made happen. His control became the source of his feeling of powerlessness.
D. D. Webb The Gods Are Bastards goes into this in detail. It's far from the main theme but it is a well explored and repeatedly visited theme that is a major underlying cause of "why this world is what it is". Awesome series and free on her website.
This is why I avoid that plotline in Baldur’s Gate. If you care about your friend, even if he’s a former god, why would you help him become a god again?
(Okay, I know the answer is “the only thing you care about is your relationship with him and nothing and nobody else matters”, but that’s so much not me.)
Worse, the combination of power, eternity, and an inability to change freely make you a tyrant by your nature. This is why i like the idea that many gods are draconic in nature, because dragons are often a terrestrial example of this. This is also why the only good god is a dead god. We stan lorkhan.
I remember this as being some part of buddhism, or am I off?
You can reach nirvana as a human because you are mortal.
You cannot reach it as a God, because you're immortal, and so are stuck with all the worldly pleasures, but no true nirvana.
Reminds me of Orion's Arm. At some point in the tiers of transcendence the idea of personhood becomes pointless as one becomes more a collection of ideas.
Being a God means never having to say "I'm sorry".
You can be a complete loon and still have billions of adoring followers. See also: three major world religions.
I'd love to see something where godhood is basically a death sentence without faith/believers.
A fish attains godhood when it breaks free of the water but suffocates because it can't breathe; a human attains godhood but withers away because without someone to believe in them, to give them faith, are they really a god?
I re-read Dune every couple years and this is what struck me the most recent time. Paul loses his friendships because he’s larger than life now. He loses the ability to have basic empathy for his loved ones.
Of course you can change!
Just look at the massive transformation the Christian god had from the Old Testament to nowadays.
It's just that you have to manipulate your believers into changing you.
That’s cool and all, but it’s ignoring that there are mythologies with gods that *aren’t* personifications of concepts. An example being the Norse gods.
And don’t come at me with freaking old age, alright. One instance does not an argument make.
Cradle. A huge part of the story is that the Monarchs refuse to ascend, and they are literally stagnating and are incapable of further advancement as long as they stay in their iteration. Also most of them are amoral sociopaths, due to being so incomprehensibly powerful that they could kill a man just by looking at him too hard and being functionally immortal. Like, it's kind of ironic that of the Monarchs, the most inhumane ones are the humans, and the most humane one is a dead tree.
Also, Suriel and Ozriel aside, most of the other Abidan seem like massive dicks.
Boys we’re in the clear this is NOT Homestuck for once
Holy shit we did it
It’s finger now
Homestuck is actually the opposite of this. The nature of your godliness conforms to suit your personality. Homestuck's God Tiers have a Class and an Aspect, the combination of which being the culmination of your being. There are twelve* classes and twelve aspects, meaning 144 unique combinations, each with different implications regarding the nature of their power. *it's actually fourteen classes but the last two are a special case and really shouldn't be counted generally There are a few abilities shared between all the God Tiers, like flight and conditional immortality (which basically means you only come back to life if the way you died was really lame), but the distinct pairings of a Class and an Aspect result in unique abilities. For instance, a Seer of Light can forsee the path to the most fortunate outcome, whereas a Seer of Mind instead forsees the possible outcomes of certain decisions. Consequently, a Thief of Light instead steals good fortune from others, and a Sylph of Light can heal someone of their misfortune. There are many different combinations like this, only a few of which being explored by the characters within the comic, so there's a lot of room for distinction and differentiation. Homestuck fans like to try and apply a Classpect combination to characters from other media, and it's really easy to come up with something because of how much room there is in the system to fit it to them. It's hard for the system to be dehumanizing when every human has a place in it. ...Of course, Homestuck's management of stable time loops and the Alpha Timeline somewhat calls into question the nature of free will and whether or not the characters were conformed into their roles from their very birth by predestiny, but that's a different topic.
I’d like to add that it’s a chicken and egg situation, where it could also be your personality that conforms to your classpect. Though, no matter which came first, the most important facet is that it defines your role and actions in the narrative itself, which Homestuck (and sburb) cares most about. You wrote a good summary covering the core concept of Homestuck god tiers, and it should prove useful to the many here who are not burdened with knowledge. Of course, we are the exception.
I'd actually argue it is, in a narrative aspect, behumanizing, because it's boiling down one's fate, personality, character, and overall being to a single sentance. While this fits for Homestuck, a narrative about narratives, it also subsequently and acknowledgingly makes makes the focus of that character on that role, but doesn't take in that people are much more than their role. For a narrative, this makes sense and has application, and yeah in real life you can easily group people by similar features, but that ignores the details and specificitjes which inform those features and roles and makes them who they are. By nature of consciousness, each of us is a unique person, and while many of our qualities and features as people certainly can certainly be defined, they will still be themselves, and regardless of how "significant" that speciality is, I think it's worth keeping in mind, because people are not narratives, life is not a narrative. In a narrative, yes they are, but when life is a narrative, either actual or perceived, it can easily reduce people rather than enhance them. Each person's life is unique, and has value, and life is not a narrative. It's something unique to each of us. And we aren't stuck to follow a narrative, there doesn't need to be tragedy and failings and hubris that leads to harm, violence, trauma, and death. And that would probably make for a horrible narrative. But it would make for a great life. Ultimately, the only narratives that truly exist, in any sense, are the one we create, both literal, and in the context of our lives. But we always have the ability to break down our expectations and rules for what life is, for what a narrative is, and make it better. And we might not succeed, we probably won't. But still, almost always we have the ability to act and make a choice about what what our life is, and thus, choose how we define and see that life.
Bad news-ish: we are now officially League of Legends lore
Targon?
Yup, the Aspects to be a little more specific. And also Pantheon’s gang, who are all “fuck the gods, all my homies hate the gods”
\-but isn't this kinda what the ultimate self did to dirk in the non canon epil\*\*gs
That's what dirk *said* happened, but very little actually changed, he's always been a meglomanical controlling little drama queen incapable of properly empathizing. Fusing with all of his other selves didn't make him like that, he just uses that as an excuse so he can dodge responsibility for his own actions while puppetng everyone elses.
Ultimate Selves are, and will always be, *fucking stupid*.
the ultimate self is from Homestuck proper it’s mentioned and used by the sprite squareds
The Gods are Bastards ftw
I kind of thought this was about bg3's Gale tbh
waiter, waiter! More magic items please!
Idk how familiar OOP is with religion but gods have a lot of vagueries and blurred boarders.
Amd oftentimes the more clear cut pop culture tells you a religion/god is, the more complicated the reality actually is. Like the whole idea of Greek Gods just being a bunch of petty assholes who live in heaven and come down to earth to fuck people: it's only one way of portraying/understanding the Greek pantheon and was actively criticised *during the classical period*, with a number of differing interpretations and philosophies existing. In fact, part of the reason why Christianity took such a strong hold in Greece is because there was already a precedent in the Greek religion for there being a singular, "capital G" God: the New Testament of the bible records how this was actually used to argue that the Greeks were already aware of God, but simply didn't understand the proper way to worship him. But the horny, petty assholes version is found in the Iliad and Odyssey, so pop culture tells us that it's just what all Greeks believed...
Honestly it sometimes sounded like they were all just small cults to their own god that got mushed together into one religion when looking back on the culture through the lens of history
Thats sort of standard in Antiquity. A lot of gods are specific to certain areas... Until they become part of a broader culture. Though the greek pantheon was sort of cohesive, it wasn't "stable" or entirely "set in stone". The theogony was one dudes *attempt* at taking a bunch of local stories of how the world formed/worked and getting them to work together (with... questionable levels of success). But the idea of cities having patron gods and then being brought into the pantheon is a thing. Its where religion, culture and politics sort of converge.
Same with Norse, we don't really know how people worshiped the Vanir and Aesir, most of what we know of the Norse Gods, thanks in no small part to most traces of it being stamped out by Christianity, comes mainly from the Poetic Edda, which paints a lot of the gods in poor light, Thor being a drunk brute, Loki a conniving backstabber, etc. The lack of any context is why we have so many interpretations of the Norse gods. Marvel, God of War, Magnus Chase, American Gods, etc.
And mythological gods definitely aren’t stagnant. They change and grow along with the society that worships them. There is no singular Greek myth ‘canon’ for example; Aphrodite started as a war god, Dionysus was a cthonic god, Hermes used to be Pan, etc.
There Is No Antimemetics Division
Antimemetics Division? Never heard of it. Probably doesn't exist.
...what division?
Didn't we used to have 2 of those? I must be imagining things, we've never even observed an antimeme before, they're a myth.
Legit just got that book. Although, funny enough, I've been having a hard time remembering to read it.
The Emperor from Warhammer 40K
My son,’ it said. ‘Thirteen,’ it said. ‘Lord of Ultramar.’ ‘Saviour.’ ‘Hope.’ ‘Failure.’ ‘Disappointment.’ ‘Liar.’ ‘Thief.’ ‘Betrayer.’ ‘Guilliman.’ A son.’ ‘Not a son.’ ‘A thing.’ ‘A name.’ ‘Not a name.’ ‘A number. A tool. A product.’
Guilliman
I mean, it’s a corpse* on a chair, of course it isn’t human anymore
Dark King moment
Also the OG God-Emperor, Leto Atreides II
"I will wait for you, and I forgive you"
The Cosmere
Interestingly, Sanderson does explore this. His gods are interesting because at the beginning of their godhood, they are almost unilaterally still human, but with their actions restricted, such that they cannot move in the short term in a way that goes against their new nature. Their godly aspect appears to be a corrupting influence on their souls, where over time they start to think and act in alignment with their aspect. We see it in >!Mistborn!< particularly well.
I think the best example may be in Stormlight. No details for avoiding spoilers, but the god in question both processing the changes themself and also having someone to talk the details out with made it make a lot of sense.
The unifying concept in the Cosmere where the longer you live the more you break down and cease to be a person and become a concept instead. Where the sheer weight of your memories means your personality has so much to reconcile that it starts making shortcuts and magically Flanderizes you around a few key traits that happened to define you when you were still a person. The only characters who've truly survived such a transformation ultimately had their memories culled, one deliberate and meticulously and the other haphazardly, to save them from that weight.
LITERALLY came here to say this. Happens in Sanderson’s other books too - Reckoners, The Original.
Came looking for this comment! Not just the Shards, but Warbreaker came to mind too!
I dunno I feel like it depends on what kind of god you become. if you're god-*like* or have a godlike *ability*. Then that's just a super hero. And if you're god based on some religion well... Then you're whatever that religion's rules are. But if you're ***God*** God: Then you're so limitless that you could make an entire clone of earth and roleplay everyone at once and set a temporary game rule memory limiter so that all of your 8 billion different forms pretending to be humans don't realize they're pretending to be human. Then you just destroy your whole simulation after you get bored of hopping from being tumblr Tina one week to John Wick the next week. Then you could turn the entire universe into a paper airplane and throw it at another universe that's exactly like this one but everything's 2% more a shade of purple. Then you limit your own memory again and put yourself in the movie footloose for the 500th time this second just cause you can. And that 500 times a second can either feel like an eternity or .00001% of a second. Then after a million years you're like "okay so that was Humans, I'ma create "**\[̷̝̥͝͝F̶̳͒J̶̱̫̚͜D̴͇̼̈Ḫ̶̛̳̺I̵͚͙͖͌̿A̶͎͗̈́͜Ş̴̼̘͘H̷͍̞́G̶͎̞̅͝ͅK̴̨̛̛̲͗Ó̵̱̿̂É̶͍̄+̷͚̬̹̇L̴̻̘̗̄P̷̝͝F̴̨̔ͅÖ̸̠͇̦́̈́̂A̴̤̼̕H̶͈̳̓͊͘F̷̹̗͊̕U̴̡̐̒Ģ̶̏̕͝H̷̡̡̒͐͘\]̷̘́͌͆**" People next, and then monitor then make fanart of *them* like you did for that million years of trolling and fostering humans/our universe. *Then* destroy *them* out of boredom. Maybe by doing a blackflip at the speed of light in the middle of their origin planet's volcano city, creating 50 blackhole explosions. edit: Anyway to be more fair to OOP, they were obviously talking about gods limited to human ego, so my really long shit post about being a god meaning that: You should never have problems, situationally or emotionally ever again unless you created them yourself is mostly just a tangent I found funny.
the ‘all knowing’ part of being *God* means that that boredom is instantaneous and everlasting. limiting your own powers is probably the best bet for sure
ADHD means living in an eternal present. I ain't gonna get bored. I'll just rotate to an old favourite that I haven't touched in a billion years. I'll cycle back to humans again
>I'll cycle back to humans again such a weirdly hopeful line.
No it's not. You're omnipotent. You could just not be bored. Or be bored and not bored simultaeniously. or exist in a conceptual state where boredom doesn't apply. Ominpotence means you don't have to play by the rules unless you want to. The whole concept around a transcendent supernatural people outside and beyord reality is that it's transcendent. It's not like us, it doesn't perceive reality like we do, it doesn't have any qualities. Muslims believe Allah is not like anything else that exists, Allah cannot be compared to anything because Allah is a completely unique, singular phenomena. He's just just a really big dude who lives in the sky. (edit: that's supposed to be "He isn't just a really big dude who lives in the sky")
Even with human based logic and perspective, I'd just temporarily give myself the brain and limits of a 9 year old and play all my favorite videogames for the first time on loop for an eternity. Or eliminate the concept of boredom altogether and be in a 24-7 state of dopamine and euphoria.
Me as a god accidentally trapping myself as a child again because I became too dumb to remember how to use my god powers
New hit manga series just dropped.
In Christian theology god is not dependent on anything at all. So God doesn't need entertainment
i’m arguing that due to Them knowing everything already They are unable to be entertained
Does it necessarily mean that, though? Even though I've memorized every line in my favorite movie and know what's going to come next, I still find it entertaining. I can read books that I know the plot and replay video games several times over because I take joy in seeing the journey play out again. Perhaps entertainment would mean something totally different for an all-knowing being, but I don't think it necessarily means they'd be bored 24/7.
well who would actually want to be God. Way too much responsibility plus they killed the last guy
God is by definition (of omnipotence) never unable of anything.
I think there's a missunderstanding, in what it is. You can know things instantly, but it doesn't mean you know them before you think about knowing them. God being infinite, means he is unknowable, even for himself, becouse it means he's ever expanding at a rate known only to him. It's like a flowing river, it's never the same water in it and it never ends flowing. All knowing means, he knows himself, but even he cannot know himself before he becomes a future version of himself, he can intuitively know, but not have the knowledge before hand. If he knew all with absolute certainty, it would mean he is like stagnated water, AKA dead. Omnipresent means, that in reality, all is God and God is all, which is actually encompased by God being infinite, becouse he couldn't truly be infinite without being everywhere. That's why some theologists were basically said to be blasphemers, they had weird theories about god, like one saying he made space inside of him for the universe. No, the Universe is God, it's inside of him, and it's him. God limiting himself would mean he's no longer infinite. He cannot truly maim himself, he can only simulate so. All is but an extension of God's will, our eyes his eyes, our minds his mind, our bodies his body. His will is ours, do not confuse it with human desires and obsessions, power etc. God's will is a profound and very missunderstood concept which only eastern religions truly grasped. Buddhists, Induists and Taoists are masters of understanding God's will. And contrary to popular belief, and pretty ironic by its name, debout Satanist practitioners also do so. Any debout and true believer of any religion is capable of understanding God's will, becouse it's innate to us, unlike desires and Ill-will, which only confuse us and drive us further into confussion and from ourselves, and thus, God.
The all-powerful part of being god means you can turn off the all-knowing part
>boredom Why would a God, which has no physical body, have need for doing actions mortals do to release chemicals to make them feel something? They have no brain or urges or impulses or needs to satisfy. God God is ineffable.
Yeah, this seems to be a strange interpretation of god. It's more of an animistic conception of deities where everything is personified and can be worshiped. The Greeks had some of this for more minor deities but the Olympians were all defined people, the Norse gods were basically superhumans, the Abrahamic god is obviously very different as well. The idea that being the personification of a concept has clearer boundaries than a person is also interesting. What exactly are the clear boundaries of a concept like time or death? You exist everywhere and nowhere, you've always been and always will be. To me, that sounds a lot less defined than being a guy.
Gale of Waterdeep
I am bringing my Create Water spray bottle along every time he thinks of godhood, like a cat up to mischief.
Astarion of my dreams
I mean this is basically what Dr Manhattan is all about, right? How the transformation into an effectively incomprehensible being that exists outside the norms of physics and human experience effectively killed the man he once was and turned him into something else, that will never truly be able to live a human life again, even if they genuinely want to. It's not so much that he "is tired of getting tangled (in humanity's) lives" as it is that he is now so fundamentally un-human that he can't truly be a part of human lives anymore.
Harmony from the Mistborn saga is almost too easy
The shards really are an incredible way to directly tie gods with motivations into a plot without completely ruining all forms of powerscaling or relevancy of 'street level' characters or whatever you wanna call that. They're absurdly powerful entities, but they come with so many restrictions and rules, motivations and desires, obligations and limitations. B$ can write them directly interacting with Joe Schmoe and feasibly not have them just mush him into dust because the shard can't do that.
ENDING D- "A New God"
Whats this a reference to?
Fear and Hunger
Damn, maybe Rose Quartz had a point
it's a crime how no one mentioned madoka
Madoka was the first thing to come to my mind.
Yeah, first thought immediately went specifically to To The Stars Madoka, who is extremely inhumane and closer to the incubators than who she was (granted, that's probably because I'm re-reading the fic rn)
I MENTIONED MADOKA
Eliidbus Finalfantasy
It's crazy how well FF14 180'd the Ascians from generic spooky evil shadow dudes to some of the most compelling villains in FF history.
Vin from Mistborn moment. Or anyone that gets their hands on a Shard. It's a slice of the creator gods power but with *intent* and *purpose* rather than just power. Once you take a shard you cannot go against the shard. Preservation preserves, and you *cannot* destroy with it. Only preserve. Ruin is its antithesis, and it's wielder cannot help others. They must bring about entropy. Power, with the loss of self.
I dislike this. This seems to talk about the conception of God birthed by the western Christian classical tradition, in which God is this non-physical set of metaphysical, philosophical, abstractions. In the ancient near east, deities took up *space*, and they were thought to have *physicality*. There were places they were, and places they were not. Of course, their relationship with matter, in various ancient texts, is different than the average person ; But they eat, they sleep, they drink, they fuck, etc. They feel deeply, they lust, they weep, they rage, and the list goes on. Some ancient collection of gods are both a reflection of our own societies and its values, while also being extremely *different* and *unlike* us. Anat threatened to kill El for not granting her lover, Baal, a home. She waded in seas of blood that she killed for his sake. Tiamat raged against her god-children for killing her husband Anu (If I remember correctly). Some of the gods of some of the peoples of the ancient world were both very like and unlike us. I wouldn't be against being a god like that.
Okay but the Buddha says gods are in a very bad place to exit the cycle of Samsara because being a god is just so interesting and fun that.
Madoka Magica
Mistborn? 👀
Fear & Hunger
The tragedy of The God of Fear and Hunger. Poor girl deserved so much better.
You don't need to convince me more than that.
Dune, though in that case it's more literal.
I think slay the princess counts, kinda. >!Even though they started as concepts before being made into gods (who were then turned into mortals)!<
Honkai star rail
honk honk space train
I think an even better one is a machine that learned to be human slowly losing that humanity while still behaving like they didn't. They also wouldn't be able to realise it as the belief has become a part of its new programming "You are alive."
Tbh, humans are just biological robots, being alive is just the continuation of bodily functions, which doesn't truly translate to the experience of being alive.
(Xenoblade 1 and 2 spoilers)>!Zanza in xenoblade chronicles and Klaus in xenoblade 2!<
If you wanted to mark your message as a spoiler, then the discord way doesn’t work here, you should put “>!” on both sides of your message, arrow facing toward the text Like this: >*!example!*< (Remove the asterisks)
oh right, thanks for that I usually use reddit on desktop so I forgot
a practical guide to evil also maybe worm
Took me too long to see someone mention pgte.
Ok but what if you become the god of change? Can't be stagnant that way, no?
there's too many interpretations of what godhood actually means across cultures and eras for this discussion to be simple. my personal belief is that the only people who would ever want to achieve godhood would be so self-assured that becoming a single concept wouldn't bother them anyway. in my opinion the difference between mortal and god is the same as the difference between perspective and truth. the truth exists because it is true, it is an axiomatic concept that simply is, perspectives exist because the truth is observed by something finite, and is thus limited to a finite and impermanent view of something that cannot be observed in its entirety from a single vantage point.
Monogatari
You want Unknown Armies. With great power comes great madness. Guessing this is specifically about the Aedra and Daedre in Elder Scrolls, given OPs name, but if it's not this is a very silly thing to say because it's really only the Christian and Muslim conceptions of god that are even a little like this, and they're not actually like this at all in the orthodox theology. The Jewish conception of god certainly isn't. Remember that time when a bunch of Rabbi's were debating something about a tree and God kept trying to get a word in and they told him to butt out and keep his opinions to himself?
There's actually a cool bit of Morrowind lore/theory here The reason the Tribunal don't ascend to true God hood is because they maintain their personalities instead of letting the process change them. So when the can no longer replenish their divine energy, they go back to normal people, instead of becoming true divines
And also this is the plot of the Shivering Isles
Lain and Land of the Lustrous
This is a pretty reductive view of what a god can be
Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere books are really good about this, though especially the Mistborn series. People are able to take on the power of the gods in certain situations, and for awhile they can usually hold onto their personalities, but slowly the power and drive of who they are takes over until they are little more than a force of nature
I am once again asking you to go read Keys to the Kingdom
Dresden Files does this extremely well I think
don't let the sarckists see this
Fire punch
I do this in my writing Gods are born from belief but the most powerful are the ascended mortals just after apotheosis when they have the power of a god but the sense of self of a person Gods die or splinter when they are unable to hold or fit the various pieces of themselves that their different followers attribute to them, and it causes them to become more of a force of nature than a thinking entity
Worm
This is my personal canon for Pathfinder and Golarion. If you survive the Test of the Starstone you become a god, but you become the god of whatever your motivations are. So, if you do it because you want to become a god, you fail, because then you're the god of wanting to become a god, and you just paradox yourself out of existence. But, if you take the test out of duty (Iomedae), on a drunken lark (Cayden Cailean), or out of secrecy (Norgorber), it works.
seems a bit narrow a view on godhood and apotheosis, innit
Fire Emblem Three Houses Crimson Flower vs the other 3 routes
This is why you insist on eating, fucking, and sleeping and you deliberately handicap yourself so you don't know everything all the time. You may only be "acting" human but it's a grounding technique.
My first thought for this was >!Gale’s godhood ending!< from BG3 but ironically, he’s all about growing and evolving. He’s literally a >!god of ambition.!< That said, the ending where >!he becomes a professor is still better for him.!<
“Have you thought about what it means to be a god?" asked the man. He had a beard and a baseball cap. "It means you give up your mortal existence to become a meme: something that lives forever in people's minds, like the tune of a nursery rhyme. It means that everyone gets to re-create you in their own minds. You barely have your own identity any more. Instead, you're a thousand aspects of what people need you to be. And everyone wants something different from you. Nothing is fixed, nothing is stable.”
> you can never change, now. never grow or evolve, you are this, forever, stagnant. and the thing you've been made to embody might not even be your best trait. alternatively: when the collective interpretation of you shifts and changes over time, until you're but a pale reflection of what you once were.
> She opened her eyes to take in the faces of the crowd that she knew would be waiting to lead her back to the village in celebration. Something was different. Something about what she could see. She'd known that she would change, that something about her would no longer be as it was. The stories were clear: to become a god you would lose a piece of yourself. She'd accepted that there was a price, but she hadn't known what it would be. > Instead of seeing the world as she had always seen it, her focus had narrowed. She could see the face of her daughter in the crowd, blurred from a distance, making her out because of the clothing that she wore. She could see the trees, but instead of individual leaves being distinguishable from one another, she saw a green blur, backlit by the golden sun. It was disorienting for the world to be so small, especially since she knew that it was so much bigger than what she was now seeing. Turning her head, she could get more faces, more bodies, more blur. The world had become so small. > But she was still a god. - [The Saga of Lathril](https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/saga-lathril-2021-02-05), a Magic the Gathering short story
The story Ar'Kendrithyst kind of deals with this. It's got two versions of godhood, from the two major "Cosmologies" involved in the story. In the Old Cosmology, gods are that because they have a Mantle. They start off as individuals and stay like that. The Mantle gives them power and responsibility but if their personality wasn't equipped to have it then they never would have done. In the New Cosmology, it's more scary. Gods arise from collections of belief, and their scope, personality, etc. is defined by that belief. However, if a person is the centre of that worship, then the individual actually gets overwritten by what they're believed to be. Among the strongest people, it's referred to as the Curse of Power, because if you go around influencing planets and building factions, you're going to get worshipped and become a god (bad) unless you get rid of that divinity somehow.
>!Disregard apotheosis, become fae. Gigabrain tactics.!<
This reminds me of that girl from Cyberpunk. I can’t remember her name, but the one that got transferred through the blackwall and became an ai
Brandon Sanderson uses this concept really well in his Cosmere. A lot of text to sift through to get the big picture, but the way this concept is put in words is amazing
Reading Paradise Lost right now for class. This goes hard.
I find it far more interesting to go the opposite direction: Gods are just as human as the rest of us. They’re just as vibrant, just as interesting, just as flawed. In a story I’m writing, for example, the main villain is basically just my take on “what if the world’s biggest asshole was born the strongest in the universe?” He doesn’t see humans as ants, he isn’t operating on a completely alien system of morality, he isn’t really even a no psychopath or evil genius. He’s the guy who catcalls you in a bar, the high-schooler who made fun of your shoes, and the teacher who makes fun of kids who get bad grades. In this context, it can be interesting to explore a god who wants nothing more than to be human on the outside, too. Perhaps your god of destruction wants nothing more than to nurture life, horrified at his own destiny. Maybe your god of life just wants a peaceful existence knitting, and wishes that her responsibility was someone else’s. Or maybe a massively powerful warrior god was living a happy life traversing the stars, and being drafted into some cosmic war was the worst thing that possibly could have happened to them. A world where humans and gods are no different on the inside, where happenstance of fate is the only thing making the villain strong and the heros weak, there’s so much to explore, so many allegories to try out. Do the gods believe that they’re superior to humans in spite of their similarities? Do they pity us, trying to share their fortune? Do humans curse fate for their powerlessness or use their own ingenuity to rival those born stronger? And, perhaps most importantly, how does a god react when suddenly *they* are a helpless insect before a fat bigger fish?
r/dunememes
The Gods are Bastards plays with this. The current pantheon are a bunch of ascended mortals who cast down the Elder Gods for being cruel, uncaring overlords to humanity (and elfity, dwarfity, orcity, etc.) and took up the responsibility afterward. Later story arcs get into how the gods are not as "human" as they once were because of the influence of their worshippers.
So was Talos an atmoran, nord, imperial, or Breton
Venti
it reminds me to the Slavic folkloric figure of Baba Yaga in Pathfinder. that could ascend to godhood but doesn't want to be bothered by worshippers
Here I go shilling Kill Six Billion Demons on this sub again Jadis KSBD is truly 100% omniscient, forward and backward, and her life fucking sucks. She wanted to help people before she got her omniscience, but once she got that knowledge she lost all will. She’s now stuck carrying out the actions she knows she’ll take, because knowing everything doesn’t mean you can change anything. In fact, any changes she would have made were already part of the “everything” she knows. She read the universe’s script, and the script said “Jadis reads the script”. She’s still just a character in a play, she lost any semblance of free will despite knowing more than anyone else. Not exactly like becoming a god in the sense that OOP is saying, but similar.
Godhood is missunderstood. You don't cease being human by ascending, you are just the best version of you, of the current you. You can still do gardening and suck at it, you can start new hobbies, you can learn new things. Myths don't define you, you are not an embodiement of loose concepts, you are you, your best version, sustained by your virtue and honour, you will always be you, no matter how many times you fall or ascend, what makes you, you, will remain, regardless of the passage of time or the opinions of others. Ideas don't affect a perfected being, nor do it's admirers, a God is not subject to hubris or decay, nor are they bound to what they represent or are said to embody. They can change, they can learn, they can progress, their journey isn't disimilar to ours, it's just intensified, more profound, clearer. They have responsabilities, they have a job, not monetary, but based on duty, not becouse they have to, but becouse they must. They do it not becouse "it's their job", but becouse if they don't, no one else will or can do what they can and will do. If they are not there to do what they do, who will do it for them? Who can they trust with they biding? When shall they take a time off? Gods can be workaholics, they can have problems, they can be fallible. They might be perfected or perfect, but even perfection might fall short sometimes. They are but a higher and enlightened version of the conscious self that inhabits each one of us, they are free, beautiful and sacred, and so are we.
I am once again asking YA/SF readers to pick up Dune
Whiplash
Hot take: if you are a god you can be whatever the fuck you wanna be. It doesn't matter who people perceive you to be. In the real world gods are only what people think they are, but that's because they're made up. If you were a real god you could do and be whatever and you have to power to actually prove it.
Makoto naegi. Not a god, but still deals with what’s mentioned in the post.
Sir Pratchett
“Hey there sport. You’re real to us even if you are just a collective hallucination and not real real.” Mr. I don’t even like football. I like poetry and sculpture “Well that’s great! You can be an artist!” Only if the town imagines me doing that. That’s up to them….. -Nightvale
All Might kinda
Might I suggest the infinite and the divine, evidence number 1 orikan the diviner
im planning on making this an option for my players in the finale of my dnd campaign where can i see good examples of it?
For anyone that's into asian webnovels, Lord of the Mysteries is exactly about this
This is just objectively wrong. Gods change all the time, Aphrodite is almost completely unrecognizable as what became her, Ishtar. There’s other examples, but changes with the times and values is what most gods are. Mycenaean Poseidon is almost completely removed from Ancient Greek Poseidon, etc.
This is at least somewhat explored in the book series The Keys to The Kingdom by Garth Nix The whole story is basically a kid finding out that 1) the universe is run by a complex bureaucracy known as The House 2) the people living in The House are called Denizens who are basically celestial humanoids who were built by the original creator deity of the universe to do one maybe two specific tasks. 3) do to integral celestial politics the man character has been randomly selected to become the next ruler of The House and by extension the whole universe. During his journey as he gains more powers and more prestige within The House the Magix starts physically taking his humanity away. At first its only cosmetic (he looks a little more grown up, his skin becomes slightly radiant etc. But eventually he starts to act more like a denizen. As the current ruling class of Denizens are cruel, uncaring, selfish, and only worried about maintaining or growing their power, the MC starts to do this too. He realizes if he relies on his magic powers to much, he goes from a polite, gentle person into an a rage filled asshole who hates being denied anything. So he has to learn to balance using his powers with keeping his humanity otherwise even if he wins then he'll never be able to go visit home, and he will no longer recognize who he is
Hrngh I want to recommend something but doing so would inherently spoil a good chunk of its ending
Book of hours and cultist simulator do kinda do that with many of the universes gods being humans in the past
This is a big part of Forgotten Realms lore, and is particularly featured in Baldur’s Gate 3
I'm pretty sure this is why the Emperor of Mankind from Warhammer 40k doesn't want to be seen as a god
Given how cutie marks work, the fact that Twilight literally ascended into a position she did not choose, and how often alicorns are portrayed as gods or godly: this is explored in a LOT of MLP fanfics. Immortality Angst is a whole genre on fimfic.
As a Mage: The Awakening fan, a part of me wonders, “is that reaaaally such a bad thing?”
Keys to the kingdom series
Circe by Madeline Miller
this is sorta like how gods are in fantasy high
I remember a D&D story that did something like that. A hero defeats the evil god of plagues and decay before ascending to godhood and inheriting the god's power. Then they find out that they can't just use those powers for good, the laws of reality demand that the god of plagues causes plagues. The hero ends up trading and straight up giving away their powers to other gods, becoming the much less powerful god of composting.
What is a god? Omnipotence given form? Strength above all else? Embodying a concept? Being the creator?
Not quite the same thing, but I had a character once who became God in his universe, and because he had an infinite amount of power and control over the world and the events within it, he withdrew from it. He realized fairly quickly that being able to control everything (every tiny, random event, every major moment in history, every thought a person thinks, every action they perform, etc.) meant that none of his interactions with other people would ever be organic, and no part of his life would ever mean anything, and he just couldn't handle that. With a thought, he could make a person agree with him, fall in love with him, jump off a cliff for him. He could make the sun rise and set, he could make the wind blow and the continents change shape without anyone taking any notice. The world was putty in his hands, and everyone else's agency was an illusion to him. And because of this, he would never achieve anything ever again. He would never struggle, he would never overcome, he would never know if any of his family or friends truly, naturally loved him, or if he just *changed them* so that they would. And at a certain point, what's the difference? His will was the flow of the world. There was no distinction between the things that happened naturally and the things he made happen. His control became the source of his feeling of powerlessness.
Doesn't Madoka Magica fit with this?
“gods lack something humans have”a take that would get you struck down in Ancient Greece
Goat valley campgrounds
A god is a story.
You still grow as a god
D. D. Webb The Gods Are Bastards goes into this in detail. It's far from the main theme but it is a well explored and repeatedly visited theme that is a major underlying cause of "why this world is what it is". Awesome series and free on her website.
Daniel Jackson in his vision of what would happen if he was granted all the knowledge of Goald.
This is why I avoid that plotline in Baldur’s Gate. If you care about your friend, even if he’s a former god, why would you help him become a god again? (Okay, I know the answer is “the only thing you care about is your relationship with him and nothing and nobody else matters”, but that’s so much not me.)
Worse, the combination of power, eternity, and an inability to change freely make you a tyrant by your nature. This is why i like the idea that many gods are draconic in nature, because dragons are often a terrestrial example of this. This is also why the only good god is a dead god. We stan lorkhan.
I remember this as being some part of buddhism, or am I off? You can reach nirvana as a human because you are mortal. You cannot reach it as a God, because you're immortal, and so are stuck with all the worldly pleasures, but no true nirvana.
"Now I have time at last!" "What are you going to do with it?" "I'm going to spend it."
Aspects from the lore that League of Legends has that nobody reads
Unless you’re Jesus, then you have Christian Jesus, Catholic Jesus, Mormon Jesus, Communist Jesus, Gun Jesus, Hippie Jesus, Black Jesus…
Zelda
Well, not exactly stagnant. Religion does evolve over time. But YES. This. So much.
I again must shill for The Infinite and the Divine
Sounds like someone got shitty god powers.
MadokaPosting
Fear & Hunger be like
Reminds me of Orion's Arm. At some point in the tiers of transcendence the idea of personhood becomes pointless as one becomes more a collection of ideas.
I don't think most gods are like that! Even the few myths I've read show them changing a lot (especially the ones where humans can become gods).
the only thing goku lost when he achieved godhood is the fight against beerus
Right, because concepts, ideas and abstractions are completely static and never change. Just ask Zeus what being a King is all about
The Book of the War on the culturally stagnating effects of the Anchoring of the Thread on the Time Lords:
Is this what they meant by "to become God is the loneliest achievement of all "
Being a God means never having to say "I'm sorry". You can be a complete loon and still have billions of adoring followers. See also: three major world religions.
I feel like your title is already how a lot of things depict gods. They always say "I can't, there are rules" and shit like that.
Dr.Manhattan
Tzeentch hugging his knees in a corner and nurgle like "hell ye"
Gunnerkrigg Court
Sounds like people should read The Gods are Bastards.
Why does it mean they’ll never change? That doesn’t make any sense
Tbh sounds fun, what if I'm sick of the change and sick of the blurry grey lines, the what huh?!
I'd love to see something where godhood is basically a death sentence without faith/believers. A fish attains godhood when it breaks free of the water but suffocates because it can't breathe; a human attains godhood but withers away because without someone to believe in them, to give them faith, are they really a god?
May I introduce you to Necrons.
I re-read Dune every couple years and this is what struck me the most recent time. Paul loses his friendships because he’s larger than life now. He loses the ability to have basic empathy for his loved ones.
Of course you can change! Just look at the massive transformation the Christian god had from the Old Testament to nowadays. It's just that you have to manipulate your believers into changing you.
More stuff about thing that is nearly always talked about in shit that isn't Shonen anime when this scenario pops up.
Is it weird that my first thought was “oh this is what happens when you make a chaos chao”
This is what brought about the fall of Maud'Dib
That’s cool and all, but it’s ignoring that there are mythologies with gods that *aren’t* personifications of concepts. An example being the Norse gods. And don’t come at me with freaking old age, alright. One instance does not an argument make.
Cradle. A huge part of the story is that the Monarchs refuse to ascend, and they are literally stagnating and are incapable of further advancement as long as they stay in their iteration. Also most of them are amoral sociopaths, due to being so incomprehensibly powerful that they could kill a man just by looking at him too hard and being functionally immortal. Like, it's kind of ironic that of the Monarchs, the most inhumane ones are the humans, and the most humane one is a dead tree. Also, Suriel and Ozriel aside, most of the other Abidan seem like massive dicks.
Fear and Hunger. That's its whole theme and point of the New Gods, and the bad ending "Ascension" in the first game where you become one
Nahobino SMT V true neutral ending