BBS - Anonymous Text

[vaporlike]

From: Anonymous
Date: April 27

A recent conversation has given me something quite interesting to consider:

We are assigned to the roles of certain gods. What does one do if one feels that particular god doesn't suit them?

What if the god has a particularly unsavory reputation? Or perhaps even too flawless a reputation?

Does the god someone is assigned to represent color what you think about them? Would you, for example, be less likely to trust a god of decay with taking care of your houseplants? A god of foxes for pet-sitting your chickens?

It's an interesting thing to consider.

Comments

[vaporlike]

Perish the thought! I would like to think that none of my sides are hidden, though I do admit that some are harder to find than others.

[thetopofthefoodchain]

So obscured rather than hidden...

What god are you representing? Or what are they a god of, if you want to keep your identity a secret.

[vaporlike]

That's not as simple a question to answer as one might think. It seems there's quite a bit of disagreement within the scholarly community as to just what he's meant to be the god of.

It makes my job here a little more difficult, I suppose.

[thetopofthefoodchain]

Well then can't you just decide. Pick a thing and do that. You're the god now so it doesn't really matter what scholars think.

[Shen Wei would probably disapprove of that, being a teacher. But Da Qing figures that squabbling academics wouldn't argue too much if the god actually showed up and decided the issue.]

[vaporlike]

That will cause them no end of consternation!

The aspects of the job that most appeal to me are the ones they seem the most desperate to disregard.

[thetopofthefoodchain]

And what parts are those? [This is interesting, he hasn't really spoken to many gods. Except Shen Wei but they haven't really spoke all that much about his 'godness'. Perhaps they should.]

[vaporlike]

If I said what they were, I wouldn't be very anonymous anymore, would I?

Of course, I don't believe I've ever told anyone what god I'm mean to represent in the first place, though I assume it's registered somewhere. One would expect the Heaven's to have some sort of a bureaucracy.

[thetopofthefoodchain]

I guess they do. They definitely knew what temple to send me to when I first arrived so someone is keeping a list somewhere.

[vaporlike]

And yet they don't pass that information on as far as I can tell!

Though I suppose that's typical of most bureaucracies. The more organized people try to be, the less organized they truly are.

[thetopofthefoodchain]

I don't think so. Shen Wei sure looked surprise to see me at his gate, I don't think he'd been told he had been assigned a shinki.

[So they were either highly secretive or much less organised than they pretended to be.]

So either incompetence or deep secrecy. I'm not sure which is better.

[vaporlike]

At some point, they're more or less one and the same.

I would hate to think they're being remiss about notifying gods of shinki they're meant to have assigned to them. I would hate to think there's a shinki somewhere that I'm responsible for that's been left to wander the world untethered.

[thetopofthefoodchain]

That would be pretty terrible. It's confusing enough to come here without being left to wander about getting into trouble.

[Not that he would get into trouble if left unattended, despite what Shen Wei seemed to think.]

[vaporlike]

And yet they will lecture us about getting in trouble!

[thetopofthefoodchain]

Exactly! If they want less trouble they should teach us better! And give gods better instructions of how to live up to their name.

[vaporlike]

I think they may very well be waiting to see if we'll all simply disappear as unexpectedly as we appeared.

[thetopofthefoodchain]

That's not very forward thinking of them, what happens when we stay. They just have a load of undisciplined gods on their hands.