3371 Ranna Finds Her Calling
on August 5, 2020
Chapter: Ranna's Fulcrum
Characters: Ch'Thier Goddess of Health and Purity, Lady Marion of Heatherdale, Ranna Goddess of Chaos and Cruelty
Location: Elegrost Fields
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I wonder how many times it had been done before.
And how many schism had occured?
My symbolic animal is a sloth.
OH! So you work in the DMV then??? 😉
(I just couldn’t resist)
Flash, Flash, Hundred-Yard Dash!
Although I live in England so it would be 91.44-Metre Dash.
My brother!
I would be a sparrow, because Sparra killi.
Probably a seagull, after Johnathan Livingston.
That's nice. Mine is a turtle. With a disc on it's back… 😛
Sometimes there’s no big explanation for a thing
…and of course, because it had to be said,
https://imgur.com/gallery/RJ0ab/comment/1101125183
Nice
Excellent.
Lol? I don’t get it.
I think he’s referring to the cartoon the ‘lol’ is responding too as well.
Bunnies AND Unicorns.
Bunnicorn? Or Unibun?
Definitely Bunnicorn.
Yeah, ‘Unibun’ tends to make one think of a ‘manbun’!
Animal totems? All I have to say is: "Quando omni flunkus moritati"
"When all else fails, play dead?" in butchered latin?
Is that a "Red Green Show" reference or a "Cryptozoology Tracking Society" reference? Either way… not sure I get the connection.
Red Green Show; it’s the motto of the Possum Lodge & recited at the opening of all lodge meetings.
Yes, I know. I still don’t know what the connection is.
Heraldic symbols, and animal totems…Snake, Bunny, Possum! 🙂
It was a poorly executed attempt, at correlative humor.
Red Green references gets cookies. Always.
"I’m a man. But I can change. I guess. If I have to."
greedy pooka
no wonder you’re my favorite
*gives more cookies*
That is so weird that you brought up The Red Green Show, I’ve just rediscovered it. It is too funny.
"And what about the birch, Harold? What about THE BIRCH?!"
"Al-Mi’Raj was the name of your first bunny, and your second, and your… you just liked that name and gave it to *all* of your bunnies."
Al-Mi’Raj isn’t the bunny’s name. It’s the unicorn bunny species name.
Oh, thank you
bunnies don’t have horns, that just doesn’t exist, your eyes are playing tricks on you, it must have been a mirage.
This does make the case of "she’s a goddess of chaos, not evil" that slight bit harder to defend. Consistently waging wars of conquest? Then consistently splitting captives into groups ordered by preplanned criteria? Then consistently exploiting one group, while torturing the other to death? Nothing chaotic about this (sounds almost orderly, actually) but plenty of evil.
I thought my narrative was clearer than that. But here, let me explain:
Marion isn’t saying that Ranna isn’t evil. She clearly IS. What she said was that she’s not a goddess of Evil. She’s a goddess of Chaos.
Also: Ranna didn’t start off as evil. She was chaotic, but as attitudes changed and her worshippers grew angry, the anger changed her into an angry, vengeful god, which in turn had the people start to think of her as evil…. and so she turned into evil. Perhaps this last bit will be better explained in Friday’s strip (I’ve got to finish cleaning it up today.)
I can see where you’re going with this, and I still hope you’re going to do a Vorlon (Ch’Tier) and Shadows (Rana) thing here, with Marion (Lorien) leading them into higher realms to join the other gods (First Ones).
Hey, I’m just a big fan of Babylon 5.
Why would you want it to happen here if you’ve seen it already?
t!
There are only two kinds of people. Big fans of Babylon 5, and those who have not watched it yet.
Three kinds. There are also liars.
Ithilion: See, here’s the thing with B5. Before I got my hands on a VHS copy of the first season’s worth of episodes, I had B5 fans blowing smoke up my ass about how incredibly wonderful and awesome it was omg omg hopupanddown yougoddaseeeeeeyit yougoddaseeeeeyit.
And by the time I got to episode…. 6 maybe? I had decided that (a) it was a nice change from Star Trek’s forehead alien blandness that was all over the channels at the time but (b) it was otherwise pretty standard Star Trekkie sort of stuff and I never got excited enough about it to pursue it further.
I found Farscape much more entertaining to be honest.
That’s a a shame, BK. B5’s first season may set stuff up for later but it’s actually completely skipable, season 2 and on will fill you in on everything you need to know and is much better.
… it’s even worse in case of ST:DS9, where almost whole first FOUR seasons are skipable.
Fnordius: I can only promise you two things:
1) I have no idea what you’re talking about (being one of Ithilion’s former types of people), and
2) That’s not what’s going to happen.
Oh, no worries! I was just reminded these past few weeks of the parallels to this climatic scene in the series (spoilers, naturally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tj4qfe9afs )
I like that you are going somewhere else, and it bear repeating that you are a great storyteller. I look forward to the transition from an age of magic to an age of science and technology.
Nono, I got that. It seems I didn’t express myself right. My point was that the argument made in https://www.yafgc.net/comic/3358-the-muse-steps-up-2/ refers to the current day Ranna as the goddess of chaos. At the time I made this comment the link between the expectations of the followers and the nature of their gods hadn’t been made fully explicit yet, but it was already clear that their natures were malleable, and what I was saying that even at this very early stage she seems to not only have the evil in her aspect, but also was very orderly in her conduct (so, not really being a case of a goddess of chaos who happens to be acting evil on top of that primary aspect, but just a goddess acting evil).
The point was this: can Marion still truly call Ranna a goddess of chaos rather than evil, when it seems that on one hand yes she was born a goddess of chaos but on the other she changed away from that so completely, and this transformation happened so early in her history, and she’s been just embodying evil (free of chaos/order considerations) all the time since then? With the alternate take being that "goddess of chaos" is what she was at the start (for "centuries") but not what she is anymore, and this having been the case for close to all of her existence (for "millenia")?
I’m honestly not really arguing either way, just making an observation I thought someone might find interesting.
Is she not a goddess of evil though? Maybe she *wasn't* a goddess of evil originally, but she sure seems to be in the present. Is the portfolio of gods fixed and unable to evolve? How does that square with the "council of ten" gods who changed their roles from what they were originally assigned? Is Llolth still technically a goddess of light rather than a goddess of darkness despite everything?
I think the point is that she was born a Goddess of Chaos, so she didn’t choose chaos. However, she wasn’t born a Goddess of Evil. She chose to become evil all by herself.
No, part of the point was that she didn’t choose to go evil either. It was chosen for her.
Is it all-or-nothing, though? Either it was wholly her choice or she had no choice at all?
Marion was caught in that tempest of powerful feedback from her worshippers, and could easily have embraced godhood…but she fought it to a compromise, becoming an immortal muse but not quite a god. And, it seems to me, retaining quite a bit of hard-won capacity to define for herself who and what she was.
Ranna was assigned the mantle of cruelty, first by her enemies and by the allies who rallied to her BECAUSE of it…and she *embraced* that mantle wholeheartedly. Wasn’t at least part of that swandive-off-the-slippery-slope her own choice, if only by choosing not to fight it?
What we don’t see (because Marion wasn’t there) is how long Ranna struggled before ’embracing the evils’
And there is still nothing to say she did it with a whole heart
What we are seeing is jus one side of the story, and not from either of the ‘main characters’ of the narrative: just someone looking in from the outside seeing the *results* of the actions, not the *motivations* for them
What makes you think the criteria for splitting captives weren’t chaotic?
1) A gag! At this point in the narrative, VERY much appreciated.
2) Just 9 short hours ago, in the context of archaeology and what we were calling quantum history (inescapably distorted by the historian), a colleague and I discussed the attribution of ‘significance’ to every cave painting. Surely, humans being what they are, over 50% of them were of no more interest than a tweet – in this example, "I like bunnies!"
t!
It’s harder to make a cave painting than send a tweet. So, it must’ve been at least "I like bunnies a lot!" 🙂
I find it easier to draw than to type, myself. I agree with t! It’s not like these early humans had sketchpads to doodle on -not that they’d have had a lot of doodle time, mind you.
How about this scenario: I want to draw a buffalo hunt scene to honour my fallen comrad but I’ve never drawn one before and I’m not sure if this colour quite captures what it looked like…. let me just try it on this wall…. nope, not right. No, too tall… too long… oh wait, it had no horns…. ah, that’s good. I’ll do it like that! (entire cave wall painted with a ‘herd’ of buffalo.)
In the end, we may find out that Lescaux was basically a practice room where artists could try stuff out before committing to an expensive hide on a frame, or tent skin, for all to see. Or the wall paintings were reference works.
Who knows how future historians may pore over engraved plates with serial numbers, puzzling over the ritual significance of these religious trinkets called "laptops"? And who is this god Intel, that lived inside these cartons?
Future historians will definitely have huge misconceptions about today’s society, but not understanding what a laptop is wouldn’t be among them: the way laptops are build, they stop being recognizable as ANYTHING at same time they will stop being recognizable as computer.
And, in general, we are getting better at preserving information, recycling and destroying things. Future historians could have more information available in databases than physically.
(Future historians will have pretty good idea about what was Windows and what Linux … but their estimates about number of causalities in wars between those two would be way off. They may also think Bloodbath of B-R5RB was part of Cold War.)
So much lore and backstory….
Anyone else betting that one sister or the other lops the head off the other at the end in ‘That’s all well and good but she’s gotta die now.’
Rana had my initial sympathy. But once you move to torturing for fun then youve become the "cruel" moniker. Of course… was she like that because of the reasons she lists or did her nature change due to c’thiers followers believing that about her?
Worse yet, her OWN followers also believe that, and revel in it. There’s a reason "positive feedback" is a curse word to engineers…
Shows that being a god in this setting is actually a rough deal – you’re REALLY vulnerable to having your whole essence just shifted to an unpleasant degree if your followers suddenly get an idea….
Bunnies are good.
I know some kinghts that would disagree with that
I say to thee, ‘Ni!’… and pass the shrubbery
Monty Python references also get cookies (for both of you).
Well, yes, but chicken is chicken.
"Bunnies are good. Unicorns are good. Therefore unicorn bunnies are the best bunnies ever. Look, you were *eleven*."
Bunnies aren’t just cute like everybody supposes.
They’ve got them hoppy legs and twitchy little noses.
And what’s with all the carrots-?
What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?
Bunnies, bunnies it must be BUNNIES!
…or maybe midgets…
Rabbits don’t naturally eat root vegetables/fruit. Carrots/fruit are high in sugar and should only be fed in small amounts as occasional treats. Rabbits need mainly hay and/or grass, some leafy greens and a small, measured amount of pellets. So in short, you’re not really supposed to give carrots to a rabbit.
I’m quoting Anya from the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Don’t take anything a thousand year old bunnyphobic ex-demon sings while under a compulsion to behave as if in a Broadway show seriously.
cookies for the Buffy reference. Just happens to be my favorite scene from my favorite episode LOL
I wonder why Marion remembered all this, but Tanna and C’thier did not.
Immortality does not mean having the ability to remember EVERYTHING you do in your eternal life.
Yeah, I can barely remember what I did yesterday. Ranna and Ch’Thier are thousands of years old. (Not millions. That’s Marion. And she’s a bard, writing and passing down oral histories and memorizing them is what she does.)
It could be that a god’s memory is tied into his/her follower’s memory….
If a gods attitude is tied into their followers, this could make sense..
Or it could be that they’ve just forgotten
Marion has an eidetic memory, where Ranna & Ch’thier don’t
Ch’Thier: "Oh, yes, that’s right, I loved bunnies! Though I was devastated when one of them started burrowing, made a wrong turn at Albuquerque, and I never saw him again."
Bugs Bunny references gets you double cookies!!
YAY!!!! Thank you! Omnomnomnomnomnom!
It’s not like Ch’Thier forgot she loves bunnies. It’s just that she wasn’t sure she didn’t forget something more specific.
Interesting that Ranna and Ch’Thier are not as tall as they were when Lady Marion started reminding them of their life stories.
I think they just aren’t reflexively using divine energy for a giant growth effect any more. Or they downsized to be closer to her height so it’s easier to hear her. Maybe both.
Or maybe Marion is just subtly manipulating them like a good diplomancer. 🙂
Being reminded of their humble beginnings could be making them shrink to a more humble size
Like I said, escalation.
They were real jerks to us, and mean, and we even got into some fights…
Take their towns! Loot, pillage, rape, torture, murder! That will make things right!
What’s funny (bleh, not ha ha) is that they don’t remember why they are even doing it any more.
You sure they aren’t human?
To be fair, gods are usually imagined as humans with way too much power; all of our faults, and often only one of our good traits, if even that. Even Jehovah/ YWHW/ Allah/ God is often depicted that way, especially in the old testament, and by modern ‘fundamentalist’ Jews/ Muslims/ Christians (and no, I don’t see any difference between them). The problem is of course that even if such entities exist, they don’t talk to us, so we just make them in our own image, projecting our own faults onto what are supposed to be supreme beings… making them petty, cruel, and vain.
Interesting that you don’t see any difference in how Jews/Muslims/Christians depict God. Since Jews and Muslims don’t "depict" God at all. Unless you’re referring to textual references.
The three use similar texts but have very different outlooks. I would suggest that perhaps your inability to see the difference is more a result of your own lack on knowledge on the subject than any inherent similarities in the subject matter.
I’m going to go with "depict" in the figurative sense, as in create a mental image. And there, all three Abrahamic religions have a common view of the creator deity that differs mainly in motive, and in how the god they describe currently intervenes.
In the first book of the Pentateuch (Genesis in the Bible), God Himself seems to go through a learning process, not unlike a mod/creator of a MMORPG: making sweeping changes in the beginning, all too willing to scrap it all when users get too toxic, then adopting a more off-hands approach and interfering less and less as the world matures.
@Fnordius
Yes, that’s a good way of putting it.
In the new Testemant God gets very much hands off, except for Christ of course, and he also is far less prone to the old wrath of God for petty reasons stuff.
"You looked back! I said not to look back! DIE!" Seems a bit harsh…
BUT, other than Revelations, a lot of self-proclaimed Christians sure love to quote the Old Testement, and rarely the New. They liked the drunken abusive father Gawd, well, at least the parts that suit them. They tend to cherry pick. Citing Leviticus about homosexuality is asking for trouble, it is full of rules that VERY few people follow, but they seem to think two sentences out of the entire book are the only ones that matter.
The fundamentalists also love to name Revelations, although they don’t actually quote it much. Thing is, even many religious scholars dismiss Revelations as just a story written to tell the newly minted Christians that were being persecuted that they would receive their reward in the end. I saw even a Vatican scholar on TV dismiss Revelations as nothing more than a story.
But to the fundamentalists, it is the Rapture (not mentioned in the bible, it showed up centuries later), when God will raise all the good Christians (i.e. THEM) up to heaven and leave everyone else on the Hell on Earth, and damn they can’t wait for it.
I think it’s hogwash, but even if it isn’t I suspect that it wouldn’t go they way they think.
To continue my bad analogy, Revelations is basically one guy saying: "Hey, the Endgame Event is gonna happen soon, the original developer comes back, and when it happens and he sees what you are up to, you guys are going to be SORRY!"
I wasn’t talking about them describing the mythical being they created, I was talking about what they do in the name of their god, while claiming it is the will of their god. God hates this, god hates that, god hates all the things I don’t like, so if I don’t like you, then god doesn’t like you.
If you look objectively you will see that the way the people of the three Abrahamic religions are very similar – especially from the more ‘fundamentalist’ views – and that the only thing that really changes is the details, the names and places. God loves America and will destroy its enemies, Allah will strike down the enemies of the Muslim people, YHWH has granted the holy lands to the Chosen People….
Religion isn’t about god or gods, its about people.
We create god, not the other way around. And therefore gods are like us, and people are very much the same when you get right down to it. Details change, cultures change, but once you scratch below that, people are people. Thus our gods are like us. And it will depend upon who is interpreting the god; a basically decent person is going to say their god wants different things than what a cruel or greedy person will say their god wants. Same god, and both will be able to point to scripture or some other thing to justify their view, but different interpretation.
Thus the religion doesn’t matter, it is what the person interpreting the religion wants. Which all too often is "how can I manipulate other people to do what I say?" And so for people afraid to think for themselves, someone says "Gaaaawd said…" and a bunch of people go "Oh well, if God said, then who am I to question God?"
This is how you get the ‘prosperity gospel’ in Christianity, when Christ in the bible is not actually particularly friendly towards the rich. Mathew 19:24 "And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”
By the same token there is a minority opinion that the Hadiths in Islam are heretical for the same reason, that you can literally find a hadith that justifies ANY position, and that many of them directly contradict one another. But it is a small minority, all the major sects have picked out the ones they liked, declared the others false, and declared it the will of the Prophet and Allah. Meanwhile another sect picked different ones and did exactly the same thing.
Religion is not about deities, it is about people. And people are deeply flawed. Even in the comic where the gods are real. the two deities in question are just people with a lot of power. But they don’t have the wisdom of the entire universe or anything you would expect of gods, they are just people with power. They are not unlike Q (except Q had even more power, but no more sense).
I find it interesting that the comment about gods was just to compare how our gods in the real world and gods in the comic are similar – just people with power – as a followup to my question of "You sure they aren’t human?"
People can’t imagine a perfect being, or at least most can’t, so – as I said – gods end up just being people with a lot of power; petty, cruel, and vain. This was merely an illustrative point on how the two goddesses are just like gods from our own myths, and thus their actions are human, not divine.
But as usual, people fixated on the offhand comment instead of the actual point. Sigh.
I suppose I should have expected that. The only topic more ridiculous than religion that gets an even more extreme reaction from people if you mention it in passing is politics. I could start a war just by saying… nah, better not.
"But as usual, people fixated on the offhand comment instead of the actual point. Sigh."
Yeah, I didn’t have a problem with your comment on gods as related to the comic. I just bristle when people make sweeping generalizing and dismissive remarks about groups of people like this one:
” …and by modern ‘fundamentalist’ Jews/ Muslims/ Christians (and no, I don’t see any difference between them).”
Especially when I have good friends among all these groups.
You have good friends among fundamentalists?
To quote Mark Twain —
"God created Man in his own image; Man, being a gentleman, returned the favor."
(this in response to Eric’s final comment, in case it isn’t clear.)
@Lachesis
Ha! I like that.
> we just make them in our own image
Not everyone does that.
t!
No, it is a generalization, but I feel comfortable in saying most people do.
If for no other reason than that is how human perception works. Take five people who viewed the exact same thing and ask them to describe it, and you are likely to get five different answers (maybe even more). The human brain is a weird thing.
You made explicit in your post that you were making a generalization, which is why I did not reply to you directly.
Nevertheless, I wanted the point to be made. The nature of this flashback for some might be an irresistable temptation to express their religious bigotry, and one comment a few strips back has already veered dangerously close to it.
Call this a warning to those people: Be mindful of how you express yourself.
(My post was sent before Rich replied to yours, so bear in mind it does not take any of that ensuing discussion into account.)
t!
Being reminded of their humble beginnings could be making them shrink to a more humble size.
Could also be that their giant size was reflective of the level of belief in them, and with all of their followers being present for this story, they are losing belief.