three. video. id: the Outsider. later tonight.

[crypdick]

[ It's traditional, when asking simple, broad questions to the Network to do so in a text post but that's not nearly melodramatic enough for the Outsider.

He's in the desert in the outskirts of Jeopardy, night has fallen and he's looking not at the communicator but up at the stars. There's some faeries nearby he's bribed to leave him alone with pizza, but they make it cold enough you can see his breath glittering on the air. ]

The places you come from are varied, where even the things that you take for granted may be different here, or for other imPorts. Even this reality is changing week to week.

With that in mind, I have a question for you.

[ Now he turns to look at the comm, eyes empty and black. He tilts his head. ]

What do you think makes a god a god?

(( And regular reminder that if you respond with video, you are completely free to include a vision for him to see if you want! ))

Comments

[dragony]

Well, sure. Splicing wings to a cat doesn't make it an owl, does it? Taking the legs from a gecko doesn't make it a snake.

[crypdick]

But some would consider those experiments to be made. [ He could see some intrepid natural philosophers making the attempt and then debating the results. ]

So to you a god is what one is, as if they were a species.

[dragony]

Yes. You can create new things that way, but it wouldn't become something else that already does.

I suppose that's a way to put it. I know a lot of people wind up coming through here, who are gods in their own world, or know them, or think themselves so, and maybe that's true, where they're from. That's not the case, for me.

Gods aren't humans.

[crypdick]

If a god isn't a human, and one can't change what one is, then a human could never become a god. Is that right?

[dragony]

That's right.

A human can be useful to a god, or used by them. A human could even have power granted by a god. But they wouldn't be one.

Not really.

[crypdick]

Then what would you call someone who became unto something like a god?

[dragony]

Godlike? Demigod?

[crypdick]

Both somewhat underwhelming.

[dragony]

Are you looking for a title for yourself, then?

[crypdick]

I know what I am, and I know what I have been called. But it doesn't fit your definition.

"The Outsider" will suffice. It has always sufficed.

[dragony]

No, I imagine it wouldn't.

I don't think you'd much fit in with the gods I know, either. None of mine could be brought to a plane like this. [ And he's too short, secondly. ]

[crypdick]

I wouldn't have thought it possible, either. But I have often been proven wrong about what is and isn't possible.

[ He never claimed to be infallible. Perhaps an odd trait, for a god. ]

[dragony]

Often? Then perhaps it's your judgment that isn't attuned to reality, more than its limitations being broken.

[crypdick]

I have existed for long enough to see many remarkable "firsts" that have never been achieved again.

[ Which doesn't necessarily contradict Ruka but he does resent the implication regarding his judgment. ]

[dragony]

[ Everyone always does. ]

Such as?

[crypdick]

Are you asking for a story?

[dragony]

An example, at least.

[crypdick]

I have watched a witch trapped outside reality find a way back in by creating a hole in reality itself -- and by manipulating the power of something like a god. [ The cheek, here. ] It was... uniquely unpleasant.