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 &  Best Friends Forever (until our inevitable betrayal)
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Jun 4, 2013 10:17
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FoxTerrier posted:M is getting a surprising amount of votes, so changing my second vote from J to All that needs to be said. Just because we don't have plot-amour doesn't mean we should put on the fun-armour. NOT A + M
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Jun 4, 2013 11:27
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Changing my vote to    because I am bad at reading and voted for the wrong first vote by accident.Just because I'm illiterate doesn't mean I don't have faith though! 
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Jun 4, 2013 11:44
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Changing my vote to A + NOT M. Vengeance is not going to solve anything. Asherah won't give us a pat on the back and say 'job well done', and if the fish laser spell couldn't even kill three people then it's highly unlikely a single guy could do anything to hurt an entire city filled with El worshipers.
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Jun 4, 2013 12:28
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EVG posted:
In case it wasn't clear, I meant J above, not I.
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Jun 4, 2013 13:05
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Pray to El and Asherah as we've always done.
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Also going for A and NOT M Vengeance is dumb. Right now, it looks like we're among better people than our village, and we're with Jalitha whom we love and trust. We've made our first friend ever, and we're caught up in the wonder of Tudiya's spellbinding words and stories. I don't think we'd be hating them all and wishing murder upon their heads. Maybe if/when we discover some murderous truth about them you guys can have your revengeful bloodbath.
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Jun 4, 2013 13:06
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 and  H, where Enkidel bows his head and prays as Tudiya instructed him to, to El, as per A, but where right after praying, he tosses the shark tooth into the fire as a clear renunciation of Asherah. By their fruits you shall know them. El is a good god, a kind god; he sent a king to rescue Enkidel and Jalitha, who have only been treated with kindness by their rescuers. Asherah's servant beat Enkidel and Jalitha and no others. Asherah's people forbade their children from playing with Enkidel, while Danal is Eknidel's first true friend. El's angels forbid cannibalism, while Asherah's servants engage in it. Repeatedly. With everyone. One day they would have eaten Jalitha, who Enkidel loves very much. One day, they would have eaten Enkidel! While Asherah's servant insisted that Asherah would bring ruin to the village for not paying homage, Jalitha's never said anything like that about El. And the king said she had told Enkidel everything properly. Once the shark tooth, the symbol of Asherah, has been thrown into the fire, follow option I, as it is only natural for Enkidel to embrace him mother and tell her how much he loves her. John_A_Tallon fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Jun 4, 2013 |
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Jun 4, 2013 13:39
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JT Jag posted:
Another vote for this. All you traitors wanting to abandon Asherah entirely should have picked the Baitel start to begin with. 
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Jun 4, 2013 14:04
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B and J Belief doesn't have to result in worship. We have no idea if El still exists as a single coherent being, it's supposed to have crafted at least some of reality using its own flesh. Even then, we don't know if it wants worship, or deserves it. Asherah is just an rear end in a top hat and specifically offers "not going to eat you right now" as the only type of reward. If the angels failed to kill it, that just leaves more delicious shark meat for us later. Making friends is pretty cool too, even if it never really worked out last time unless you count Narod.
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Jun 4, 2013 14:15
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Genpei Turtle posted:Another vote for this. All you traitors wanting to abandon Asherah entirely should have picked the Baitel start to begin with. Enkidel is not an unquestioningly loyal animal. He can understand that Asherah at least tacitly accepts cannibalism. That's a bad thing. He can understand his mother (his real mother, not Nami, Shushem's wife) stressed how bad cannibalism is. And he knows that these followers of El apparently believe that she taught him correctly.
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Jun 4, 2013 14:23
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A & I Also, when the prayer is over and it seems appropriate, ask: "Is Asherah Asharak?"
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Jun 4, 2013 14:43
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Globofglob posted:Pretty sure traitors had a worse one. An excellent point! Those who betray their benefactors are in the lowest circle in hell. Another reason why we should not plan revenge on the man who saved us. Sogol posted:
I think you are thinking of Limbo which is the first circle that contains Homer, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Caesar, Saladin, Socrates, and Plato among others. I was referring to those spirits and neutral angels that are rejected by both Heaven and Hell. Dante posted:Those who are here can place no hope in death, and their blind life is so abject that they are envious of every other fate. (Canto III) Mr Apollo fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Jun 4, 2013 |
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Jun 4, 2013 14:44
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JT Jag posted:
This. Of course we pray to both; especially since not praying to Asherah gets you eaten. We don't have to like the hungry god, but we better respect him unless we want to get hit by lightning. We already comforted mom, and with all these gods pestering us we could really use some simple in our life.
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Jun 4, 2013 15:18
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In case anyone missed this and wants to be a part of another CYOA, OhYo has you covered. You are even asked what you are wearing! 
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Jun 4, 2013 15:26
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Changing my vote to A. (J stays the same.) After giving it some thought, I don't recall that Asherah has done anything that's deserving of loyalty. Jorah and Pagem might have been nice, but those are people. All I recall of Asherah is that the fish is really, really hungry and cares little about how good/bad people are. Asherah might be real, but El seems to be the better choice overall.
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Jun 4, 2013 15:45
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A J
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Jun 4, 2013 16:03
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& Glad you are feeling better :-)
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Jun 4, 2013 16:13
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H&M Where were the rest of you revenge-hungry fuckers in the last couple of votes?
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Jun 4, 2013 16:16
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A & I
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Jun 4, 2013 16:23
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John_A_Tallon posted:Enkidel is not an unquestioningly loyal animal. He can understand that Asherah at least tacitly accepts cannibalism. That's a bad thing. He can understand his mother (his real mother, not Nami, Shushem's wife) stressed how bad cannibalism is. And he knows that these followers of El apparently believe that she taught him correctly. Sure it's a bad thing. To us, 21st century modern people. To Og/Enkidel? If his society was cannibalistic that taboo surely wasn't as ingrained into him as it would be to us. His mom was surely against it but for the great majority of Og's life she was just some nice lady that lived with his uncle. Same thing goes with his dad beating him for disobedience--that's a bad thing to us, (well, bad but not shocking to me since when I was a kid it was something pretty much all parents did) but to him it would just be a "normal" thing for a village elder to do since he doesn't have any outside reference to indicate otherwise. I think people voting to just change cultures like we'd change our socks are undervaluing the impact of Og's upbringing up until this point. Our whole life we've known nothing but the sea and Asherah and life in a primitive fishing village. Jalitha and her culture was definitely a wildcard, but given her limited contact with us during 90% of our "aware" life its impact would be minimal. Unless Og's extremely unlike the majority of kids ever, regardless of how he was treated he probably loved the people he thought were his parents more than Jalitha--they were the ones that raised him, not her. The sudden revelation that she's in fact his Real Mom wouldn't be cause for him to go "oh, OK, well gently caress my 'fake' parents/culture/life then." Hell, kids that are outright abused and not fed and have to be taken away by CPS are often distraught at having to be separated from their parents even though it's the best thing for them. Based on what we know about the game in a larger-picture point of view it may well be smarter to go side with El since he's probably more powerful than Asherah, (then again, who knows what the real story is?) but it's a lot less realistic as something that you'd imagine what a kid in Og's shoes would do. It's a much more metagamey decision than something that actually makes sense.
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Jun 4, 2013 16:37
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It's not so complicated for me. I like the sound of El, the city, the king seems cool, we won't be beaten anymore, our father was full of lies and pain and we obeyed him because it made sense at the time, but now we know the context, have our real mother, and I'm excited we have a nice friend who likes us and wants us to have a puppy.
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Jun 4, 2013 16:48
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Genpei Turtle posted:Sure it's a bad thing. To us, 21st century modern people. To Og/Enkidel? If his society was cannibalistic that taboo surely wasn't as ingrained into him as it would be to us. His mom was surely against it but for the great majority of Og's life she was just some nice lady that lived with his uncle. Same thing goes with his dad beating him for disobedience--that's a bad thing to us, (well, bad but not shocking to me since when I was a kid it was something pretty much all parents did) but to him it would just be a "normal" thing for a village elder to do since he doesn't have any outside reference to indicate otherwise. One thing people keep missing is that being beaten was not a normal thing in our village. Our fake father was the only violent person, and we were the only kid that was beaten, and Jalitha was the only woman that was beaten. That would have been pretty terrible, to not only be ostracized by other children, but to have the poo poo beaten out of you and then find out your abuser wasn't even your real father. And then you find out that the only woman who was consistently kind to you (who was also the only woman your shithead father beat) is actually your real mother.
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Jun 4, 2013 16:57
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Mexican Deathgasm posted:One thing people keep missing is that being beaten was not a normal thing in our village. Our fake father was the only violent person, and we were the only kid that was beaten, and Jalitha was the only woman that was beaten. That would have been pretty terrible, to not only be ostracized by other children, but to have the poo poo beaten out of you and then find out your abuser wasn't even your real father. And then you find out that the only woman who was consistently kind to you (who was also the only woman your shithead father beat) is actually your real mother. That's why I specified that he was the elder. For all we knew, there was no violence because only the village elder was allowed to hit people. And seriously were none of you smacked around by your parents as kids for disobedience?  It doesn't change how you feel about them much, honest.ed: also unless I just missed something, there's nothing about us getting the poo poo beaten out of us or outright abused. Just that we got "a thrashing" for skipping out on our lessons and that mistakes were punished "with the back of our father's hand." That doesn't sound like closed-fist, potentially-scarring abuse but standard open-hand parental corporal punishment. Genpei Turtle fucked around with this message at 17:15 on Jun 4, 2013 |
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Jun 4, 2013 17:01
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JT Jag posted:
This right here.
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Jun 4, 2013 17:18
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Genpei Turtle posted:Sure it's a bad thing. To us, 21st century modern people. To Og/Enkidel? If his society was cannibalistic that taboo surely wasn't as ingrained into him as it would be to us. His mom was surely against it but for the great majority of Og's life she was just some nice lady that lived with his uncle. Same thing goes with his dad beating him for disobedience--that's a bad thing to us, (well, bad but not shocking to me since when I was a kid it was something pretty much all parents did) but to him it would just be a "normal" thing for a village elder to do since he doesn't have any outside reference to indicate otherwise. Diog mentioned multiple times that beatings were something only our dad did only to us (and Jalitha), so Og/Enkidel would have definitely noticed something was weird, and nobody in the village really even liked Shushem that much. Also, I think you're way undervaluing Jailtha. She isn't some 'nice lady', She is the prime source of love and affection in Og's/Enkidel's life until now, paying us more attention than even ex-mom (now we see why), we might not have voted to spend that much time with her in the 4 to 10 year period, that's because we thought we needed a male role model in the form of Jorah, and we spent time with Shushem out of a reluctant sense of duty (People were thinking "Since we are the next priest it would be irresponsible not at least try to learn his lessons", not "Oh yeah, dad is totally great!")
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Jun 4, 2013 17:18
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Also, cannibalism was not ingrained in Og/Ekindel as culturally acceptable, as we were never told about it by anyone in the village except our mother. I see it as being told lies up to this point. Why should Og/Ekindel stay believing in a god that, as taught, didn't care if we lived or die, with our own father trying to beat his teachings into us? We are being given another chance, why not take it?
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Jun 4, 2013 17:33
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GoneWithTheTornado posted:Diog mentioned multiple times that beatings were something only our dad did only to us (and Jalitha), so Og/Enkidel would have definitely noticed something was weird, and nobody in the village really even liked Shushem that much. Also, I think you're way undervaluing Jailtha. She isn't some 'nice lady', She is the prime source of love and affection in Og's/Enkidel's life until now, paying us more attention than even ex-mom (now we see why), we might not have voted to spend that much time with her in the 4 to 10 year period, that's because we thought we needed a male role model in the form of Jorah, and we spent time with Shushem out of a reluctant sense of duty (People were thinking "Since we are the next priest it would be irresponsible not at least try to learn his lessons", not "Oh yeah, dad is totally great!") On the first part you're right that nobody else smacked their kids (and again, there's nothing that states we received severe beatings, just backhanded smacks) but we were already in a different position as son of the elder. I don't think we would pay intimate attention to the family lives of others either, On the second part though, that Jalitha was more loving to us than anyone else is kinda irrelevant. It's important to be sure, but it isn't really how parent-child bonding works. Children don't just bond with whoever loves them the most. Just as a natural stage of development we would have bonded to Shushem and his wife over Jalitha due to the fact that for most our life we spent the most time with them and they were our actual caretakers. Also even if your parents are kind of lovely, the severance of those bonds, especially to a child, is incredibly traumatic so Og being anything other than a blubbering wreck right now is really unnatural. Then again this is a fantasy world so maybe none of that applies. (as a point of background, I'm taking a bunch of neuroscience classes right now and a lot of this flies in the face of what I'm learning that that's what's probably bothering me the most about all this.  )
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Jun 4, 2013 17:56
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Porpoise, if you or anyone else are so inclined to do an updated count, I would like to start on the update. Everyone is welcome to continue to vote and change votes however they so desire. Also, thanks again to Porpoise and the others who have helped with the counting, you have really sped things up! I run around a lot during the day which gives me time to write, but I don't really have access to a spread sheet.
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Jun 4, 2013 17:58
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E: whoa freaky timing! Totals as of a few minutes ago https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv?key=0AmB38yzQY_2ZdFFhWFo5T0dmTGd5TjFUM0tiSk9EcUE&usp=drive_web lunch break over back to work I go.
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Jun 4, 2013 17:58
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HiHo ChiRho posted:We are being given another chance, why not take it? Because we believe Asherah will drown the world/eat us/destroy all we know if we don't follow his whatever. Maybe we'll be able to put together that, hey, all these other people worship Not-Asherah, and they haven't been drowned, so what gives? But completely stripping ourselves of all our deeply ingrained beliefs, built up over a decade of our most formative years, this quickly? Nah.
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Jun 4, 2013 18:01
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Theglavwen posted:Because we believe Asherah will drown the world/eat us/destroy all we know if we don't follow his whatever. Maybe we'll be able to put together that, hey, all these other people worship Not-Asherah, and they haven't been drowned, so what gives? But completely stripping ourselves of all our deeply ingrained beliefs, built up over a decade of our most formative years, this quickly? Nah. The most powerful being we knew in our day to day lives was Shushem, and we hated him.
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Jun 4, 2013 18:10
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Not A and M. 
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Jun 4, 2013 18:14
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Algid posted:Belief in supernatural entities doesn't equate with worship. Did we? I don't think that's true.
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Jun 4, 2013 18:34
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Algid posted:Belief in supernatural entities doesn't equate with worship. So? We believe that if he's not worshipped (or whatever was involved in attending to him, I'm assuming praying is part of that, otherwise why would it ever have been a part of our activities, seeing as he doesn't reward it) then he'll destroy everything.
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Jun 4, 2013 18:41
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Mexican Deathgasm posted:One thing people keep missing is that being beaten was not a normal thing in our village. Our fake father was the only violent person, and we were the only kid that was beaten, and Jalitha was the only woman that was beaten. That would have been pretty terrible, to not only be ostracized by other children, but to have the poo poo beaten out of you and then find out your abuser wasn't even your real father. And then you find out that the only woman who was consistently kind to you (who was also the only woman your shithead father beat) is actually your real mother. Not to open up a  , but our father (like him or not) raised us our entire lives. He doesn't suddenly stop being our 'real' father just because it turns out he's not the one who got Jalitha pregnant. There's also no indication that the woman we knew as mom wasn't kind to us, fwiw. She seems like she was a subdued presence in our lives, sure, but that's about the worst you can say about her. We had a strong connection to Jalitha throughout childhood, but mom was still mom for 11 years of our lives, and the fact she didn't give birth to us isn't going to change that connection. Especially not overnight. Hey Porpoise, I think my vote accidentally got put down as Not B instead of Not A. (If I'm reading your badass chart correctly. Can't tell if that'll make any difference though, so might be a moot point.) 
FoxTerrier fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jun 4, 2013 |
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Jun 4, 2013 18:52
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FoxTerrier posted:Not to open up a We don't even know this is the case. Jalitha said he wasn't but she also presumably hates him. Either way, village history indicates Jalitha washed up on shore about a year before Og's birth. Even given the fuzzy nature of timekeeping in the village, that is a tight schedule if she was supposed to have been pregnant already. That combined with descriptions of Og's appearance makes me fairly certain his father was one of the villagers at least if not Shushem. Edit: also consider, shushem and nami have no other children. The obvious assumption to a prescientific patriarchal culture is that the woman is infertile. Perhaps when the sea spit up this young foreign woman he saw an opportunity to produce an heir without upsetting village customs by demanding another villager's wife or daughter. andrew smash fucked around with this message at 19:15 on Jun 4, 2013 |
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Jun 4, 2013 19:09
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andrew smash posted:We don't even know this is the case. Jalitha said he wasn't but she also presumably hates him. Either way, village history indicates Jalitha washed up on shore about a year before Og's birth. Even given the fuzzy nature of timekeeping in the village, that is a tight schedule if she was supposed to have been pregnant already. That combined with descriptions of Og's appearance makes me fairly certain his father was one of the villagers at least if not Shushem. Yeah, I also assume that the biological father is somebody in the village. And if mom is telling the truth about it not being a Abraham/Hagar situation, then honestly my money is kind of on Jorah. He seems the person most likely to spot a castaway, and it would make sense if they loved each other but she cooled waaaay down on him when he allowed her baby to be adopted by a heathen priest. Total idle speculation, obviously. An immaculate conception via Ashera would be fun too.  My only real point was that the person who raised us for eleven years as our father is our 'real' Dad (what does that silly term even truly mean?), regardless of biology. FoxTerrier fucked around with this message at 19:19 on Jun 4, 2013 |
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Jun 4, 2013 19:16
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Theglavwen posted:So? We believe that if he's not worshipped (or whatever was involved in attending to him, I'm assuming praying is part of that, otherwise why would it ever have been a part of our activities, seeing as he doesn't reward it) then he'll destroy everything. We believed that Asherah is real and is a source of power, which is why we asked all those questions about magic powers and predicting the weather and stuff. No one was asking how we should worship Asherah, just the why of it, and the reason given only drove us to want to learn more and gain more power. Prayers were mentioned only in the context of something we did with Jalitha, and we were explicitly told that praying to Asherah for protection doesn't work, and the rituals that were part of worship (leaving to the forest, getting a shark once a year) was hidden from us.
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Jun 4, 2013 19:19
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FoxTerrier posted:
Agreed.
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Jun 4, 2013 19:27
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FoxTerrier posted:My only real point was that the person who raised us for eleven years as our father is our 'real' Dad (what does that silly term even truly mean?), regardless of biology. He basically ignored us for the first four or five years until we were useful to him. Not exactly parenting but more of being his tool.
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Jun 4, 2013 19:30
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