Divinity's just another word for nothing left to win

[Scott Alexander]

(an interlude directly following the events of Resurrected, Living in a Lighthouse)

An undersea garden where the best of land and ocean had been married with uncommon genius. Dolphins jumped in and out of the hedges, and a robin sitting upon the branch of an apple tree snapped a minnow out of the air and swallowed it with obvious relish. A colony of honeybees made its home in the hollows of a coral reef, and deer peeked out from behind the thick cover of a kelp forest, keeping a wary lookout for sharks.

"Mare," asked Omi Oitherion, who had spent the last hour in silence, watching the brilliantly colored fish float before his eyes, "have you ever wondered if we're doing this all wrong?"

Maria Morimoto, Star of the Sea, long-time immortal and relatively newborn goddess, gave no sign or flinch or word to indicate that she had heard her consort.

"Mare," asked Omi Oitherion, "are you using the perceptual filter that blocks out everything you don't want to hear? I've told you before how much that annoys me."

"That's funny," said Maria. "I must not have heard you."

Omi glared.

"Here," she said, and held out an octahedral turquoise fruit, a peace offering. "I found it in the opium dream of a mind-addled Galisyin woman, and I liked it so much I brought it back. They're really quite good."

Omi munched on the fruit. "It's good," he agreed, and threw the core into the bushes, where it was grabbed and devoured by a marauding octopus.

"Since you brought it up," Maria went on, "yes, it has occurred to me that I am doing this all wrong."

Omi raised an eyebrow.

"Let me retrace the argument you were about to make. First, at your insistence, I arranged the destruction of the old world. When you looked set to screw up the new one, I arranged the destruction of Drachumve. When that looked set to end in disaster, I saved the remnants of the Drachumvelin and turned them into Galinomai, an outrageous society that had no business ever existing. Now that Galinomai is collapsing under its own flaws, instead of allowing something to spring up organically, I am providing Kayi Raknumion with all possible aid short of his own personal host of angelic warriors to try to rebuild it."

Omi nodded.

"Further, you know that Kayi and his merry crew are about to make landfall in the fucking Omega Complex, and meet the fucking bitch who lives there these days, and that I will have to save him from her, most likely in a fit of spectacular divine intervention. And then I will have to use an inordinate amount of even my own considerable genius just to clean up after the two of them. And that this can be traced directly to my own decision to kick-start the Omegan semiconductor industry ninety years ago because I thought their interest in science was, and here you will bend your fingers into little sarcastic quote marks, 'cute'".

Omi did not deny it.

"And you will say that Pelagia is dying, and that a very large number of its current problems can be traced directly to my tendency to meddle in its affairs to try to make them more humane or more interesting."

Again, Omi did not deny it.

"And by now you have already realized that there are two responses. The first is that I can withdraw from Pelagia, doing nothing whatsoever, letting civilizations fall if they become unstable, letting technology stagnate if no one figures out how to improve it, and what results might not be very pretty, but it will at least be tough and hardy, because it built itself from the ground up and didn't ask favors of anybody."

"Or, you will say, I could take the other route. I could meddle, and then meddle more to correct the consequences of my meddling, and then meddle even further to correct the consequences of that. If Galinomai collapses, send Kayi off to find Kalas Elityin and save them. If Kalas Elityin causes some kind of national crisis, find someone else, give him a heroic quest, and have him save them from that. If the economy collapses, create a vein of gold right underneath their mines; if civil war threatens, have the rival leaders die of heart attacks. I'm a goddess. It's not like I'm going to run out of resources."

"And yet, you will tell me, both routes are unaesthetic. The first is a garden run wild, choked with weeds and lacking any true art or beauty. The second is the perfectly geometric nobleman's yard, where everything is trimmed and tame and subjected to my will, and there is no room for wilderness or romance. And since you're a Hyperborean born and bred, you'll tell me that one is sterile Truth and the other chaotic Beauty, and that the only real value comes from the artful combination of both. And, fuck you, you'll be right."

Omi nodded, then spoke. "Tell me, Mare, how does one judge a goddess?"

"Very carefully," responded Maria, "and hopefully where she can't hear you."

Omi almost laughed. "It seems to me, that a sign of a god's, a god's skill at godding, if that's what you want to call it, is that god's ability to produce the most striking changes with the smallest push. Materializing whole ships and lighthouses whenever you need them strikes me as crude. The gods in our myths were not like that. When they acted, it was always with the most profound results, but it was always so subtle that no one could see them act at all. And so they took mortal patterns, and pruned a piece here, and a piece there, and gardened them into their chosen shape, all without seizing the patterns for their own."

"Yes," said Maria, and her countenance briefly darkened. "Yes, I have thought on these things before, in my three thousand years."

Omi looked puzzled.

"You are wondering why I have turned so somber all of a sudden," said Maria. "It will hit you in four seconds."

One, two, three, four. "Oh," said Omi. Then, "Oh."

"Indeed," said Maria.

"You're wondering how many layers of gods exist above us, so skilled and so subtle that they touch only an atom here or there, yet control our every action."

"Indeed," said Maria. "And with all my powers, I have found no sign of them, but of course that means nothing."

"Of course," said Omi. "They would not be young like us, and prone to the sudden materialization of lighthouses."

"We, too, shall grow," said Maria Morimoto. "The gardeners garden the garden, and the garden shall garden the gardeners, and all things become more than they were." She took a bite of another turquoise fruit, briefly brushing away a shrimp that had become tangled in her hair. "In the meantime, let's see what Kayi has gotten up to. I would not want to miss his first meeting with our mutual friend." She said it through gritted teeth.

"The garden shall garden the gardeners," said Omi. "Perhaps so. But poor Galinomai. I hope it does not require too much intervention to save them."

"A light touch, from now on," said Maria, and she touched Omi's neck lightly, sending tingles of electricity down his spine. "A light touch."

[Harvey]

It's definitely well written and somewhat chilling, but if I was still an active participant I'd be raving right now about how insane it was to have essentially assumed IC over the entire world and the history of all its people. Ya know, like, still, even after I told you to knock it off. But since there's next to no active storylines running here, hey, more power to ya if it makes you happy.

[Rei Milharna]

Now, for some reason, I am contemplating introducing Maria to the Safirian queen-goddess Amane

[Scott Alexander]

@Harv: Until this post I didn't think I was doing anything outside the sorts of things both Soloralists and Treesians were famous for. Diga probably didn't think he was the Incarnation of Fate or that the foundation of Tymaria was part of some weird Soloralist legend, but people wrote stories saying he was, and for his part, he ignored them. Likewise, most of the people in the War of the Orchids weren't fighting as part of some cosmic struggle between two child-gods, but the Treesian Church said they were, and so be it.

This time I did cross a line by declaring what's happened to Omega, and I intend to cross that line much further as this story continues, but I guess it is as you say: Nicholas is gone and I don't expect him to come back, so it's mine now :evil

@CJ: The queen-goddess would probably find herself lying naked in a bathtub somewhere, with all of her divine powers and treasures mysteriously missing and no idea what had happened.

[Harvey]

Soloralism and TUC weren't collaborative fiction but religions tied to or focused around one particular nation. And things were grossly embellished in Solorlaism for the purpose of creating a good RPG game plot. I was kind of under the impression that anything world-spanning for Archipelago would have to be at least mildly agreed upon, else it applied to only one statelet. The fact that this is not the case is probably the biggest reason I've stopped participating, though the whole "come back whenever you want, but don't expect anyone else to be there when you do" thing is easily the big other half too.

[Scott Alexander]

What have I done that applies to more than one statelet, other than foreshadow that I'm going to write about Omega Complex? Maria, as a goddess, is a religious figure (although obviously my own personal preferences make her an odd sort of goddess) and so gets the same exemption as Mithaniel or Intyale; her statements about the destruction of the world carry no more significance than your own legends that Micras underwent an apocalypse called the Eve of Destruction. And even Maria wasn't active until loooong after you left. And, of course, if you ever specifically told me what to stop doing, I would take it back and stop doing it.

You left because getting fed up with things and leaving them is a pattern of yours, as I've accused you of many times before. I've accepted that, and the only reason I'm even discussing this is my long-acknowledged weakness not to be able to stop debating when someone says something I think is untrue.