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MrAce321 on 7/5/2022 for The Thief And The Messiah 
I have to say, I'm personally not much of a fan. I mean there are so many cool bible stories, but you went with the crucifixion?



This Chris guy writing about the lamest and least important Bible story of all, smh. Just baffling.

Mr Ace is really not going to like my idea of doing Rashomon  but with the discrepancies in the four Gospels 

I would have picked something from Judges, personally. Samson perhaps.

See, my original idea was taking a Judge, Tola, (whose entire presence in the Bible is just two lines) and making up a cool wild west story in ancient Israel but it just wasn't clicking for me.

Also, @MrAce321 is a fucking idiot who thought I copy pasted the same ending page for each path, when I actually used variables to direct the player to one of two pages instead of copy pasting the same page over and over like a fucking idiot. That 3k word count isn't inflated by repeat pages at all you fucking ignoramus.

I guess people going straight for Samson was pretty obvious. Solomon might have been another more apparent choice. There are already quite a number of interesting stories involving him.

That would double as the getting kicked in the tender bits prompt, concerning Job. People know about the Leviathan and Behemoth, but there are some bizarre and less talked about accounts in that book.

A libreal take on the tower of babble

A libreal take on the tower of babble

A libreal teakno babble tower

He had to study 100 hours for the ACT, maybe at should cut him some slack.



.....nah.

Samson is one I'd actually consider one of the more overdone in general fiction, but it does hit that sweet spot of detail and open endedness while also having action scenes and a really flawed character who can't stop thinking with his dick, so it lends itself well to being elaborated on.

Same with Gideon, who is much less well known but has a number of negative traits that would make him an interesting character (although I think ultimately a pretty unlikeable one) if you're looking at it just for plot potential.


Really really tried to convince Chris to write about Ehud stabbing the fat guy, but he's been interested in the idea of a dialogue based story for awhile and that was a good angle for this one.

Judges definitely had some bangers. Fat Shaming, spike through a man's temple, eating honey out of an animal carcass, etc.

>I do want to say that my main critque wasn't the fact that the story was wrtiten about the crucifixion (got the spelling this time)

Good job!

Okay but for real you might like browsing Kings and Chronicles if some of the more obscure Old Testament stories interest you. There's a lot about Elisha, but a lot of shorter historical accounts of the kings too, and plenty of metal in there.

Everybody knows about Jezebel, but not how based Jehu (the guy who killed her) was. Or look up Athaliah for an even more psycho woman.

I have a couple of times considered combining those two basic plots, it'd make for a very Hollywood story.

Just make sure to do your research and don't just grab a Bible at random. The English Standard Version is pretty good if you want it in modernish language without losing all the poetry and impact. There are many many hilariously bad translations out there, and unfortunately clunky condescending garbage like the NIV has become the default in a lot of places.

I'd recommend an actual, physical book with maps and a good glossary, but https://www.biblegateway.com/ is good for comparing the different versions verse by verse to see what you prefer. You'll need at least some idea of historical context for a lot of the Old Testament though, so I don't necessarily consider cover to cover the best way to start. The New Testament tends to be a lot more familiar and relateable just because so much of our culture comes from it.

If you think you've been overexposed to Jesus stories, you might get more out of parts of the New Testament that have Paul's letters to the early church, they go into a lot more philisophical stuff. Romans, Corinthians, Philippians etc. (Note the spelling; that last one is not an island in Asia.)

KJV is the original English translation, but yeah, that stands for the King James version. That was English as of the time Shakespeare was still alive. For the "most historically accurate" you'd have to learn to read Greek and Hebrew lol.

My favourite part is when Lot's daughters get their father drunk and rape him!

... Doesn't seem to be any kind of moral to that story, it's just sort of in there. :p

That's how it is with a lot of this stuff and a big part of the appeal, these books were intended as historical record and the specific details the original authors found important to note down are sometimes just bizarre. (Sometimes it's God freeing slaves by parting the sea, sometimes it's the dangers of the pull out method...)

There's not a lot of direct moral lessons to lists of descendants, or multiple pages of exact, autistic measurements of a building, or in Solomon's horny love poetry either. Although people do tend to remember details of one of those over the others.

Biblical End Master was an excellent writer.

But as for any sort of reasoning, you could say it was colorful story slander against the Moabites and Ammonites since they were apparently always fighting with the Israelites.

"Well what can you expect of those Moab/Ammon savages, they're all descendants of incest fucking!" - Old Jewish propaganda

It's entirely possible, because unless Malk wants to pop up and go WELL ACKSHUALLY, iirc Genesis was supposed to be a record of oral traditions that Moses collected up from Hebrew elders.

The actual context though was that they were living with their crazy dad in a cave after their city was destroyed, and just going well there's no way to get a husband now so how tf do we get sons, aka the most important thing in our ancient world existence. Lot just had some seriously bad luck with his family in general though.

My brother in Christ, it is still an extremely important story that is the foundation for mine and many others' beliefs. It was not about being original, but about paying tribute to (and trying to personally get myself closer to) Jesus through writing about him and his crucifixion in a format that very few Bible stories have been written in, let alone stories about the crucifixion.

The fact that you're so focused on "muh do something original" shows that you missed the entire point of me picking that specific event to write about, rather than something else.

I dunno, everyone here mostly just does generic fantasy fiction, it feels weird to make such a point of criticizing the topic for being "unoriginal" when it's not represented on the site at all.

Even if there are more under repersented stories that you'd had perfered to see. Such as a libreal take on the tower of babble instead of the crucifiction story.

It's cool. Go have some vinala ice cream.

....I'm still laughing at the unintentional funny of "crucifiction" because I could see that one finding a home on r/atheism or something.

"More like cruciFICTION, am I right??? Heh, take that, Xians!"

Come to think of it, I'm surprised I haven't seen that before, as either a mistake or a pun.

It's too bad you weren't able to go forwards with it. What little we have on the guy has some potential, a 23 year career and not even one event recorded. Did you know his name means, "Crimson Worm" or "Scarlet Stuff," I'm sure you did, but I didn't until a minute ago. His grandpappy was named Dodo, also funny.

Maybe all 23 years were marked by abject failure, who can say?

I personally had no clue what to do with it, which was why I abandoned it for the story I went with. Had a few cool stylistic and formatting ideas as well as the idea of how to start the adventure (as well as a vague goal of "bring order to a fractured Israel in the midst of civil war), but couldn't think of ways to bring all these little idea saplings into one cohesive whole. I may revisit the idea at a later date, after I expand upon The Thief and The Messiah.

It's definitely open ended. I can understand the difficulty.

Years ago I tried to run a D&D campaign in Narnia, and I found Aslan too daunting to work with. For the same reasons I have never considered writing anything that puts words in Jesus' mouth.

It wasn't easy, especially considering I'm not very far along in my walk with him, but I watched the first two seasons of The Chosen for inspiration on how to translate his lessons into more casual conversation and it helped tremendously. Even if you're not a Christian, I can't recommend The Chosen enough as a TV show, extremely well done adaptation of the Gospels.

I will remember your recommendation. Thanks.

I will give this a watch at some point since you've recommended it a couple of times now. But man, any association with the Left Behind authors makes it a hard sell. Those were painfully bad, it's been decades and I still haven't recovered.

Didn't even know those guys were involved but whatever capacity they are involved in must be small because the writing is top notch at bringing in original material to expand upon the characters and stories of the Gospels, easily the best writing I've seen in a modern piece of Christian media. The acting is superb in all aspects, it has genuinely nearly brought me to tears at some points and I'm probably gonna sob like a little bitch when they cover the crucifiction crucifixion.

Everything about the show is done extremely well. If it wasn't for it being part of the Christian media ghetto it'd be the type of show that would easily win Emmys; it excels at both teaching the Gospel and being an entertaining TV show. Once again, highly recommended, two thumbs up, 8/8, all that good stuff.

Oh and also it's completely free to watch online so there's no excuse not to give it a shot.

Okay, looking it up it's actually just the son of one of the authors, I misread it originally.

This is all high praise though, I'll check it out and determine if you're a little bitch or not. And good to know it's free, I was having an awkward moment wondering if I would need to steal it.

This is the most discussion the Parlor room has had in years.

I was thinking the same thing while scrolling down. Maybe a future contest could more directly ask contestants to write old testament fan fiction.

Isaiah 53 would be the ultimate troll move there.

Yeah actually this is a good idea.

Christian stories are perfect for a wholesome site like this one.

That's a really cool idea.  Maybe one of the next contest themes could be "ancient religions" or something, that way we can get more old testament stuff, and maybe some cool stories surrounding greek/egyptian/norse/aztec mythology or something.  There were a couple prompts like that in this contest that didn't get used.

Now that's the kind of inclusion CYS is known for! Also Mesoamerican anything is criminally underused.

To End's point, I don't see how it could go wrong. In the slightest.

Always thought a story where Aztec mythology was real would be cool. As in, their actions are literally the reason the sun rises each day, and the world is plunging into eternal night unless you provide enough human sacrifices to keep it kindled.

.....which might in fact be the lore basis of a popular video game franchise now that I think of it. Including a god trying to become a new sun early on and falling.

I'm not crazy, right? I don't know a lot about Dsrk Souls lore, but you've got a constant parade of human sacrifices necessary to beat back the dark age, four gods who started it all, one who made the problem worse early on by trying to become a new sun and failing, and a previous cycle of the light being lost and rekindled.

There are some correlations, but sun and fire are prominent in many myths. The Aztec and Inca are both under explored in fiction. I agree that taking a serious approach to the Aztec world view, and looking at a world where they were right, could be very interesting.

Aztecs even had their previous world inhabited by giants.

Sent is already arguing with me about basically the same thing you said, but still there was this moment of realization as I was posting that there was no way that storygame could be made without half the readers telling you that you must have been inspired by Dark Souls lore.

Incans also had Giants, purportedly.

Well as you know, Dark Souls was the first game with lore.

If we went with ancient religions in general, this seems relevant:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_in_folklore_and_mythology

I'm thinking... The Adventures of Black Jesus! ^_^

The Boondocks has aged remarkably well.

So, all this has gotten me remembering how fucking insane the bible is. I mean there's the regular Sunday school stories that everybody's heard a million times, but when you actually sit down and read it, there's some crazy fucking shit in there that just comes out of left field and leaves you wondering, "What the actual fuck did I just read?"

And so I decided I'd share some of my favourite WTF moments from my bible reading days.

As mentioned before:

30 Then Lot went up out of Zoar and dwelt in the mountains, and his two daughters were with him; for he was afraid to dwell in Zoar. And he and his two daughters dwelt in a cave. 31 Now the firstborn said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man on the earth to come in to us as is the custom of all the earth. 32 Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve the lineage of our father.” 33 So they made their father drink wine that night. And the firstborn went in and lay with her father, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

34 It happened on the next day that the firstborn said to the younger, “Indeed I lay with my father last night; let us make him drink wine tonight also, and you go in and lie with him, that we may preserve the [b]lineage of our father.” 35 Then they made their father drink wine that night also. And the younger arose and lay with him, and he did not know when she lay down or when she arose.

36 Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father. 37 The firstborn bore a son and called his name Moab; he is the father of the Moabites to this day. 38 And the younger, she also bore a son and called his name Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the people of Ammon to this day.

... And, I guess Lot never asked where these random deformed babies came from? I dunno, the story of Lot just kind of ends there.

Then there's this one:

24 And it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him. 25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses’ feet, and said, “Surely you are a husband of blood to me!” 26 So He let him go. Then she said, “You are a husband of blood!”—because of the circumcision.

... So, basically... God decided to kill Moses. Doesn't explain why. So Moses's wife took a sharp stone and circumsised her son with it. Doesn't explain why. Then she threw the foreskin at Moses's feet. Doesn't explain why... And so God decided to let Moses live... Doesn't explain why... I legit have no idea what just happened.

And then there's this little gem:

23 Then Elisha went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up the road, some youths came from the city and mocked him, and said to him, “Go up, you baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!”

24 So he turned around and looked at them, and pronounced a curse on them in the name of the Lord. And two female bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

25 Then he went from there to Mount Carmel, and from there he returned to Samaria.

... So, basically, God sent two bears to maul 42 children to death because they called a guy "baldy"... Prophets be cray-cray!

Would love it if some of you guys could share your favourite WTF bible moments, as I'm sure I've forgotten a whole bunch of really awesome ones. ^_^

I think that youths in this translation can mean young adults, if that makes it any better for you.

Oh, that's okay then. Teenagers all deserve to die. ^_^

Oh, I forgot this one:

11 “If two men fight together, and the wife of one draws near to rescue her husband from the hand of the one attacking him, and puts out her hand and seizes him by the genitals, 12 then you shall cut off her hand; your eye shall not pity her.

The bible has some weirdly specific laws.

Hmm, I'm guessing that was seen as something of a problem back in the day.

"Keep away from me, or I'll get my wife to grab your balls again!"

Yeah, I love that one because it had to have been a recurring problem for them to make a LAW against it.

Two dudes just beating the shit out of each other the way dudes will do, and then your wife runs up and "rescues" you and now there's a bloody mess and the other dude can no longer have children, that just causes all kinds of problems.

You forgot 2 Samuel 13 where David's son Amnon raped his sister Tamar and David's other son Absalom killed him along with the rest of David's sons excluding Solomon.

Veggie tales must've skipped that part.

If this does end up becoming a competition, I'd personally choose one of the gospels that wasn't chosen to be included in the bible. They have some really batshit stuff in them, like Jesus slaying a dragon, or murdering a child for accidentally bumping into him and then blinding the village elders when they complain about it.

The bear story is a great one proving the need for the right mindset when reading ancient literature. I guarantee that only readers within THIS specific century have ever heard this thousands year old story being passed around and gone "awww, so mean, those poor kids! All they did was be horribly disrespectful to a stranger who was an elder and a holy man! That's not the sort of thing that should invite divine wrath at all!"

A known messenger of God walks by. He is a living symbol of God's authority on earth. A bunch of young people start ridiculing him, thereby knowingly disrespecting their elders, their society, and God Himself, and are subsequently eaten by bears.

Modern People: That's horrible! People should be allowed to disrespect god, or anyone they want.

Also Modern People: Oh my god, your micro aggressions constitute assault.

19 When the Lord thy God hath cut off the nations, whose land the Lord thy God giveth thee, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their cities, and in their houses;

2 Thou shalt separate three cities for thee in the midst of thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it.

3 Thou shalt prepare thee a way, and divide the coasts of thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee to inherit, into three parts, that every slayer may flee thither.

4 And this is the case of the slayer, which shall flee thither, that he may live: Whoso killeth his neighbour ignorantly, whom he hated not in time past;

5 As when a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die; he shall flee unto one of those cities, and live:

6 Lest the avenger of the blood pursue the slayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and slay him; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he hated him not in time past.

7 Wherefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt separate three cities for thee.

8 And if the Lord thy God enlarge thy coast, as he hath sworn unto thy fathers, and give thee all the land which he promised to give unto thy fathers;

9 If thou shalt keep all these commandments to do them, which I command thee this day, to love the Lord thy God, and to walk ever in his ways; then shalt thou add three cities more for thee, beside these three:

10 That innocent blood be not shed in thy land, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for an inheritance, and so blood be upon thee.

11 But if any man hate his neighbour, and lie in wait for him, and rise up against him, and smite him mortally that he die, and fleeth into one of these cities:

12 Then the elders of his city shall send and fetch him thence, and deliver him into the hand of the avenger of blood, that he may die.

13 Thine eye shall not pity him, but thou shalt put away the guilt of innocent blood from Israel, that it may go well with thee.

I like the idea that accidental homicide was such a common occurrence in ancient Israel that there were enough slayers to fill 6 entire cities. I get that there needed to be enough for proximity reasons, but there still had to be enough of these slayers to run functioning cities. Imagine all your neighbors, shopkeepers, etc. are killers; could make for a nice storygame. Also, "avenger of the blood" is such a cool title.

But... How the fuck would the elders know whether the murder was accidental or intentional?

>.<

If this was me, I would have absolutely gone with David and Goliath without a second thought. It's too funny. One of the first Bible story I heard and the first I had to translate it from latin in high school. I was always thinking that the original text has more homo-erotic subtext than the movie 300, Homer's iliad and Top Gun combined. Goliath coming at David with his giant spear, both wearing zero to no clothing in most paintings and statures with spicy descriptions like these. 

Sticks, swords, flesh, coming against each other, my friend and I were dying of laughter at the time. 

42

He looked David over and saw that he was only a boy, ruddy and handsome, and he despised him.

43

He said to David, "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?" And the Philistine cursed David by his gods.

44

"Come here," he said, "and I'll give your flesh to the birds of the air and the beasts of the field!"

45

David said to the Philistine, "You come against me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come against you in the name of the LORD Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.

Well, I was actually disappointed that people speculated more about David and Jonathan's relationship than Goliath, well too bad.

I think that's just you projecting.

Oh yeah, was probably projecting pretty much. I was around fifteen at the time I made this my head-canon, my standards were lower than the pits of shame. 

Anyway, a Bible/mythology based contest would be very fun and would finally fill up the empty Spiritual tag that no one had used in ages (and the overall concensus last time was that people were really adamant about keeping it).

Oddly we already have 48 stories with the Biblical tag, but only 35 with Spiritual.

At least that's what the tag list says, but that's wrong since a quick search shows 3 stories with the Spiritual tag and 7 with Biblical (and one of those overlaps with both)

29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!”

The Exodus
33 The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste. For they said, “We shall all be dead.” 34 So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders. 35 The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. 36 And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.

Incidentally, this answers the question of where a bunch of slaves got all that gold to make the calf later.

Sorry, my sensitivity reader says that should be "enslaved persons".

I'm with Ace on this one. Seriously, how many Moses movies do we need? They should've made a film about that woman who went around grabbing balls instead.

For your impudence may you be cursed by the LORD to have this playing on repeat in your head for the next 2-5 days.

The only cure is that Mulan song

By the power of Ra! ^_^

I have to say, given that it's his story that sparked this comment anyway, I keep reading this title as "Shitposting for Chris."

I do like learning about cubits. ^_^