CO-VIDs: adventure games about jesus 

Hey man, I watched a very old video called we don't talk about kenny (on the walking dead) I loved it, and wondered what the intro music was called.

Will you have any political videos for the upcoming election?

@@bascal133 all my videos are political

Innuendo Studios boi stop playing you know what I mean 😭🤣🙌🏾. “Will you make videos, in the style of the alt right playbook, about the new tactics being used by the right in the run up to the presidential election” ?

@@InnuendoStudios Did you change the title of this video? I think I watched it before when it referenced the names of the two games, but I could be confused (though I have been certain that I've seen some other creators occasionally change video titles days or even weeks after release before). Anyway, I really appreciate your work, and think that you are making a massive impact at a cultural level (especially with projects like the Alt-Right Playbook...speaking of which, any plans to write Co-Vids that continue the playbook, or are you done with it for now?). Keep up the great work!

Well put.

Excellent observation!

Well said, my man. I am quoting that.

Both are necessary for true Christian belief though - as Jesus and his apostles said, you can't have one without the other

@@matthewbrandin6947 I’ve never liked that philosophy due to it implying that in order to love, one must believe, and as an extension of that, if you’re not Christian, you don’t know how to love. I don’t like this mindset largely because it’s an entirely false mindset.

"I think I will solve problems on purpose."

This comment made me realize why I don't want to play the Goose game!

Its a horrible day in this city And you are a lovable clown

Then, if Dropsy is a Jesus allegory, does that make the Goose the devil? It checks out.

"peace was always an option"

PILOT A MECH FOR JESUS- The End Of Evangelion (1997)

Y'all would love the Captain Bible video game then 😝 Look it up 😃

I want "PILOT A MECH FOR JESUS" on a shirt!

SharPhoe it’s gonna be the one thing i remember from this video

@@ragalyiakos on the front Pilot a Mecha for Jesus. On the back, to attack and dethrone God!

Well, Superman has since died and returned to life in the comics, but yeah that is a later addition to the lore

But the only thing Superman ever had in common with Moses in the first place is his origin, nothing about his adulthood. Superman was born into nobility but raised by commoners, the direct opposite of Moses, and there is never a point where Superman sides with his birth culture over his adopted one like Moses did.

Thank you for the info. I knew something felt off cause he's made by Jewish immigrants, why would he be at all intentionally a Jesus figure?? That makes more sense

The Superman = Moses shit is also dumb, just fyi. Can't really phrase that in a kind way so I won't. Superman is "John Carter of Mars, but in reverse, as someone we wish would come and take care of our corrupt bosses for us." That was further refined into "Superman is Upper Class Power informed by Working Class Ideals" which is why all of his most iconic enemies are bullies, tyrants, and corrupt nobles of various stripes who behave unethically-- particularly towards those beneath their capability. Any religious allusions to Superman are stapled on and don't hold water. They never have. They never, ever have.

Thank you for pointing this out, the Jesus-ification of Superman makes me ITCH as a Jew

Yeah... this is definitely not a good time for this to be happening.

Well it isn't a physical plague so it makes sense in context.

GIFT1FROM1THE1GODZ Yeah please argue for a game where the premise is your mental illness, depression in this case, will go away/be cured when you become religious and start spreading that religion. This is not just a cute dress for evangelicals and the destruction they cause in people’s life with their harassment but also an insult to people who have mental illness.

@@elif6908 Don't forget that this narrative can also imply that non-belief itself is the plague. You are sick because you don't believe, and you can transmit your sickness by making sure others don't believe either. Both of these are very problematic statements when applied to subjective realities like religion.

@@DarkExcalibur42 And the idea that the government is "keeping the cure" from the people is very similar to all those pics Boomers share on Facebook about how "God isn't allowed in school" and shit.

It's really pretty annoying in context though, because the "belief system" he's referring to, atheism, isn't a belief system at all but rather the absence of a belief. The false claim that atheism has led people to commit atrocities is a frequent talking point of religious apologists.

@@kennethconnally4356 I've been an atheist my entire adult life. I'm aware of the distinction, but I recognize that the shorthand is often convenient, and am generally forgiving of it.

@@kennethconnally4356 I don't think that's quite what he was saying. Even though "Atheism" isn't a belief system, atheists still have belief systems, just ones that don't involve god. And whatever belief system someone is using, whether they're religious, atheist, agnostic, spiritualist, etc., it can still be used to justify crappy behavior. Just take, say, Juche or Stalinism as examples. They're atheist, areligious, and have been used to justify atrocities.

@@Twrgadarn If that's the point, I still think it's a bad one. If someone criticizes Stalinism for leading to the gulags, is it really any kind of defense for the Stalinist to say "well, but any ideology can be used to justify bad behavior"?

@@kennethconnally4356 I still think that's valid. Any ideology/belief system can be used to justify crappy behavior. But some are more prone to do so than others.

I get this very much. and animals are so much easier to get along with too.

@@TheSkullPanda Throwback to when I made friends with the neighbor's dog. Not the neighbor, just his dog.

@@sasak369 I once said "hi" to a dog and was startled because the human walking the dog told me "hi" back(to be clear I just wasn't expecting a response from the person)

Of course it's okay. And you don't need my or anyone else's approval to be as you are. And if it's wrong to be this way, then let's be wrong together.

jon dw i do that all the time man! whenever i see a cute dog i can’t help myself, i always wave or say hi to them lmao

Speaking as someone who’s in the same boat vis a vis “grew up in a Christian environment, no longer religious at all but fascinated by religion and sees the value in it for believers”? A lot more Christian media could use “piloting a mecha for Jesus” as a plot point.

This is basically the synopsis of a good dozens of late 90's/early 2000's mech shows.

There's no time to explain! Get in the Jesus Mech!

ShootingStarNeo Christians could use some more good media. They’ve barely made anything good since Veggietales, and even that went down

That line could’ve sold me the game were it not for the rest of it.

Well, I finished the video and I gotta say, your English teacher would be proud, but this is something. As a Christian the final like about rationalizing crappy behavior under any belief was the quote of the century, and the takes on the games make a lot of sense. You did well, but Jesus isn't indistinguishable from God the father after he ascends, he's still Jesus (and if memory serves, he was kind of always there, it's always been a weird thing but whatever.) Other than that, decent take. I wish we had actual Christians making videos like this, though. We need left-leaning Christians on RU-vid/Breadtube

lool thats nothin this is really good content!

I'll take that 10 times over saying the wrong word in a script and instead of rerecording you just put the right word on screen. At least I can understand it was a missed error instead of being too lazy to do your script again and leave blind people with inaccurate information.

No worries, we'll call it a non-standard romanization.

His name can't even be properly spelled using the Latin alphabet. Anyone with a problem can eat 驴 .

Billy Weed Amen to this.

This attitude is what made me realise religion does not matter. Good people will not let their religion get in the way of being good, and bad people will justify their bad deeds with whatever religion they have.

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.” - Google attributed it to Marcus Aurelius

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead." - James 2, 14-17

I mean, more power to you, but that just seems like humanism with extra steps

Superman was created by Jewish writers. I'm a Christian and I see the parallels that Christians see, but they are generally contained in false understandings of what the Gospel portray. Even in Mark (the kung-fu heavy metal gospel) Jesus has not come to destroy evil with miracles but to die on a cross. That is the explicit plot of Jesus' life; it is not the character of Superman. (Until the Death of Superman, which is a whole other conversation.) I much prefer the Moses allegory, as it (correctly) points out Superman as a person given special privileges and abilities to enact a social change, which is much closer to the story of Moses (whose story is intertwined with the liberation of people and the reform of a society) than with Jesus (whose story is intertwined with a divine activity that will permanently alter reality whether people like it or not).

@@GestasLeftcross Indeed. As I said, I don't think he's a clear cut allegory to either of them. He's his own thing, with elements of both, but generally separate.

As an aside, I’ve kinda wanted for a while now for someone to write an even more Jewish version of the Superman story, in which he is raised by observant Jews, presents himself as Jewish in his Superman persona, and has to deal with other Jews wanting to declare him Moshiach.

I’m really glad someone else pointed this out! My biggest issue with Snyder’s Superman treatment was the erasure of Jewish themes in favor of more mainstream Christian-centric storytelling. Also minor correction-Michael or מיכאל is more accurately rendered “who is like unto God” with the rhetorical answer being no-one as you said. Also nice Esther shout out!

Using this opportunity to suggest _The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay_ to anyone who hasn't read it...written by someone very much aware of the environment that led to Superman and superhero comics in general. Basically, superheroes make sense as a whole category of characters created by a bunch of mostly Jewish writers and artists, mostly from New York, living in a society where Christian imagery is *everywhere*.

It's an ancient greek word with modern meaning derived from its usage in the Bible. Basically, it's strength, power, miracles, potentiality, ability to do a thing through the power of God.

It's only subtle to you because you weren't forced through years of sunday school. Or more accurately, Innuendo Studios, myself, and people like us find it unsubtle because we grew up in religious families where that sort of allusion was commonplace enough that we're familiar with it. A lot of people in this country, even those who aren't religious but who grew up in religious families, tend to assume everyone has the same baseline of knowledge about the religion they were raised in. In a similar vein, my handle is an unsubtle shot at dogmatic thinking, and also at the hardline Richard-Dawkins type atheists. Tabris is just the Angel of Free Thought, after all, though he's tagged by the Catholic Church as one of the Fallen. To those who didn't grow up in the Catholic Church and have a very reactionary Monsignior, it's an Eva reference and I'm just a weeb. (I am both a weeb and an Eva fan, but the handle is the result of being a mildly bitter ex-Catholic with a sense of irony, and I have been using it since well before I saw Evangelion).

@@BaelPenrose Can you provide me some sources on Tabris from a theological point of view? I tried googling it, but all that came up are eva references.

@@VellusTerennia He's mentioned in Revelations, but it's a fairly obscure mention. I suspect he got well known enough to have his name used in Eva because of Paradise Lost - which a whole bunch of Cardinals and Catholic scholars had to give Milton permission to write and got to edit. He's portrayed there as one of Lucifer's hands that will guide people away from the word of God and towards godless or secular thinking. His quote from Paradise Lost is something to the effect of "My Prince of Darkness need not waste his art / For godless and and Fallen are mere hairsbreadth apart." Unsurprisingly he didn't get a lot of attention in Catholic teaching until Renaissance and Reformation started cropping up and challenging them, which is probably why he cropped up in Paradise Lost. Mentions of him in catholic teaching declined as a result of political calculus and the Catholics realizing that one of their draws against Protestantism was that they were willing to engage with *some* earthly arts and sciences, so reminding us that an angel of secular thought was one of the Fallen was going to weaken their case against Luther and Calvin somewhat. I'm suprised he doesn't crop up in American evangelism more, since that narrative would be so fitting for them, but then they're mostly protestants and Protestantism, as I understand it, cares a lot less about biblical angels than Catholocism as a rule. (Or aesthetic, presentation, style, reality, the fucking concept of the Grace of Christ, charity and mercy as virtues, really anything that made christianity even remotely cool. I might be a bitter ex-Catholic but I will still defend it as the less awful sect of Christianity. Onto a topic other than the vandalizing prick and the sexually repressed heretic known as Luther and Calvin, respectively. ;P) There's also some degree of argument amongst catholic scholars, or was, about his role in revelations since the mention of him isn't terribly clear about what side he's on at Armageddon. Some thought he was a bit about how even the unchanging can be changed by Christ into something good but it's really not clear. But that's about as much as I remember. He is also a cute twink in Eva because Anno heard "Angel of Free Thought and Alternatives" and thought "oh you mean alternatives for those who aren't into waifu arguments" apparently.

Aye. They're all like 'Obviously' and I'm like, 'Wha?'

Daughter of the Lilies, right? Surprised to see a fellow fan here!

@@Rajun008 Yep! I'm liking the comic so far - interested to see where they take it.

What does seem to me as a good way of representing the Devil. Every impulse of selfishness in your mind is the devil speaking

@@Packbat given what we've seen her make so far between "the nightmare comic" and the Spiderman comic she made, as well as just the rest of DotL, I think it will be taken somewhere really amazing.

Satan is more about questioning blind faith. Why not eat that apple if you're hungry. Why did job continue to blindly follow god after god allowed such atrocities. The great flood, plagues, crusades. Satan is about humanism

Such a shame he's the most terrifying being I've ever seen

​@@obliviousotterI Reminds me of me with E.T. Most people find him cute or kinda goofy but ever since I saw it as a kid I have been terrified of him and it sucks because my mom is always like "but he's so nice and has such a positive message" but I literally can barely look at him without feeling uncomfortable (it's gotten better as I have gotten older though). Incidentally, I think Dropsy is kinda cute so I get what it is like to be on the other side of things lol.

It's not even proselytizing, because there's no ethos to proselytize! It's literally just "here, drink from this thing, I can't force you to take it but I don't have to tell you what it is."

@@InnuendoStudios Eh, there's still "drink the bottle Jesus from the Christian God altruist ghost or you'll suffer depressio- I mean the Vague trust me man I'm saving you" going on. But fair point.

@@disposable157 No prob! I would like to see if there are any Jewish-influenced games. Not games specifically about Judaism, but that have stories that could only have been told they way they were by Jewish people. I mean, we already have a lot of Jesus figures, why not lean into that "Yisra'el means 'he who wrestles with G-d'" and have some kickass JRPG-style fights? 😄 (Fun fact! There's not a lot of proselytizing with Judaism. Even the most chill reform movements require a big period of studying and a test if you want to convert, and the studying can be for 14 weeks or longer! Orthodox places even reject people three times to test them before they allow even that!)

mayatunes I know this is an extreme exception, but I once met a Chabadnik that tried to convince me to convert because he found out that I was dating my now-wife. While she’s practicing Judaism again, at the time she was a lapsed convert and we were both practicing polytheists.

@@NarfiRef True, true. There are converters and Messianic Jews too. There tends to be a divide between them and the more Orthodox/Reform movements, but we disagree about a lot of stuff, haha. Sorry if they bugged you!

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who's sick and tired of surface level criticism of religion. We must move beyond it and build socialism as people from diverse faiths.

"Lefty trans christian" WE FOUND THEM, WE FOUND WALDO! I'm kidding. My aunt is Hari Krishna (the sect of Hindu that spread into the middle east and heavily influenced the forms of messianic Judaism that later Voltron'd into Christianity. Seriously, lolk up Gopal, literally Jesus like 10 thousand years before Jesus) and the temple in her home village has the following quote engraved over it's entrance: "It doesn't matter what God you call, so long as you call God" Basically its what you said. God's will is executed in acts, not words. I was raised by an atheist (ex Baptist, I think) father and a non-practicing Irish catholic mother who converted to Hari krishna around when I was 8. Im going to say to you what my father told my aunt: "I'd probably be going to church still if half the folks there were like you" I'm more partial to mainstream, nondenominational Islam than any of the other religions but I still have that attitude. If the church and it's adherents acted like you even half the time, I would have never questioned my religion.

@@wraithwrecker_ look up "Horizon Initiative". I know its fictional and exists in a universe where God(s) are confirmed to exist, but they literally do what you're describing. Their goal is to unite humanity via emphasis on the details that every religion have in common, and use that faith (faith is a tangible force that can be measured, stored, directed, and even weaponized in that universe) to fight the "things that go bump in the night".

I was brought up in the theologically liberal/liturgically conservative part of the Christian spectrum (no problem with lesbian clergy, but none of that rock band light show nonsense for us), and I feel the same way. By the way, on the topic of humanism and how it's been hijacked, I recommend this piece by R. Joseph Hoffman. rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/movement-humanism/

Or just be a Deist. There's no church or religious text to declare what you can and can't be.

Same, and I've been thinking about converting to catholicism.

YES i keep getting the trump survey ads and i’m so tired of it

SAME HERE it's insane.

@Joe Average I made a burner email account vladimir.i.lenin to troll the survey, which didn't do much other than make me giggle like a 10 year old.

Warmachine a true comrade

Joe Average exactly, it’s the most expensive way of fishing for compliments i’ve ever seen

Excellent comment.

Thank you for putting into words what I couldn't quite express. The us/them narrative, as if we are called to fight the world rather than love it. After all, our battle is not against flesh and blood. As soon as he said that Alum became immune to The Vague after receiving the rushlight, I decided this game wasn't for me. At least the way Ian described it, The Vague very much seemed like an extreme form of depression, which is something I, a Christian, deal with.

I never knew people thought about that parable that way, in the church i grew up in people only ever talked about the last few verses of that about how the wheat and weeds were separated and burned at the harvest, really played that up to scare us kids. I wish more churches talked about stuff like this. I'm just an ex christian but to me it seems like whether or not the earth was created in seven days or whatever is not even close to the most important part of that book, but that's all they wanted to talk about.

@@midnite1112 yeah that interpretation dates to Augustine at the latest (4th century). What you're reporting is the product of an abandonment by many Christians of what Christianity has always taught - ironic, considering the whole point of the Reformation in the Western/Roman tradition was to correct this. I'm sorry you had that experience, but I'm sadly not surprised. I, too, wish more Christians talked about stuff like this.

@@GestasLeftcross I wish more christian followed Christ.

I go back and forth on this. As a white person, it's not my place to critique Black culture; as a man, it's not my to critique femininity. That's in part because of privilege, so it's complicated with Christianity because Christians have way, way more numbers and institutional power than atheists, but that's not true of all religions. I don't think I get to critique Judaism, for instance. I can still *talk* about these things, and discuss complications, but I think it's valid to own the fact that I do not have the same lived experience and that's going to color my perspective.

@@InnuendoStudios Yeah, fair enough, I see your point. I'd still say that there are two key differences: 1. Feminity or black culture is still far, far more fluid of an understanding than the concrete notions of Christianity. The first is basically someone's lived experience, while the second one is a text and the lived experiences of those who follow that text are still irrelevant to the text itself. Needless to say, Christianity has a very complex history, but in the end, if one wants to know what it is about, one only needs to look into the bible. Whereas one's experiences of living as a black person or as a woman are completely unavailable to me. I can listen to them and empathize with them but I will never actually know what it is like to live that life. Therefore it is also true that I'll never be able to know what a life of a devout Christian is, but (and I'm going a bit Death of the Author here) their life experiences are still largely irrelevant to the text of, say, the gospels, as I said above. 2. Secondly, I could be outside of a certain narrative and still say: hey this story resembles in its pattern this other story. Was it meant to? I don't know, but it does resemble it. I found Toy Story 4 to be pretty Sartrian, for example. :D P.S. By the way, love your channel and your videos, keep up the good work!

​@@InnuendoStudios I've never bought the "outside perspectives don't count" for any of these cases. In the past I've been wrong (and proven wrong) because I lacked context, the absence of which could be traced back to me being an outsider, but my not being a woman or my being cisgender weren't what made my opinions wrong. And when I accounted for the context I was given I wasn't called out for being an outsider anymore. I've been wrong about the bible before, and called out by people who have studied it. But I've also called out practicing Catholics who made the same, and worse, mistakes that I did. And they could (and sometimes did) tell me my opinions don't count because I'm an outsider. Didn't matter I was quoting an educated insider on the exact piece of scripture they'd corrected me on. "You're an outsider" was just a means to not have a discussion they didn't want to have.

@@InnuendoStudios I just watched all your co-vids back-to-back, and I'd suggest you statement about the privileged making themselves known is the answer to this dilemma. Christianity makes itself unavoidable in our culture. Other religions do not.

There are two types of atheists, the ex-theists and never-theists. I think both should get to criticize Christianity, especially as it is an extension of western hedgemonic soft power, but ex-Christians probably have as much right to criticize Christianity as Christians do. Ex employees often have as much insight if not more than current employees about a company's failings. Christianity also isn't like blackness or gender identity in that beliefs are malleable and can change. I can't become more or less black, I am as black as I will be until the day I die. I can change how Christian I am. I can convert right now, if so convinced. Well, convert back. I got out relatively early and have been secular for near a decade now, more of my life that I can remember is secular rather than not. But there's a part of me that deeply resents the notion that a critique I make would be invalid just because I no longer subscribe to the faith. I'm sure there are things I can't speak to, like the culture of church in 2020 and later as opposed to 2012, the last time I'd attended. But you know... There's still that line in Romans calling me an abomination because as an adult I've slept with other men. Hard not to feel a little burned.

That's the way it should be

I'm curious. What, if any, perspectives in an education setting are not valued? Are there any groups of people who are de facto disregarded due to their association/participation in said group? I don't intend to insinuate anything by asking, I'm genuinely curious as to what your experience is because as someone who has personally been separated from religious life since before I went through puberty... It's a really difficult perspective for me to catch in my life. I don't think I have a single friend who is an atheist as I am. So I would appreciate some additional insight from someone who isn't personally attached.

Yeah, that slunds super Catholic.

I grew up Catholic, became an atheist, became an *anti-theist* , went back to just regular old atheism, and now after a rough encounter with 450 mics of acid and 4 months of quarantine, I'm thinking of joining one of those churches that focuses more on people and community rather than recitation of prayer(eugh!). I went to a Unitarian service once when my mother was looking for a new religion to belong to and I really liked it. People shared good stories about their lives and things they'd heard happening in the world. Alternatively, there are the Quakers. It sounds super silly that one could become a Quaker in the modern day but Quakers are actually really awesome. They're also really into community and stuff. There's always Buddhism. My research has led me to believe they focus more on meditation but meditation is supposed to be really good anyway.

@@downsjmmyjones101 But literally none of it is true, though. I don't get why you would want to go to a worship service over just, say, reading about the various rules/regulations/philosophies about the religion/theology in question?

@@macgeek2004 Because I'm looking for a community that wants to help people and Unitarians and Quakers don't really mess around with god much. They're more into recognizing each other as worthy of worship as we are all the most divine beings we will encounter. I'm looking to belong to group. A group that can provide connection. There isn't much connection that can be had in solitary pursuit of knowledge. They don't require that you believe in anything other than the value of other people.

@@downsjmmyjones101 “I’m looking to belong to a group” This is just sad. Have fun in the death cult. Lol!

@@Quaquadaqu What death cult? What's wrong with wanting to be a part of a group?

I can imagine playing through Dropsy and never thinking about how awesome Dropsy is for being a loving and kind person. I'd probably just laugh every time he did something weird. Fuck, I kinda wanna play Dropsy.

Yeah, not gonna lie the whole time Dropsy was being shown I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Did not expect wholesome clown.

I have to disagree because the God of the bible is both these things at once. Love and judgement do not exclude each other. The point of the laws in the bible are to make us aware of our sin, to show that we cannot be perfect and to show our need for God. But God loves us, so he sent Jesus to take all the punishment for sin we deserve so that we can have a relationship with him. Romans chapter 3 verse 23-24 says it really well, "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus." By putting our faith in him we are freed from our sin, which allows us to learn how to love whole-heartedly as Jesus loves us. But judgement is not a bad thing. God will also right all injustice and everyone will get what they deserve. All the terrible things that people have done on this earth, the murders, cruelty, genocide, will be punished, even if people get away with it now, which is a wonderful comfort. Sorry if I rambled a bit, but I think that this is important for you to understand. I really recommend reading the whole book of Romans since it really captures the biblical message and explains it better than I can, but I am happy to keep chatting if you'd like :D

Well I'm certainly hearing it now, and will be for days lol

I havent watched that myself but wasnt that about piloting a mech to fight god, thats at least what ive gathered about it from hearing about it

@@dragamation3266 SEELE runs NERV and SEELE is the religious organization thay follows the Dead Sea Scrolls and is trying to accomplish instrumentality. So by working fir SEELE you couod say they were working for god.

@@downsjmmyjones101 ooohhh ok. I just remember hearing that the monsters they fight are basically biblical angels so thats how i got the idea of "fighting god with mechs"

Keep me updated.

liam dahlgren If he is American, then he is a unexplainable rarity, cool.

@@alexcereuceta5907 I'm an american Christian Communist! *crickets ring out * I'm also kinda alone in that lmao someone help me XD

@Michael Freed yeah, you're completely right. Using ideology as justification for action has lead to some of the most horrible acts in human history. There's a part of me that thinks it's kinda pointless and naive to try to make games that can help fix real world problems and that instead, I should try being more of an activist. Problem is, I would be a horrible activist. I think the best thing a game can do is force you to question real world things. Like you say, it's easy to get players to do good stuff in game by systemically making it the ideal way to play but at the end, players can walk away from that with nothing. But if you can get them to question thing (which I have experienced in games) you hopefully plant the seed for change.

@Michael Freed You make some really good points. To be honest, until just recently, I thought that "sure the government messed up occasionally but overall, what they do is in our best interest." but oh man, this has been quite the rude awakening for me. (I used to be rather sheltered.) In addition to the validation thing, I think it is also just a lot of laziness. It is so much easier to just go with the flow because "they may be coming for but they're not coming for me." It's just so easy to turn a blind eye or justify things rather than confronting them head on. I agree that there are easy ways to enact societal change, ways that most people would espouse but the main problem is that you need a large enough group to stand up and actually do something and in a large country, getting a group together that is large enough to start to be heard is gonna really hard and, as you said, it is hard to get even one. Police brutality is a prime example of this. It isn't a new thing but it took several people being murdered in the streets for people to finally pay attention. Anyone in their right mind would agree that racism and police brutality are bad things and that someone should do something about it. Somehow though, that "someone" has a tendency to not include the person speaking. (I used to be there unfortunately. I've recently started looking into more active things I can do though). There is the fear of getting hurt, there is the fear of getting judged, and there is the "but I could be doing something else" and then that something else involves watching TV/YT and getting angry at the world for being the way it is which too often leads to coach philosophers rather than actual action. (again, I used to be there but I'm working on fixing that) (sorry for the largely unorganized rant there. I have become very upset at the general state of the world of late. Also, I looked at the allaregreen thing you linked to and that is terrifying that that could be considered illegal)

(Not that I’m suggesting that being unaware of his Jewish roots is a sin or anything - none of us can know all the things!)

Another point is that while Supes was written by two Jews and originally shares a lot more with Moses than Jesus, he has changed a lot since his initial portrayal and has been written a lot by Christians who play into the Jesus allegory that any prophet-based character can have, especially Moses, who, if it weren't for proselytizing early Roman Catholics, would be a lot more like jewish Jesus anyways. Supes might not have started out with much Jesus in him, but that aspect has been played up by the numerous Christian wroters he has had.

The original Superman had more in common with Moses. Most modern adaptations depict him as a pure being from the heavens, both human* and something else, here to save the world from itself. Also, you know, all the unsubtle Jesus imagery. Superman is many things, and a Jesus analogue is undeniably one of them. *Like, biologically he's Kryptonian, but spiritually he's just a nice dork from Kansas. I've seen people argue he's more human than Batman.

heck this

But this is a video about Jesus, theres no room for those unholy words

"Not pretending to be affected and helping without expectation to benefit" does seem fitting for the clowno.

Yeah I can get behind this.

If not for the threat of a copyright strike I probably would've used Prepare Ye The Way Of The Lord as the outro music.

@@InnuendoStudios what is the outro piece? It's very beautiful and I'd love to hear the whole thing

it's the Gesualdo Six rendition of Veni Veni Emmanuel

lmao imagine believing there are only two genders

Even though I watch mostly leftist/centrist Political youtube, I always get ads for PragerU, Trump2020, and the Daily Wire. It’s really annoying.

heck off

Maybe New Testament kind of confusing, if we believe the father, the son and the holy spirit are the same God, or aspects of God, or that God impregnated a woman with himself like a parasite, if you can forgive my cynicism.

So, kind and only really doing wrong via error and ignorance?

@Paul Nicodemus I know.

Wait really? Dropsy, something so pure and kind, was inspired by the SomethingAwful forums?

@@Lou-Mae yeah, in 2007/8 I ran a Choose Your Own Adventure thread featuring Dropsy. SA was never a super wholesome place but it has lots of sub-communities who aren't involved in the crude/jerk stuff. that said, the original Dropsy was a bit more cynical because that was 12 years ago and I was pretty young. :)

Yeah, I didn't get into it here, but I talked about it some when I first mentioned Dropsy in my adventure game hype list in 2015 and then in my Tumblr write up of the game itself. From interviews with Tholen, he designed Dropsy to be weird and creepy in a way you could find cute once you got to know him and has always been surprised that people read him as neurodivergent. I think that was pretty naive of him, but, with the reveal that Dropsy's an alien, it becomes pretty clear that he doesn't represent disability, and there are a number of characters in the game with actual disabilities who are treated with love and respect. Still, since the alien reveal is at the end, many people are going to read Dropsy as a symbol of disability for most of the game, and that's not so great. It really reads like that stereotypical, Forrest Gump-y, "adult disability as metaphor for childlike innocence" role that marginalized communities get to fill in movies by neurotypicals. Anyway, agreed, it's questionable, but it feels less so when you play the game itself and figure out what it's doing. Not *fixed* exactly, but mitigated.

@@InnuendoStudios Oh. Wow, I somehow managed for forget it was you to first introduced me to dropsy. Fancy that. I can see why he might have thought that this was an "alien" but neurotypical media does have the problem of conflating "not the norm" with "alien" or "robotic" that can sometimes result in some, uh... accidentally on the nose similarities to non-neurotypical behaviors. I know Overly Sarcastic touched on this in Red's video on tropes surrounding Robots, but if they genuinely were unaware, if naively, I can understand why they thought it was appropriate to leave it up to the end that they are an alien and not an allegory for non-neurotypical behavior. I'm glad to see you are still showing love to adventure games. I'd planned to message you or email you or whatever-else you a message for a while about a video by A Bowl of Lentils about a missing developmental link in adventure games that fairly cleanly demonstrates what the west calls visual novels are fairly demonstrably adventure games of a Japanese developmental path of games that never left Japan. They've always been viewed as adventure games in Japan and the term simply doesn't isn't used in Japan like it is in the west (just look at the famitsu top adventure games of all times list). I'd wanted to do a proper write up about this and the fact that I think this calls for a new term like "JADV" (a play on JRPG) should exist as a parent genre to visual novels, but I suppose this comment will do for the moment. I just figured you'd find this interesting since it deals with an entire oft-forgotten 15 years of overseas development of the genre from the same general sources (especially Mystery House). He also did a video on how a term like Visual Novel came to be used in the west despite having little if any meaning or bearing on the view of the subject in Japan.

@@InnuendoStudios When I initially made Dropsy back in 2007ish as a forum game (on Something Awful no less) sensitivity to this wasn't even a thing I'd considered. He was originally a boss sprite for a platformer I made as a teenager and I thought it'd be funny if he hugged people. He was repurposed as a frankenstein's monster-esque gentle giant. As I worked on the actual game from 2011-2015 I matured as a person and the reality of Dropsy as a potential stand in for neurodivergent folk became apparent While it was initially surprising to see such comparisons, two of my family members who'd previously been diagnosed with autism were reaching adulthood and the parallels couldn't be ignored. I am mildly neurodivergent but not to the degree that I feel comfortable to speak for folks who may see more of themselves in Dropsy. That said, conversations WERE had and changes were made. It's likely that Dropsy has problematic bits that I hadn't considered but I've had only positive feedback from the neurodivergent folk who have played so far.

Following this comment thread, thanks for the conversation.

GOOD

Right, because the story of Jesus is ALSO inspired by the story of Moses. So it all just kinds of blends together. Originally the authors were going for Moses. Which unintentionally made the character also similar to Jesus. Which caused later writers to make him INTENTIONALLY similar to Jesus.