After years of affirmation and endorsements, he has finally sunk to a depth of evil and depravity and corruption that even I can no longer abide. Cthulhu has joined the Republican party.
I could forgive him if he’d become a Christian or a Muslim, I could even look the other way if he started blogging at Patheos, but a Republican? Intolerable.
Anyway, I’m now in the market for a new evil god of nightmarish wickedness to which I can give my sarcastic support. Suggestions welcome.
I’m kind of leaning towards Jesus.
Any deity that caused Bill O’Reilly’s head to burst like a rotten melon would earn my undying devotion.
Cecil the Lion.
He’s a cat, therefore evil
He was martyred by a rich fucker, which makes self-righteousness easier
There are a lot of people lamenting his downfall for all the wrong reasons while ignoring tragedies happening close to their own home.
So don’t be shy, and embrace Cecilism
Try Lord Foul the Despiser.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Thomas_Covenant
Don’t despair, PZ; you can probably take some comfort in the likelihood that Cthulhu’s probably a John Kasich-Republican evil and depraved and not Ted Cruz or Donald Trump-Republican evil and depraved.
Could be tough, the Republican Party has most of those signed up already.
Personally I’d recommend Hades. As part of the Olympian pantheon he has been around for a long time, so you know he won’t just up and leave or, even worse, reform your beloved religion to blazes, forcing you to schism and massacre your neighbours while wearing silly outfits.
In fact, for the most part Hades does not care. Like most Olympians you don’t want to get on his bad side* but other than that he’s a low maintenance deity. You can sacrifice to him but don’t have to. There are no services or holy days to observe, no restrictions on your lifestyle or personal choices.
Hades will not judge you (except in anger). Hades also runs a low-cost, environmentally friendly underworld that welcomes anyone and everyone without discrimination. While eternity in the underworld will inevitably be dull, unlike other afterlives you will not have to worship Hades endlessly. Nor will you be likely to remember you mortal existence at all so there is no pining for what you have lost. This has the added advantage that, should you encounter former enemies in the Underworld, neither of you will ever know. All in all, the stygian plains are a calm and relaxing place to spend eternity, although you can always watch those who did offend an Olympian for entertainment.
Please not that, due to issues with overbooking related to eternal life after death, Elysium is currently full and is expected to remain closed for the forseeable future and beyond.
*This is a given whether you believe in him or not. The faith of his detractors is not Hades’ concern. Their eternal torment is.
Eh – the linked story and the button on his arm suggest he’s running third party. The logo kind of looks like a Republican elephant but if you enlarge it it’s clearly a tentacled monstrosity and not an elephant.
If you’re looking for wicked deities to adopt, I’d go with Yahweh over Jesus.
Personally I’m a big fan of Loki, but that’s more because he and Coyote are about the only two gods whose existences aren’t refuted just by looking at the state of the world around you. And Coyote is less baldly wicked than he is just uncaring about the trouble he causes than Loki seems to be.
Cthulhu is small time anyway. Azathoth is the ruler of the Outer Gods, but I think Yog-Sothoth might be the real deal.
I’ve never been impressed, Cthulhu’s a pussycat compared to Yahweh/Jehovah.
Gods are so passe. I nominate the Goddess Tlazolteotl to replace the horror from beyond. She seems well suited to being the atheist imaginary figurehead.
Great Heavens!
From the look of that photo he must be a distant relative of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Of course, the FSM is far too relaxed for your needs. A wonderful cook and his very existence irritates the opposition — but not much use in a scrap.
Sithrak’s the one for those tired of the namby-pamby Teabagging Cthulhu.
Oh, come on, be serious. If you are going with an entity that people actually worship(ped) as a god, why not pick something interesting? Like Anubis, for instance. I’ve always liked Anubis. And the expression “breath of Anubis” is awesome.
Or Enlil, it’s another one of my favorites.
He’s way to egalitarian in armageddon to be a Republican, surely? Unless he’s a Libertarian, I guess. But those tend to favour corporatism rather than melting all the corporations. Cthulhu transcends our puny political spectra and especially the American one, atrophied as it is.
That said, if you don’t mind getting into video games, I’d recommend Hermaeus Mora from The Elder Scrolls (incl. Skyrim). As a god of forbidden knowledge who drives people mad, he seems like a good choice for a scientist. And he does have that Lovecraftian feel about him, so that’s good.
I would like to suggest the Shinto god Susano’o, also known as The Impetuous Male. We’re looking for gods of destruction here, and Susano’o is essentially the ur-MRA, known to have committed such acts of harassment against women that they caused eclipses. We all know how destructive that crew are, so I think he’ll be suitable.
Oh, or go for Tzeentch! Join now, gain power and knowledge and grow a few tentacles as a bonus! I’m going all nerdy right now, but I don’t care!
Amused @13:
Inanna could kick his arse.
Mammon? Take not the name of the Profit in vain…
before descending to the link provided, I just assumed the Republicans were claiming Cthulhu as their candidate, without his acceptance, as a way to lure his followers onto the Rethuglican De~nile~wagon. I have a bigoted stance against Rethugs as inherently dishonest and thiefs of anything anybody believes in, to twist, pretzelly, to their benefit (um…profits!!).
I admit, I too have bigot leanings, just opposite direction than most of that ilk.
So that led me to blindly Ass~u~me that the Re$%^& were the guilty, not the sacred Cthulhu.
.
ack. I sense “satire” from that linked site. I need to calibrate my satiresense.
I’m not sure, he sounds more liberal than most of the republicans right now. After all:
May I be the first to recommend Kanaloa, the Hawaiian god of squids?
http://www.sacred-texts.com/pac/hm/hm07.htm
He’s not so much evil, more just a big asshole with his brother, BUT he’s sometimes conflated with Satan and most importantly is still associated with oceans and cephalopods.
@Tethys #10:
There is no way that I would ever attend her orgies!
I have to agree with Jerthebarbarian on this one; that isn’t an elephant, it’s a tentacled head. The similarity might be intentional to draw in the weak-minded.
I have no suggestions for an appropriate replacement. Have you considered a self-caricature/Alternate persona? I’m not sure I’d recommend it and suspect you’d grow to hate it (possibly within minutes), but it wouldn’t join the Republicans and would cause many of the right heads to spin and implode.
In any case, didn’t the Republican Party already lay claim to Jesus? I somehow doubt, given what I’ve read, he’d agree,but they do seem to claim him.
Davros. Still makes me shiver after 40+ years.
Well, there’s always Father Dagon and Mother Hydra
No votes for Zuul?
I hear Anoia is looking for a gig, and she needs the believers…
Anoia seems to respond well to attention, too. I’m going to rattle some drawers and see if anything wedges up and gets stuck.
@ komarov, I would further argue that Hades is one of the few deities who actually does his fucking job. I mean, Zeus couldn’t stop boning random mortal women, Posiden had a temper and jealousy problem, but Hades? He’s just like, “fuck it, ya’ll go be idiots, I’ll keep my relm nice and orderly and working as intended.”
Disney really did bad by him, but I like Jim Butchers portrayal in the Dresden Files.
As if Cthulhu cares enough about us chattering monkeys to take part in our politics.
Oddly, I didn’t see anything in there stating that he was running for the republican nom-nom-nomination, only for “president”.
I think Cthulhu might actually be an independent.
Screw Hades. Hecate’s your deity, PZ. She helped Demeter get Persephone back after that hellboy kidnapped her.
Hesiod praised her thusly:
Cthulhu’s not taking calls, never mind running.
@Rawnaeris, Knight of the Order of the Glittery Hoo Ha #29
Yeah, being Lord of the Underworld and the being you encounter after death has led Hades/Pluto to being conflated with Satan in Christian societies, giving him an association with evil that the pagans never attributed to him. Amongst the pagan gods, from the human point of view Hades was probably the only nice one, or at least the nicest of a nasty lot; he did kidnap – and perhaps worse – his niece because he fell in love with her so he was far from being without blemish himself.
The other gods objectified humans, providing blessings as payment for the worship that they required. If, however, you insulted them or the whim just took their fancy, they would without hesitation end a human’s life or make it a living hell. (Much like another character I read about in a book…) Hades seemed to be the only person interested in humanity qua humanity and had an interest in morality.
(As an aside, the Furies were not interested in morality so much as in taboos. Kill a random man, that was fine with them. Kill your father, they’d get you. Kill a random man who turned out to be your father, they wouldn’t care if there was no way you could possibly have known that fact, killing your father was Wrong.)
For me, if you’re looking at the pagan pantheon for an evil god, they’re pretty much all bad but that baby-eating bastard Kronos (god, titan, whatever) may be the worst of a bad lot.
That’s far more effective than most of the candidates, who seem content to deny and mock reality. I’m dubious about his boast of being able to out-Trump Trump, though. What’s his plan for climate change: eviscerating those amateurs, and getting the job done right?
As others have said, Cthulhu has *not* joined the Republican party. The link doesn’t mention either party but does make it clear that he has support across ideological lines and strongly favors universal health care (at least in as much as providing end of life treatment is a kind of health care.)
Actually, Kronos is probably the perfect candidate. O.o
Bit of a fake cephalopod boy anyway. Since when did a squid, cuttlefish or octopus have need of human-like arms?
I received a revelation from God last Thursday.
God has decided that the system of Heaven and Hell was just not working. Torturing prisoners had grown boring, and hymns of praise even more boring. So he has abolished Heaven and Hell and set up a new system of sequential reincarnation. When you die, your soul will go to the back of a line. When you reach the front of the line, you go into the next available human body.
He has declared a general amnesty for the residents of Hell, and put them into the line. Those who were good enough to get into Heaven, all twenty-seven of them, volunteered to go into the line as well, so they could teach virtue and goodness by example.
He hopes that we will have enough sense to treat each other well and care for the Earth. If not, we will just have to live in the mess. He is turning his attention to other galaxies, where he has other children to raise. He said, “You’re on your own now. It’s time to grow up.”
When Cthulhu finds out that people are claiming that he has joined the Republicans, there will be a reckoning. I mean yeah, he’s evil, but he’s not join the Republican Party evil. That is next level stuff.
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Saganite, a haunter of demons @ 16;
Got to love the Changer of Ways, and definitely a strong candidate. Khorne is out of the running – he would be too violent (you just know he would be anti-gun control). Nurgle is avuncular enough, but all that disease and entropy wouldn’t make for great orgies, and we have to have those orgies, same problem with the Great Horned Rat…
Ah, of course – Slaanesh! Orgies are definitely the bag of the self described Prince of Pleasure, and She Who Thirsts has recently gone missing from the Mortal Realms. Maybe PZ has already struck a deal?
You and me both, friend. :-)
Lavos
It is honest, all it wants is to live off geothermal energy at the planet’s core while absorbing every biological, technological and magical innovation on the whole of earth to incorporate into it’s spawn before its death. Serve Lavos and you will create a perfect kingdom floating above the clouds. Sure once it awakens that kingdom will be destroyed, but in the mean time you’ll live without wants. It won’t even destroy all of Earth, just drain it until it spawns and then leave the rest of the world to slowly die with it. It’s a giant space tick and that’s all you need to know. Watch out for random spacetime warping though…
Or, Giygas. You don’t even need to serve Giygas. Giygas doesn’t ask for anything, because he’s just living power with only the barest thread of conciousness there to say it’s alive. Giygas is an almighty idiot that, once it awakens, will instantly end the entire universe. That’s it.
Shiver!! What could be a more evil god of nightmarish wickedness than a Republican.
Are you sure? I mean, he does have an opposition to sanity.
I’m currently reading the Chalion series by Lois McMaster Bujold, and I feel like The Bastard is your guy. He’s the God “of balance, of all disasters out of season*, of bastard children and orphans, of executioners and many other dirty jobs, and the god of odd loves, such as sodomy.”
LMB’s world has five gods; Father, whose season is winter, Lady, whose season is summer, Maiden, whose season is spring, Son, whose season is autumn, and Bastard, who has no season(*hence god of all disasters out of season, as seasonal disasters such as drought or storms are attributed to the others). The Bastard was begotten by a demon on the Lady of Summer, and this has created a schism. Quintarians claim it was a union of love outside of marriage, and The Bastard is a god. Quadrenes claim the demon raped her, and The Bastard is a demon himself. Acolytes of The Bastard wear white; rats and crows are his familiars. Ibrans also consider the gull to be his familiar.
He’s easily my favourite of the pantheon.