Greetings! From the Soul Reaver Vortex of Eternal Suffering! Yeah, watching clone judge judy swirl the bowl screaming in cruel flames, I couldn’t help but take a dip. It reminds me of that time I successfully completed about 99.99% of the trials and tribulations of a Christ, but at the last moment I forgot to resurrect because after the ardours of getting crucified and having to drink that nasty gall-wine, I was just content to stay stone dead. So some readers might say, BOnky, if you’re writing this then how is it possible you died and came back to life without resurrection? Look, it just wasn’t a good, solid principled resurrection. You really have to stick the landing on something like that. Yeah, I came back but I took the lazy man’s returnal. I just kinda came back. Now, you might say, well how is that different from Jesus? He just kinda came back and let people fish around in his guts to confirm it was him and he was back? It’s difficult to explain. You’ll have to die some time and then have a look around behind the scenes at the mechanics and metrics of the underlying reality and then you’ll see my little escape tunnel and then you’ll go “oh, he really did kinda cheat. I probably could have thought of that if I were a really temeritous horse with insane willpower driving him, even in death, to clamor his way back to neg his horse-man pal. I think partially you can tell I didn’t resurrect because my body is not in any way glorified. It’s perfect, sure, but, well, I think perfect versus glorified is something you just have to feel. Once you get a look, you’ll understand. Something has to be really stoked up to be glorious. I can’t remember the last time I saw something I considered glorious. If I used the term, more than likely I was being hyperbolic or ironic. Not even when I saw the grand canyon did I think it was in any way “glorious”. It was just grand! But if even the grand canyon is merely grand and not glorious then what chance does joe somebody have of attaining gloriousness of his own determination? So why am I talking about this instead of the Soul Reaver Vortex of eternal suffering? Because the Soul Reaver Vortex of eternal suffering is not interesting. Sure, when I first hopped in it was. And yeah, I’m in a lot of pain. And it is kind of a lovely escape destination in its enormity and green fieryness. It’s just sort of like the grand canyon of pain vortexes - grand but not glorious. It is also the domain of some sort of extradimensional squid god. But the novelty wears off pretty quickly. In ordinary circumstances pain is by its very nature of extreme interest. In fact, that’s all pain is. It’s an awareness that you can’t escape. If you twist your ankle, you’re aware of a body part that you ordinarily didn’t have to be aware of. Instead of being ignorant to this thing, you suddenly have to cherish it. What’s more annoying than that? Well. I suppose that’s a bit of what I call “the reconnaissance of the enemy.” When your thoughts lead you unknowingly into admitting that you are, on a long enough timeline, annoyed to have to cherish something - it acts as a type of confession. And the confession points to one’s dark nature. Things about ourselves that we don't really want to admit, that even love becomes tiresome and tedious at some point and even the perfect horse will cast it off or grow enured to its charms and with enough exposure even love becomes a kind of back-biting pain. But when all there is is pain, your brain just kinda flips the switch and says “you know what? none of this pain has anything to do with me anymore. I don’t have to provide special attentions to it. To what end? I don’t have a job. I don’t have to get out of bed anymore. There’s no gravity because the vortex is bottomless so all my extremities exist without purpose. They can burn all they like.” In his fixation in causing mere sensual alarum, squid god removed all the things that actually cause mental anguish. So, anyways. Soul Reaver Vortex of Eternal Suffering: uhhh, 6.3/10. High marks for the novelty and practicality of having a place to cast in your enemies and imperfect clones you friends created, but ultimately lacking in its variety of pain and anguish. Love and best wishes from the Soul Reaver Vortex of Eternal Anguish and wish you were here! Your pal, Bonky.