The Conversion of Arjay to Dioism

Day 1,128, 22:23 Published in Bolivia Bolivia by Arjay Phoenician


Please understand, I was working on other things concerning my career at eRepublik. I’ve been considering ways the Bolivian community could undermine the dominance of the Argentine PTO group, the Pindonga (translates into English as “prostitute”). I’ve also been writing more philosophical articles, finding a small community of thinkers with whom I can psychoanalyze the e-world. As always, I’ve had my fingers in a whole lot of pies.

One of those pies concerned the recent return of the great Dio Brando, about my mixed feelings of the living god and how so many people in this world have bastardized his name for their personal and national ambitions. In my nineteen months here, I’ve seen trolls believe they were heroes because they used his name as the excuse for their heinous acts, their arrogance, their cocky laughter, none of which I found to be things Dio himself would conduct nor condone.



As I started to write with malicious intent, my keyboard shocked my fingers with a sizzle and a loud DZZZZZZT! I yelped as I pulled my burnt fingers away and cradled them, and that’s when my computer screen went white, bright white, stinging my eyes, forcing me to look away.

A young but angry male voice came through the speakers and directly asked, “What’s your problem, Arjay?”

Don’t let the piss in my pants fool you, I wasn’t scared so much as startled.

“Arjay, talk to me, dude. I didn’t blow your mind, did I?”

I faced the screen and tried to open my eyes, managing just a squint, but I saw him. The boyish face, the blonde locks, the collar of his yellow jacket, he looked like a digitized Brad Pitt, but less whiny. “Who are you?” I asked with trepidation.

“You know who I am. Do we really have to dance around with this, or can we just cut to the chase and you tell me what your big hairy problem is?”

Realizing it was the divine Dio, I told him what I tell everybody, that while he himself might be pretty cool, while he seems to know how to save the world from its own crap, many who call themselves Dioists are just doing whatever the hell they want and using him as their inspiration, just as in the real world, where many Christians over the last two thousand years have fought bloody wars, engaged in genocide, ramrodded Crusades and Inquisitions through history, all in the name of Jesus Christ, the alleged Prince of Peace.

“OK then,” Dio resumed, “how did you deal with separating Christ from Christianity?”

I thought about that for a moment. In real life, I’d always considered myself a Christian, but not the church-going, fire-and-brimstone kind who would find loopholes in the Bible to explain away my bad behaviors, the very things that turn a lot of people away from Christ. One day I simply sat down with the Bible, set aside all the dogma, all the history, all the things mortal men have done to sully the religion, and I realized the very kernel of something true and pure still remained—Jesus himself. Through this, I re-oriented my belief system, I put what Jesus said and did as He walked the earth in the Gospels ahead of everything else, and when I did this, things made a lot more sense. I became a sort of oddball who didn’t agree with how the world of man works, but I could at least sleep at night in knowing that no man or thing stood between my Lord and myself.



“Is that how I should separate Dio from Dioists?”

“Dude,” Dio said in closing, “let me say this, and then I gotta take off, I have better things to do than satisfy your god complex. I didn’t come back to save the world from the admins and their bunk, from the superalliances and their nonstop debauchery, or from the trolls who don’t think before they talk. I’m here to be entertained. To have some fun. If you want to have a little fun, then let’s party. Yes, it pisses me off that people turn into a-holes with my name in their mouths, but if it wasn’t me, it would be someone else, it would be their country, it would be some other dumbass they put on a pedestal. None of that matters, because there’s only one true god in this world. None of them were here when there was nothing but sand. Then I came, and I’ll come and go as I please. You want to start trouble with people who have followed me from the beginning? Be my guest, entertain me. If you can get people to actually read what I said and to act on it, instead of just a lot of Bro-fists and F-YEAH DIO’s, great, golfclaps all around. If you can’t, don’t sweat it so much, let’s just party while we’re here. You bring the chicks, I’ll bring the beer.”

His voice and his face started to fade with the last few sentences until he became silent with the word beer. The screen returned to its normal brightness and whiteness, and as I could open my eyes again, I touched the keyboard and, realizing I wasn’t going to be shocked again, started to type this.

I’m not sure where I go from here, but wherever I go, I’m sure it will be loud.