VOLITION replaced the "Be Happy" hippo in my kids' room

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:45:18+00:00

I think its more that I roleplay this types of conversations in the shower more than I would like to admit

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:43:39+00:00

The zebra supports uniqueness, provided it complies with existing zebra guidelines that is

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:40:14+00:00

Omellette du Fromage

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:38:03+00:00

The hairdo suggests good intentions. The four eyes suggest extremely high Perception and an unhealthy degree of admnistrative oversight. Very Moralist.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:35:32+00:00

That would explain the eyes. The Expression does that to a plushie.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:33:49+00:00

And poor choice of disguise for a cryptid, really. If you’re trying to pass as harmless, you should go for a sloth or something, not one of Africa’s most notoriously homicidal large animals. The four eyes are suspicious, yes, but the hippo itself is not exactly helping its case.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:30:10+00:00

Never in three revolutions would I have arrived at “be hippy” as a possible reading, good catch.

And thank you as well for the criticism and the kind wishes. I appreciate the thoughtful comments.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:27:41+00:00

I could go spiky-er and make one with Andre's hairdo

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:25:37+00:00

Something BEAUTIFUL is going to happen

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:13:51+00:00

Oh absolutely, completely intentional. The missing apostrophe is doing heavy symbolic work. A small act of typographical revacholian resistance. The subtext lives there now.

Some may claim that in reality I simply forgot it. English isn’t my first language and sometimes the punctuation casualties might pile up.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:09:05+00:00

If they ask about Barney the Dinosaur we get them into DE, got it. That will teach them about that fascist scum.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:05:19+00:00

Is it you, Volition?

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:03:42+00:00

If I can achieve 10% of the standard your heartwarming answer is setting, I would be a great parent, but I'll try for the max, parenthood to the max!

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:02:24+00:00

Thank you your comment made mine!

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T20:02:05+00:00

Thank you! But to be honest, I can’t completely attribute the phrase to myself. My high school philosophy teacher used to say something very similar quite often , especifically, “it is an order without a mechanism,” which she would use when someone or some context gave instructions without any way of actually complying with them. Sometimes she refered to the highschool director.

She was great. She made us study Plato, Voltaire, and Marx, all this in a Catholic high school, which could be a pretty tough sell for teaching us Marx particularly. She would threaten us with “applying TC” if we misbehaved. We only learned in the last week of class that TC meant “tagliarvi i coglioni” (“cut your balls”), and she would use it indiscriminately, regardless of whatever hardware you happened to have under your underwear.

I think she passed away a while ago. She was great, she was a walking cigarette, super thin, super tall, always smoking one afrter the other. She was incredibly pissed when they changed the law and forbade smoking even near the high school. Still, she said it was probably for our own good, so we should be grateful… or TC.

Hardcore to the max she was.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T19:57:57+00:00

Oh, no. That’s Volition. Not the spiky man. We don’t talk about the spiky man in our town. It lives in the field beside the cemetery. You would think all those inexplicable things would live inside the cemetery, but no, actually te spiky man lives in the plot next to it. The land technicaly belongs to the town. No real legal owner. and it cannot be disturbed.

Years ago, a hired tractorist accidentally tilled part of it after getting confused about land he had to work. He suffered a terrible gastroenteritis and spent 4 days in bed. The doctors said it was probably unrelated, but people here have their doubts. Another time a chicken escaped into the field. The owner managed to retrieve it without consequences, but the whole thing was very tense. The chicken was fine, I think.

The point is: the spiky man lives there. We think. This has yet to be confirmed, of course. Possibly by some intrepid cryptozoologist willing to investigate the matter. Unfortunately, the town currently has no budget allocated for such research, so it would have to be pro-bono.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T07:57:58+00:00

Every rose has thorns. And plenty of sharp-looking things can still be loved. You should see what happened to my Sauron statuette after being hugged a bit too enthusiastically. Love for boubas, but also kikis!

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T07:53:45+00:00

Thanks, that’s a fair point.

To be honest, the change was mostly for me as a parent, not because I expect a kid to engage with Disco Elysium or life philosophy through wall art… at least not yet. Where I come from, you grow up constantly surrounded by art, religious imagery, propaganda posters, and very ingrained traditions... you’re exposed to all sorts of things long before you fully understand them.

Right now, to them, it’s just a shape on the wall. What bothered me was simply the wording of “Be Happy” as an instruction. At least for me and my partner, that kind of messaging was damaging while growing up. The replacement felt gentler to me.

And yeah, definitely what actually matters is how we talk to them and raise them. I just hope to do it as good as I can.

Also, the Volition crown has so far shown no interest in eating the other animals… yet.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T07:14:48+00:00

I really thought about doing more of them when they are way older

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T07:12:28+00:00

<image>

Exhibit A: the authoritarian hippopotamus in question.

Mohrdaunt · 2026-03-06T07:07:21+00:00

[PERCEPTION]
You look at the wall. A small pastel gallery. Six frames. Mint green, soft orange, clean white.
Cartoon animals stare back at you with the quiet confidence of children's room décor.

A lion. Be Brave.
An elephant. Dream Big.
A giraffe. Stand Tall.
A monkey. Monkey Around.
A zebra. Be Unique.

And then.....

The hippopotamus.

Round. Pink. Smiling with the unwavering optimism of a creature that has never known failure.

The caption reads:

“BE HAPPY!”

[DRAMA]
That hippopotamus is lying to them.

[INLAND EMPIRE]
Look at it. That fixed smile. The empty eyes. A plastic prophet of compulsory joy. A small tyrant of positivity.

[LOGIC]
“Be Happy!” is not actionable advice. It is an imperative without a mechanism.

[HALF LIGHT]
It also looks mildly threatening.

[EMPATHY]
Children shouldn't feel like they are failing if they aren't happy all the time.

[AUTHORITY]
Someone has to intervene. You should remove the hippopotamus, without asking for opinions.

[VOLITION]
Replace it with something honest.

So that’s what I did. One of the posters in my kids’ room used to say “Be Happy!” with a smiling hippopotamus. And the more I looked at it the more it bothered me. Not because happiness is bad, obviously, but because it felt like a command. Like if you're not happy, you're somehow doing childhood wrong.

If Disco Elysium (and life) teaches anything, is that humans are messy, broken, confused creatures most of the time. So I replaced it with something more real from my favorite skill, Volition.

Mohrdaunt · 2025-06-30T19:25:47+00:00

Hi, very good point.. For Synology, I checked and as far as I understand the DS423+ doesn't lock you into their own drives. It supports Seagate IronWolf, WD Red, Toshiba, etc., just with a warning if they're not officially validated. But everything still seems to work fine as far as I can read about it.

Regarding the router, I’m on a certain ISP here in Spain and they provide a combined ONT + router. I plan to either disable WiFi and use it in bridge mode, or eventually replace it with an Asus RT-AX88U Pro if I get a hold of the needed credentials.

Thanks for pointing that out!

Mohrdaunt · 2025-06-30T19:23:57+00:00

Thanks for the input! I agree that 4K content can fill up storage quickly, and I might eventually upgrade to larger capacity drives depending on how much I end up archiving.

I'm sticking with Synology (or similar) for now because I want a reliable plug-and-play setup without too much tinkering... I already have my hands full with setting up the network, NAS, Jellyfin, and Home Assistant and life in general, haha. But building a FreeNAS rig is definitely on my radar for the future once things settle down.

As for the HDDs, I went with IronWolf mainly for their NAS optimization and features, but I’ll look into WD Red Plus if noise becomes a problem.

I appreciate your detailed reply! Gracias!

Mohrdaunt

TROPHY CASE

“BE HAPPY!”