Monsters and Meditations

Fun fact: Voidpet is based on Stoicism. Yes, the TikTok-born mobile game about emotions is built on the same philosophy that told ancient Roman emperors to keep their feelings in check.

Maybe that sounds ironic. Or maybe it's obvious. Maybe it was the Latin professor names, or the fact that the Void's students dine in the Triclinium. Whatever gave it away, you probably already noticed. Because both are about control, and therefore, awareness. You can’t master what you refuse to face.

1. You have power over your mind

Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” It’s the line that birthed Voidpet’s app store tagline: “Mind your monsters.”

Control starts in the one place no one can invade: your own interpretation. The same stimulus can create wisdom or chaos depending on how you label it. In Voidpet, emotions aren’t bad or good. They’re wild creatures inside the ecosystem of your thoughts. They can be trained, defeated, or simply observed, but either way, they’re yours to manage.

2. Action is the only good

The four Stoic virtues are wisdom, courage, justice, and temperance.

• Wisdom keeps you aligned with reality.
• Courage keeps you moving despite fear.
• Justice keeps your power in service of something larger.
• Temperance keeps your intensity from being destructive.

Voidpet isn't here to tell you how to be a good person. But these values are baked into its design philosophy, because emotional awareness is a prerequisite for all of them.

• You can't be wise if your logic is distorted by fear.
• You can't be courageous without overcoming anxiety.
• You can't be just if you can't see resentment.
• You can't be temperate if you aren't aware of impulses.

What this ultimately means is that actions are good, and emotions are neutral. What we feel in our own inner worlds is for us to navigate however we choose.

This also means that we get to explore sin and virtue themed Voidpets separately from the actions that their human owners take. The emotions themselves aren't moral, and as the Stoics would say, they are indifferent.

3. Emotions as energy

In Stoic philosophy, pleasure and pain, wealth and poverty, praise and criticism are all indifferent. They can make life easier or harder, but they don’t make you better or worse. What matters is the use you make of them. The action that follows. That’s why Voidpet values portraying emotions as neutral forces rather than moral signals. Joy, envy, rage, and guilt are all just potential energy. You can weaponize them, channel them, or let them defeat you. Their virtue or vice emerges only in motion.

This pairs well with our adjacent system inspired by Chinese Wuxing elements, where each element represents a physical energetic state. We can explore the flavors and textures of each emotion, romanticizing or bemoaning their experience for narrative indulgence. Yet it remains crucial that this exploration does not deny the existence of constructive and destructive behaviors. Without this boundary, we swing between the chaotic binary of suppressed emotion vs. unbridled behavior.

4. Amor fati, memento mori

Loving what happens, and knowing it ends.

Everything has meaning, even when it feels upsetting or unfair. The presence of emotion — of challenge, of narrative tension — is always better than emptiness. The Stoics called that amor fati: the love of one’s fate. It’s neither passive acceptance nor surrender to despair. It’s finding beauty in the way difficulty gives life texture.

Memento mori (remember that you will die) is the counterweight. Nothing lasts forever, which makes every feeling worth having, even the uncomfortable ones. Shock, disappointment, and sorrow are proof that you’re alive inside the story.

That’s why our starter Voidpets are Sad, Anxious, and Anger. We don’t glorify negativity, but we do like to look it in the eye.

5. Logos & cosmos

The beauty of smallness.

People sometimes ask why Voidpet Dungeon is so hard. Or why we keep building depth into the same universe over and over instead of chasing new viral ideas.

The answer is Logos. The Stoic idea that everything in the universe has a rational structure. An order beneath the chaos. To see it, you have to look deeper. Difficulty isn’t punishment, it’s perspective. It reminds you how much there is left to learn.

We build complex systems to feel small inside them. And that’s the point. Cosmopolitanism, in the Stoic sense, means belonging to something bigger than yourself. When you enter the Void, you aren’t just playing a game, you’re participating in an ecosystem. The more you explore, the more you see how everything connects. That sense of vastness is sacred to us. It’s what keeps us working on the same universe year after year. Building up that feeling of an underlying order. That the universe is absurd, but never random.

Why Stoicism?

I’m sure running the Roman Empire was hard for Marcus. But imagine if he also had a TikTok account. (He’d never post, of course. Meditations wasn’t even meant for publication.) Still, emperors are human, and I'm sure he wouldn't be able to help himself from sneaking a look at the comments section every once in a while, getting lost in requests, arguments, and criticisms of his leadership. Replace wax tablets with touchscreens and you get the same thing: a single mind engulfed in more feedback than it can reasonably process.

As a Roman Empire enjoyer with a TikTok account, it seems only natural that I'd build a world in the footsteps of Meditations. A private exercise in making sense of chaos turned consumer-facing pop-philosophy game. Marcus Aurelius wrote to steady his mind, and here at Voidpet, we draw monsters for the same reason.

So yes. We make mobile games with goofy emotion monsters. We make mental health apps, along with battle RPGs and anime videos. But ultimately, the brand itself remains an ode to Stoicism. A modern Meditations designed in the age of smartphones and mobile gaming. While the Stoics practiced mental stillness in the chaos of empire, today we practice it in the turbulence of endless information.

The philosophy hasn't changed. Only the tune of the notifications.