explosivecombat | 022. [Text]

022. [Text]

With matters of one's heart and soul so close in mind, due to the recent holiday and all the romantic connotations therein, I ask that you forgive the possibly morbid nature of the question I have for you tonight:

The state or condition of one's soul is often brought into question when their deeds are brought to light or held up for scrutiny; the concept of the damned and those destined for salvation aren't new concepts by far. However, I have to ask what that means for all of you - do you accept your soul as existing only as a metaphysical concept, a matter of faith, something unproven and intangible? Or is it something undeniable where you come from, not a matter of faith but rather proven to exist? Does it fail to exist for you at all?

Or, perhaps, is it something else entirely - something that was rendered from one of the above options into another?

I suppose I should apologize for such heavy subject matter; I imagine some will find it rude to attempt to quantify such a thing. However, it's been something I've had reason to consider lately, so no apology is forthcoming.

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Who the fuck cares?

[...watch out, we got a badass over here.]

Your response is doing a spectacular job of showing how little you care. Does that make you feel a bit more validated, or shall I act shocked and offended for a little while?

[damn right we do]

You want to talk about souls, go to church. I hear they've got support groups for that kind of thing. Better yet, get some meds.

First people start talking about heaven and hell, then they start shooting people from belltowers because Jesus told them to.

I've never been one for church or organized religion, myself, but that was a lovely assumption. And besides, I don't know who this "Jesus" person is that you're talking about, as he's never been anyone mentioned in any church I've seen.

[Well, you have his curiosity now.]

Are you asking this in the context of weighing deeds only or do you mean as a tangible object? I know where I'm from souls are a thing that can be touched and understood, and there is even a clan known for ah... flinging their souls at other people.

Both, I suppose. As far as my world goes, the soul isn't something used to weigh one's deeds - that's more along the lines of a conscience, I think. They're separate principles. The soul itself contains everything you are; your life-force, so to speak.

Dealing with them directly involves something...similar to what you're describing, I think; souls are tangible things to be understood and, in some instances, touched and physically manipulated - though I wouldn't say flinging them at people would get you very far.

Then what do you care about all this afterlife crap? Asshole or saint, dead's dead. Everybody smells the same.

What kind of weird churches have you been going to?

Because I have tangible proof that souls and the forces that be exist, at least in my world; I'm curious as to how it is for others. You've answered my question, by the way, albeit in a rather roundabout manner. I suppose I should thank you for that.

Though again, I've never been one for church. They're seen as a bit cultish, in my experience. Either cultish or backwards. Either way, not something that I'm interested in.

The family I'm talking about... they can crawl inside someone else's body if they want to and have the training and either control from a distance or go through memories. They can be freely given as well but...

It's hardly the only shinobi clan where I'm from that has something like that. So yes, there is definitely the soul, as a thing that everyone has. Just like there is spirit and physical, there is soul removed from that too. It's... When I died it was a big deal. I gave my eye to someone with the expectation that my spirit would stay bound to him through that and I ended up here instead.

I'm not sure if part of me stayed there. It's possible, I'm not the same exact person I was before I came here after all. My abilities were stripped from me, what made me unique... But just like there is a spirit there are those things that gather them, and the Shinigami are a real thing as well, seeable, touchable, and indisputably a force in the world.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I have no room for doubt because it's something I know. As for where being what you are will get you... What you do in life, as I was taught, has no bearing on where you go. Good people can do horrible things, and horrible people could do good things, and none of it matters because the only one you have to sort out once you get there is yourself. No one will tell you if you're good or bad, you have to decide for yourself and go from there when you're ready.

I'm missing out on that for now, but it might still happen, some day, so better to sort myself out that I'm happy with what I see when I look back, right?

[...well, he understood about...30% of that, maybe, the rest looked like pure wharrgarbl. But let's pick out some of the more important bits first and worry about the wharrgarbl later, shall we?]

There's a being in my world that's capable of something similar to that. Controlling one physically from the inside, I mean. It's unsettling to watch, but it's interesting in practice.

You're making me wonder, however, as to exactly where you're talking about going. Some sort of afterlife, or something else entirely...?

Yep! Not really sure on the details, but considering what I've heard about a jutsu that got made before I was born that could call back the souls of the dead? Nobody knows how it works, it was slapped with forbidden pretty fast, with good reason I guess, but it's pretty hefty proof for the entire 'the soul isn't gone' concept. What I know of it meant that the person was definitely the person, whatever they were like before, unresolved issues, everything.

Then again, considering there are seals that would let one barter a soul directly with a shinigami, they have to do something as well in regard to the soul, too. I don't know how those work either though. I never got that far in learning seals myself, but sensei would have known.

Either way, if someone can be called back from somewhere after they die, they have to go somewhere in the first place.

Ah, that's where we differ in terms of our understanding of this, I believe - where I'm from, you can't call them back after a certain point. There are rituals that can be done to prevent the soul from leaving the mortal world in the first place, but they either have to be done immediately, or they're a forbidden practice that kills the body in the process of extracting the soul.

No one is really certain whether there's an afterlife or not, as a result. It's possible there isn't; it's possible that there is but once one crosses the threshold, there's no returning. I have my own beliefs on the matter, but I can't say with any sort of certainty or authority; it's a bit of a moot point for me anyway.

[Blake is kind of curious despite himself] What, they show up under black light or something?

It's all a waste of time. Just shit people make up to make themselves feel better. There was this guy whose wife got murdered, some idiot actually fucking told him 'everything happens for a reason.'

I don't know that your world has an afterlife. It might not. Somehow I can't really see only this world or that world actually having one though. That seems... wrong. Broken.

It might just be that that world, for you, is further away and thus a lot harder to reach. In mine we have much more intimate interaction with death itself and we have a direct contact on things from other dimensional places anyway, which would make a difference too about our ability to reach out for those that have gone ahead.

Still, one thing that is known and accepted is that even if there is a way, you just don't do it. It's better that way.

Not to my knowledge, no. One's soul and their life-force - that which makes them themselves, as an individual - are considered to be generally the same thing; the conscience, or indicator of one's morality, is something else entirely. One's life force can be removed through the use of certain practices or rituals, and condensed into something tangible.

Obviously that sort of business is entirely forbidden, as a practice, but I've seen it done.

But "everything happens for a reason"...? The only way that applies at all in that situation is the most obvious, cause-and-effect-related way possible. Someone decided to murder a woman, hence the woman was murdered. I don't understand how a matter of faith and religion is supposed to justify that, much less make anyone feel better, though perhaps I'm misunderstanding - is that meant to imply that whatever God they believe in saw some sort of reason to condone the murder of that woman for an arbitrary higher purpose? Because that sounds more sadistic than comforting to me.

Edited (...jfc that tag was bad let me fix it) 2013-02-16 09:44 (UTC)

No, I understand, as meddling in the realm of the dead is something we don't do ourselves - at least, we don't if we have any common sense. A few have tried; it never ends the way they want it to, and it's another thing that falls under the classification of a forbidden practice.

I personally don't believe in an afterlife, per se, but I don't think death is necessarily the end, either.

I don't know what exactly is after, for the soul, but I do know people don't just... end. That is a fact, for me. The details though? I think you'll find so many people fighting over details from all the different places that people come from.

The details, I think, are what's up to individual belief as far as I'm concerned. As such, it matters very little to me what others think. Should they want to tell me here, then I'll listen, certainly, because I did ask. However, that doesn't mean that my beliefs will change to match theirs, as that would be a massive lack of conviction on my part.

No joke right? People should believe in the things that are important to them, but that shouldn't stop someone from realizing that the angle they're looking at their important thing might be a little... off. Something like the afterlife though? Unless someone has been there and back, then they shouldn't say, because all they're doing is trying to talk themselves into it more than whoever they're talking to.

From what I understand, you haven't seen that afterlife yourself, correct? You mentioned your death - you were brought here immediately afterwards?

Yep, totally got stolen. I know I died, half my body was completely crushed, but once everything stopped... I woke up here. I wasn't eager to be done, sure, but here is both like a second chance and like being cheated too.

That seems to be the case for most who were brought here after death, actually - they were brought either just before they died, or immediately after blacking out and before the afterlife. I don't know that anyone's actually seen it, period, come to think of it.

Makes a guy wonder if maybe this place isn't trying to be a deliberate waystation of sorts, what with the whole 'you can't die anymore' thing it seems to have going on. I have no idea what kind of limits that has though, I admit, the guy who told me was pretty uncomfortable about it.

Is that so? I've heard a fair amount about that myself; what have you heard?

Any particular reason why you're so curious?

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