exeggutorhead | 47th Transformation [ANONYMOUS text

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47th Transformation [ANONYMOUS text | action for Mahogany]

[There's an anonymous message popping up on the network this afternoon. And I do mean anonymous; Envy has made as sure as he possibly can that nobody would be able to trace this question back to his Gear ID.]

What does it mean for someone to have a soul? In your world or in your religion or whatever you think. What does having one give you, or not having one keep you from doing?

how can you even tell if you have one?

[It'll be a little while before Envy actually responds to any answers, because two seconds after he hits 'send' and realizes what he's done, he chucks the 'Gear clear across his hotel room. Miraculously, it doesn't break the machine entirely, even if the screen gets cracked all to hell. He can't believe he even thought to ask something like that, much less actually went through with it. Since when did he start turning into Lust and asking ridiculous philosophical questions about the nature of existence? That's something he's always just rolled his eyes at and halfway tolerated, why does he feel the need to ask things like this now?]

[But this is a question that's bothered him for more than a year now, ever since he took that brief trip back to Amestris. Does he have a soul after all? And what the hell is he supposed to do with the thing if he does? Mostly he ignores it, leaves it alone as a doubt in the very back of his mind. But then during the last crazy weekend, Heather had been sure he had one, had brought that question back to the forefront. It's been months since then, and he still can't shake it off. And if he has to ask stupid questions to the network in his weakness, then...maybe the answers will let him push this back down into something he can manage.]

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A soul is the body's motivating force. What keeps it alive, what drives it to keep living. If a thing has a wish to live and actively pursues that goal, then chances are astronomically high it has a soul.

Interesting, so nothing to do with emotions or any of that? Just the will to live?

Yes. Should the seat of emotions be removed, which also houses one's personality and memories, the soul can take over and continue to run a being as a living thing without feelings at all, though the memories are often kept. It is a very flexible thing, a soul.

If you are questioning whether or not you possess one, given your capacity to ask if you have one and what I assume is decidedly not a suicidal nature, you do have a soul.

And what would you consider to be the seat of emotions? Most people would put that and the personality into the soul category.

It's less if I do have one and more a question of how long I've had one. When I came here I was turned into a human, so getting a soul to go with it made sense. Back home things like me are scientifically considered to lack them, but I'm not so sure of that now.

The heart. Not the physical one that pumps blood, it is a metaphysical thing, with its own powers and flaws. All living things have a heart, although some hearts are artificial and some are natural.

You have likely had a soul ever since you were born. Or hatched, or created or decanted, or whatever is appropriate to your species before you became human. If you were capable of acting in your own self-interests and self-preservation, then you had a soul even then. If you were a, for lack of a better word, if you were a mindless automaton receiving orders and making no decisions for yourself then perhaps you did not have a soul.

I see. The kind of thing I am is considered an incomplete human, lacking emotion or the ability to connect with others. In my world, it's said that it's souls that we're supposed to be missing, but in your world people would probably say that we were missing our hearts instead.

Yes, it seems so. I wonder if your people simply don't understand the difference between a heart and a soul, or if the cosmology is so radically different that hearts and souls are the same thing where you are from. Without knowing for certain the true spiritual makeup of the reality you come from, I could not say for certain.

People are thought of as three parts: the body, the mind, and the soul. And a soul is something that can be taken out of a body and either put into a new container or distilled into a solid form.

I've known several souls without bodies, inhabiting normally inanimate objects. They don't have any hearts or anything, but they still have their emotions along with their personalities and drives. I haven't done much research on that kind of thing myself, but there are scientists who study it.

Would that not suggest that the 'mind' is in fact the soul in such a situation? If one can extract the spirit and pit it even inside an inanimate object and they continue to be themselves, then the soul is what thinks for them, is it not? The mind is not needed.

I guess that all depends on what you mean by a soul. I'm not exactly an expert on that kind of thing, but I always figured souls were like... spirits, I guess. The essence of who you are. Or maybe just life force.

When I think of something soulless, I picture something that just acts without reason. Something cold and apathetic. But again, that really depends on the definition you're going with.

If I was sure of my definition, I wouldn't have had to ask everyone, would I?

The essence of who you are...that sound closest, though. What do you mean by acting without reason? That sounds more to do with the mind than the soul.

Heh, fair enough.

I guess I should've phrased that better. When I say acting without reason I mean more like... irrationally, without being held back by morals or ethics. Or, if you look at the soul as a sense of self, you could end up with something that's just... blank. Like I said, though, I'm no expert, and I'm sure that kind of thing varies from world to world.

And as for how you'd know if you have one... I almost feel like if you're asking that question, then you might already have your answer. What brought this up, anyway?

From the kind of answers I've been getting, I'd say that there must be some differences between worlds. Unless some people are just wrong, which could easily be true.

In my world, people think of souls as something only a human can have. There are creatures that are supposed to be soulless, but still have personalities and drives; they're incomplete beings and lacking that final piece of humanity.

It's just something I've been thinking about for a while. I wasn't getting anywhere with answers on my own, so I thought I'd ask.

[Something only humans can have, huh? Before he types up his next response, Riku reads over the anon's words a few more times.]

So what is that final piece of humanity? You say these soulless beings have personalities and drives, so what sets them apart from humans? Looks, something internal?

If I had the answer to that, I wouldn't be asking the network stupid questions.

There are some differences in looks, and they have special powers, but that's not the fundamental difference. They're missing something, which people have always assumed was a soul. It's hard to describe.

They're things that shouldn't exist, but they do.

A soul is the part that makes a person that person. Their mind holds their memories, and their body is a vessel, but when you die, your soul moves on, or doesn't, depending on what you've done or if you've dipped into forbidden jutsu.

[...sparkle...text...he hasn't talked to Obito through text in long enough that he'd somehow forgotten the sparkles.]

You're going to have to tell me what the hell a forbidden jutsu is. Something that damages someone's soul?

[Never forget the sparkles Envy, that way lies madness.]

A forbidden jutsu is just that, something that's been forbidden. Some bring people back from the dead, some are just highly deadly, and others do things totally unrelated and are banned for other assorted reasons. But if you've fiddled with your soul using jutsu, it's pretty much a guarantee that if someone knew about it then they'd probably make it forbidden.

[He will never forget again!]

Makes sense. Bringing people back from the dead is a forbidden science in my world too, but it only harms the one trying it physically. The damage to the soul only happens to the person they were trying to bring back.

I honestly don't know most forbidden jutsu since if something is forbidden waving around what it is is sort of a red flag. You know, a come and get me to anyone who feels like they're being challenged. So, some are known of but never seen, see?

As for your stuff... sounds painful.

Dealing with the soul itself has never really been my area of expertise, unfortunately, but I have a fair amount of experience with them. As far as I'm aware, the soul is tantamount to one's consciousness as well as their life force - that which one cannot exist without, because without it there would be no "one" to exist.

Where I'm from, there are technically soulless beings, but they aren't alive in any sense of the word; they remain "dead" or suspended until there's some sort of soul put into them. However, the soul that's put into them wouldn't technically be theirs, I think - I may be wrong on this so don't quote me, but I think that it would just be shoving someone else's consciousness into a different body or container. The container, then, couldn't really be said to have a soul of its own; the soul would still belong to...well, whomever it belonged to before they were put into this new container of theirs.

I think that the best way to judge whether you have one or not would probably be determining whether you have both 1) your own consciousness and sense of self-awareness, and 2) your own personality, distinct from those around you.

So souls in your world are tangible enough to take hold of and move to other bodies?

[Yeah, he knows that already, but he'd really rather not hold up a neon sign saying HELLO I AM ALSO FROM AMESTRIS by acting unsurprised about it.]

And would the soul transplanted into the soulless body take over that body with its own individual personality, leaving the original body in that kind of suspended animation? Or dead, I guess is more likely.

Pull that off right, and someone could live forever.

Ah, no, they'd definitely be dead. Or, well, their original body would be.

Though I don't know that it's terribly practical to live forever that way; I suppose that one could, but the problem with it is that the new body might begin to cannibalize the soul to sustain itself, at least theoretically speaking, which would inevitably kill the person in question.

Yikes, that's no good then.

Not much of a surprise, though. I wouldn't think that putting a soul in anything that isn't its original body would turn out well in any world.

I don't know about that, as there are plenty of beings here that supposedly didn't have souls where they came from; they seem to be doing just fine with whatever this place has given them.

Very true.

But then again, this world seems to be the exception to a lot of rules.

Well, no one's denying that.

At the same time, it's also the situation that's most relevant to us right now, isn't it? Exception or not, it's what we have to work with.

A soul is just energy. The animating force, I think they used to call it. If you're alive, you have one. I've met all kinds of different races of aliens on all kinds of planets, even machines, and I'd say every one of them had a soul.

Think of it this way. The universe had the big bang, right? A spark that started everything and without which nothing would exist. For living things, that's your soul. The moment you came into existence and became you, you proved you had one.

So, what, even a plant would have one?

I'm not exactly alive, though. Or at least, I wasn't back home.

Alive is more than what the scientific definition says. It's so much more. A computer isn't flesh and blood, but it can still be alive. Some of them, anyway.

A plant could have a soul, if it had something that made it distinctly itself and not just another plant. You can't distinguish one blade of grass from another, not really, but beings with souls have their own thoughts, sometimes their own feelings. You're not a blade of grass or you wouldn't be asking to begin with.

Maybe having a soul is just being able to ask if you have one?

If a soul is what makes you, you, then I think it's pretty close to what the worlds I come from call a "heart."

People without hearts have memories of the people that they were, but they don't really feel anything. It's like they're just pretending. But I've learned that even people without them can get them back eventually.

You probably don't even really realize when it starts to grow back - or grow at all. It just does, slowly. Then before you know it, you're not just acting on memories anymore - it's genuine.

In my world, most people think you either have one or you don't, and getting a soul when you didn't have one before would be nearly impossible.

What would get the hearts to start growing back? Something specific, or is it just by chance? And what did you mean by the people they were before?

I used to think something like that... Like if you don't have one then you don't really exist.

But that's wrong...

People lose their hearts where I come from. Sometimes the empty shell left behind starts to move on its own. They have their old memories, but no heart. No feelings or anything. Basically Nobodies just act based on what their memories told them that they were like.

When the heart starts to come back? I couldn't tell you exactly. I know that it happens partially because someone sees you. When you start having feelings about the people around you. I think that's a good sign.

This is more a question to be answered by a scholar than a soldier, but I speak from experience that a soul is your immortal body; long after the flesh has gone cold and started to rot, your soul will eternally exist. All mortals have a soul, but I do not know if it is possible for a man to be born without one.

What about someone who isn't exactly mortal or a human, and wasn't born in the same way?

[Dante gives the question careful thoughts; for a moment he seems quite stumped, but a chirp from his Togepi nearby seems to provide some inspiration for an answer.]

My honest answer is that I do not know. But if God would judge humans for their sin and either condemn or bring their souls to a higher place, thus has he done the same for demons and angels. If even the unholy and the holy beings are subject to the same laws, thus must they too have souls that can be judged.

So yes, perhaps even those born not human or mortal have souls.

Not a bad answer. You say you're a soldier and not a scholar, but you do seem to know a few things.

Just curious, but are angels, demons, and humans the only things in your world? Aside from animals, of course.

I have witnessed sights unseen by living men. It is both a blessing and a curse, for though I wish that I could erase such depraved sights from my mind, I have learned much through my journey into the Inferno about what makes a man, and what makes a demon.

Yes. We did not have Pokemon nor did we have...'electricity', though I am told that in the future it is possible that it would've been invented, even in my world.

do you think and feel stuff?


congrats you've got a soul

Okay, so thinking and feeling means soul.

So new question. What the hell do you do with a soul when you've got one?

[Because he's metaphorically holding his increasingly-convinced-it-really-has-been-there-all-along soul as though it's simultaneously a priceless porcelain vase and a nest of angry hornets. This whole soul business was much easier when he thought he didn't have one, or could write off having emotions as a Johto-only thing.]

um idk that's like asking what you do with toes

it is not like asking what to do with toes! it's more complicated than that

more complicated sure but the answer's still the same dude

a soul isn't like something you win at an arcade you just HAVE it

even assholes have them, it's just that they're shitty souls since they're assholes

[It's a while before the next reply comes.]

yeah okay, maybe it was a stupid question

but in my world, the people like me have been trying to get their own souls for a long time. if we've had them all along that makes everything pointless

hell I wasn't even trying to get one, and now here I am with one of the stupid things

sorry, didn't mean to devalue your life struggles or anything

but yeah you have one

take good care of it





and other fluffy advice i guess

[wh

okay what the hell is this even supposed to mean, and are these not-gauntlet things just not used for normal communications or...what]

You've feeling enough to write this, haven't you? Why would you think you haven't got a soul?

[He didn't even really pay attention in church and he knows that much. That's like asking what color the sky is.

(ps it's blue you moron)]

Edited 2013-08-30 02:13 (UTC)

There are a lot of reasons why. Besides, I'm pretty sure I have one here. It's back in my world I don't know about.

And you didn't answer the actual question. What do you think a soul is?

[Envy's gameplan in any given situation: when in doubt, distract distract distract.]

[That sure is a question Walter's never been asked. And it's frustrating because he feels like he knows the answer but he has no idea how you're supposed to put it into words.]

Tis what goes with the body to form a person. [Best he can do.]

Your soul is you. I don't think it's that hard to get.

As for how you know if you have one, the fact that you're thinking about whether or not you have a soul is enough to say that you do in my world.

Yeah, maybe it's easy for you if you've always known you had one.

So what you're saying is that a soul is self-awareness?

I think every living creature has a soul. How it's taught in my world is that your soul is your life essence, an indicator of your health and sort of a life compass; emotions, morals and intuition. I can't quite comprehend the idea of something that's alive and conscious of their life not having a soul?

If you didn't have one before coming here, then [...] is it possible that you're not alive or that you were created by someone lacking the capability to give you a soul?

Sorry, I know that's prying. But what exactly does it mean to you whether or not you have a soul?

[Oh boy. He doesn't remember those old lectures word-for-word, but he can give the Okumura Abridged Version.]

You can't tell if you have one. It's just there. Think of it like a passport you gotta take care of. You're born, you get a soul that supposed to be free of sin, then you die. And go on to heaven, if you took care of it.

Not having one just means you're not alive. Everything has a soul.

In my world a soul is something that can be measured, usually.

So how do you take care of a soul? Not sinning?

Edited 2013-09-03 01:33 (UTC)

Measured? How d'you measure a soul?

Yeah, not sinning. I'm not too sure what else to do besides that. Never paid much attention. Just don't do anything that would obviously get you in deep trouble.

If you're aware enough to wonder, that means you've got one. Your soul's what makes you a person, and it's something that keeps going even after your body quits. It doesn't give you anything, it's just you.

I've seen what happens when there's a body left but no soul, and [there's a brief pause.] it's something nobody deserves.

That is something it gives you, then. It gives you a self.

How does a body with no soul happen, in your world?

[Since before he came to Johto Envy considered himself a body with no soul, he's especially curious about that.]

I don't know about the how, but a few months back something went...wrong.

When you die, you're supposed to stay dead. These bodies, unless the brain's destroyed, they come back. But they're not who they were before, they're not even human. They just eat.

People coming back from the dead never turns out well, I know that much.

How often was this happening?

[Envy is actually a dead guy brought back to life himself, but things like him only get created once in a blue moon. And homunculi aren't contagious, so he's not even thinking of it like a virus.]

Every time. If you died, you turned. If you were bitten by one, something in the bite got into you and you died. Only way to avoid it was to destroy your brain.

You can imagine how a lot of people chose to escape from that kind of hell.

[At least, if they have guns where you come from.]

_{[Out and about, Townshend is just trying to enjoy a quiet walk. Boo, his Litwick, sits on his shoulder and babbles happily with a drinking straw in her nubby little hands.]

[It doesn't take him long to find his favorite palm-tree headed friend! And he...doesn't look happy. 8c]

[Henry decides to investigate the best way he knows how which is to advance toward Envy with his arms straight up in the air.]}

Envvyyyy-y-y-y.

[No, this palmtree head is not happy. He's been answering the replies to his question, and now he's out trying to get his head straight about all of it.]

[...and get his 'Gear screen repaired at the Center, that too.]

[He looks up automatically when he hears his name, and then stares. Hen...ry...]

Yyyyesss?

[On a normal day he might have put his arms up in the air too because playing along yes let's do this, but today is not a normal day.]

What are you doiii-i-i-ing?

_{[Once Henry reaches him, he lets his arms fall to his sides. His weird hermit crab gesture hadn't been returned.]}

You okay, man?

[Envy decides to answer the easier question first, and holds up his 'Gear to show Henry the giant spiderweb crack in the screen.]

Going to get this fixed.

[He shrugs, his face falling into the neutral smirk that is his default expression when he doesn't want to show how he's feeling, but his shoulders are slightly hunched.]

Not really, but I'll live. It's been a confusing morning.

_{[Henry makes a sympathetic face. There probably isn't a person in Johto that hadn't had to get at least one thing repaired on their gear.]}

Man...what happened?

_{[And that could either be angled at the state of the screen or the state of Envy. It was hard to tell.]}

[And Envy decides to answer the easier side of that question.]

I threw it at a wall.

...You want to come with me?

_{[Henry holds his tongue. Envy didn't seem the type to just break his stuff. Something was going on. The photographer nods and falls into step.]}

[Envy's quiet for a while himself while they walk, unusually so for him. Eventually, though, he speaks up.]

Do you remember anything from the last time everything went nuts for the weekend? Before we woke up in the woods.

_{[Henry thinks very hard about this. Most of that weekend was a huge blur but there were a couple of things...]}

I rode a unicorn. That was kind of interesting.

[France is taking a break at work when this message comes up on the 'Gear feed. The Mahogany Inn Kitchen isn't one of the bigger or busiest places he's worked at in Johto or Kanto, so he's able to take his time with constructing his comment.]

To have a soul means that there is an aspect of a being that is able to transcend the physicality of the body, that isn't bound by the body's basic needs. There's a lot of theological arguments across religions in my world about the nature of the soul and whether those besides humans have them. I personally think that it is your soul, since it is what survives the body, that allows you entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. Whether or not I myself have a soul is a question that has never been answered, and, since I cannot tell definitely what a soul looks or feels like, I don't know how to tell if you have one or not.

Edited 2013-09-03 21:16 (UTC)

Well, you're the first person to respond who hasn't been sure of their soul either.

I'm not so sure about whether that whole surviving the body thing has much to do with me. Or maybe it does, it gets complicated there. What about emotions, do you think having a soul has an impact on whether you can feel those or not?

[That's one of those things he's been getting a few mixed answers about. And if this other person isn't sure either, Envy is especially curious about the answer.]

Well, most people here are human who don't appear to have had to consider this sort of question. I've met someone who claimed to be a god of death even.

I'm inclined to say that the soul does have an impact on how one experiences emotions, especially since emotions are heavily connected to moral choices and the agency needed to make them. One of my philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, claimed that the soul is what gives humans a conscience, that endows humanity to think above the body's basic passions. I cannot say if this is entirely true because I do like to think that I am able to tell right from wrong, but I have been wrong about my moral compass many times in the past.

[Look, through the power of anon, France has actually pretty much confessed to being wrong occasionally. This is monumental in its own way.]

Even some of the non-humans I've been hearing from sound pretty sure of themselves. But it might be different where they're from, or for what they are. What I am is a special case even in my world.

I've always thought of a soul as something that lets you feel emotions or make connections with people at all. Things like me aren't supposed to have them.

As for that philosopher...choices are easy to make even if you can't feel anything about them, you just need to have the mind to make them. For right and wrong, I guess you'd need emotions to really know the difference, but those can be learned from observation too.

["My philosophers" sticks out to Envy after a minute; he nearly overlooks it, he's spent so much time with France that it doesn't sound odd to him. He decides to let it go for now, but the seed's been planted.]

[A few hours pass between Envy's message and Mary's reply. Seems like this little girl's given the subject some thought.]

is a soul like a heart?

That depends on what you think a heart is. In my world it's just an organ that pumps blood.

then how can a heart be fabricated?

[...what even?]

What do you mean fabricated?

[Mary honestly isn't sure of the definition of the word herself, but after consulting her travel companion, she answers Envy:]

it means fake.

I know what the word fabricated means

Are there a lot of fake hearts in your world or something?

i dont think so

[Another text follows very soon after:]

if your heart is fabricated does it mean youre not real?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

47th Transformation [ANONYMOUS text | action for Mahogany]

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[two secretive guys right here]

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voice; he doesn't do anon

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sorry this is so late orz;

well I'm late too, so no worries

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