blargh

[jmtorres]

This is about three and a half days I've lost to being sick and exhausted at this point, and right now in the semester I can't afford it. I keep wanting to turn my brain on enough to write fic and I can't do that so how the fuck am I supposed to do homework?

I want to do something nonstandard with Ruby's historical background (because honestly, "when the plague was big," not that fucking specific) and I need to bounce this off people and work out the kinks, because sending non-European, non-christian girl to christian hell where she turns into a demon is kind of... what the fuck. Like it's granting christian mythology superiority in this storyverse even over people who don't believe in it, because one specific way to get sent to hell is not to believe in the christian mythos, and that overrides whatever her beliefs were? Not so cool. Not in general but especially not when non-christian mythologies have valid existence in this storyverse. When I tried a few basic parameters on Ruby herself, Ruby was pissed off as fuck to have landed in white people's hell (in the historical parameter set I gave her, christian missionaries she'd known were white, her folks weren't, ergo, "white people's hell.") I mean, this brings up the larger question of in the Supernatural universe, are (lingering ghosthood), [christian] heaven and [christian] hell the only afterlives available to humans, or are other beliefs valid? Can people be reincarnated? Is there a Hades, with Elysian fields and Tartarus? A Valhalla? Etc?

Maybe catching up on recent episodes later will kick me some new ideas on this. Damn it, I dislike defaulting Ruby to christian/euro background, it feels like invisibling the rest of the world not to explore other possibilities, but it's... problematic. yeah.

(At least I can get that much think on, even if I'm not writing actual narrative?)

Comments

[grey_bard]

I think sending a non-European non-Christian girl to hell in your fic would be... deeply problematic. Because as far as I can tell, that's not what happened in the show and we have no reason to believe it does. Supernatural has enough fail that ... extrapolating *new* fail... would bother me. Personally.

I mean, I'm not saying it would not be justified in certain ways, based on a lot of Christian theology? But given how much of theology Supernatural plain old ignores...

Not saying the *fic* would be fail. But.

[jmtorres]

I swear Ruby's background is the vaguest of the vague. I don't know anyone on Supernatural ever bothered to work that one out.

[grey_bard]

However, on reflection, I would be *all over* an AU in which Ruby was some *other* kind of formerly human possession spirit (they abound)from another religion and/or culture.

Everything in present day would be the same minus Tami and search and replace on demon and hell in her meager backstory right up until the whole "I DID IT ALL FOR The Money LUCIFER! I WIN!". She could *totally* be working the whole "Use your powers, screw their moral scruples about your powers, screw their apocalypse" from the motivation of "Your Judeo-Christian Apocalypse can TOTALLY BITE ME".

[jmtorres]

Do you think I could start a ficathon of Rubies of the world?

[grey_bard]

HAHAHAH. If you made the required wordcount super low, like 500 words, I would TOTALLY sign up.

[grey_bard]

Alternately! You could do a "BITE ME APOCALYPSE" ficathon for show characters, reinterpreted characters (Rubies of the WORLD!), original characters, mythological characters, and crossover characters who are not believers of the various Abrahamic Religions and are like APOCALYPSE NO! to Supernatural end of world thing.

[everysecondtuesday]

I would probably sign up for either of these!

*pointed, hopeful look at jmtorres*

[jmtorres]

I'm dying, someone do it for me.

(also send me glitter pens and an iPhone.)

[everysecondtuesday]

I'm already running something with shirozora. My powers of organization are sadly limited.

[jmtorres]

You can't send me glitter pens!?!!??!

[everysecondtuesday]

See, I would need your address to do that.

[grey_bard]

It... could have been? I guess? If a non-Christian somehow got the chance to sell her soul to a Christian-worldview-demon. (HI TAMI!)

On the other hand, the non-Christian gods in Hammer of the Gods were pretty open about their issues with the Christian God and angels, and "Our worshipers go to your Hell" was not listed.

[grey_bard]

To clarify, I would not be like "JM IS FULL OF FAIL!" just that the (handwave) faily cultural and theological issues of "Even righteous people who don't believe in my thing go to HELLLLLL" religions - which is one fail we haven't really seen on show - would be too much *external* fail on top of the preexisting failcake for me probably.

Which is to say, the fail is in the culture, not you. But going after the fail that is not there in the show when there is so much fail already there to go around...