Trutharchivist

Since more than 24 hours passed from my previous status update and no one expressed objection to my idea, I'll post here my thoughts of afterlife and its representations in books and religion.

The first thing we need to understand is, what do I mean when I say afterlife? I know we all know what it means, but I still want to define it. Well, the word "afterlife" itself is self-explanatory: after-life. What happens after you live. Many religions believe that after the body dies, something remains. Usually it's your soul, which I'm not sure if is the cognition, or part of it, or your life force. Anyway, this part of yours remains after your death. Where does it go? Interestingly enough, ancient Egyptians believed your soul (or however they called it) returns to your body after your death, and this body is taken to the afterlife, which is why they embalmed their dead. Of course, they believed the soul passes a judgement before it returns. This is an interesting concept, that I believe appears in every religion. Usually this judgement ends with either being sent to heaven or hell, though some believe the ultimate punishment is destruction of the soul - complete death, without return. So basically, the belief in an afterlife consists of three parts: the immortality of the soul, the judgement, and the world of souls - heaven, or whatever way you chose to call it.

Now, after explaining the basics of afterlife, let's proceed to see it's representation in books! Afterlife appear in many book, including (maybe) some of Sanderson. The books I know off that I'll probably refer to include Secret History (of Mistborn, of course), Warbreaker, Shadows for Silence and Bands of Mourning - all by Brandon Sanderson (out of the Cosmere series, including two Mistborn stories (one novel, one novella), one standalone-for-now novel and one novella, I think), Sabriel by Garth Nix (out of the series Old Kingdom), The Screaming Staircase and The Whispering Skull by Jonathan Stroud (OOTS Lockwood & Co.), Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin, Death Weavers by Brandon Mull (OOTS Five KIngdoms), The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman (OOTS His Dark Materials), The Black Reckoning by John Stephens (OOTS The Books of Beginning), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling (OOTS... Harry Potter, I think?), the Death sub-series of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett, The Silmarilion by J. R. R. Tolkien (edited by his son, Christopher, out of Tolkien's Legendarium), The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis (OOTS The Chronicles of Narnia), Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke (OOTS Inkworld, I think? Maybe it's named the Inkheart series), and I believe I forgot a book or two. I might refer to Riordan, though I'm not sure how much I like his books.

One thing all the books I've mentioned have in common is having sights of dead people - not their bodies, but their souls - sticking around after their death. This doesn't necessarily mean in all these books souls are immortal; in many of them (the Cosmere books, Sabriel, Harry Potter, Discworld, humans in The Silmarilion, Lockwood & co. and Inkdeath) the ultimate fate of the souls (or minds, or ghosts) is unclear. In the Cosmere, when someone dies he (or she, or whatever) stays a little in the Cognitive Realm - the more Invested he is the more time he stays - before passing to the Beyond, about which nothing is known. Sanderson, being generally a pluralist, didn't want to write his books with a determined afterlife, so as to not make people snort at Jasnah's opinion and say "yeah, she doesn't believe, but we know otherwise." Or, in short, to not misrepresent atheists, which is great, since it means that in some ways, the Cosmere is not all that different from our world: there are both proofs and disproofs for the existence of afterlife and the God Beyond. Interestingly enough, judgement sometimes is passed on those passing through the CR, as seen in BoM (Harmony offers Wax another chance to live) and WB (Endowment and the Returned). A soul can also achieve eternal - or at least very long - existence in the CR by becoming a Silver, like Kel in SH, or by other, unknown means used on Threnody, as seen in SfS, though the Threnodite Shades don't keep their mind afterwards, unlike Kelsier. There are potential RoW spoilers here, which I won't get into. I will move to other books you almost surely didn't read, because... only RoW spoilers are forbidden here! Anyway, I'll start with the most known books.

It is evident in HP, unlike the Cosmere series, that the soul probably keeps existing even after passing on. So seems to be the case of the humans in The Silmarilion, as I believe it is stated that they (probably) go to be with Eru-Illuvatar, outside the Circles of the World (or something like that. Sorry, I've read the book in Hebrew). Sabriel also seems to hint in this direction, and I'm not truly sure about Discworld. What's interesting in Discworld is that it seems, in the few times Pratchett bothered to make order out of things, that the afterlife there is what you believe it will be, not unlike something Riordan wrote in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, though I sort of prefer to stick to Pratchett in that. He might not be very organized, but Riordan annoys me lately, and isn't all that much more organized himself. So, in most of the books where the dead's fate is not exactly known, it is at the very least known that they stay in existence - this includes Lockwood & Co., in which there is a mirror that can show you the afterlife - and I probably just spoiled you one of the books. Never mind. Anyway, I said "most" and not "all except Cosmere" because of one fascinating book called Inkdeath.

Now, if you haven't read the Inkworld series - you very well should, because it's a very good series. My older brother that introduced me to Sanderson used to say, at least before he read Sanderson, that Inkheart is the best book he ever read. I don't exactly share his view on it, but it is a good book. Don't proceed unless you've read the book, because spoilers are coming. You may, if you wish, skip to the next paragraph, or spoil he book for yourselves. Now, let's start! In this series, two to three people come back to life by some trick, though I believe Funke did this better than most other authors. The first, Farid, was brought back soon after his death through a trade with Death's daughters, the White women, which apparently both love and are afraid of fire. The second one returns as part of a fascinating bargain one of the protagonists - to be exact, Mo Folchart, the heroin's father. Death agrees to let Mo, who was brought to her (yes, Death here is femalen) by the White women (though he didn't die naturally), go back to live, on the condition that he'd bring her the one man he made immortal - Adderhead, the king of the southern kingdom in Inkworld. When he asks for the return of his friend, Dustfinger, too, she agrees reluctantly, adding Meggie, Mo's daughter, to the bargain, which states that if Mo fails to kill Adderhead in a set amount of time - he, his daughter and Dustfinger will all die. The interesting part of it all is the fact that Dustfinger forgot everyone he once knew in death, and that it seems that most dead move onward, though the White women once brought Dustfinger's long dead daugher to him, so maybe I'm wrong. Anyway, nothing is clear about what's being done to souls after death, though it seems that they do stay in existence, though I thought it might be otherwise. Oh well. So it probably is all except Cosmere imply the soul's eternal existence.

All those books are books that definitely have after death existence, though there never is an on-screen scene in the world of the dead. It's existence is either implied, whether heavily or lightly, or not at all known. All the other books I've mentioned are unlike that in the respect they all have on-screen scenes in the WotD. Those books include: Elsewhere (which actually takes place only in the WotD), Death Weavers, The Amber Spyglass, The Black Reckoning and The Last Battle. funnily enough, one of these books was written by an atheist while another was written by a devoted Christian, and one was actually written by a Jew. (could you guess which is which? The second is easy, and to a lesser extent the first is also, but I believe the third is hard.)

And you know what? I think this post is long enough for now, so I'll keep the rest of the rumble to another time. Thank you for reading! If you see something discaussable somewhere up there, please try to discuss it.

Did you just... give me reputation on my second post in the UC fanfic? I'll proceed to act like Fadran claims he does and complain. (BTW, sorry I did that here. Didn't know where was the proper place for it.)

I suspect you because you were suspiciously active when I got it. Don't say you're always like that; that is right only when you are on the shard, and being on another timezone, I'm online most of the time you aren't.

So, two basic things here (this'll be a short one): first, my magic system - the Faunologos Mindgardening - is very close to complete, and I theoretically plan to write a story about it. I'll need, of course, to add a little to the worldbuilding, but I generally know how the world should look like, though I didn't try to draw a map yet, which probably will be necessary. Anyway, the question is what story to write? The original story I had for this world was a short story that took place in our world, and basically introduced a covenant of foxes discussing the effect of the quarantine on their work. This could work, but I'd want to expand a little bit. Any ideas? I wish to remind you that this world is all about representations, so it should be something connected to that. I considered using another story I had, which was based on Cinderella, but this one started with a weird idea which I don't know if I could make into a plot.

Second, I've been thinking lately a little about the representation of afterlife in books, and though of writing a post about it. Would you care if I post it as a status update? @Ixthos, if you wish I could also write here a little about Judaism's opinion of such things, though it might be better to keep the religious discussions in the PM...

Thank you for reading! And now I'm going to count on you all commenting on it. Practically stupid of me, I think.

Oh, and unless you allow me to rumble here - don't except many status updates. I'm not exactly this kind of a person who writes those regularly.