So here's a thing that bothers me

[fufaraw]

about the use of souls as fuel for the Darkness-bomb, a thing that has bothered me before about the use and treatment of souls. It's likely a product of my Christian Protestant upbringing, but isn't the soul a person's *being*, and after death, that person's afterlife--whether in heaven, hell, or some other destination revealed and supported by that person's religion or faith?

So you live a good life, kind to your fellow beings, and doing what you can on earth to ease suffering, and you die in the expectation that your afterlife will be at least pleasant, hopeful meetings with your beloved ones who've gone on before you and will come after you. That the pain you endured in life will be repaid in peace and earned..."happiness," for lack of a better word at the moment.

So that's the deal you accept, and work toward earning, in life. And in death, you've achieved it. Then suddenly, your soul is one of thousands, millions, siphoned off to fuel some plan or other of beings vaster than your understanding, and their plans. "You," your essence, your soul, become nothing but a unit of measure, easily sacrificed and undone forever in some scheme you had no say in.

And my thought is, how can these forces be "for good" if they deal in people's *souls* like toothpicks in a card game?

Comments

[casey28.livejournal.com]

It sucks, but I guess they thought it was only way to save the world and all of creation. Of course, it still doesn't make it right, and I wish they'd shown some feelings of regret.

[anniespinkhouse.livejournal.com]

I guess not believing in the soul thing removes that problem for me. It's all abstract, creative imagination. Even when trying to be a good christian as a kid I never really subscribed to the idea of afterlife, except in the sense that my atoms will be reassembled into other thing and that's good enough for me. For some reason I don't need any part of my essence or consciousness to continue.

When I heard the plot (I haven't seen more than snippets) my main issue was with how you destroy Amara with souls when she's been snacking on them all along? Did they explain that? Was it like overcharging an old style battery or something? Would it cause a cosmic puke?

[fufaraw]

Well, within the context of the show (context? What context?), souls mean something--souls have energy, or *are* energy, which can be harnessed or focused into a source of power. Show has souls sitting in little monk cells of happiness in heaven, or being tortured in hell, and when a demon is "ganked," the soul, which was human and turned to demon in hell, is destroyed. Souls have been kept captive in mason jars. It all plays on the energy idea, and even if the soul energy is long past remembering who the *person* was, and their life on earth, that energy still retains the core, the essence of that person.

Regardless of my personal beliefs (which align pretty closely with yours), *show* has established these parameters for souls. So it seems to me that squandering them like so many Eveready batteries is worth a second thought.

[anniespinkhouse.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yeah. I guess at this point Sam and Dean are working with Crowley,Rowena, Lucifer and the Book of the Damned so its pretty dire, end of the world stuff and it might be end of the world for all souls too, so why not - for the greater good? Sacrifice the few for the many? Mostly I just don't think the writers could afford for the boys to question the ethics because they wrote themselves into a mess which they had neither the screen time or skills to fix. *sigh*

[ash48.livejournal.com]

Did they explain that?

My thought was it was about the light the souls generated to defeat the darkness. I'm not sure it was about their energy - but I might be wrong.

The soul thing is pretty messy and they deliberately didn't make any of that clear.

[anniespinkhouse.livejournal.com]

Ah, okay, I can head canon that it is what type of energy it is converted into that counts.

[roxymissrose.livejournal.com]

I worried what using the souls like that meant. Were those all souls caught in the veil, sort of thing, or trapped on this plane, like ghosts? What happens to them if they're used like that?

The first time we heard of souls used for power, I thought what was happening was that these souls were trapped until their energy was tapped, and then they were released to go on to their final destination--like, if Dean had exploded the souls, they wouldn't have been erased, just released. But I'm pretty sure I felt that way because that's what I wanted to believe.

[ash48.livejournal.com]

Souls in this 'verse are like money (power, and currency etc) for heaven or hell. I'm not sure we know that the souls are "aware" of their existence - as in, being individuals. I suspect they are viewed as mere energy. Of in this case - light. I think they are different to ghosts who are sometimes aware they are ghosts. (And I swear if you asked a writer in the show they wouldn't know either - though I'd be interested to know what their thoughts on it were).

[kalliel]

I had a similar thought as well when they brought up this plan! Especially since S6/7 made such a big deal about, you know, not using souls to do stuff. And even what was disturbing about Amara at the beginning was her use of souls as fuel. I mean, I guess their thinking was that the end of the world is the end of the world, which is fair. But it was a pretty suspect plan! The way I thought about it through fic was Sam admitting (and feeling kind of bad about admitting) that they didn't bat an eye about the souls; but that gdi if he and Dean were going to have to do this over and over and over again, give up everything over and over again, then the dead should start pulling their weight, too. (But then he feels bad about saying that, too.)