(no subject)
Very spoilery, so beware. It's just that when you've been playing a character for a few years you get inside his head, and he inside yours.
In the beginning apparently there was God. This flies in the face of Shinto which, all things told, is the most important (to him) of the three religions he holds, four if you count the scientific approach to reality. Somewhere along the line God decided to split Himself, somewhere after he created human beings.
Yeah, this contradicts the Bible all over the place.
But first God made Man in His own image--complete, full of internal contradictions and wild emotions and just full of everything, emphasis complete. No angel, no demon, no spirit can claim this; even animals fall short. Man is the pinnacle of creation, and he as a young, healthy, wealthy, American man of Japanese descent puts him very near if not at the top of that heap. Which would be pure ego if he didn't have a point. I mean socially, other than being Asian and not White, he is at the top of the heap.
After creating Man, God split himself into his component parts, parts like Love and Hate and Creation and Fire and Wind and Purity and Honor. These became the angels and when the inevitable conflicts arose some became demons. God probably meant for this to happen, for his pieces to conflict with each other and learn from the friction only to come together at the end, wiser. He'll never be one being again, but he might one day be Whole again, if all the celestials understand their true natures. If they simply look at human beings as a model to aspire to, not children to be guided.
So talking to angels to him is a thrill, because they're a tiny piece of the ultimate divinity. It's also frustrating, because they're fragments of a whole, and some concepts they just don't understand.
War, he maintains, is a human concept, and wonders sometimes how celestials came to wage it.
But his primary religion, at least in terms of practice, is Shinto. Despite being born American he holds his own family as his spirit guides, not really trusting anyone else. Ghosts are demonstrably real, and there is evidence of his great-grandfather and so forth, even those he hasn't met. At least on the Watari side, he knows his heritage and reveres it. On his mother's side he has to reconcile Eli and the fact that she's an orphan. He's had little success tracing that side of the family, but he'll never stop trying.
He's also a Buddhist, but maybe not all that serious a one. He understands the precepts and they explain things to him, teach him how to meditate and otherwise seek peace. Unfortunately so far it isn't peace he wants--it's excitement and change.
In the beginning apparently there was God. This flies in the face of Shinto which, all things told, is the most important (to him) of the three religions he holds, four if you count the scientific approach to reality. Somewhere along the line God decided to split Himself, somewhere after he created human beings.
Yeah, this contradicts the Bible all over the place.
But first God made Man in His own image--complete, full of internal contradictions and wild emotions and just full of everything, emphasis complete. No angel, no demon, no spirit can claim this; even animals fall short. Man is the pinnacle of creation, and he as a young, healthy, wealthy, American man of Japanese descent puts him very near if not at the top of that heap. Which would be pure ego if he didn't have a point. I mean socially, other than being Asian and not White, he is at the top of the heap.
After creating Man, God split himself into his component parts, parts like Love and Hate and Creation and Fire and Wind and Purity and Honor. These became the angels and when the inevitable conflicts arose some became demons. God probably meant for this to happen, for his pieces to conflict with each other and learn from the friction only to come together at the end, wiser. He'll never be one being again, but he might one day be Whole again, if all the celestials understand their true natures. If they simply look at human beings as a model to aspire to, not children to be guided.
So talking to angels to him is a thrill, because they're a tiny piece of the ultimate divinity. It's also frustrating, because they're fragments of a whole, and some concepts they just don't understand.
War, he maintains, is a human concept, and wonders sometimes how celestials came to wage it.
But his primary religion, at least in terms of practice, is Shinto. Despite being born American he holds his own family as his spirit guides, not really trusting anyone else. Ghosts are demonstrably real, and there is evidence of his great-grandfather and so forth, even those he hasn't met. At least on the Watari side, he knows his heritage and reveres it. On his mother's side he has to reconcile Eli and the fact that she's an orphan. He's had little success tracing that side of the family, but he'll never stop trying.
He's also a Buddhist, but maybe not all that serious a one. He understands the precepts and they explain things to him, teach him how to meditate and otherwise seek peace. Unfortunately so far it isn't peace he wants--it's excitement and change.