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Ending Spoilers: The Brothers Lionheart and The Good Place

The Brothers Lionheart’s setting is an afterlife, Nangijala, where the eponymous bros go after dying. In Nangijala, they kill themselves again in the belief that they will go to Nangilima, another afterlife.

I’d‘ve loved to see them repeat the same schtick there, again and again. As a kid I used to make up names for these next levels. Nangipali, Nangimara, Nangilewa etc etc. That would be their fate. A never ending journey from bad to worse.♥

Lindgren, author of the novel, indicated that that Nangijala itself was a blood pressure related fever dream of the younger brother, and that the brothers’ death in Nangijala was the younger brother’s experience of his own death in the real world. “I can see Nangilima!”

The Good Place, I’m not onboard with the ending.

They made sort of like a “door” in heaven which you could go through at any time for a permament end.

It’s pretty vertigonous to consider suicide being better than heaven. I’m OK with oblivion (not particularly eager for it if it’s anyhing like how it was before I was born or concieved because that was one boring &scary eternity—and then I had at least life to look forward to, while afterwards it’ll just be one long sigh of “nevermore”) in September when it comes, but less OK with pulling the trigger prematurely, which I felt like some of the characters did, leaving each other behind.

Accepting death is not the same thing as directly causing it.

Also Eleonor’s life is difficult to describe as “good” when she misses Chidi so much. Feels like her decision is driven as much by despair as by finality, and the same goes for Chidi himself. The show, in the end, buys in to the myth of “relief-experience”. Nothingness isn’t a bad afterlife, but the whole “life sux so you might as well kys” thing is distasteful af. Instead, I want to learn to feel that as much as life sux, I might as well try to learn to live, and appreciate it for what it is.

Zen and Buddha teaches us to become OK with dying (and does a pretty good job of it) but doesn’t encourage us to run to the nearest Stop-And-Drop, America’s favorite suicide booth since 2008. When a TV show makes me wanna kill myself immediately, I’ve got to admit that that gives me pause about the quality of said show.

A heaven when I know there’s a door like that would be the most stressful because like Chidi, I’d be jugggling “the decision” all the time. Is it time now? How about now? How about next Tuesday? Or like Eleanor I’d be left behind, alone, knock-knock-knocking on Heaven’s door.

More likely I’d be like Tahani, not accepting this, wanting to build something better. She took the bodhisattva oath.