This was great! I liked this a lot and felt like each component worked really well. Hell being filled with Tasks full of meaning gives it a fable-like feeling. It also made me wonder what Hell looks like after eons of people who all have tasks; does it end up as a closer approximation to a place that people would actually want to live in? I also think that modern life often is filled with jobs without meaning, and so there’s something attractive about this idea (reminds me of Shop Class as Soulcraft’s thesis), of working with your hands and becoming more grounded.
This was probably the biggest gap in my worldbuilding - I think of Hell as being improved by each person doing their task (aside from the railroad here, we also get the bureaucrat, the librarian and the programming language designer). But I also imply that so many people have gone through hell and completed their tasks (and then ascended) that their bones are everywhere, which implies hell should be a lot more optimized already. In my mind I mostly settle this by having most people's tasks just be about something more specific, like being a better husband or reconciling with friends they let down, and the actual physical reality project people like the ones we see here being an incredibly tiny minority.
(This also implies that, despite his downsides with his job, John actually was content with his relationships with the people in his life, which I think I can live with).
That makes sense! That gap didn’t bother me when I was reading it; I didn’t think of it as an inconsistency at all, actually. Part of this is because it seemed like Hell was infinitely big, and also timeless, so any contribution would in some sense be a drop in the bucket.
This was great! I liked this a lot and felt like each component worked really well. Hell being filled with Tasks full of meaning gives it a fable-like feeling. It also made me wonder what Hell looks like after eons of people who all have tasks; does it end up as a closer approximation to a place that people would actually want to live in? I also think that modern life often is filled with jobs without meaning, and so there’s something attractive about this idea (reminds me of Shop Class as Soulcraft’s thesis), of working with your hands and becoming more grounded.
This was probably the biggest gap in my worldbuilding - I think of Hell as being improved by each person doing their task (aside from the railroad here, we also get the bureaucrat, the librarian and the programming language designer). But I also imply that so many people have gone through hell and completed their tasks (and then ascended) that their bones are everywhere, which implies hell should be a lot more optimized already. In my mind I mostly settle this by having most people's tasks just be about something more specific, like being a better husband or reconciling with friends they let down, and the actual physical reality project people like the ones we see here being an incredibly tiny minority.
(This also implies that, despite his downsides with his job, John actually was content with his relationships with the people in his life, which I think I can live with).
That makes sense! That gap didn’t bother me when I was reading it; I didn’t think of it as an inconsistency at all, actually. Part of this is because it seemed like Hell was infinitely big, and also timeless, so any contribution would in some sense be a drop in the bucket.