"I don't know what samsara is. --In Cascadia they think a lot of animals are people and it's wrong to be cruel to them. In Gilead most of the theologians think that animals are... basically automatons? They don't have souls. There isn't anything it's like to be them."

"It's the cycle of suffering? You die and are reborn, over and over and over, and the only way out of the suffering is to awaken and leave it. Plenty of people want to help everyone else leave to, and that includes the dogs. ...the beings that are currently dogs. So depending on who you ask, animals have souls."

"Cascadians mostly think the world is pretty okay."

"Yeah, that sounds like the Cascadian attitude."

"Maybe the world is suffering if your babies keep dying but you can end the cycle of suffering by just saving the babies."

"... Heavens, I do not want to think of the karmic mess this is if that's how things work."

"Man, if karma's how it works I must have been such an asshole in my past life."

"And apparently most of the planet! ... Maybe this is to make up for not having smallpox."

"But no I didn't mean in a karma way, just. The reason you believe life is suffering is that their lives are full of awful shit and instead you can just... get rid of the awful shit? At least until the part where I'm tortured forever for defying God."

"Yeah, if you can fix whatever's going wrong with the kids-- then you're fixing a lot of hurt."

"If you fix smallpox and polio and malaria and kids not having enough food."

"And you just keep going until you have everything. --It's a nice thought. Very Cascadian."

"What else are we going to do, trust God to fix shit?"

"That doesn't seem to have a very good track record!"

"Yeah, God couldn't even fix me being gay."

"I mean, could he even? He doesn't have a great track record for a supposedly omnipotent being."

"Well, I was mostly supposed to do the fixing. By praying a lot and being celibate and ignoring girls I had a crush on and trying to be more feminine."

"I can see how the celibacy could, uh, help, but being more feminine?"

"You're gay because you have a disturbance in your gender identity, you're not securely the gender God created you to be. Probably because of childhood trauma. --I mean, my parents sucked and observably I have a disturbance in my gender identity, I'm not sure this is wrong, it's just that no matter how sweet and submissive I was I couldn't stop wanting to be something else."

"I, uh-- okay, so maybe that's how it works in Gilead, but I know--knew?-- people who were perfectly masculine who regularly had sex with other men."

"I think it's different if it's not a compulsion. The masculine men and feminine women would just-- stop being into the same sex, if they were in Gilead and having sex with a person of the same sex would send them to prison. I couldn't stop no matter how much I wanted to."

"I don't know, with the people I know, the people who wouldn't stop even if it was a crime wouldn't have all been feminine or masculine when they shouldn't be, but its not something I could prove."

"Also they might be good at pretending."

"If you pretend so hard that you're masculine that no one can tell the difference, is that even different than if it came naturally?"

"Yes. The part where you're miserable and want to die and your entire body feels subtly horribly wrong."