Dante’s Inferno: Comic-Con Update #2

Did I mention that they’re also holding a contest to promote the game/cartoon/eventual breakfast cereal based on Dante’s Inferno? It’s called “Sin to Win” and according to the official announcement that they tattooed across this lady’s breasts

all you have to do is commit and “act of lust” with one of the Comic-Con’s many sexily costumed attendees or booth babes official brand spokespeople, take a picture of it, and then twitter, facebook or email the picture to them. Judging by the entries submitted so far, the most popular “act of lust” at the Comic-Con is “posing in a blurry picture next to someone who seems like they may have breasts”. Like so:

Thanks for keeping it classy, Dante Team.

Now, some of you reading along to that last sentence at home might suspect that I take a dim view of this sort of contest. Far from it! In fact, allow me to help out the contest hopefuls real quick.

You see, contest hopefuls, Lust is not as simple a sin as you might have imagined. It’s not all about the boobage! According to the medieval Tree of Vices, Lust is in fact divided into at least nine species, or sub-sins. They are:

1. Affectus secti “Affection for the World”
2. Incontinentia or “Lack of Self-Control”
3. Inconsideratio or “Being Inconsiderate”
4. Odium Dei or “Hatred of God”
5. Petulatitia or “Petulance”
6. Amor Sui or “Love of Oneself”
7. Precipitatio or “Haste”
8. Instibilitas or “Instability”
9. Mentis Teritas or “Blindness of Mind”

So, yes, you could satisfy the contest’s edict to do an “act of lust” by standing near boobs. That probably falls under both affection for the world and lack of self control, especially if you drool a bit. And taking out of focus pictures is technically a sort of blindness of mind, and very inconsiderate to your audience. So you’re off to a good start, but that’s only 4/9ths of the sin. You also need to do it quickly (precipitatio), while complaining bitterly about how you were promised a conference exclusive Soundwave figure but didn’t get one (petulatitia), standing on one leg (instibilitas), and making devil horns with your free hand (odium dei and also metallum awesomorum).

Now, if you’re more of a Chaucerian about your Lust, things get more complicated. Chaucer has the Parson in his Tale divide Lust into these species:

1. Fornicacioun — by which he means sex between the unmarried
2. Birevynge a mayden of hir Maydenhede — or having sex with a virgin, also known as “stealing her hundred fruit” (centesimus fructus)
3. Avowtrie — or adultery, sex with someone who is married
4. Brekynge avow of chastitee — or having sex with priests, nuns, monks, subdeacons, deacons, or hospitaliers.
5. Assemblee of hem that been of hire kynrede — incest, whether between blood relatives or relatives by marriage, illegitimate relatives, one’s own god-children or the god-children of those in the family
6. The abhomynable synne of which that no man unnethe oghte speke ne write — the sin that’s so horrible it can’t be written down (c’mon, you know, that sin…)
7. Polucioun — which is to say, the sin that comes in the night while you’re sleeping when you go to bed with dirty thoughts and which has to be cleaned up afterward.

You can see why it’ll be difficult to fit all those sins into the same picture. Here’s my strategy: find a booth babe that you fancy, but make sure she’s a virgin. Then, get her parents to simultaneously name you as her godfather and force her to take holy orders. Now, getting both adultery and fornication in the same picture might require there to be more than one babe present, but if you get a camera with fast enough shutter speed and a justice of the peace who can speedtalk,* you can make do with just the one babe, provided you can convince her to marry a bystander while you work your magic. Oh, and this’ll all need to take place at night, and technically, you’ll need to be sleepwalking. All that leaves is the sin that can’t be named, which is awfully hard to capture on film, but since it can’t be named, the judges likely won’t have a spot on their scorecard for it, so you’re probably good to go there.

I hope that helps.

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*Is the Micro-Machine Guy ordained? I seem to recall him dressing up like a captain once, and since the convention’s in San Diego that’ll probably be good enough.