“He’s a God, You Fool. It’ll Take More Than One Shot.”: Immortality and Death · 2:14am Sep 20th, 2016
There is one part I always remember about Princess Mononoke. Well, a few parts: that creepy scene with the humans disguised as boars and the tentacle animal monsters, for instance. But one line in particular stuck with me more than any other. At the climax when Lady Eboshi shoots the great forest spirit. A bullet pierces its head, but it calmly continues walking. The men look on in disbelief, and Lady Eboshi chastises them, “He’s a god, you fool. It’ll take more than one shot.”
In a past musings post, I discussed the idea of Immortality and Emotion. In that post, I posited that immortals—and their personalities—can be characterized in a lot of ways because it's a purely fictional concept. Though some scientific research has brushed against the fringes of it, it remains something that can’t have verisimilitude: it can’t take cues from real life, because it doesn’t exist in real life.
Today, let’s discuss the idea of how immortality interacts with death and dying.
Lady Eboshi’s line sums up one way to approach immortal death: it is possible, but takes a lot of effort. (It also sums up the movies themes about man vs. nature and how violence is erroneously seen as an infallible solution, but that’s another matter.) Another way to approach immortality is to make it absolute: nothing can kill the immortal, no matter how hard one may try. Yet another type of immortality is one that applies only to lifespan, rather than durability. The character can live forever, but they are in every other way as fragile as any other member of their species.
Like emotion and immortality, then, death and immortality is something that can be tailored to the needs of the plot. Like most aspects of immortality, the author can make whatever rules they want.
So how do I approach this topic? I think that truly unkillable immortals are far too difficult to write around. If a fundamental aspect of a story is Conflict, then immortality tends to make it difficult. (Although it’s certainly not impossible: see Planescape: Torment for an example.)
At the same time, I do think an elongated lifespan would make a character much hardier than a mortal. Even if they are only as durable as any other human (or pony, etc.), they certainly acquired a lot of experience and resources over their lifetime.
This can be seen in the few stories I have written that feature Celestia, Luna, and Discord (as well as the possibility of their deaths). The Conquer trilogy, for instance, features immortals who can and do die, but it is made difficult by their experience and magical prowess. By the same token, the immortal characters in that story who do die are often defeated by psychological weaknesses. Being attacked by someone who they trusted, someone they never expected to be attacked by, means their deaths have a degree of irony to them. The element of shock and surprise is what seals their death, even though as an immortal their experience is what gives them their strength.
For further reading, see also the TVTropes index on Immortality.
So there you are: a brief exploration of a very complicated topic. As always, comments, criticism, and counterpoints are welcome!
Beings that can never die of age but are just as vulnerable to violence and poison as any other are not immortal, they're ageless.
A very intriguing concept, one I've never thought about touching until recently. Pertaining to this, I do have a question I'd like your thoughts on.
Taking your thoughts on immortals who can die, such as in the Conquer trilogy, then c/wouldn't sheer trust (not necessarily arrogance) in those accumulated magics and experience be their ultimate demise? Instead of exploitation of psychological weaknesses?
4218169 That's inaccurate: the terms mean the same thing. "Eternal youth", "ageless", "biological immortality", et al are all synonyms.
I suppose you could make some semantic distinctions--like how "eternal youth" is more old-timey and Romantic and "biological immortality" is more clinical and scientific--and that could affect the perception of each term. But it's still all semantics.
4218198 I suppose that's one of those details you could argue as a matter of perspective. Did the characters in question misplace their trust in their companions, or was it their abilities they trusted too much?
In the case of the Conquer trilogy, I'd say it varies. Celestia dies the first time because she trusted Luna/Nightmare Moon not to kill her. Luna dies partly because she doesn't recognize the threat Princess Nightmare Moon poses, but at the same time she was also magically overpowered. She was also pretty insane anyway. Discord dies because he either didn't expect Celestia to attack him, or because he underestimated her strength. Princess Nightmare Moon offers her life to Celestia, but it isn't clear if she actually wanted to die (because of her Polycrates complex) or if she trusted Celestia not to kill her.
So each case is slightly different, and arrogance and misplaced trust show up in different quantities. It is an interesting dichotomy, though. It's also an interesting reflection on the other characters. Especially since both the characters who place trust in their abilities and the ones who place trust in others are often wrong either way.
I would separate immortals into enhanced mortals and true immortals.
Enhanced mortals are, well, mortals, having something that greatly elongates their lifespan. They may see a lot of things, but they are still vulnerable. Also, being vulnerable, they still are ultimately understandable. Depending on writer, it possible to give them specific problems, like finite memory size, but writing them is reasonably easy.
True immortals are so radically different beings, that concept of death is not (easily) applicable. They may come in many flavours: a sentient cosmic principle incarnate, a hive mind of a collective large enough, a creature existing in all times simultaneously etc.. They key point is that they are utterly, completely alien. They may act in the same universe, so they use same logic, but their wants, emotions and values are not ours in the slightest. Writing such a character is a challenge, but more importantly, they cannot be the only backbone of the story. Stories are about people, and such a character is closer to a force of nature than a person.
I do like the 'Resilient, but can die' group - sort of like, say, Captain America. They can take more punishment than the average mortal, considerably so, but hit them in the right way and they can still die.
Although I suppose for Celestia and Luna, I consider them somewhere between Cap and Wolverine in my resilience levels. But then I simply hate the idea of them perishing so they get a power boost!
Oh, any plans for Conquer #4 wherein we see Old-Celestia and Reborn-Luna?
4218398 I'm not sure if that's quite the same thing as immortality. Durability is often distinct from long lifespan. Although, they do often go hand in hand (like how Wolverine's healing factor can heal injuries but also slows his aging). Ultimately, it's one of those distinctions that is extremely semantic, since each thing is very fictional in the first place.
In the case of Celestia and Luna, canon hasn't properly defined the scope of their immortality. One of the books states they are just very long lived, but obviously the books are dubiously canon.
4218340 I think that's a reasonable way to look at it: it's a simple and practical distinction. As I mentioned in the post, the latter type is very difficult to write. Their inherently different morality and the difficulty of creating believable conflict is why are so often used as villains rather than protagonists.
4219736
I should clarify; I oft see them as like Elvish Captain America-Wolverine hybrids. So, they would be ageless, but still vulnerable to fatal injury - just that the degree of damage required to cause such an injury would be much greater than an ordinary pony of their mass/weight, even if both of them were standing still as someone shot arrows at them. Like, as in, laugh the arrows off sort of whatnot.
4219833 Ah, gotcha.
Hmm, yea I tend to favor eternal, but not undying. In other words you can kill them but no matter how hard you try they don't stay dead. Though this also means this can be taken advantage of in various ways, and trapping them, especially trapping them in the right place and the right way, can be very effective. Though I have a running not joke about testing immortality so maybe it's just a matter of not finding a big enough fish to finish them off yet. And now that i think of it a story where despite testing immortality being crazy Twilight does it anyway. Though I put some variation in how it works, in some cases they have to build it from something, in others it just appears.
Here's a page that tries to define the various types.
Rather than bog down in trying to define the specific words like everyone else, I feel like I can address the topic itself better.
I think when 4218340 says,
we get a good indication of what the topic really is.
Rather than start from trying to define immortality itself, the specific mechanisms of it, and so on the easiest approach is to just build on what we know most, first: ourselves. Look into the differences of needs, wants, and values between people of different walks of life. If someone is poor, food becomes more important. Simply eating enough, and being full and not malnourished are concerns. As someone becomes more affluent, food becomes more of a chore. How quickly/conveniently can food be acquired? Or, divergant to that, a focus on more delicious food with less concern over cost.
Homes follow a similar trend. The homeless person looks for some place they can successfully fend off the elements and other dangers. A poor but not homeless person accepts a shoddy home in a bad neighborhood, as long as they can afford it and it can be reasonably expected to keep out the elements and other dangers. As affluence rises, willingness and ability to spend more on a home simply for convenience and display of ostentatiousness rises. Important factors and values change from defensibility and affordability to aesthetics and comfort.
As worry of your own mortality fades, worry about dangers to that mortality fade. You don't have to be immortal to lack a fear in death. As long as it isn't imminent, mortality isn't often a concern. It doesn't matter too much what the source is. If it is simple affluence, long-lifespan, or durability, it all tends to translate to similar directions.
4469396 I think that's a reasonable summary of it. Of course, this also raises some questions, like "to what level would an immortal devalue their own life?" and "what would an immortal value instead?"
Some stories answer the first with its logical extreme: the character actively attempts to die. Some stories answer the second with a similar extreme: in cases where their immortality is not absolute, characters spend all their time coveting and protecting their immortality (like Liches with their Phylactery, or Voldemort and his Horcruxes from Harry Potter).
While I think your analysis is perfectly valid, my point was that Immortality is such a fictional concept--so far removed from reality--that there is only so much verisimilitude one can attempt with it. Referencing real life is always possible to different degrees, but it's possible to interpret this particular subject in whichever way fits the story.