Comments on: Death Unhinged

By: Magic: Metamagery and Tool Use « Tish Tosh Tesh

Magic: Metamagery and Tool Use « Tish Tosh Tesh — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 12:50:35 +0000

[...] work leads to story hooks, like trying to figure out what happens when death breaks, as I did in my Death Unhinged article. I’m firmly in the camp of “magic should have [...]

By: Naught to Fear but Horror Itself « Tish Tosh Tesh

Naught to Fear but Horror Itself « Tish Tosh Tesh — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:30:48 +0000

[...] To which I might add: What would the horror genre look like if death itself became unhinged in any of a variety of curious ways? [...]

By: Exigo Ergo Sum « Tish Tosh Tesh

Exigo Ergo Sum « Tish Tosh Tesh — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 12:31:10 +0000

[...] musing. I’m in that sort of mood again, where I contemplate narrative, endings, entropy and death. Not because I’m depressed, no, but because I think endings are important to life, and [...]

By: Broken Down « Tish Tosh Tesh

Broken Down « Tish Tosh Tesh — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:51:26 +0000

[...] most important mark of our passage in this mortal coil? …is it important at all? What if death were unhinged, what then? What can those who have gone before teach us today? Do we care, or do we keep [...]

By: Lint Collecting « Tish Tosh Tesh

Lint Collecting « Tish Tosh Tesh — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:30:48 +0000

[...] Death Unhinged [...]

By: nugget

nugget — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:07:47 +0000

Morbid nugget quoth, ‘Even if death is impossible, dismemberment and other forms of disablement are not.’

…now look at being immortal, loook at that statement, and think again, if immortality is really all it’s cut out to be.

By: Tesh

Tesh — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:31:31 +0000

I think there’s potential there. But I’m weird. I’m pretty sure that there are weirder implications for truly immortal adrenaline junkies, though. Extreme sports alone would be very crazy to see. That’s why I called this “Death Unhinged” instead of just “Death Undone”. Sanity as we know it could be blown apart by tinkering with death.

By: Anton

Anton — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 17:26:48 +0000

Quick! Somebody make a crater-competition skydiving game!

By: Tesh

Tesh — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 23:26:33 +0000

Thanks, all. I’m not really offering much in the way of answers here, but that’s sort of the point. I think fiction and the quirky storytelling potential of games really can do a lot with this sort of concept. I think there are some interesting games out there (I hear Prey had an interesting “spiritwalk” mechanic) that toy with death, but I’d actually like to see more.

Note, I’m not talking about wanting to see more gore, violence or gratuitous killing… I’m talking about a more nuanced and thoughtful treatment of death itself and how it affects the human condition in otherworldly settings. I think there’s a lot there that we can only really explore with fiction. (And arguably, that’s what storytellers and mythshapers did ages before we came around anyway.)

By: sente

sente — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 19:24:57 +0000

A key distinction in fiction would be if we talk about death of mind, death of body or both. Would it be considered death if the memories were still intact, but in another ones mind, or in the same mind, but the personality or soul is lost? Or if it was the other way around, memories are lost, but a personality or soul is still there – which raises the question how to define a soul or personality.

Death of body implies either a transfer to some other state, or that bodies can be replaced or repaired. The former case is a kind of permanent transfer, which would have a very different effect than if it was just a matter of a replacement (even if it were cumbersome to do).

A different aspect also is if we were looking at a hive mind society. Also potentially a death of body, but also very different where instead larger groups formed the unit of mind.

There is plenty to speculate about what a society would be like; something MMOs and other games could do a bit more perhaps.