Doctor Seaweed Stink requested this thread. Please post carefully. Try not to get too grim or morbid, okay? As the good Doctor pointed out, everybody dies, so you might as well be able to talk about it.
We’ll kick it off (by the way, “kick off” is one of many euphemisms for “die”) with a comment Dr. S. S. posted on the random thread:
Here’s a HypQuest about death that the Chatterbox did not admit.
1. What would you do if your best friend floated up to you in the form of a ghost and said, “Hi, it’s me, (friend’s name), and I died in a car crash. Only you and a few other people can see me as a ghost. Can I stay with you until I figure out how to manage my new afterlife?�
I’d say, “Sure! It’s too bad you’re dead, but it’s cool that you became a ghost. Come on in!â€
So if we become ghosts, do you think, like we’re just free to roam the whole world, and no one can see us except for some who are, like connected to the dead or whatever, or do you think we’re confined to places we’ve been in our lifetime, so you can go back to the movie theater you usually visited, but can’t go to a theater you never were to in your life, or what?…
In the Septimus Heap books, “A ghost may only trod once more, where, when living, he has trod before.” Either that or ghosts are free to roam the world, and since they don’t need planes or boats and don’t breathe, they’ve no need to avoid large bodies of water between continents and can travel to any country in the world. Or maybe we’re confined as ghosts to one place forever, like the place where we died or some where special to us during our lifetime… or what?
All these theories were drawn off of things I read. Anyone have a more original idea… ?
(Parenthetical note: It’s an interesting idea but an excruciating sentence. “Trod” is the past tense or past participle of “tread.” He should have written “A ghost may only tread once more…”
Also, if it’s supposed to be a couplet, the word “when” messes up the meter. I’d have written:
A ghost may only tread once more
Where, living, he has trod before.)
Now, back to the discussion…
Blame it on Angie Sage, I guess.
I read those books when I was younger and I think you have the couplet correct — though it’s entirely possible the author had bad meter and the intrinsic rightness of the “correction” is fooling me.
POSOC: See comment 2, below.
I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do know that the more specifications you add to a claim, the less likely it gets. I don’t really see any way to know what things would hypothetically be like for ghosts, but things like you listed require specific rules. Granted, I’m sure there would be natural laws governing ghosts just like everything else, but since there hasn’t been any evidence of what ghosts would be like, I don’t see how I could predict these laws, and they could be in any area–stating that there would be a law specific ghost transportation seems like a burdensome detail to me.
Granted, if I were to learn that ghosts exist, it would be reasonable to assume that some of the accounts people have made of seeing ghosts would be accurate and thus provide evidence, but it would be really, really hard to determine which without anything to go on.
Of course, fiction usually should have specific rules about non-real things, because that’s more interesting, and it’s not supposed to represent the most plausible scenarios ever.
So I immediately remembered the hypothetical horcruxing of the Pioneer Plaque in HPMOR, then thought “go to spaaaaaace”. Except for the fact that ghosts abide by gravity… except when it’s convenient. Assuming I was restricted to a sane sublight speed I’d just roam Earth for a while anyway…
messing with technologyexperimenting.If it was restricted, I wonder would would happen with continental drift and other geological processes– would you be stuck in the areas defined by the original coordinates (while the Earth was around), or would there be a significance attached to what you think of as the places, like the buried ruins of the movie theater?
GAPA, all your corrections were correct. I googled it and it really is,
A ghost may only tread once more
Where, Living, he has trod before.
Also, I think that we should call the admins O Great And Powerful Administrators instead of just Great And Powerful Administrators. It sounds better that way.
The “O” is used only in addressing us. (It’s the equivalent of the vocative case in Latin.) In referring to us, “GAPAs” is proper.
Thank you for clearing that up, O Great And Powerful Administrator.
Did the term “Great and Powerful Admin” come around before or after Oz the Great and Powerful came out?
See for yourself.
I feel like it should be mentioned that “HypQuest” is short for “hypothetical question.”
Anyway, I can’t really answer it because, well, I don’t really have a best friend. Although it is hypothetical, so I guess, hypothetically, I’d say yes as calmly as I could, ask to be excused for a moment, and try to contact en to see if en was really dead or I was just hallucinating.
Doctor (Can I just call you Doctor?) also asked how we’d like to die. I think that, like most people, I would prefer to die of old age in my sleep and as far from now as possible. I would least like to be die of scurvy or the bubonic plague or some other excruciatingly painful illness.
Yes, you may call me Doctor. I’d also prefer to die of old age, when I am a hundred years old. I was born 1999, so I’m thinking I might be able to live until 2101 and so have lived over three centuries.
I’ve had the same thought! (I was born in 1998). That said, while even 100 is a lot to hope for so far considering my exercise habits, I’m sure that if I do live to be 100, I won’t spontaneously start wanting to die just because I’ve passed the mark. Which isn’t to say that it’s not a good goal for the time being.
How about last words? Has anyone given any thought to them?
Last words? Hmm. “I hope I changed the world forever”? Kind of lame. I’ll think about it.
I’d like mine to be “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!” Anyone who writes MB fanfiction in which I perish (as so many characters do around here) is hereby instructed to make those my last words if at all possible. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to say them at the appropriate moment in real life.
Of course, that could lead to some incongruous situations. For example, in an elevator accident:
Not exactly germane, but at least it would give my fellow passengers something to wonder about as we plummeted to our destruction.
On the other hand, I could say “FLY, YOU FOOLS!” Then the other passengers would spend their last moments hating me.
If I were on the plane, I’d love you for it because I’d die laughing.
If I were in the elevator, I would assume that in saying, “YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”, you meant that we would not pass as in “pass away”, because you were going to save us somehow. Then I would ask you how you planned on saving us.
And then we’d hit. Unless I had time to yell “FLY, YOU FOOLS!” first.
I almost want to be on this elevator now.
The dream is collapsing!If we really were dying in a elevator at some point, wouldn’t someone have the sense to pull out a top, spin it on the floor and see if it topples?
((Of course, telling people they can’t pass would probably help clear the floor of a crowded elevator…))
When you’re falling, the floor clears itself. Weightlessness, you know.
Duh, sorry. I suppose we’d need to know the elevator is going to crash, then start the experiments before it actually does. Ack, never mind.
I would think that it meant I wouldn’t pass to the afterlife, I would just wander around in limbo or something.
Duly noted for future reference.
Can Robert go and retroactively edit all pre-existing stories where he dies? Especially the stupid senseless variety?
I could, but it would be more fun to copy them here and add the new dialogue.
If are any. I’m not sure I’ve ever died on the blog before. (I have a feeling it won’t be long now, though.)
You did post a few examples of hypothetical last words on one of the Six-Word Stories threads.
Many other people did, too. Oh, yes, those were great:
https://musefanpage.com/blog/?p=4405#comment-339623
I think you misspelled germane, because I didn’t know the word so I googled germaine and it said it was a French given name. However it said that germane means relevant or closely connected. It appears that germaine may have been an older English spelling of germane, though.
Right you are. Computer cues always lead me astray. *fixes*
I would like my last words to someone be, “I left… 5 million dollars… in…”
Second HypQuest the Ads at the CB didn’t allow through the door…
2. What would you do if the phone rang, and the voice on the other end said, “Hi, this is the Devil, and I’m calling from Hell. There’s a dead and dangerous murderer on the loose who should be burning in my hellishly hot furnace, but he tricked me and is now running among the living and most likely intends to cause trouble. If you see him, will you let me know?”?
I’d say, “Uh… sure. What’s your number, Mr. Devil… and what does this guy look like?”
I’d hang up, assuming it was a prank caller.
I mean, even assuming that there was a devil, that he was incompetent enough to let people escape, and that he’d want my help–all of which I find highly unlikely–why would he need to use a phone?
Drowning and being buried under a ton of rock. If you had to pick between the two, which would it be?
I’d pick drowning. Buried under a ton of rock seems lots more painful.
Isn’t this getting rather morbid?
Not in my opinion.
I honestly think drowning is one of (if not the) least painful forms of death. Basically, you pass out underwater from lack of oxygen and die. The former very nearly happened to me once and it really wasn’t bad.
I obviously didn’t black out so I can’t know, but I actually felt very peaceful towards the end of my dive when I’d started greying out. Of course, the thought of drowning didn’t occur to me until I was too dazed to panic, which must’ve helped. But then again, I really like diving, swimming and *being underwater in general*, so I probably would panic less underwater than someone with the less experience.
This is a good place to mention that drowning most often does not look like people expect. No splashing, crying for help, or even waving arms above the head. Instinctive drowning response is mouth at water level, gasping for breath, arms and legs moving around underwater. Victims cannot swim or grab life savers. Drowning is quick and quiet!
bookgirl, your near drowning experience was coming up from depth? I think there are a few different types of blackout that lead to drowning. My scuba training is fuzzy, but would expanding air be a contributing factor?
Actually, I was just free-diving, so expanding air wasn’t a factor. I’d say my main problem was that I hyperventilated. I was also diving with the wrong weights, was tired and frustrated and had unnecessarily distanced myself from my group. Then I decided to hold onto part of a rock underwater (during the free dive), which threw my time perception off even further. And I tried to push myself on a bad day- it was a mixed scuba/snorkeling site about 25-30 ft at my end, and I wanted to dive to the bottom and check out the corral there for a while (I was twelve, so 30ft was a big deal for me).
I think you’re thinking of deep water blackout, though I think that’s more of a free diving problem- if you’re ascending that fast from a scuba dive, you’re probably got other things to worry about.
aaaaahh, that sounds horrifying.
and you’re right, i was thinking of a deep water blackout.
I want my death to be quick and painless. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind dying by falling out of an airlock into outer space without a suit, since that would mean I would die almost instantly and that I was in outer space.
As for something that might actually happen, I don’t really care so long as it meets my aforementioned conditions.
Would you mind having a heroic death?
Unless it was unintentional, yes actually. I probably would.
How do you know that death by space-travel while suitless would be painless? Did anyone ever try it?
If they did, they wouldn’t be able to tell. That’s why I said it would be an instantaneous death, so presumably I wouldn’t have time to feel pain.
One Soviet crew has died of decompression.
Best case scenario: you can survive for at least a minute in vacuum, but you’ll fall unconscious in a quarter of that time. Your fluids will swell, as your blood vessels struggle to keep pressure, and exposed liquid membranes will begin to freeze in evaporation. Your lungs would rupture if you tried to hold your breath. Eventually, your blood boils in the low pressure, then freezes as you lose body heat to the void.
Here’s a story in which Robert dies, told from a passenger’s point of view.
I stepped toward my plane and then I looked over to see a thirty-something dude with a can of Coke. He was on his iPhone, and the reason I was interested in him was because of his glittery pink Miss Piggy T-shirt. He caught me staring at him, so I got onto the plane hurriedly and hoped he didn’t think I was suspicious and call airport security. I also hoped he wasn’t on the same plane with me, cause what kinda guy wears a Miss Piggy T-shirt?
Sadly, he was. He was sitting right next to me.
I sighed quietly and stared out the window, before I finally got up the courage to talk with him. “So, what’s with the Miss Piggy shirt?” I asked. Then I regretted the words, cause he looked a little mad. But then he said cooly, “My girlfriend gave it to me as a going-away present,” and then went back to his game of Temple Run.
Then the back of the plane exploded. I grabbed onto the chair before I was sucked out. “Mayday! Mayday!” shouted a voice on the P.A. “This is your pilot speaking-” The pilot’s section of the airplane exploded.
Me and this strange dude were now riding a broken, crashing plane to our deaths. “How could this happen, do you think?” I shouted at the Miss Piggy shirt guy. YOU SHALL NOT PASS! he roared over the wind.
I wondered if this dude was crazy, but I didn’t have much time to find out, because then we lost our grip on the seats and plummeted to our doom.
So, who d’you suppose the strange dude with the Miss Piggy shirt was?
Duh.
That was the lamest story I’ve ever constructed on the internet,
So totally lame, yes.
My preferred way of death would also be quick and painless.
I would also like to not hate anybody at my time of death.
What, no takers for slow and painful?Maybe the HPBs?If you could pick the place where you would die, where would you pick? I think the amusement park, cause I only visit an amusement park once a year and it would be interesting to find out how I would die there.
Of course, you would only find out if it was slow enough that you could realize you were dying. Or if you get to keep your memories after death, I guess.
Personally… I suppose I’d prefer to die on Mars, because hey, I’ll have been to Mars. Non-astronauts getting to go to Mars in my lifetime in general would be amazing, actually… as would my someday being able to pay for a trip to Mars.
But if you want something actually plausible…. Antarctica. Because again, I want to have been there.
On the Bridge of Khazad-dûm.
On where now? Will you please enlighten me regarding that location?
Have you see any of the Lord of the Rings movies or read the books? If not, please please please at least watch the movies as soon as is possible. You’ll love them.
The Bridge of Khazad-dûm is located in a huge and ancient dwarf city/mine called Moria in Lord of the Rings. It was built over an unimaginably deep chasm, and it’s only wide enough for a single-file line of people to walk over it (no handrails, either). This is intended to slow down an invading army, although as you might imagine, it’s also an impediment to anyone trying to escape the Moria. Say, several protagonists on a heroic quest, being pursued by a fiery demon.
are you trying to imatate me?
I think that I would like to be struck by lightning in battle. There was a funny scene in Moonrise Kingdom where Sam gets struck by lightning. He doesn’t die, of course. Moonrise Kingdom…my Favorite movie ever.
In Valinor.
Which would you rather be murdered by: a crazy football player or a crazy kitten?
Crazy football player. Getting killed by a kitten sounds humiliating.
Same here.
I’d rather be murdered by a kitten.