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Hob seems to be more eternal than a lot of the other earthly eternals; while that one dude who had the wall fall on him was mortal but unaging, Hob apparently has survived the plague and starvation, and has worked as a mercenary secure in the knowledge that he can't be killed. I liked him, he was my favorite minor character in the series. He had the best attitude of anyone.
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Jul 17, 2009 02:26
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but isn't the very idea of "immortality" turned on its head though? Even the Endless know that someday they will cease to exist. And that guy who got crushed, when he asked if he did well living so long, Death said "You had the same as everyone does, one lifetime."
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Jul 17, 2009 03:08
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bison wings posted:but isn't the very idea of "immortality" turned on its head though? Even the Endless know that someday they will cease to exist. And that guy who got crushed, when he asked if he did well living so long, Death said "You had the same as everyone does, one lifetime." Nerd correction that's what Death said to the baby she took in her first Sandman appearance. Immortality always sucked when I thought about it. Everything you know and love slowly disapering while you just keep going. Some people probably don't see it that way but I would never want to live forever.
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Jul 17, 2009 03:48
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There will be more people to love, and you will have time enough to love them all.
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Jul 17, 2009 04:36
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I got my "immortality is really loving not worth it" message from the Xbox game Lost Odyssey. The 1000 years of dreams are little short stories you can unlock throughout the game that shed light into the main characters past and how empty he is.
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Jul 17, 2009 11:18
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Zoolooman posted:There will be more people to love, and you will have time enough to love them all. Except I wasn't really talking about people it's why I used everything not everyone. We're used to losing people but watching the civilization and culture that birthed you die out and society slowly becoming so alien to you that you might as well no longer be human would suck. A few centuries is nothing millennia is where it starts to breakdown. SirDan3k fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Jul 17, 2009 |
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Jul 17, 2009 13:44
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SirDan3k posted:watching the civilization and culture that birthed you die out and society slowly becoming so alien to you that you might as well no longer be human would suck. I don't know about you, but this sounds absolutely loving fascinating to me. If someone offered me the Hob gambit I'd take it in a flash. I mean, yeah, things would get weird, and I'd be lonely once in a while missing my old culture, but . . . man, how much new stuff would be out there? How many things could I get done? I could spend two lifetimes mastering every musical instrument that had ever been invented, and by the time I was done, I'd have another half-dozen to work on! I'd see the birth and death of entire artforms! I could watch civilizations form, degenerate, and crumble, then recoalesce into even better things than before! I could get a PhD in everything. it would be loving amazing I mean, obviously we can't know because nobody is immortal, but I really think immortality is one of those deals where you get out approximately what you put in, only magnified.
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Jul 17, 2009 13:54
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ZorbaTHut posted:I don't know about you, but this sounds absolutely loving fascinating to me. If someone offered me the Hob gambit I'd take it in a flash. I would suspect the breaking point would come at whatever point you were left alone on the world/in the universe/whatever. If your immortality was "true" immortality and you couldn't be killed or die, then at some point, you're going to be alone, forever, with no way to escape.
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Jul 17, 2009 14:00
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ZorbaTHut posted:I mean, obviously we can't know because nobody is immortal, but I really think immortality is one of those deals where you get out approximately what you put in, only magnified. It'd be intellectually fascinating but emotionally devastating. I'm not enough of a scientist to separate myself from what could be the grandest experiment of all time. Though I imagine most fantasy writers aren't either so that explains the Immortality sucks curve.
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Jul 17, 2009 14:16
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SirDan3k posted:Except I wasn't really talking about people it's why I used everything not everyone. We're used to losing people but watching the civilization and culture that birthed you die out and society slowly becoming so alien to you that you might as well no longer be human would suck. Duncan MacLeod seems to do a pretty good job of it. He actually complained once that in the good old days if you wanted a new identity you just needed to walk 10 miles and find a town. But now you need a driver's license, a social security card, a bank account, etc... it's just sooooooo muuuuuch woooooork. And then he finds a computer and starts international super spy hacking. You just need to adapt. Rolling with the punches is probably easy enough if the punches are 100 years long.
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Jul 17, 2009 14:27
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SirDan3k posted:Except I wasn't really talking about people it's why I used everything not everyone. We're used to losing people but watching the civilization and culture that birthed you die out and society slowly becoming so alien to you that you might as well no longer be human would suck. A few centuries is nothing millennia is where it starts to breakdown. I think that there are human universals that ensure that as long as humanity is around, things will stay relatively the same. Just don't freak out when people get cell phones like some sort of mongoloid and you'll do fine.
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Jul 17, 2009 17:29
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ZorbaTHut posted:I don't know about you, but this sounds absolutely loving fascinating to me. If someone offered me the Hob gambit I'd take it in a flash. And then what? You'd find something else to amuse you until that got bored, then anthor and another, and then what? A lifespan measured in cosmic ages might be cool, true immortality slightly less so. Or at least make drat sure you have the option to cash out when you've done everything.
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Jul 17, 2009 19:11
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I view history as a book. You can only read the pages you're on, though there's plenty of references to earlier pages, and there's lots of people guessing what the later pages are about. But the worst loving thing is how you only get to read a tiny portion of the pages in the book, and you don't even know how many pages you're going to get to read. You're just sitting there at a table, engrossed in it, and suddenly somebody slams the book shut and takes it away from you. I've only been alive for about a quarter of a century, and the world has changed so remarkably and so profoundly in that time. I can't imagine a downside that would outweigh getting to read to the end.
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Jul 17, 2009 19:14
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Pope Guilty posted:I view history as a book. You can only read the pages you're on, though there's plenty of references to earlier pages, and there's lots of people guessing what the later pages are about. But the worst loving thing is how you only get to read a tiny portion of the pages in the book, and you don't even know how many pages you're going to get to read. You're just sitting there at a table, engrossed in it, and suddenly somebody slams the book shut and takes it away from you. So immortality would be The Neverending Story?
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Jul 17, 2009 19:31
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If humanity develops space travel to the point where you can get off the planet and into space, immortality would be great. If a meteor hits before that happens, then enjoy spending a few billion years as the only sentient being on the planet. Then the next few billion inside the sun when it becomes a red giant. Oh, and after the sun collapses and dies I guess you'd be floating in space, continually asphyxiating but unable to ever die, for the rest of eternity. Could be a bit of a downer. 
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Jul 17, 2009 19:36
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would you be aware and in pain the whole time, or unconscious and vegetable like? Because you can be "alive" without being aware. Plus it'd be kinda cool to be in stasis for hundreds/thousands of years only to wake up again when the correct stimuli finally exist around you. And if that never happens, well that's the same as being dead right?
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Jul 17, 2009 21:15
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I can't find any reference to it online, but there was a short story where the narrator is planet-hopping and hears this weird story about a village that has immortals in it. They decide to go see what weird local legend it is, but when they get there they find its true - there is an immortal, paraplegic, horribly burned, blinded, who is tended by one of the village families and exhibited for money. So you want to be invulnerable, as well as immortal, because just staying alive could get pretty horrifying.
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Jul 17, 2009 21:39
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Ashcans posted:So you want to be invulnerable, as well as immortal, because just staying alive could get pretty horrifying. I guess I feel like, yeah, you could add qualifiers in. But there's no guarantee things like this won't happen in normal life. You could get in a horrible car crash tomorrow and spend the rest of your life in agony. Sucks to be you. But you're not saying "omg, I could end up in a huge amount of pain for decades, I'm going to go kill myself now just so that doesn't happen", and I don't see why eternal life should be thrown away for that reason either. And if you were immortal, hell, you'd probably get used to it eventually. I agree it'd be good to have an escape switch (Hob clearly has one, since Dream offers to end his experiment at one point) and it'd certainly be good to have the ability to heal from anything (I suspect Hob has this too, considering how he doesn't worry about mercenary work) but . . . even without those, I'd take it.
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Jul 17, 2009 22:35
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Ashcans posted:I can't find any reference to it online, but there was a short story where the narrator is planet-hopping and hears this weird story about a village that has immortals in it. They decide to go see what weird local legend it is, but when they get there they find its true - there is an immortal, paraplegic, horribly burned, blinded, who is tended by one of the village families and exhibited for money. That's taken from the greek myth of Tithonus. He was a lover of Eos, who convinced Zeus to grant him immortality, but forgot to ask for eternal youth as well. Eventually he turned into a cicada.
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Jul 17, 2009 22:36
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DoctorTristan posted:That's taken from the greek myth of Tithonus. He was a lover of Eos, who convinced Zeus to grant him immortality, but forgot to ask for eternal youth as well. Eventually he turned into a cicada. Man, that always happens when you try to get immortality. 
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Jul 18, 2009 01:25
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DoctorTristan posted:That's taken from the greek myth of Tithonus. He was a lover of Eos, who convinced Zeus to grant him immortality, but forgot to ask for eternal youth as well. Eventually he turned into a cicada. Wasn't there something very similar in Gulliver's Travels?
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Jul 18, 2009 03:21
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SuperKlaus posted:Wasn't there something very similar in Gulliver's Travels? Yeah, one of the countries had Immortals who got older and older but never died except by violence. So you had these hideous old wrecks being pushed around in wheelchairs forever, barely cognizant of their surroundings.
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Jul 18, 2009 05:15
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Pope Guilty posted:I've only been alive for about a quarter of a century, and the world has changed so remarkably and so profoundly in that time. I can't imagine a downside that would outweigh getting to read to the end. I'm not gonna lie--the ending is kinda poo poo, they got a new writer to do it and that guy just doesn't understand the theme history has. Make up your own ending, you'll enjoy the work more.
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Jul 18, 2009 07:11
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Mystic Mongol posted:I'm not gonna lie--the ending is kinda poo poo, they got a new writer to do it and that guy just doesn't understand the theme history has. Make up your own ending, you'll enjoy the work more. I know, right? Can you believe North Korea wins?. Just a total disregard for continuity.
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Jul 18, 2009 07:31
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ZorbaTHut posted:Man, that always happens when you try to get immortality. I think the idea was that a cicada's chirping is the feeble croak of an old man begging to die. Yeah. There's always a logic of a sort to the Greek myths, but quite often it's based on a hilarious misunderstanding of the natural world. See Hippomenes and Atalanta: two lovers who offended Aphrodite, who punished them by turning them into lions. Her reasoning was that lions do not mate with other lions, but only with leopards (!), so they'd never be able to sleep together again...
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Jul 18, 2009 09:53
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DoctorTristan posted:I think the idea was that a cicada's chirping is the feeble croak of an old man begging to die. Yeah. I dunno, maybe the Greeks understood the natural world and thought that the gods were just colossal morons. ...honestly that's pretty much the only reasonable assumption from the stories about Zeus.
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Jul 18, 2009 10:29
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Pope Guilty posted:Yeah, one of the countries had Immortals who got older and older but never died except by violence. So you had these hideous old wrecks being pushed around in wheelchairs forever, barely cognizant of their surroundings. Borges also did this in a short story.
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Jul 18, 2009 14:26
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Fritzler posted:I think he is referring to Hob Gadling. Immortality in Sandman was great for some guys, and horrible for others. Really, their life was the same as it was before they were immortal, for better or worse. Just longer. Is his story arc contained in a single trade? I might go and see if I can pick it up.
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Jul 18, 2009 17:43
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A single issue, actually. His story is in issue 13 of Sandman, which is collected in The Doll's House. He appears as a recurring character through-out the rest of the series.
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Jul 18, 2009 17:47
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KOraithER posted:A single issue, actually. His story is in issue 13 of Sandman, which is collected in The Doll's House. He appears as a recurring character through-out the rest of the series. Heres to hoping someone local carries it :V Edit: sweet my local comic shop has it Johnny Aztec fucked around with this message at 19:00 on Jul 18, 2009 |
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Jul 18, 2009 17:54
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I love Hob's attitude. He's beaten down, completely impovrished, starving to (supernaturally averted) death, and generally miserable, and his response to "Do you want to die now?" is "But I've got so much to live for!" He's a man with perspective is what I'm saying.
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Jul 18, 2009 19:23
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I haven't read the story, but how do you become impoverished as an immortal? Every five or ten years, take something somewhat valuable and store it in a safe spot. Take out something that's a couple hundred years old at the same interval and sell it for a large profit. The hardest bit would be finding a safe storage spot in the modern world, but with the funds from one of these 'investments', you could probably pay to have a secure vault set up somewhere undeveloped.
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Jul 18, 2009 19:53
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DoctorTristan posted:I think the idea was that a cicada's chirping is the feeble croak of an old man begging to die. Yeah. I thought it was that as you get older, you start to get shorter and more shrivelled. Therefore, if you were immortal but still aged, you'd eventually get small and more shrivelled up until you turned into a cicada.
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Jul 18, 2009 21:59
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Bobulus posted:I haven't read the story, but how do you become impoverished as an immortal? Every five or ten years, take something somewhat valuable and store it in a safe spot. Take out something that's a couple hundred years old at the same interval and sell it for a large profit. It all starts in the late 14th century, which makes things somewhat tougher - merely getting ahold of something valuable would not have been trivial. Also, ironically, he never really shows himself to be a very good long-term planner.
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Jul 18, 2009 22:40
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34 new posts, and no new strip? For a second I was afraid it was "the alignment thread, round 7000" but I was pleasantly surprised to find this discussion about immortality.
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Jul 19, 2009 01:02
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So do you guys think a Lawful Good person would be more or less likely to pursue immortality than a Chaotic Evil one? (Assuming that the process itself doesn't involve any alignment-impacting acts.)
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Jul 19, 2009 01:05
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Nope. Theres almost no reason for a LG guy to avoid death. CE are the guys who need to avoid the big fire down below.
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Jul 19, 2009 01:08
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tazman posted:Nope. Theres almost no reason for a LG guy to avoid death. CE are the guys who need to avoid the big fire down below. Well what if he felt he could do some good by remaining alive, like protect people important to him?
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Jul 19, 2009 01:24
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Ashenai posted:Well what if he felt he could do some good by remaining alive, like protect people important to him? There's a prestige class of a good lich that hangs around to do just that, although if I remember right they generally defended an area, or a nation, something like that.
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Jul 19, 2009 02:40
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KOraithER posted:A single issue, actually. His story is in issue 13 of Sandman, which is collected in The Doll's House. He appears as a recurring character through-out the rest of the series. Bah. I went there and spent the money on that trade back, and resisted the urge to get Volume 1 of that giant hardbound book of Sandman. Then I see Dark Heresy rulebook, and I end up getting it for 40 bucks when I have no one to play with. You monster! Also they had orgin of PCs there for like 13 bucks and I might grab it sometime.
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Jul 19, 2009 06:34
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