Results 1 to 30 of 33
-
2020-10-08, 05:18 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
A trend I've noticed in the comic is that many sentient undead (Xykon, HPoH, The Exarch) seem to default to insulting other (living) characters' biological existence.
This is especially true when they're REALLY mad:
- "I'm snuffing you sickening pouches of warm goo right now."
- "You pulsing little toad."
- (mild SoD Spoilers) "I should pop your sickeningly warm head right off your disgusting fluid-filled sack of organs."
In each case, the undead character was at a particularly low moment -- they'd just lost something incredibly valuable to them. It makes sense that they'd be at their meanest, and they'd want to hurt whoever they're talking to the most. And the most horrible insults they can conjure are about how terrible it is to be alive. That disdain and repulsion almost feels excessive to me: it makes me wonder if this is a sign of some deep resentment or envy. Maybe some sentient undead all secretly long for life again, or at least envy the living for their biological functions.
Or -- more likely -- it's just a fun, cool insult that normal alive humans never get to use on each other in the real world, so it's fun to include in a fantasy setting.
Happy to hear others' thoughts.
-
2020-10-08, 05:51 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2010
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
Hello,
It certainly is possible that undead characters feel resentment about their state. Xykon can no longer taste coffee. HPoH was so susceptible to seductive viviocentrism that his psyche temporarily converted into Durkon. There are many hedonistic pleasures that would be denied to an undead creature, and also undeath has certain limitations.
Every undead villain would seize an opportunity to demonstrate their embrace of undeath, horrifying and demoralizing their living foes. How much is hatred and how much is regret and projection? Only the Giant knows...
-
2020-10-08, 07:40 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2014
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
It is somewhat important that all of the example of sentient undead are evil (Due to the horrific anti-undead bigotry inherent in high fantasy settings) and so they are probably more prone to insulting a creature on the basis of their biological status.
Off the top of my head, I can't think of an instance of Malack displaying this attitude, so its probably not inherent to being undead.
-
2020-10-08, 09:03 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Apr 2007
- Location
- Beverly, MA, USA
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
Malack was also a fairly polite guy. It wasn't his style to make broad, sweeping insults about whole categories of beings. I'm not sure that it was a coincidence that he spoke softly and carried a big stick.
I'm not sure whether all undead beings envy the living. Xykon certainly does, at least to some extent, but Greg strikes me as someone who has absolutely no desire to be alive in the conventional sense. I find it easy to believe that most undead are genuinely disgusted by bodily fluids and the like, which, to be fair, are kind of gross. In some sentient undead, this disgust may mingle with resentment and envy; in others, it may not. I can understand a mentality that prizes being kept "alive" by elegant magic rather than a complex system of squishy flesh and bodily fluids.Number of Character Appearances VII - To Absent Friends
Currently playing a level 20 aasimar necromancer named Zebulun Salathiel and a level 9 goliath diviner named Lo-Kag.
-
2020-10-09, 07:34 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2020
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
I'm not quite as sure about that as you are. X. enjoys being a lich tremendously, and loves the effective immortality that comes with it.
but Greg strikes me as someone who has absolutely no desire to be alive in the conventional sense. I find it easy to believe that most undead are genuinely disgusted by bodily fluids and the like, which, to be fair, are kind of gross. (…) I can understand a mentality that prizes being kept "alive" by elegant magic rather than a complex system of squishy flesh and bodily fluids.
-
2020-10-09, 08:22 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2020
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
-
2020-10-09, 08:47 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2020
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
-
2020-10-09, 09:20 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2009
- Location
- Somewhere in Utah...
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
It might be significant that the undead insulting the living are generally newly-created undead. Malack had hundreds of years to mellow and accept his "condition" by the time we meet him. Or it might just be Malack's own character to be polite.
Last edited by Jason; 2020-10-09 at 09:21 AM. Reason: Typos
-
2020-10-09, 11:06 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jan 2012
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
The scene where he loses it in SoD actually directly relates to that, because it's the first time he actually does experience a meaningful loss as a result of having become undead. That one does seem like a very deliberate "Xykon hates the living for being alive, out of envy" moment.
-
2020-10-09, 11:20 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2008
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
I think it's the almost universal tendency of bad people to insult and despise something they perceive as "different" from them. This risks to become political, so I will stop here, noting that the most important point of difference between the living and the unliving is, by definition, life.
It is also to be noted that [SoD spoilers]...
Spoiler
during his fight against Dorukan, Xykon directed his (somewhat indirect) insult not to his opponent being alive, but rather being a bookworm:
...this magic is [...] not cribbed off of "Magic for Dummies..."
Last edited by Cicciograna; 2020-10-09 at 11:20 AM.
-
2020-10-09, 11:41 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
- Location
- Italy
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
Surealy there must be something happening during the process, which modifies as undeads perceive life and living creature.
Let's not forget that X, even if he was (ok, I'm going to spoiler it, even if it is a very tiny detail)
but when Tsukiko proposes to him, he states that he is not one of those disgusting biophiliacs showing that any interest has gone and he is even slightly disgusted (more or less humorously) by the idea.Spoiler: SODimpotent because of old age, was still clearly in admiration and attracted by the beauty of the demon barmaid
So my guess is that the negative energy changes them somehow.Last edited by Dr.Zero; 2020-10-09 at 11:42 AM.
-
2020-10-09, 12:19 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2015
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
I think that's just human nature. Just look at kids in school, they'll pick on each other over absolutely anything. What determines the pecking order is not the physical differences between the kids, but how the initiators (bullies) take initiative and how their targets (victims) react. Often, out of any intelligent ideas, the initiators will peck over trivial or non-factual traits, which will then tend to only be repeated and become "a thing" if the target is visibly bothered by the remarks. This doesn't just limit itself to the context of an ill-intended person versus an undeserving victim. When angered, it's quite normal to mentally caricaturize an adversary, by emphasizing visible, if otherwise meaningless, traits. Slurs will often spring to mind, even if one is not otherwise inclined to use them or think that way in general. For an undead, the most blatant difference between themselves and their living opponents is, well, precisely that: life.
Attention LotR fans
Spoiler: LotRThe scouring of the Shire never happened. That's right. After reading books I, II, and III, I stopped reading when the One Ring was thrown into Mount Doom. The story ends there. Nothing worthwhile happened afterwards. Middle-Earth was saved.
-
2020-10-09, 12:38 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Nov 2008
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
-
2020-10-09, 07:31 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2019
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
It's eerily similar to how non-mammalians in this comic always insults mammalians.
-
2020-10-10, 05:34 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2019
- Location
- Doggerland
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
I Am A: Neutral Good Human Wizard (2nd Level)
My favourite forms of humour involve wordplay, self-deprecation and their
mutant hybrid offspring: Intentionally misreading semantically ambiguous
phrasing. Beware thy missing Oxford commas!
Avatar by smutmulch
-
2020-10-10, 11:46 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Sep 2020
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
My guess is that undead have an instinctual revulsion to the positive energy in living things, given that uncommanded non-intelligent undead don't do anything at all except attack living things that get near them. Sapient undead would logically have the same revulsion but could choose not to act on it. Of course vampires and ghouls rely on consuming living things so they might not have that same disgust reflex.
-
2020-10-11, 05:06 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2020
-
2020-10-11, 11:47 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
Last edited by Ionathus; 2020-10-11 at 11:47 PM.
-
2020-10-12, 02:19 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Mar 2013
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
I also want to add that most insults in real life are related to insulting "living".
By far most insults and swear words have to do with biological functions: diseases and handicaps, sex and sexual body parts, digestive products, etc.
Bodies are just gross, and if you're looking for an easy insult focusing on the grossness is convenient.
-
2020-10-12, 03:33 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2008
- Location
- Italy
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
on the other hand, undeath also has several benefits. I would assume that people who seek it intentionally would feel that an undead body is superior to a living one. call them unliving suprematists, maybe
In memory of Evisceratus: he dreamed of a better world, but he lacked the class levels to make the dream come true.
Ridiculous monsters you won't take seriously even as they disembowel you
my take on the highly skilled professional: the specialized expert
-
2020-10-12, 05:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2006
- Location
- Poland
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
I think it boils down to the notion that people being insulted over traits that we don't even think about (having hair, having warm blood, etc.) is funny.
My FFRP characters. Avatar by Ashen Lilies. Sigatars by Ashen Lilies, Gullara and Purple Eagle.
Interested in the Nexus FFRP setting? See our Discord server.
-
2020-10-12, 11:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Dec 2019
- Gender
-
2020-10-12, 02:05 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2017
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
It kind of reminds me of one of the robots in a Star Wars game (Kotor maybe?) who kept calling you meatbag and couldn't understand how you could sleep with all that blood sloshing round.
It could also be undeath is an inherent wrongness to the natural world, and vice versa.
-
2020-10-12, 09:44 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2014
- Location
- A Michigan Far, Far Away
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
Good old HK-47 . He was just the best.
From the little I recall (not digging SoD out right now), Xykon, in death, was not so much different from Xykon in life. He was an arrogant, self-centered jerk then, and he is now.It seems to me that un-dying only meant that he could pick on one more thing about his antagonists.SpoilerHe insulted the other contenders for the spot of chief minion to the Dark Lord, he insulted the lizard men, he insulted Redcloak and Right-Eye when they met.
Whereas Malack (rather, his host, considering we're talking about a vampire spirit that possessed the original shaman Malack) may have been a fairly decent fellow before being turned. That, or, as suggested, he's mellowed out a lot over the centuries.
-
2020-10-13, 09:21 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2020
-
2020-10-13, 10:10 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Aug 2013
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
In my memory of SoD, I think they mentioned that once he became undead, killing things seemed to be the only thing that he enjoyed anymore.
Spoiler: SoDSince, y'know, coffee was off the menu...I'm still surprised that scene hit me as hard as it did!
I wonder if Malack's attitude is more about his worship of Nergal, and reverence for death. In contrast to Hel, Nergal's attitude seems to be that Death is something to be upheld, maintained, and fulfilled as part of the natural cosmological order. Whereas Hel seems to treat death like a tool, or a means to an end. She doesn't seem to care about her "duties", and is focused on personal power more than anything else.
As a result, I can see Malack treating mortals more normally, since they're part of the natural cycle of life and death. Tarquin even mentions that Malack once told him Nergal frowns upon raising undead (the mummies), which is an interesting statement coming from a vampire!Last edited by Ionathus; 2020-10-13 at 10:11 AM.
-
2020-10-13, 10:23 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2020
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
That may or may not be the case. We know precious little about Nergal's attitude for certain.
Whereas Hel seems to treat death like a tool, or a means to an end. She doesn't seem to care about her "duties", and is focused on personal power more than anything else.
As a result, I can see Malack treating mortals more normally, since they're part of the natural cycle of life and death. Tarquin even mentions that Malack once told him Nergal frowns upon raising undead (the mummies), which is an interesting statement coming from a vampire!
-
2020-10-13, 02:26 PM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jun 2014
- Location
- A Michigan Far, Far Away
- Gender
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
He had a different name 200 years ago, but for convenience's sake I called him "the original Malack" rather than "the barbarian shaman who became Malack".
If a vampire spirit is made of the host's thoughts on his worst day, then from what we see of Malack, the shaman may have been a fairly decent type of person. Meaning the vampire spirit didn't have that many dark thoughts to work with. Not saying Malack isn't evil, but he is a polite evil. Of course, that may, again, be behavior picked up over 200 years of learning that going around ripping throats out can be counterproductive unless you do it in secret.Last edited by Darth Paul; 2020-10-13 at 02:27 PM.
-
2020-10-14, 05:40 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Jul 2020
-
2020-11-15, 05:20 AM (ISO 8601)
- Join Date
- Feb 2019
Re: Is insulting the living a sign of resentment, or just flavor in a Fantasy story?
Greg's attitude is likely common among those undead who are "detached" from their body's previous alive state--e.g. vampires experience their host's memories vicariously rather than feeling them as their own. To them, being undead is their "natural" state.
On the flip side, undead such as Xykon, who have a continuity of identity between being alive and being undead (Xykon considers his former fleshy self and his current bony self to be the same person), would not think of being living flesh as something alien, but might see it as a weakness that has been cast aside (the phrase "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" comes to mind).