this post was submitted on 21 Nov 2023
863 points (98.6% liked)
Comic Strips
11950 readers
2001 users here now
Comic Strips is a community for those who love comic stories.
The rules are simple:
- The post can be a single image, an image gallery, or a link to a specific comic hosted on another site (the author's website, for instance).
- The comic must be a complete story.
- If it is an external link, it must be to a specific story, not to the root of the site.
- You may post comics from others or your own.
- If you are posting a comic of your own, a maximum of one per week is allowed (I know, your comics are great, but this rule helps avoid spam).
- The comic can be in any language, but if it's not in English, OP must include an English translation in the post's 'body' field (note: you don't need to select a specific language when posting a comic).
- Politeness.
- Adult content is not allowed. This community aims to be fun for people of all ages.
Web of links
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
No worries, homie!
He gave you IMMORTALITY, didn't say nothin' about remaining conscious!
And while suffocation due to CO2 accumulation doesn't feel nice, HYPOXIA ON THE OTHER HAND FEELS AMAZING!
So:
step 1: shut off your oxygen feed and your suit heat
step 2: let the CO2 scrubbers do their job
step 3: breathe easy because you still have the ambient nitrogen mix component
pretty soon you're gonna feel floaty, dizzy, and giddy - you're gonna feel exhilarated, a real I CAN DO IT vibe - and then as a tingly and warm sensation engulfs your entire body, you will begin to feel HELLA sleepy.
then your immortal body will go into a state of persistent dormancy, preserved by the cold, purified by the radiation.
if you are EVER found (assuming you ever are... and if you aren't, you won't be in any condition to care!) and your rescuers expose you to an atmosphere your body can actually use, you will AWAKEN and be able to pick up however many days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, or millennia later, and resume living a life, even if it isn't necessarily the one you once knew.
And should you be abducted by the gravity of any celestial body you will feel pain unimaginable for however long your nerves last, stranded on something that nobody else will ever discover to live out the heat death of the universe in a constant cycle of pain (if you can regenerate lost nerves) or as a mangled sentient* meat pile (if you can't regenerate) all because you were given Immortality and not Invulnerability.
No. You won't feel pain if you're not conscious. What are you on about?
Also, you can see the Earth and Moon in the corner of the frame, he's not that far away. Probably in Earth orbit, or in near-Earth solar orbit. So the celestial body he's most likely to hit is Earth, which means he just wakes up after impact and everything's fine.
You mistake invulnerability with immortality.
An immortal can still die they just aren't effected by time.
Invulnerability would mean you can still die of age but your body is physically invincible.
I don't know what scenario you think we're discussing here. If the astronaut is capable of dying from damage then the comic doesn't work.
My interpretation is that they are not, but they can be in eternal agony or be rendered a chunk of living meat that's too damaged to sustain sapience.
If the astronaut is unable to sustain sapience then there's no problem. It's no different from regular death.
True. It's the best outcome if they're unable to make it home. Gross, though.
But it IS a problem for the astronaut, as "I don't want to die!" implied they didn't want to lose sapience. Only a problem until it happens, of course, but then, so is death.
By definition, an immortal should not be able to die, but it depends on the writer. You're correct that nothing says they can't experience pain, though.
I've always seen the two as different but like you said it depends on the writer.
In my experience though "immortal" is mainly used in the sense that there's no physically possible way for a mere human to kill said immortal.
It could also be the difference between something that's biologically immortal (like lobsters who could theoretically grow forever due to their ability to reconstruct telomeres) and something physically immortal like certain atoms. Or event potentially something "essentially immortal" where by all accounts to human life they will outlive us by eons and there's nothing we can do to even affect them let alone cause damage.
"Mortal" means "subject to death," so without qualifiers "immortal" should mean something cannot die at all. But of course everything in the real world dies eventually, so when used on real things it's being hyperbolic. Since there's a supernatural being in the comic, all bets are off.
Fair enough
Lmfao I was reading the parent comment thinking "hey thats actually pretty decent" and then you hit me with this. Instant "oh...."