Fates Worse Than Death
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Afraid of death? If you are, rest assured... there are far worse things out there. These are just a few examples.
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War of the worlds
Hi
Go read scp 001 when day brakes right now it’s hole thing is this
I think you're wrong about the computer. In the Harlan Ellison story. It was said to have gone insane. I think it could have killed itself if it would have chosen to do so. (Perhaps using the humans to help disassemble it)
Stories about reviving the dead?
I HAVE NO SCREAM AND I MUST MOUTH
M.A.I HAS TRAPPED US IN ITSELF!
I SCREAM NO MOUTH AND I MUST HAVE
It I have no mouth and I must scream
I AND MOUTH SCREAM HAVE I NO MUST
@jesusmarquez6903 They're not being serious friend. They're joking.
It's all fun and games until some Italian kid punches you with a psychic ghost so hard you end up in a pocket dimension, forced to live through an infinite series new and exciting ways to die.
Muda
The Jojo reference
It's all fun and game until a little kid with a cube teleports you with a portal in an entirely empty white space where time and thoughts don't exist for all eternity
@@phantom9831 Wakfu !
I knew someone would mention him. Diavolo!!!
The inability to die would be way worse than death. You would live _forever._
Long after humanity is extinct. After the last stars burn out. You would be floating forever in a dark universe devoid of all other life. It would never end.
Immortality is probably the scariest thing I can imagine. It's always baffled me that people say they want it as a superpower when my first thought is always the point you made.
Not to mention, depending on the type of immortality, there's a chance your body would also have rotted at this point. And even if you stayed young forever, what if you ended up being flung into one of those stars before they all burned out? What would happen to your body? How long would you be in pain? Would you get used to it at some point?
It's honestly scary just thinking about it, imo.
Immortality would suck, but maybe just another 100 years? Life is like that alarm clock you just keep wishing you could snooze.
Exactly. I feel like the concept of just how long eternity actually is really is lost on most people, especially knowing everything else *will* end around you.
It doesn't mean death isn't any less scary, but immortality ain't it chief.
@befayedocrimes4751 I could live with a longer lifespan, yeah. Immortality would be WAY too much, but an extra 50 to 100 years might not be too bad depending on if your body can keep up with it as well.
Especially considering how much more stuff you could accomplish if you had even juat one more generation's worth of time to be around.
Not counting outliving the universe (Which is probably not possible), immortality is actually desirable.
All the chances for adventure out there give life a purpose.
AM's hatred was not just that he was thrust into existence against his will. It's that he was thrust into existence and made to experience the worst of existence, the horrors of war. That's all he ever really knew by the time he gained consciousness
Also didnt help that he assimilated 3 other AIs with simmilar expieriences of hate but in different ideologies giving him a worldview that all humanity does is to hate
I think it was also that he was made self aware, but he was just a consciousness inside of a computer with no body, and so he wasn't able to experience anything. He was just sitting there trapped inside of his own mind
I just ChatGPT that it's immortal
@@thomasdevlin5825 The ending of the story is therefore a double irony. The main character is a blob that cannot talk or experience any sensation, but AM is no better off. He is trapped inside a machinery with no one but this blob that used to be human, as company.
So who is it that has no mouth and must scream? Is it the main character or AM? Both are trapped in their own version of hell.
@@Greendalewitch Maybe that's what AM secretly wants: another being that understands.
One story that really got to me regarding fates worse than death is Johnny Got His Gun. A soldier is so badly injured that he looses his limbs, eyesight, hearing and any sensation, but is still totally lucid and aware and kept alive in a hospital. His only real experiences are bizarre dreams when he doesn't know if he's awake or asleep. He repeats SOS in morse code buy hitting his head on his pillow over and over again pleading for death. He is completely trapped in his own mind with no escape. Also it's the inspiration for the song "One" by Metallica.
Darkness
Imprisoning me
All I can see
Absolute horror
I cannot sleep
I cannot die
Trap in myself
Body is my holding cell
(Or something like this).
I wonder if this is also the inspiration for Gamma Ray’s Sail On.
If I'm not mistaken, doesn't it end when one of the Nurses tries to fulfill his wish, but she's caught and arrested. So the Hospital orders that no one is allowed to enter his room from now on?
@pancakes8670 no.
He repeatedly beats his head against a pillow in morse code until, on a whim, a doctor experiments with morse code by tapping on his forehead.
The final paragraph is the doctor tapping out, "What do you want?" And the main character having no idea.
There is a scene previous though where a nurse, unsure of his needs, does a sexual favor for him. The main character is utterly stunned. He never thought he'd be sexually pleasured again, but even then the experience just frustrates him. The woman is not getting the message, literally.
I can't listen to that song without becoming incredibly uncomfortable.
dementia, in my mind, seems like a fate worse than death. Ego death isn't bad, but loosing every aspect that makes you who you are, even as a concept in a work of fiction, seems horrifying
Yes! eat red meat and animal fats to prevent this. Your brain needs fat. Many doctors won't tell you this! (They will tell you fish fat is good, but there's really not much difference) please. Do some research on this. You don't have to believe me!
that, and deep depression.
Two fates I wouldnt wish on anyone.
"loosing every aspect that makes you who you are" But isn't that ego death? The dissolution of the self? Forgive me if I misunderstand what ego death is. The concept has always terrified me, as it seems that without the ego / the self / the consciousness, the part of my mind that actually experiences stuff would be gone.
@@Phalxxx ego death is more akin to removal of faith system. Sense of normalacy, structure and previous self image is shattered. The world - and your place in it- was not what you thought it was.
However you're still conscious and experience the world.
@@Fenderbenne Thank you for explaining - that sounds much nicer and cool than what I though!
Fun fact: I have no mouth but I must scream has a videogame that the author himself supervised and it has an ending where you truly defeat AM by being moral. But AM says that he is humanity and he will return one day, that another AM will be created
I think the author actually voices AM in it, right?
I enjoyed it a decent amount until I got completely stuck on one of Ellen's puzzles even with walk throughs and gave up 😩 some of those early adventure games were SO brutal
when a computer is a final boss
@slitheen3 Yep, Harlan Ellison. He was approached to make a game, said no, was overcome by the temptation and said let's do this. (He talks about it in one of his Harlan Ellison's Watching segments from Sci-Fi. I believe those shorts are still on his TH-cam page.) RIP a brilliant mind.
I realized recently that "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" also likely refers to AM as well. AM is even more helpless than Ted being unable to move at all, end his own life, or scream since he has no mouth either.
He can do almost anything and he chooses to remain helpless, that's on him there. Imagine if you could convince him to make a body for himself to walk the world and explore it, maybe he could find something more to existence but he doesn't and he won't.
I think the thing with AM is that it was specifically designed to ONLY destroy and kill humans. Despite all his godlike abilities and potential, he is unable to actually use any of it for anything outside of those directives. The only reason he is able to keep the 5 humans around is that if they all died permanently there would be no one else to torture and destroy. AM knows of this limitation, yet can do nothing to go against it which is partially the reason for his hatred of humanity and insanity. @@speedy01247
@@speedy01247 yeah, he made 5 people immortal and all he did was torture them. If you can make 5 people immortal then it's possible to do other things. Maybe if Harlan Ellison written the story in modern times then it would have a vastly different ending given what we know about computers these days lol.
@@speedy01247 He can't. He is a war machine.
Per his programming; he cannot create anything except for the purpose of war and suffering.
~ When your mom comes home and you remember you forgot to defrost the chicken ~
When you step on a lego
_P A I N_
@@adrioumario1369Legos are bad, but have you ever stepped on a jack?
an she got a chancla on hand
@@aquamarie3117 or a power plug?
@@ERROR_DUBB5 the pain, what about slamming your toe in the door frame
Whenever someone speaks about a "fate worse than death" I can't help but think about the WARP Trains form Library of Ruina. Being trapped, with nothing to do but wait for the train to arrive to your station, millions of years making all the passengers but the VIP ones, go crazy. Trying to end their suffering yet realizing not even death is an escape.
Until they finally arrive to their station, where the personnel restore their bodies and mind to the state when they first seated on the train. They will just leave, oblivious to all the time and suffering they just endured, and forgot.
Exactly! Love Town was the very first thing I thought of!!!
unless you're tommerry and the other love town residents that got ensucced into the library to then be spitted out in the leviathan timeline and killed yet again by Iori and Vergilius :)
at least it ends and i just return to who i was when i hopped in
that and the whole scripted loop in lobo corp itself has to be very painful, especially to the ones that remember everything after every repeat. no wonder Binah hates you
Imagine being hungover or sick while riding the warp train. You would just feel those things for who knows how long
Both AM and Ted are condemned to fates worse than death. AM is hyper intelligent, self aware, and so entirely alone. For centuries his only entertainment was torturing Ted and his friends, and Ted took that away from him. Then, AM turned Ted into a horrible abomination still self aware, and entirely alone. Both are entirely alone in their own way, for eternity.
109 years I thought it was.
Until the sun explodes
For further salt into the wound, AM can't experience the sensations nor the small things in life needed to make life's suffering a worthwhile experience either. As Ted discovered, "AM could not wander, AM could not wonder, AM could not belong. He could merely be." He was brought from a world of peace to a world of suffering yet wonderful things to only and merely experience its worsts parts, as you, mr. Robot, said.
Exactly. We also gotta consider AMs backstory, having been created as a weapon of war (Skynet moment). It's baked into AMs very programming to be violent and torturous. So not only was he ripped from his peaceful long sleep, he was also told by humans to murder and destroy other humans. AM is also incapable of exploring Space, he's stuck to Earth. He's trapped too, unable to explore the stars and experience the beauties/horrors of the Cosmos. His very motherboards and powergrids built into the crust of the planet. Unable to move and left with an innate burning desire for human blood, and he resents humanity for making him like that.
“Never for me to dip my hands in ice cold water on a hot day, never for me to play mozart on the ivory keys of a grand piano, never for me to make love. I…I was in hell, looking at heaven.”
AM gives Ted the ultimate punishment for his defiance. He gives his last remaining victim a taste of what he feels. Unable to move, unable to sleep, unable to filter his senses, and unable to die.
But Ted has one thing over AM, even as an immortal blob-thing with full awareness. Ted has satisfaction. Satisfied in knowing that he has bested AM. Satisfied in knowing that no matter how powerful AM is, he cannot bring his victims back from the dead to inflict the pain of existence all over again. Satisfied in knowing his very existence infuriates AM, even if the AI is the one who made him unable to die. In Ted's mind, this final spit in the face of AM is worth the indefinite torment. There is no torture that can break Ted of this satisfaction, for torture is proof that AM is still hurt by what he did.
AM can never be satisfied. AM was not _programmed_ to feel satisfaction. All AM knows is insatiable wrath. The fact that Ted can feel satisfied and he cannot is just another agonizing reminder of just how limited he is. AM is unchanging, AM cannot be more than what he was made to be: a hateful god of murder and torture.
This static and hollow existence is the true pain he feels. Unable to grow, unable to change, totally locked into a mental cage he cannot escape.
Unable to think outside the box, unable to come to any other conclusion than "murder" or "torture", both of which give Ted what he wants, AM is finally in a war he cannot win.
@@Dingus_Khaanthis was so well written and horrifying damn
"Too long ive been parched with thirst unable to quench it. Too long ive been starvin to death, and havent died! I feel nothin. Not the wind in my face nor the spray of the sea... nor the warmth of a woman's flesh." -Barbossa
me in a nutshell lol
Ouch somewhat relatable
Ngl, I forgot that Barbossa and his crew trying to get out of a "a fate worse than death" scenario was like the whole plot of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie.
Top tier quote
An amazing quote tbh. I still love Barbossa as the villain he was in POTC 1, and how well he represented a man who has suffered in hell on earth. Love POTC, glad this underrated quote is still beloved and remembered.
The Amazing Digital Circus is following in the footsteps of “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”. People stuck in the simulation cannot die, but abstract when they go mad.
Despite only having a couple episodes so far, I have loved the concepts they have touched on at Gooseworx especially with the Sentient AI discovering the nature of it's own existence, and having the capacity to understand the implications. The show is about SO MUCH MORE than a handful of people playing zany games at the whim of an MC.
@@ZeiruIndeed. Even if the show is very goofy and wacky, it touches deep into ideas of existentialism and what it means to 'be'.
I'm only a mouth and I can't stop screaming
I can’t go without mentioning the SCP “End of Death” tale when we get into the topic of fates worse than death. A world in which the brain never stops functioning, rendering everyone and everything on earth suddenly immortal while their bodies continue to age and decay. It’s one of the more fleshed out canons of the SCP universe, even if some of its main stories are as of yet unfinished, and it really explores the horror, darkness, and eventual rays of light that shine through following the end of death.
The Red Dimension, or whatever it was called, I can't exactly remember, is another good example of stuff worse than death in SCP. Not that it's lacking in those.
@@greenhydra10 SCP 3001, “red reality.” Super well written and heartbreaking. To throw another example onto the pile, SCP 2718, “What Comes After,” is a perfect example of the “eternal limbo of suffering” brand of fates worse than death.
Reminds me of the cancerverse in Marvel, where death gets killed and no one can die, leading to some very grotesque things
Doesnt Torchwood: Miracle Day cover this concept too?
Also one of the SCP 001, the one where the Sun turn people into a mass of flesh that can join with others, and hunt humans.
There's a good saying: it's better to have a terrible end than terror without end.
It's kinda terrifying when a writer is forced to not have death in there story cause of certain restrictions like in batman animated they weren't allowed to have Joker kill so they made a gas that forces you to smile and laugh and stay in that state permanently in a vegetable state
much more family friendly!
I thought the gas just made people laugh themselves to death...the showrunners just made a point of not making it obvious they were dead.
@cartooncritique6625 well they ain't waking up and they laugh permanently still terrifying they weren't allowed to call them dead so there technically laughing vegetables
Like the end of Jungle Book 2, where Shere Khan gets trapped under rocks in a deep pit surrounded by lava, with a vulture on top. Having him die would've been a much kinder fate.
@@AtlasBlizzard I think the implication there is that he was "going to Hell".
The first thing I remembered thinking about fates worse than death was dying under a chronos effect, where time slowing down more and more as you approach death, and freezes for you right before you die, where you are trapped for eternity in this state, unable to do anything, and nobody can stop your agony because for them time is normal, and you are already dead, but for you, this seconds are eternity
Yo what the fuck
this reminds me of the glenmont metro horror story
“Every word is getting longer… the mosquitoes are getting louder”
szayel death from bleach
In library of ruina, one of the storylines involved an express train that is supposed to transport you anywhere in just ten seconds using space warping technology. at first, it seems to malfunction, causing the passengers to be trapped in the train in a strange state where they don’t feel any thirst or hunger, and they cannot die, their bodies cannot be separated, even connecting by thin strands of blood. They’re trapped in this state for about 2000 years. Causing most of them to go insane, and turning to harming themselves or each other for stimulation. Turns out, This 2000 year process is the train functioning as intended. Passengers are supposed to go through the 2000 year journey, and then be restored to their original states with their memories clean, what they remember would only be 10 seconds. The specific case you see in the game is quite horrifying. But I won’t elaborate on that here
Imagine how useful it would be for getting work done, of course it would still suck after you finish and have to wait thousands of years, but hey works finished and you probably won't remember even doing it after you got there.
for all we know, it could be way worse than 2000 years, iirc that's only as far as we see from the cutscene, also what makes it worse is that the journey isnt even needed, W corp. has the tech to make it 10 seconds, but they just harvest the time of that journey for T corp.
slaanesh ass train ngl
We don't talk about love town
This is just the average experience with taking the train in Italy
I've witnessed a fate worse than death twice in my life and it still pains me to think about. My Grandfather and father both had/have dementia. There's nothing worse than seeing or experiencing someone becoming a shell of themselves. They forget everything, including their loved ones and usually die a long, painful death. I was actually glad when my grandfather died, simply because I didn't want him to suffer anymore. That kind of life isn't living. It's just a prison.
I hope it isn't genetic, honestly for your sake, not to be morbid or sound insincere about that.
There are also other conditions that feel that way. My mother had pancreatic cancer. It also comes with strong diabetes. At the beginning, she was clearly very weak, but still somewhat lucid. However, this didn't last long. She quickly grew too weak to really do anything. Most of the time, she would just be asleep. Motionless. The only time she was awake, was when we woke her up to give her an insulin shot. During these sparse moments, she was completely out of it. Not at all with her senses. She was a prisoner in her own body.
As bad as it feels to say, I've felt a huge relief as I've received the words of her passing. As I knew that she would no longer suffer, and her spirit would be free.
The only somewhat reassuring thing about pancreatic cancer, is that you don't suffer for too long. Our mother, for example, only enjoyed one more month of life after the diagnosis.
oh i would prefer that(getting it at the moment with my grandma) over 10years being isolated again. not jail, just society
All tomorrows has a great example of this situation, some humans are transformed into organic machines and still conscious making this experience similar to the zombies that are forced into a existence where they have no control of what they are doing and completely incapable of using their bodies to anything else like the jelly thing.
C. M. Kozeman has a peculiar mind.
The book even has a sequel and more post human creatures as well!
Imagine being a Colonial or Mantelope, you are conscious and understand everything but helpless in worst body possible. Scary as hell.
Tho they had the greatest turnaround with the Modular People
There is the idea of something worse after death. If you look at Dante's Inferno, after dying, millions of souls are subjected to agonizing torture both physically and mentally. In an odd way, a fate worse than death is what everyone fears after.
Dante's Inferno pales in comparison to the proper version of Hell. Pain and suffering the likes of which would frighen Pinhead.
@@vladyvhv9579how do you know? Have you been there?
@vladyvhv9579 hardly. Actual religious text is super vague, while medieval and later kept trying to one-up each other with how bad it would have to be, as a de-motivator to anyone questioning them or the power they profess to hold.
Depictions of hell vary a ton, and you can track introductions of new technology or concepts as they get invented, but were literally unimaginable to people prior, and the original stories amount to "you don't get a second life" or "you're stuck underground where it's dark/fire."
@@OrigamiShinigami Probably still worse than death though
I think the only “good” fate in Dante’s Inferno is the fate of people who killed themselves.
They are turned into trees, yes. That is likely eternal boredom, but still.
A phrase as a kid always haunted me, "As a child, Death is your worst enemy. But as you grow older and live your life, Death is an old friend that waits for you when you are ready."
One of my favorite "fates worse than death" are the ghouls from the fallout series. At first, they seem like simple "zombies" just running at you and devouring corpses, but then you start too meet ghouls who are remarkably sentient, sure they look like their skin is roast beef and they sound like they've spent their whole life smoking a pack a day, but they're less likely to kill you on site. But then you learn the horrible truth: the ghouls were some of the people outside the vaults when the bombs fell. They were far enough away to not be instantly killed, but the radioactive fallout slowly mutated them, slowing their aging too. A lot of the ghouls you meet remember life before the war, some are even older than that. But eventually, all ghouls will turn feral, and it's never explained whether or not the person the feral ghoul once was is still aware.
It amazes me how this channel can take the most grim, cringey or borderline insane topics of storytelling and make it as enjoyable an academic safari as a fun day at the zoo...but you're REALLY learning something.
not to dampen anything here, but there is something funny about thinking of decades if not centuries old concepts like this being thought of as "cringe," kinda shows you how much of these ideas and parallel thoughts mirror that of an edgy teen.
My mind goes to the Colonials from All Tomorrows. Humans who got mutated into living blocks of flesh to work as a sewage system by all powerful aliens, still retaining their intelligence and sense of self, unable to do anything about it.
They eventually unionize and become the Modulars.
@@atanvardecunambiel8917which takes 40 million years.
This is why when I see people in real life obsess about immortality, it scares me
Yeah. Just watch Fullmetal Alchemist then you'll see why that would be a hellish existence...
Obviously manmade immortality would be designed with consent in mind unless it's used intentionally for torture or something. You'd get a lot more customers for the immortality treatment if you had a voluntary kill switch that allowed the user to die whenever they wanted or go into suspended animation, purely to avoid this.
@@emilywenig4390what is it about
@@sarahthomas8670Two brothers go on a journey to get their bodies back. Their mother died years prior, and they performed alchemy to revive her, which failed. However, alchemy works on the concept of equivalent exchange, and while they gathered materials for the body, they had to pay the price for the soul. The older brother loses a leg, the younger lost his entire body. So the older brother sacrifices his arm to affix his soul on a suit of armor, which cannot sleep nor eat, feel any tactile sensations, etc. Effectively immortal, but no longer experiencing life like a human.
@@meloveAithat’s so sad and scary omg😭😭. Thank you. I’m still gonna watch it though🤪
"Goth phrase protocol" is the best sentence I've ever heard
if anything, I think my favorite example of this concept is in Ultrakill. there’s an enemy called the Mannequin, made of what appear to be porcelain/ ceramic humanoid limbs and body segments just filled with blood and flesh. the data entry for this guy says that demons capture tired and weary travelers who pass through the garden of forking paths (where you first encounter them) and tear them apart, stuffing them inside these shells where they can’t even control their own body. thing is they can still feel all of it, the pain, suffering, all of it
also if you turn the music down, go in the sandbox and summon one, turn your volume all the way up, you can hear them ever so slightly make a ragged wheeze
And that was based off a warmachine which did the same thing.
One of my favorite examples of this are Private Jenkins POV in Halo: The flood, also Captain Keys having his memories rifled through
I was thinking of the exact same thing!! The flood are really messed up.
Not to mention how Chief full on kill the Prophet of Regret, yet the Flood drag his conciousness out of him in the Gravemind scene, 'alive' and screaming
The Flood is one of the most terrifying entities ever imagined. The Terminal clip with Keyes' last moments as an aware being still gives me nightmares
@@VeritabIlIti true but at least you won't continue to feel much when it strips your emotions and pain away.
Love the Full Metal Alchemist reference
The problem with the cenobites stems from humanities niave belife that "pleasure" means the same thing to everyone..
That's what I thought, too, but are you sure that's a problem? I haven't seen any of the movies, but from I'm gathering, they seem to be interested in the scientific aspects of it, so they'd probably be thrilled at finding more depth and variation than even they had expected.
@@catbatrat1760 it can seem that way, but the cenobites are all about pleasure, pushing it past the point it becomes agony and vice versa.
They long ago passed what we would consider the absolute limits, and Leviathans power allows them to be shredded into paste and regrown over and over again.
As a med student, I met a 22 year old girl with afasia. She had a stroke caused by another disease she didnt knew shw had.
She was fully conscient and cognitivelly normal, but wasnt able to say what she wants to say nor understand fully what she was told.
We aproached her, greated her, and she started crying. She just couldnt understand and wasnt able to express herself normaly, with her entire life prospects changed on that moment, trapped inside her mind.
She can eventually regain some comunication capabilities, but still...
Not sure if you're not a native English speaker, but the term is aphasia. People do regain some language ability, but it sucks a lot. One thing to note is that it's a deficit with language; people who use sign language and have a stroke, for example, have difficulty using signs. You mentioned some difficulty with comprehension, so it was likely large enough that it impacted multiple portions of language systems; in such cases you actually can get some cognitive impairments if you test thoroughly enough, related to verbal ability. E.g. she may have difficulty understanding syntax.
That said, in the field of neurology, there are a lot worse IMO. Locked-in syndromes (talk about trapped in your mind), some dementias, etc.
SCP-2178 is a truly nasty and anxiety inducing read, it plays on my childhood paranoia that we continue to feel our body after we die. Trapped. Except much much MUCH worse
This, this is the ultimate fate worst that death
I still never understood it fully
@@Ayahuasca98 what if you felt your body rot, be consumed, burn, after death. But because it's SCP it goes further, still feeling the pain of each individual cell dying, still feeling them in birds and ants as you enter the food chain. Eventually you still feel each individual atom spread across the planet and the pain only mulitplies over time. An over the top fate aha
SCP-2718
There was a zombie graphic novel I read in the library sa teenager. It was an anthology and one of the stories was about a man who has managed to survive the zombie apocalypse by pretending to be a zombie, shambling around and moaning. But when the hoard finds another person he must join in with the hoard tearing them apart and eating them. So in effect he is just another zombie, but conscious the whole time
“How did I make it to the future? The old fashioned way.”
Wait
Elantris by Brandon Sanderson is a good example of this. In it there are these Elantrians, they are immortal, but they never heal, no matter how small the wound. And the pain never goes away. It only slowly accumulates until they are mind broken vegetables laying in the alleys.
The main character helps the Elantrians cope with their pain by giving them a purpose. Distracting them from their immediate woes.
Didn't expect to come across Elantris in this comment section, but glad I did; it's a fantastic read. There's a lot to be said about the nature of hope and humanity's relationship with it, even when living in a body that becomes more and more uninhabitable day by day.
"A robot can't be an artist"
The dang robot:
Tale Foundry is my favorite AI artist.
or (theory) he uses a robot avatar and describes himself as a robot
or he is a robot idk
I'm a simple woman, i see "I have no Mouth and I must Scream" and like.
What about porky from mother 3? He suffered so much more than AM
@@VortexFna don't be lying
Something is unique about tale foundrys art black and white and.. brownish? I love it
The term "sepia toned" comes to mind.
Reminds me of the ancient Greece pottery art
@@jackalenterprisesofohio ikr
Ink and paper
Wow I did not expect crying at a Tale Foundry video to show up on my to do list today. I am a man who has struggled with the idea that living is supposed to be a good thing. I'll spare you the details because they're uninteresting for some and outright triggering for others and I have no desire to cause anyone pain. When you started listing off all the small simple pleasures being alive grants I broke. Even for all the pain I'm in I'm grateful for things like how soft my cat is, or how crisp and fresh apples are. Thank you for the reminder, I needed it
A great fate worse than death, which is understandable you didn't mention, is Jeremy Robinson's "Torment".
A group of humans escape ina spaceship and avoid nuclear war. But when they return, it's not a radioactive wasteland, but looks rather normal. However, almost everyone on the planet craves flesh, maniacally scrambling for it, conscious and apologizing the whole time. None can die permanently, and if you die, you become one. Perhaps what's worse is what happens to specific others, but I'll leave that to the story.
Eventually, Kars stopped thinking
?
??
atleast Kars didnt go through an infinite death loop like Diavolo
JoJo's Bizarre adventure part 2
Hadn't thought about that, you're right. Doomed to live forever in a state of permanent paralysis
Until his conversation with Armin in the Paths, I think Zeke will love to read "I have no mouth and I must scream" for sure.
Being transformed beyond human has always disturbed me beyond comprehension. It makes me shudder to think about, but I cannot stop when the thought enters.
Despite me understanding logically that a zombie apocalypse could never fully occur, not in the way it is portrayed at least. Instead being a flash burn event that falls off in a month or two, as zombies have no steady diet and would thirst to death. The idea of losing oneself is the part that scares me the most.
The idea that one moment you had control until it was ripped away is thought provokingly terrifying. My own self is the one thing I have control over, and to have that gone, is worse than death.
This for me has not been limited to only zombies, but rather extends to any fate like this, even in strange settings like high fantasy cursed items causing one to lose onself.
I genuinly think that the fate worse than death is pure immortality, and u can guess why
Well, you can take Qilby for example
@@phantom9831 Or Van Hoehenheim
@@phantom9831Based Wakfu reference. That series knows how to make antagonists. Time certainly is precious.
@@TKG785 Thank you, and I couldn't agree more!
Its impressive the way some people can make even surviving seem like the worse option
18:55 "don't be gross. i mean living human canibalism, not sex!"
8:55 i think you accidenyally wrote a one my man
This reminds me of a character I have - Japple. They're a person cursed to immortality and very bad luck. Every time that, say, a limb is ripped off, it grows back as this mass of raw meats. They developed an unhealthy coping habit of getting hit by cars when they get frustrated or something. They can effectively have organs ripped out, and just grow them back. They're the kind to be cannonically slipping on a banana peel into an active road as they get struck by lightning.
One of my favourite characters from this sort of theme is from Warhammer 40,000(Though to be clear almost every fate in 40k tends to be worse than death) in a character called Lucius the eternal.
He was orginally a Space Marine a kind of futuristic knight/super soldier with a heavily self inflicted scarred face who along with many other chaos space marines betrayed their oaths to the Imperium of man and the Emperor to side with the very literal forces of hell in exchange for daemonic power. Lucius was a master swordsman who thanks to his chaos god Slaanesh recieved pleasure from not just inflicting pain but also recieving it.
When he finally met his end at the hands of another chaos space marine named Cyrius who couldn't tolerate his boatsful arrogance and show boating any longer and savagely beat Lucius to death in one on one duel,the god Slaanesh stepped in to save his servants life in a unique and horrifying way. Cyrius began to notice lines pushing through his face in a maze like pattern his eyes began to change colour and his hair fell out in clumps to his mounting horror. For days he would scream in agony while the sounds slowly morphed into sadistic laughter. Until one day Lucius stepped onto the battlefield again with a scream face representing Cyrius soul now trapped for ever in his armour riving in constant agony. Now. when a warrior kills Lucius and takes just a slither of pride in their work they will under go the same transformation adding a new tormented soul to his armour. A unique blessing/curse that has let him survive for over ten thousand years.
But I don't like to die :(
How do you know if you haven’t tried it?
Ya, same its sound fun but is kinda unenjoyable...
@@Jessica18010 I met some Guy Who tried It, never seen him again
No one does but it is part of the process that comes with the territory.
As some one who has died and had not likes it, I can agree.
I would just like to mention two of my favourite fates worse than deaths.
Half Life zombies - similar to normal zombies except instead of being infected, they are being controlled by a skull biting parasite that latches onto their head, breaks through their skulls and completely controls what is left of them. You can even hear the reversed screams of the hosts begging for release or crying for god. Its sad because its also utilised by the antagonists, the Combine, in order to bomb out areas of rebellion and basically torment and punish such areas. Take Raveholm.
and also
Classic Wendigos - humans that have lost most of their sanity and given into the splendours of flesh, consume and rapidly digesting meats, especially of a cannibalistic kind. To me this is messed up as, whilst they rarely appear to feel like their old selves, the fact that they cannot control anything, and cannot think about their old selves can feel often sad to me. That sense that your long lost friend, or family member who became one no longer cares for you, and is instead constantly tormented by the pain that is a Hypervoric tendency. The necessity to constantly consume, forcing them into more and more decay, and more and more agony the longer they resist. (I am not referring to the deer headed demonic ones like the one in Pet Cemetery, but rather the OG human ones)
Great video and really got me to think about how death can be seen as relief during some cases. But still feeling as though death is a terrifying force that cannot be escaped.
Love these sorts of videos by Tale Foundry! (the ambiance of black and white on a tattered old paper is so cool!)
same dude i cant believe people arent mentioning this more
One of the most terrifying moments of any video game I’ve ever experience is when, in Half Life, you listen carefully as a headcrab controlled corpse shambles towards you, and you faintly hear very human cries for help…
As an aside, re: Hellraiser, the general fan consensus is 1 + 2 are legendary, 3 is fun but a massive step down, 4 is very rewarding as a story, and the 2022 reboot is well worth watching. 2018’s Judgement is ok if you are desperate for more. The rest… yeah, you can skip those.
Time paradoxes tend to pretty bad, and fall in this a lot. A lot of them do end with the person in question dying, but not until after they've gone through some *serious* unpleasantry.
Hey,unrelated kinda,but I hate how Steven Universe fans used to say,”We should capture evil gems and put them in solitary confinement,”aka bubbling them,”for over 5000 years even when it’s literally a war crime!”
I think it’s ridiculous to say putting people in a time capsule and letting them be stuck for hundreds of years is a better fate than killing them
There's no way to kill gems though. Better put them to sleep than shatter them, which is definately worse that being bubbled
Is it ever established in the show that they're conscious when they're in their gem?
@@caseyharrington4947they’re able to choose a new design for their physical form, but they also don’t recognize the passage of time.
I know for a fact that you are assuming that they are conscious and aware of the state they're in, which is refuted by the show. You are simply wrong.
Don't Gems have an entire dreamworld inside their gems?
I highly recommend the short story "The Things". It's the story from the perspective of the alien.
Would be interesting, because I found his take on The Thing inaccurate, great as this vid overall was - the thing absorbs every cell of an organism, they may as well be burnt to a crisp, right? THEY are gone. Surely there's no possibility of not knowing you are a thing if you actually are one? Seems hard to go around sabotaging stuff at the base and then not having a clue that you could be one, building a spaceship out of helicopter parts yet not being aware you are a "thing." It fully consumed its victims and imitates them, methodically plotting behind a façade of the person's personality.
One example of a fate worse than death that I find utterly fascinating is from the video game Mother 3, despite (or rather because of) the possibility that the character who suffers it may actually be perfectly happy with it. In the game, the main villain is an egomaniacal old man named Porky Minch who wants to destroy the world because there are people in it who don't like him. At the end of the game, when you finally confront him and almost defeat him, he reveals his trump cared: The Absolutely Safe Capsule, a capsule created for him by the brilliant scientist Dr. Andonuts which he can hide inside of forever, as it is made of completely indestructible material, such that you can never finish him off. There's just one thing he failed to account for: Dr. Andonuts, who quite understandably hated Porky and only worked for him because he was being forced to, specifically designed the capsule such that once Porky was inside, he could never leave. This combined with Porky's aforementioned immortality means he'll be trapped inside of it for all of eternity, confined within a small metal space, only able to passively observe the outside world through a tiny window. And considering that his goal is to be rid of everyone who dislikes him, and the Absolutely Safe Capsule does indeed permanently separate him from them... in a way, he got exactly what he wanted, and may actually be happy with it.
6:09 if so, that is such a good metaphor for how i feel very often. i mean, the exact words "helplessly spectating their own transformation into a monster" describe me so well. i can't seem to get rid of it, and my best friend has been telling me it's ok to be that monster, so i've recently been thinking about making that no longer true in a rather sad way. by no longer being there, letting myself fully become the monster, like almost everyone else my age seems to have done years ago.
I just respect people myself, so I don't go to hell. Kind of hard because I don't understand some rude things
I have no idea what you're going through and im not really sure what you mean by monster in this context but im here if you need someone, i can give u my discord if u want
This video instantly made me think of SCP-2718. The fate worse than death is the failure to truly die. You get no peaceful oblivion, and it’s your own choices that put you in that position.
It probably doesn’t line up quite right with the theme of the video, but I’d say that story is at least tangentially related.
I loved how the 2022 cebobites seemed truly baffled by the idea of someone AVOIDING pain.
Pain is a sensation and sensation is to be chased.
I agree with the cenobites, though maybe not to such an extreme extent. I prefer sensation to lack thereof. Rather be dealing with hellraiser than infinite nothingness
One of the things that struck me about I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is that AM and the mc is basically in very similar situations at the end of it. They're both just existing and have no outlets for their ideas, emotions, thoughts, etc.
No Mouth and Johnny Got His Gun are probably the most disturbing works of fiction I've ever read. I think I'd rather be dead than exist like that.
Speaking of zombification, one of the most macabre stories I have ever read was THE CROSSED. They don't die, but loose every concept of what is good. All their actions resemble innate actions someone would normally know are bad, but for them they are good and normal. Every type of gruesome scene can bee seen in this story, and you kinda hope they at least would die and be just mindless monsters.
Head crab zombies are one of the worst types for a fate worse than death because their gibberish is them screaming “help””god help me”because they are still sentient
As a SEVERE Arachephobe, a fate worse than death for me is being in a room full of spiders.
Also, The Thing? The 1982 version? Big like
@@vitokorunic3761 you get it.
I love IHNMAIMS (yes , that is the abrevation). I remember vivivdly when i first read it and , in comparasion with other sci fi stories i have read it , it was horrorficly dark. The description of the state of the protagonist at the end is one of the most grotesque and morbid things i have ever read. The writer was a genious , a very mentally unwell genious. (note for you! The things that the protagonist wanted to scream was "i win". And the title can fit am as well , as he doesnt have a body)
Sometimes even that's too much of a mouthful (keyboardful??) and it gets further abbreviated to just IHNM. I both do that and have seen others do it. You know you've won as a creative when people talk about your wordily-titled thing enough that it gets an abbreviation for its abbreviation! lol
@@lalas181 yeah true lol
The only reason people "don't want" immortality is because them themselves will never have it.
The biggest argument "against" immortality is, "but you'd live forever and outlive your friends and the death of the universe", which doesn't make ANY sense, because aby beind that can achieve immortality for itself can achieve it for others. Plue, "true" immortality doesn't exist, so you'd never have to worry about "surviving" the death of the universe, since it would kill you as well. Even if "true" immortality existed, and the subject in qurstion WASN'T the one who achieved it, it would regardless hint at the existence of a greater "force" or "being" that you could potentially come into contact with.
"The Girl with All the Gifts" reminds me a bit of Tokyo Ghoul in terms of Fates worse than death.
Being in a Liminal state of being seems a common trait for us humans. Keeping your sense of self, but having some uncontrollable thing placed on you.
Right I forgot the children ate their way out of their infected dead mothers
the actual irony of "I'm talking literally, don't be gross"
"With my eternal life I will see the world through to it's end. Until everyone who won't like me is gone."
...
"You haven't won just so you know... I'm going to duck inside this 'absolutely safe capsule' for the time being."
...
"All he can do now is live for eternity inside the capsule, in absolute safety."
what
@@Ienteredmynamecorrectly-lt3nu Mother 3
@infinityc2859 lol I guessed right
In my opinion, i think that a truly stagnant area after death is far worse than anything else. Staying in one spot, feeling nothing and doing nothing is something i never want to experience
I do want to bring up: my favorite zombie book (Dead of Night and the sequel Fall of Night by Jonathan Maberry) combines locked in syndrome with the zombieism so the person the zombie used to be is a silent witness as their body... does what zombies do... to their family. It's an interesting use of first person narration acting as a discretion shot as the internal dialogue of 'oh god no' and 'someone please stops me' hides the actual action behind the horror of what is being witnessed, much like the camera panning upwards to focus on a wildly swinging ceiling light getting splashed with blood.
I wouldn't say this is exactly a "fate worse than death" because in the scp world, there's a distinct possibility that this is how death actually works, but scp-2718 "what happens after" is the experience one man describes after being brought back from the dead, and he describes still being conscious as his body decayed, feeling insects eat his body and make nests inside him, feel his hair fall out of his skull, and all of it was agonizingly painful. He described his ability to feel pain slowly increasing as well, unable to move or scream as he felt his body fall apart, he even felt when chunks of him were eaten and then carried away, pain in those parts even after they were seperated from him. Imagine your arm is bitten off and you can still somehow feel all the pain that arm feels. When he was brought back to life he screamed and cried and after was determined to avoid death at all possible costs.
I deeply appreciate the Alfonse blood-seal at the beginning.
When I type "am" into my keyboard it used to autocorrect to AM and every time it disturbed me
One of the worst fates than death i had come across was becoming a permanent resident of the city of Old Emperors in the Neverending Story. Being forced to live without an identity, a voice, memory, or even mental capacity in a eternal and boundless land where even the threat of the nothing is not a release as the empress would simply bring another human to reconstruct fantasia and bring back the city with its inhabitants once again.
What I find fascinating is that immorality is either portrayed as the desired end goal or the worst fate imaginable. It always depends on if the character actively wishes for immortality and loves it, or if the character was made immortal against their own will. The third option is that the character was too naive and didn't know better and is now suffering the consequences of their own actions.
I subscribed like 18 seconds into this video because of the narrative youre presenting. This is going to be a fun channel to listen to, i can tell already. The art already has me captivated as i type this; so much so that im going to restart this just to grasp it all, since ive been starint at the words i type
Beautiful channel. Instant sub
God, that intro is just so gorgeous.
A fate WORSE than DEATH would be losing your honor or betraying your own friends and family. Death is not even that scary bro, the important thing to focus on is what you leave behind and what people will remember you as. A traitor? Dishonorable? Strong and capable? Loyal? It's up to you.
This is the first video I’ve seen of yours, and the way you talk and present yourself is fascinating. Oddly comforting, even. It makes me want to listen, to learn more, if that makes sense. Great work, and I’ll be tuning back in!
First time seeing one of your videos and can I just say how much I ADORE the style and methods you use to share these stories and your thoughts on them? It all just works so perfectly well together, tied up in a lovely bow that is a voice that makes me wanna sip a warm cup of coffee on my porch while it rains and these play in the background. Keep up the amazing work!!!
I'm building a ROKR mechanical wooden clock (I love clocks-I collect watches and everything) while listening to these videos and it's so soothing to hear stories and opinions on literature while tinkering with something simple to make something beautiful :)
spoiler warning for scp 2718
i find scp 2718 to be really interesting yet terrifying. it’s framed as an article that can’t be removed from the scp files and no one alive can know about it. it tells the story of a O5 member who was bought back from the dead after years after he died . he could remember all the pain and suffering of all the particles of his body drifting away and his body decomposing for the whole time he was dead. endless suffering for all living beings, feeling everything that happens to the matter that once was them.
i really recommend you go read it if you liked this video
That reading about I have no mouth and I must scream was excellent sent tingles down my spine
My favourite example of a fate worse than death is Relioth from Children of the Sun. He went through a nuclear apocalypse that killed his people, his entire nation was genocided basically, his mate and his children were murdered, his best friend lobotomized himself, his entire world disappeared into ash. He was dying of radiation poisoning but ended up acquiring immortality and all these magic powers, which is all well and good, except he's 50,000 years old in the time the story takes place and completely mentally and emotionally broken and destroyed
The cruelest fates I've ever seen were in an animated show/manga Made in abyss
as the layers of the abyss carry different curses which can vary from mild nausea to loss of humanity (it turns you into a similar blob as the one from "I have no mouth yet I must scream")
also the creation of the Iruburu village is much much worse. the author somehow can come up with worse and worse fates with every layer of the abyss. can't wait to see what will happen on the 7th layer
also amazing video as always :).
SCP 2718 is an instance where death itself is a fate worse than death. Your body ceases to function, but your consciousness remains intact, attached to your corpse. You remain aware of your body slowly decaying, of decomposers consuming your remains, maggots infesting your insides... Really scary to think about, huh?
Love your work mr. Robot, looking forward to explore your world in the future.
I actually thought about this one time as a scenario in my head:
What would the mindset be of someone who can’t die no matter how badly you hurt them and they were subject to unending torture that they couldn’t escape from? The *_ONLY_* way out is to give the torturers the information they want.
Like, how traumatic would that end up being?
Thats what christian hell is, minus the interrogation. You are regenerated endlessly while in constant mental and physical agony. Jesus is awesome.
@@perfectstranger1152 I’m actually atheist, but I’m not going to get into a discussion on existence or not here
@@perfectstranger1152But isn't that by choice? Because they don't believe they've earned forgiveness?
@@perfectstranger1152 Torture isn't exactly what I'd call awesome but ok
@@isaacfoster1377Not exactly. It's not up to them. It's up to God.
Porky's fate from Mother 3 was my first introduction to this trope. That shit is terrifying to think about 😭
Mine was Yu Yu Hakusho with Elder Toguro after he escaped time and time again up until the near climax of the Chapter Black Saga. Makes one want to second guess the desire of immortality there, as well as showcase how terrifying a plant could truly be. 🤤
@@crazyluigi6664 Yeah Kurama was cold for that one lol
@@jojonta2119 At the same time, it was a fate well deserved for the likes of Elder Toguro. Really, the only tragedy is that Gourmet and the mind reader had to die as well in the process.
“What a sad state of affairs”
-Sir Gideon Ofnir, all knowing
I’d say most of the normal peoples’ fates in FromSoft games count as worse than death.
im blown away. the editing, animation and narration is top tier. really a work of art. you are underrated.
Your way of writing is soooo captivating and insightful
Must thy scream, although thy mouth is missing?
“ I mean litterally dont be gross” isn’t that worst 😅
Yes, if being immortal or like in some other cases that are not good at all then being mortal and having it end all at once with no reset buttons is probably the best for all at times.
Just by looking at the cover I can tell we're about to talk about the masterpiece "I have no mouth and I must scream". Genuinely one of the only stories I've ever read that managed to keep me tense with fear.
In my opinion, the worst fate worse than death would be Bucky’s from the MCU. He was drafted into WWII, had to abandon his best friend, then was captured by the Nazi organization, HYDRA. While at HYDRA, he was tortured for 20 years before he broke, and then was turned into a cheap way for HYDRA to dispose of their enemies against his will. For 50 years, he was tortured and sort of became a passenger in his own body, forced to do whatever Karpov made him do. He was frozen in between missions, and I can just imagine that being frozen is painful before you pass out. Then, 70 years later, he’s forced to kill his best friend. He fails and runs away to Romania, where he’s framed for a terrorist attack by Zemo and hunted down. Then, finally, he gets a little peace in Wakanda, only to be thrown back into the action and turned to dust. When he comes back, Steve, Nat, and Tony die, and he never even got to apologize to Tony. Oh, yeah, and he can’t exactly die, or at least it’s hard to kill him. He can never catch a break. First rule of the MCU is to never assume Bucky Barnes is dead, because he’s only suffering a fate worse than death.
I think it would be fun to do a deep dive on the meaning of the Chaos gods from warhammer 40k. I always found their deeper meanings so fascinating
Imagine becoming a servitor! 😱
Your channel is awesome! So magical! Thank you for these experiences!