CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
if you brain does not react correctly to outside stimulus and is obviously fault, should you put it out of its misery with a fucking bullet throught he brain?
Troll Kingdom
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if life doesn't work on you, should you end it?
- Thread starter CaptainWacky
- Start date
The Dork Lord
Whipping Boy
I don't want to be hooked up to a machine until my heart decides to stop beating, if that's what you mean.
To an extent, Gadling (along with the other immortal characters in Sandman) violates something of a cliché of fantastical stories: physical immortality usually turns out to be a curse in disguise, with the recipient eventually longing for death. In the Sandman universe, however, immortality simply bestows more of the same, for better or worse. Gaiman's immortal humans may not age, but neither do they develop unnatural wisdom or any other notable talents. Some, such as the unfortunate Element Girl, are faced with the possibility of an eternity of unbearable existence.
Gadling regularly ponders the nature of his blessing. Sometimes this pondering is whimsical - at Morpheus's wake, a slightly drunk Gadling converses with the centaur Chiron: 'I once worked out that I'd spent over six years all told, just pissing. Six years of piss.' In contrast, a poignant scene in volume nine sees Hob weeping next to the grave of the latest of his companions to die: 'I thought we'd have longer. It never gets easier, people you love not being there any more.'
The last time we see Hob, indeed, he seems to be more ambivalent about his gift. In 'Sunday Mourning' in The Wake, he attends a Renaissance Festival with his latest girlfriend, Gwen, who is black, leading 'Robbie' to regretful musings on his earlier involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. Gwen tells him to drop the subject, and when he responds 'you can't just forget about it', she answers 'sure you can, Robbie, you know how? You just forget about it', neatly echoing Gadling's own method of achieving immortality.
Gadling also has much to say about the inauthenticity of his surroundings: 'It's just someone's idea of the English Middle Ages crossed with bloody Disneyland.' He spends most of the afternoon drunk in a disused and derelict tavern, vaguely similar to the one in which he first met Dream and Death. Here he encounters Death again, who tells him of her brother's demise and offers him a way out. He asks her many questions about what happens next and the nature of life and death, all of which she neatly avoids answering. He admits to being tempted by her offer of death: 'There'd be an awful neatness to dying here, wouldn't there? ...like coming full circle'. Eventually, however, and after a long pause for thought, he declines: 'I'm not ready to die. Not today. Not yet. Maybe not ever.' But there is a wistfulness in him we haven't seen before. Ultimately, though, he chooses to live, and we suspect he always will.
'Sunday Mourning' is the last episode of Sandman to be set in a contemporary setting, the final two taking place in ancient China and Shakespearian England respectively. There is a feeling that Hob, as the only human we've followed this long and this closely through the series, is the last modern character we see. On the last page, he relates a dream to Gwen in which he met Dream and Destruction on a beach, and they walked off into the sunset together. When Gwen asks how it ended, he fobs her off with the cliché that 'they all lived happily ever after'. We are left with the feeling that neat, happy endings of that kind are only to be found in dreams - Gadling may live ever after, but the happiness is not guaranteed.
Gadling regularly ponders the nature of his blessing. Sometimes this pondering is whimsical - at Morpheus's wake, a slightly drunk Gadling converses with the centaur Chiron: 'I once worked out that I'd spent over six years all told, just pissing. Six years of piss.' In contrast, a poignant scene in volume nine sees Hob weeping next to the grave of the latest of his companions to die: 'I thought we'd have longer. It never gets easier, people you love not being there any more.'
The last time we see Hob, indeed, he seems to be more ambivalent about his gift. In 'Sunday Mourning' in The Wake, he attends a Renaissance Festival with his latest girlfriend, Gwen, who is black, leading 'Robbie' to regretful musings on his earlier involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. Gwen tells him to drop the subject, and when he responds 'you can't just forget about it', she answers 'sure you can, Robbie, you know how? You just forget about it', neatly echoing Gadling's own method of achieving immortality.
Gadling also has much to say about the inauthenticity of his surroundings: 'It's just someone's idea of the English Middle Ages crossed with bloody Disneyland.' He spends most of the afternoon drunk in a disused and derelict tavern, vaguely similar to the one in which he first met Dream and Death. Here he encounters Death again, who tells him of her brother's demise and offers him a way out. He asks her many questions about what happens next and the nature of life and death, all of which she neatly avoids answering. He admits to being tempted by her offer of death: 'There'd be an awful neatness to dying here, wouldn't there? ...like coming full circle'. Eventually, however, and after a long pause for thought, he declines: 'I'm not ready to die. Not today. Not yet. Maybe not ever.' But there is a wistfulness in him we haven't seen before. Ultimately, though, he chooses to live, and we suspect he always will.
'Sunday Mourning' is the last episode of Sandman to be set in a contemporary setting, the final two taking place in ancient China and Shakespearian England respectively. There is a feeling that Hob, as the only human we've followed this long and this closely through the series, is the last modern character we see. On the last page, he relates a dream to Gwen in which he met Dream and Destruction on a beach, and they walked off into the sunset together. When Gwen asks how it ended, he fobs her off with the cliché that 'they all lived happily ever after'. We are left with the feeling that neat, happy endings of that kind are only to be found in dreams - Gadling may live ever after, but the happiness is not guaranteed.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Well, he was happy to go on living the last time we saw him, but he'd still only been alive for a matter of hundreds of years. Maybe after another thousand years he'd want to die. At least he got some enjoyment out of life, with his many campanions and his forray into slave trading!
The Dork Lord
Whipping Boy
I don't think Hob will ever want to die.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Think of the timescale associated with immortality. Maybe not even in another thousand years, maybe not a hundred thousand...what about a million years?
Of course I think he can still die as a result of an accident, just not by disease or old age, so he might not make it that long.
Of course I think he can still die as a result of an accident, just not by disease or old age, so he might not make it that long.
The Dork Lord
Whipping Boy
Ok well we know that everything dies eventually. Even the universe. Imagine being able to see the end of EVERYTHING. I would put up with a lot of BS to witness such an event.
The Dork Lord
Whipping Boy
Even if it's billions of years from now.
Fuddlemiff
Is this real life?
100 trillion, actually.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
Death will be there to close the doors.
Fuddlemiff
Is this real life?
It's from Doctor Who, it can have any word behind it, actually.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
And there will be annoying cute human children there at the end.
CaptainWacky
I want to smell dark matter
But what trying something new?
Colonel Kira's Left Tit
Bearded Belly of Bajor
Jumping out of planes rules.