Did anyone get to wondering what changed her? In Endless Nights when Death makes an appearance at that celestial party she comes off as... well, a bitch. She realizes that everyone fears her and seems to delighted in that fact.
I personally would have loved to see the progression into the character she later becomes.
I think her happiness is mosly relief that she's finally able to do her purpose, and that these masqueraders will no longer go beyond mortality's limits.
I know why, but for the life of me I can't remember where. Roughly, "A long, long time ago" cold-hearted Death came to collect a girl. Said girl called Death a cold-hearted bitch who had no understanding of what mortals go through. Taken aback by this, Death decided to live a day as a mortal to see if there was something to this. At the end of the day, Death greeted her mortal self and asked what she had learned, and what she learned was that she was a cold-hearted bitch with no regard for those she came for.
And after this, Death resolved to live a day every century so that she may know how mortals feel.
Of course this was way better written than I remember, so work with me here.
Scott Edwards
Posts: 2 | Location: Los Angeles, CA | Registered: November 02, 2002
We can't be so sure Death was indeed so bitchy at the beginning of time. I'm not sure if we can state that Death really was that unpleasant at the beginning as everybody seems to be convinced - we see her only on a few panels of Endless Nights and that's basically ALL we see about her behavior back then; too little to guess if she was not a nice person indeed. Maybe she just was having a worse day then. Or she just didn't like the stars that attended the gathering. Or maybe everybody was so afraid of her just because of her very function and would be so regardless of how nice she would be and not because she didn't have too pleasant and cheerful personality then.
Originally posted by Scott Edwards: I know why, but for the life of me I can't remember where. Roughly, "A long, long time ago" cold-hearted Death came to collect a girl. Said girl called Death a cold-hearted bitch who had no understanding of what mortals go through. Taken aback by this, Death decided to live a day as a mortal to see if there was something to this. At the end of the day, Death greeted her mortal self and asked what she had learned, and what she learned was that she was a cold-hearted bitch with no regard for those she came for.
And after this, Death resolved to live a day every century so that she may know how mortals feel.
Of course this was way better written than I remember, so work with me here.
What changed her? Experience. The Endless Nights story is set quite early on in the history of our universe, when not so many people had died. In the meantime she's been present in the final moments of uncountable bazillions of sentient beings. It would be hard for her not to develop compassion.
There's also the matter of perspective. I do remember Neil once saying that if he had written the comic from Desire's point of view, people would have thought Dream was the jerk.
In this story, IIRC, Dream and Desire were on closer terms, and Dream and Death were less close. So while Death certainly changed over time, so did Dream's perception of Death.
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Posts: 6917 | Location: Chicago | Registered: October 24, 2004
