A Caveat Added to Type 7 Immortality

[Flashlight237]

It's fairly small, so just posting it here in the Content Revision board is doable. So, Immortality Type 7 as its currently written assumes that all undead beings are immortal. That isn't the case.

Vampires are where the statement holds true best. Vampires are, like hydras and one particular species of jellyfish, immune to the effects of nature taking its course on them. Basically, they can't die from age. A vampire fan once told me that sunlight would not kill the original Dracula, only power-null him. They can get killed by things, and... Well, they can killed by so much apparently that there's an entire video on the subject:


Ghosts should be immortal because... Well, they already died. How can you kill a ghost without basically Beerus-ing the thing? Well, that's the thing. In Pokemon, ghosts can actually die. It's such a big deal that Bulbapedia outright listed every notable instance of such in its article on Ghost-types.:

• As shown in Pokémon the Series: Sun & Moon, some Ghost-type Pokémon, despite their name, can still die. This was first mentioned in Why Not Give Me a Z-Ring Sometime?, where Acerola revealed that her Shiny Mimikyu, Mimikins, is in fact the ghost of a deceased Mimikyu. Later, in A Timeless Encounter!, it is revealed that Professor Kukui had once befriended a Totem Trevenant that he nicknamed Elder. It is later revealed that Elder has since died, its body now a regular tree, though the circumstances of the death weren't revealed. Giratina is another Ghost-type whose life has been in danger, in Giratina and the Sky Warrior. However, despite this, it still appears that many Ghost-type Pokémon, particularly ones who are more similar to traditional ghosts, are indeed immune to the ravages of time and can live on indefinitely; for instance, a Yamask shown in A Night in the Nacrene City Museum! was told to be millennia old.

Now, the thing where the caveat is necessary the most is the thing that inspired this thread: zombies. Zombies are the least likely to be immortal out of them all, as they're essentially corpses with largely instinctive responses. While zombies are based on George A. Romero's depictions of zombies, in the original Haitian folklore where zombies came from, zombies are actually NOT naturally immortal. Zombies are a temporary spiritual being that will go away once their soul is reclaimed... That is usually the spiritual way of saying "nature will take its course." Also, you can just feed a zombie salt and they'll die. Also, Walking Dead zombies are written in their article to NOT be immortal naturally.:

"As a species, Kirkman's zombies do not evolve and are permanently doomed to just deteriorate until there's nothing left but the skeleton. Individual zombie strength depends on the physical makeup of the individual and on how long they have been reanimated."

Depending on the conditions around the body, it could take from several weeks to several years for a dead body to skeletonized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeletonization

So pretty much Walking Dead zombies have a set lifespan of weeks to years.

Zombies are also the most easily killable of the bunch. Usually in zombie media, just decapitating the zombie or severely damaging its head would do. In Minecraft, just simple blunt force damage can kill a zombie with zero regard as to where you hit it, never mind swords and bows. That and Minecraft zombies have a pretty shit natural lifespan. If they're out in the open, they'll simply become an Arizonan car hood dinner because the sun cooked them. Like how can you claim a zombie that gets cooked by the sun after just one night of being alive is immortal?

As such, I shall propose a caveat to add to Immortality Type 7. That being... This.:

Note: Due to the variable nature of undead beings throughout fiction, it is best to consider whether an undead being can die naturally in the media they're from or not before adding in Type 7 Immortality.

That would help make sure that faulty claims of immortality wouldn't get applied to certain undead beings. So yeah, there you have it.

 

[Flashlight237]

Bump

 

[SamanPatou]

Immortality type 7 as a whole is a very old and outdated concept, basically useless in itself and which defines more a state rather than an ability.
It's overall removal or limitation was discussed a few time, but alwasy scrapped because of the amount of time it would have required.

 

[Therefir]

I agree with this, the note should be enough to prevent most people from adding Immortality Type 7 to any undead profile.

 

[Flashlight237]

Immortality type 7 as a whole is a very old and outdated concept, basically useless in itself and which defines more a state rather than an ability.

In that case, wouldn't it have made sense to just say "Hey, this guy is undead" rather than randomly associate immortality to an undead being? It's not that hard to do since we already put undead beings in one category: https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Undead

It's overall removal or limitation was discussed a few time, but alwasy scrapped because of the amount of time it would have required.

I mean, sure, but at the same time, it saves time to future-proof something rather than let it fester.

I agree with this, the note should be enough to prevent most people from adding Immortality Type 7 to any undead profile.

Yeah, that's what I was hoping with this..!