Thursday DE

[needsmoreresearch]

What role has disease played in your character's life and/or universe? Have people conquered major illnesses in your character’s canon, is there a Big Bad Disease (...is it a real disease? a metaphor for something in the real world?), do people just sometimes get annoying colds? Is illness an important plot or character development point?

Comments

[death_gone_mad]

Well, Amascut's mental health is a big thing when you talk about her with her brother. She's survived a lot of trauma and most of the world has a problem with how she's dealing with it, but her brother is practically the only person who doesn't want revenge against her for some reason or another. He's a good dog god *pets*

Naturally, she hates him for being that way.

But besides Amascut's mental health issues and those of various other NPCs, there is physical disease in canon but sometimes canon can't decide consistently whether it wants to riff off of typical MMORPG game mechanics or not. You know, eat a whole shark to recover a fifth of you health points or something ridiculous like that? There is an actual disease mechanic which drains stats other than health points but alcohol and banshee shrieks have the same effects. Outside of game mechanics there's the Sophanem plagues for which Amascut is indirectly responsible, the west Ardougne plague which is mostly just propaganda and hysteria to keep people out of the elf lands IIRC, the Zogre plague which turns ogres into zombies, and whatever is causing people in the Wushanko isles to be born with fins or tentacles or feathers or beaks. None of these really get resolved by the player character, or anyone else because lol medieval medicine and "why isn't eating tons of food working?" type thinking.

And then there are the fairies which can catch magical diseases. It never effects Fairy Fixit personally but part of the Fairy Mafia's coup plot was killing the Fairy Queen via such a disease.

[inlovewithwords]

Eriond: There are definitely some instances of major illnesses, usually for Plot Related Reasons. Or poison, which isn't the same, I guess. I think the Polgara the Sorceress talks about some plagues during her years of raising her nth-great-nephews.

Lois: Real world, really.

Evelyn: ahahahaha hoo boy uh. There's some weird magical effects that I'm not sure if they're illness so much as, see previous, poison arguably? But there's some weird physical and mental health stuff going on.

Star Wars: Okay so I guess it's not strictly speaking illness but, like, Star Wars clearly has sub-par prenatal and maternity care to plot-critical levels. Also, sometimes I toy with the idea of ignoring the stupidest part of Episode III and assuming "hey Padme breathed in a ton of overheated air ON THE FREAKING LAVA PLANET was nearly strangled to death by her husband, and went into labor, that's a lot of physical damage to take okay" (and this also explains a bit why Obi-wan looks *so* old by the OT, seriously, all that breathing in superheated air cannot have been good for any of them, maybe Palps was trying to subtly kill Anakin indirectly through lung damage even before the duel???) and that the reason Leia remembers her birth mother in RotJ (other than ignored continuity) is that Padme survived and hid and pretended to be Leia's nurse/nanny for a few years (but Leia confusingly and Force-powers-relatedly remembers the Truth) and died of illness related to, you know, the terrible lung damage. But I haven't really decided if I'm going to make that Millicanon yet or not (SW players feel free to weigh in).

Oh, and there's the episodes where a not-a-Nazi-scientist makes a universally-deadly-virus except for the One Antidote and it's this whole plotline that nearly kills Ahsoka and Padme and let's just say Anakin takes it poorly.

Tavi: ahahahahahahahaha okay so there's a literal inconsequential aside in book six where Isana and a young noblewoman named Veradis talk about how they figured out some disease or other was transmitted by rats and are taking steps to prevent a massive outbreak in the middle of the Vord War. THEY STOPPED THE BLACK DEATH, Y'ALL. Tell me that isn't hilarious. There's also another massive plague, Blight, which has major plot-relevance to Alera. It left Amara infertile until panacea intervened and so played a major role in one of the romance plots, and also killed off Bernard's first wife and two daughters (thus enabling the Amara/Bernard romance at all, really). Considering how losing his cousins who were close to sisters to Tavi, all being raised in the same house and all, ended up shaping him (headcanon mostly but come on, that leaves a mark on a ten-year-old, they were even younger than him), yeah, huge role.

Also, pneumonia is extremely plot-relevant to Alera! Sextus got pneumonia as a boy (late teens in my headcanon, he was being a dumbass) and his lungs were always weak afterwards. Result was he completely dismissed some of his symptoms as his chronic lung issues combined with old age and thus no one caught on that he was being poisoned before it was far too late.

(Also, headcanon of mine is that Tavi's grandmother had RA and a mild blood disorder, both of which contributed to her eventual Fridging By Grief.

Poison or wound-related illness in general has a much larger role in Aleran plot than viral or bacterial or autoimmune disease does, but it definitely has a notable role. Tavi was deeply concerned about the cities under siege not being able to get supplies and succumbing not just to famine but also plague. So yeah, it's a huge thing.

[angry_friendship_wolf]

Stopping in quickly before heading out again:

Disease plays a big role in Digimon Tri, insofar as the central problem running throughout the plot is the Infection, although whether it actually is a disease remains in question: While it's initially presented as one, Koushiro posits that it might be more accurate to call it a mutation, before switching tack to thinking of it more as a botched, indiscriminate overwriting of code from binary to ternary; Gennai implies it's something more magical and ineffable than that (and aesthetic clues back him up on that by visually comparing it to a Crest). In both cases, it's implied that neither of them really know, they just have pet theories based on available data.

At the very least, it functions like an epidemic, infecting both Digimon and computer systems (and, by the end of Chapter 5, seemingly spreading to human beings), and has the effect of driving its victims mad. An entire five episode chapter is spent trying to figure out a cure, with the end result being failure, the infection and deaths of all eight partner Digimon, and a forced reboot of the Digital World.

[aaaaaaaagh_sky]

Fallout canon states that in the years immediately preceding the Great War of 2077, the United States became convinced that China was developing biological weapons for use on American troops, and initiated projects to counter any such weapons. One such project was conducted by a company called West Tek; they called it the Pan-Immunity Virion Project. Their goal was to stimulate the human immune system in ways that would enable it to fight off any and every Chinese bioweapon. They came up with something that supposedly altered DNA's double helical structure to a quadruple helix, don't ask me how, and tested it on animals. The animals developed abnormally large amounts of musculature and massive extra brain activity. The Army showed up shortly after the information became available, claimed the facility and the research, and renamed PVP to Forced Evolutionary Virus- FEV. They liked the idea of using the thing's results as a form of super-soldier serum and began testing it on military prisoners once the research seemed reliable enough, 'reliable' being a relative term given that the virus had a high kill rate and could result in massive deformities and other issues. Discovery of the experiments resulted in a mass revolt among the soldiers guarding the primary research facility and in the suicide of the grunts' commanding officer. His second in command, Captain Roger Maxson, interrogated the researchers and executed the scientists involved despite every single one of them claiming to be acting on orders from the Pentagon; he then tried to contact higher-ups and failed to get any response. He eventually declared full mutiny and secession in an effort to get the government to pay some attention and answer their questions, but he did so on October 21st, 2077, and the government was a little busy at the time. The bombs fell two days later. Maxson's men and their families and other civilians survived and found somewhere else to carry on, reforming as the nascent Brotherhood of Steel. The research base was sealed but could not be destroyed due to lack of adequate weaponry, and other stocks of FEV existed at a number of research locations elsewhere in the United States, resulting in the continued creation of supermutants and mutated animals. The conspiracy called the Enclave developed a strain of FEV that was supposed to wipe out any mutated creatures or people so that the 'good people' of the United States could rebuild without interference, but they were thwarted in the final events of Fallout 3.

So, yeah, disease has played more than a little bit of a role in Ellen's world and life, both directly and indirectly.

[cottoncandypink]

In terms of what's strictly canon, it's not come up.

If his world is examined under the meta lens its presented with, there's always some deadly plague or outbreak or pathogen floating around somewhere trying to kill off humanity. It's just a thing that happens.

[quick_clean_pure]

Disease is literally the thing that wrecked the world in Repo! the Genetic Opera. A plague that caused organ failure hit and killed off millions, which led to a company devising a cure, which led to them financing the money to sell that cure, which led to Repo Men collecting on debts via murder and, well, all that shit.

It's implied that essentially everyone is in some kind of debt that, if they don't pay off, could get them killed horribly, and it all comes back to getting sick and needing a cure to stay alive.

[archmagetrust]

The Plague of Undeath has had a massive impact on Azeroth. The Plague was a magical invention capable of killing and raising any living being, animals included. It was spread through tainted grain originally (not bites, thankfully). Those raised by the Plague became known as the Scourge, mostly mindless undead completely loyal to the Plague's architect, the Lich King, and his generals, Arthas and Kel'Thuzad. The Third War was the civilizations of the Eastern Kingdoms continent fighting against the Scourge.

It didn't go well.

Of the seven human kingdoms, four were completely wiped out and raised as Scourge. Two survived by going into isolation (Gilneas built a massive wall across their peninsula and Kul Tiras is an island nation). Stormwind was the furthest south and was mostly spared. The high elf kingdom to the north, Quel'thalas, was decimated and their Sunwell corrupted and destroyed, resulting in them renaming themselves blood elves and turning to fel magic. The dwarves retreated into their mountains. The orcs stole human ships and fled to Kalimdor, the western continent, and the races they met there, trolls and tauren, were the foundations of the modern Horde. A small number of humans fled to Kalimdor as well, led by Jaina Proudmoore, establishing the human city of Theramore. This is also when the night elves were rediscovered as the orcs starting chopping down their forests for resources, incurring their wrath. The end of the War saw them lose their immortality with the destruction of the World Tree (granted not at the orcs' hands but at those of the Lich King's master).

The Eastern Kingdoms should have fallen to the Scourge, but a fluke resulted in the Lich King being forced to pull his armies and generals back to the continent of Northrend, namely due to a night elf named Illidan who led an assault on his Throne. At the time the Lich King was merely a spirit bound to a suit of armor held in a block of ice. Should Illidan have reached it he would have been destroyed. And so the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms survived.

At one point a section of the Scourge regained their free will and rebelled against the Lich King and Arthas, forming their own faction of Forsaken. They reclaimed their homeland of Lordaeron, though that didn't go over well with any living survivors and remaining humans, especially as they had done so with human help and then turned on those allies. Today the Forsaken are one of the most powerful 'races' whose alchemists have created a plague of their own known as the Blight. The Blight is able to kill both the living and the undead. They're technically forbidden from using this in combat, but that doesn't always stop them, especially now that their leader, Sylvanas, has risen to Warchief of the Horde.

Khadgar missed the Third War as he was trapped on Outland. Being a living human, he is no longer welcome in the lands he grew up in, many of which are corrupted by undeath, and many people he knew are dead or undead now. The current political landscape is a direct result of the Third War and the Plague.

The Plague also made a comeback when the Lich King returned, spawning scores of new undead. The Alliance and Horde were established factions by then, however, and they quickly quelled the attack and turned their attention to Northrend to destroy the Lich once and for all.

[archmagetrust]

I'm leaving out a lot of detail for the Third War. If anyone is curious, Wowpedia has an excellent write up.