# What do you think of this character's death?



## Sheilawisz (Dec 20, 2012)

Well, before starting to describe what this thread is about, I want to warn everyone that it ventures into a rather dark and delicate subject: Suicide.

I know that talking about suicide is serious and should be taken with respect, so I ask everyone to please use your best judgement to discuss these matters... and also, if you feel that this can affect you in any way, it would be better to avoid reading this thread.

There is a character in one of my Fantasy stories that lost her best friend (who was murdered in a rather cruel and awful way), and then, unable to live without her, she decided to just climb into snowy mountains without protection and simply seek to freeze to death.

She was indeed frozen, later describing the experience as _"The cold took me away..."_

She wanted to find her friend in the Afterlife world, not caring anymore about her own life and the brilliant future that she had in her world.

My question is: Did she commit suicide? Did she really kill herself?

This character never used any weapon against herself, drank poison or anything like that, she never took her own life... It was the natural cold of a snowstorm that killed her, and so the word suicide never appears in this story and personally I do not think of her as a suicide.

What would you say?


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## Ireth (Dec 20, 2012)

I would personally count it as a suicide, simply because she sought to purposefully end her life, by natural causes or otherwise, and succeeded.


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## Leif Notae (Dec 20, 2012)

After looking at a few entries, this does bring up a good point. Did she leave a note? If she left a note, it can be considered a suicide. If there is no note, then it can be classified as many things, but in some instances suicide is the last answer. A snowdrift freezing someone solid would be considered more of an accident.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 20, 2012)

@Leif: After her friend's funeral at the mountains, she simply walked away and started to climb alone.

She did not leave any note, but considering that she was wearing just light clothing (and was an experienced climber who knew all the dangers) it was obvious to everyone that she wanted to _depart_ and forsake her life completely.

@Ireth: I am not sure that she sought to purposefully end her life... It's more that she wanted to depart and try to find her friend, letting something else kill her instead of taking her own life.


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## Xaysai (Dec 20, 2012)

Sheilawisz said:


> Well, before starting to describe what this thread is about, I want to warn everyone that it ventures into a rather dark and delicate subject: Suicide.
> 
> I know that talking about suicide is serious and should be taken with respect, so I ask everyone to please use your best judgement to discuss these matters... and also, if you feel that this can affect you in any way, it would be better to avoid reading this thread.
> 
> ...



Less from a suicide standpoint, and more from a reader experience standpoint: is there any way that you can write it so that the reader is left wondering if she actually meant to kill herself? Or is her seeking to reunite with her friend an integral part of the story?

Is there a reason she chose to freeze to death? Does it have ties back to how the friend died? It seems like a random (and slow/horrible) way to die unless maybe it was her way to purge/cleanse herself through suffering.


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## Ireth (Dec 20, 2012)

Sheilawisz said:


> @Ireth: I am not sure that she sought to purposefully end her life... It's more that she wanted to depart and try to find her friend, letting something else kill her instead of taking her own life.



I'm not sure I'm seeing any difference here. The mere fact that, as you said to Leif, she sought to "forsake her life" indicates that she was suicidal, and her wilful lack of precautions against the cold pretty much confirms it. Someone with a working sense of self-preservation would take every possible precaution against something like that.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 20, 2012)

@Xaysai: For the readers, it's already clear that she wanted to depart and try to find her friend in the Afterlife world. They are eventually reunited even though they had ended up at different worlds, and yes: This final reunion is an integral part of the story.

This character is a Mage girl and her friend had known about her magical powers since they were little kids, but when the other Mages learned about this they considered that it was a danger to their secret.

They kidnapped her, she was kept prisoner inside a magical crystal for seven days and then she was murdered in a terrible way, so that she would become a "frozen ghost" locked forever in her own Afterlife world...

The Mage girl was partially responsible for her friend's tragic death, so yes... Freezing to death was perhaps her way to cleanse herself from the feelings of terrible guilt.


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## Xaysai (Dec 20, 2012)

Sheilawisz said:


> @Xaysai: For the readers, it's already clear that she wanted to depart and try to find her friend in the Afterlife world. They are eventually reunited even though they had ended up at different worlds, and yes: This final reunion is an integral part of the story.
> 
> This character is a Mage girl and her friend had known about her magical powers since they were little kids, but when the other Mages learned about this they considered that it was a danger to their secret.
> 
> ...



Gotcha, it all makes sense then : )


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## MadMadys (Dec 20, 2012)

Well I would skip over the argument of 'well she didn't poison herself, nature did her in' because its all about intent.  I can jump in front of a moving train and they wouldn't blame the train.

As I see it, your character put herself into a situation where the only real outcome was her own death.  Especially if she was aware of the risks, though maybe not considering them at the time, then she had no real consideration for her own life.  However, freezing to death is hardly a pleasant or quick way to go like a gun to the noggin or long walk off short plank over lava.  She was not in a frame of mind that made her aware of her actions or their consequences.  I would liken it to getting blitzed out of your mind drunk, getting in your car and immediately smashing into a brick wall at 100 mph.

You are the cause of your own demise however it was not your intent to kill yourself.

With that in mind, I wouldn't say your character committed suicide.  I would never mention the word if you can help it because it allows the reader to consider this point themselves.  Did she purposely, knowingly, end her life or did she simply lose the will to go on?  I would lean towards the latter but the toss up makes it more intriguing.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Dec 20, 2012)

Sheilawisz said:


> Well, before starting to describe what this thread is about, I want to warn everyone that it ventures into a rather dark and delicate subject: Suicide.
> 
> I know that talking about suicide is serious and should be taken with respect, so I ask everyone to please use your best judgement to discuss these matters... and also, if you feel that this can affect you in any way, it would be better to avoid reading this thread.
> 
> ...



My cousin drowned herself. As in she walked into a lake, on purpose, and didn't come back up. Does that really count as suicide?

Yes. Yes, it does. She wanted to die and voluntarily got into a situation that was sure to kill her. The same thing, I think, applies to your character. 

You said it yourself: She _sought _to freeze to death. She didn't just absent-mindedly wander into the mountains with too little clothes on. She knew what she was doing.

A suicide is whenever a person willingly arranges his or her own death. Wether that is jumping off a building or starving to death or running at a policeman waving a gun around or picking a fight with a bear is kinda irrelevant.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 20, 2012)

@MadMadys: She totally lost the will to move on with her life, simply because she did not care anymore about the Magic, her future as a Mage or even her position of power in the New World Order that they were planning: All she cared about was to go and find her friend, whatever that it would cost.

@Ireth: It would depend on how we define suicide, then... According to the culture of her world she did not commit suicide, she just _departed_, but I am curious to know what my readers would think of that.


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## FatCat (Dec 20, 2012)

I can't see how it could be anything other than suicide, to be honest. Like others have said, she had the intent to end her life, so it doesn't really matter how she does it, the intent is there. This thread makes me think of a story I heard on the radio; basically back-in-the-day in London, I believe, there was an increase in the number of child homicides. The reason for this was that killing a child resulted in the hanging of the offender, and those who were religious but wanted to end their life used this as a 'loophole'. The reasoning was, that after you killed a child you could ask for repentance, but with a suicide you obviously cannot. Aside from being outrageously selfish, would you consider those who did this to have committed suicide? Technically they were killed, but the intent to end their life spurred all the motions into play.


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## Ireth (Dec 20, 2012)

FatCat said:


> I can't see how it could be anything other than suicide, to be honest. Like others have said, she had the intent to end her life, so it doesn't really matter how she does it, the intent is there. This thread makes me think of a story I heard on the radio; basically back-in-the-day in London, I believe, there was an increase in the number of child homicides. The reason for this was that killing a child resulted in the hanging of the offender, and those who were religious but wanted to end their life used this as a 'loophole'. The reasoning was, that after you killed a child you could ask for repentance, but with a suicide you obviously cannot. Aside from being outrageously selfish, would you consider those who did this to have committed suicide? Technically they were killed, but the intent to end their life spurred all the motions into play.



Exactly. There's a trope for that, "Suicide by Cop". Basically doing something stupid and illegal in the hopes of getting yourself shot.


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## Leif Notae (Dec 20, 2012)

Sheilawisz said:


> @Leif: After her friend's funeral at the mountains, she simply walked away and started to climb alone.
> 
> She did not leave any note, but considering that she was wearing just light clothing (and was an experienced climber who knew all the dangers) it was obvious to everyone that she wanted to _depart_ and forsake her life completely.
> 
> @Ireth: I am not sure that she sought to purposefully end her life... It's more that she wanted to depart and try to find her friend, letting something else kill her instead of taking her own life.



People never assume anything. Never assume your readers will assume this either. This can be considered just needing some alone time, which is reasonable. Heck, I've lived in North Dakota and wondered around in a thin t-shirt and diapers when I was a kid in -10 degree weather, but I didn't want to commit suicide. I've been out in freezing weather this morning (32 degrees) and could have fallen into the ocean/got sucked in by waves instead of jumping in without witnesses.


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## Phietadix (Dec 20, 2012)

I'm curious, does she find her friend in the afterlife? Or does the story end with her death?


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 20, 2012)

Thanks everyone for your comments, I hope more people will give their opinion about this...

I heard the story of an explorer that was lost in the Antarctica many years ago: The situation was desperate, so he just walked out into the blizzard telling his friends that he would leave for awhile and was frozen to death without directly taking his own life.

I have also heard those stories about people committing a crime in order to be sentenced to death, so I think that whether a death is suicide or not can be decided by how we define suicide itself...

Defining suicide as simply the intention to end your life seems too vague and broad to me. What my Mage girl character did was letting something else kill her instead of directly taking her own life, so maybe that's a gray zone between real suicide and something else that is quite different.

Let's say that a man joins the army and goes to war, and then he deliberately exposes himself to very dangerous situations until one day he gets killed in battle. Is that a real suicide, or is it more like having a death wish?

I would like to describe what the Mage girl did as going out looking for death, a type of death different to the act of taking your own life... However, I am sure that if I published that story many readers would think of that as suicide anyway, and I don't like that because it has a very negative impact on many people =(

This also makes me think of Harry Potter, and a story that I heard about a group of warriors that fought and killed each other with the intention to die without directly killing themselves.

@Anders: I am very sorry to hear that about your cousin. If this thread made you feel bad, I apologize.


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## JadedSidhe (Dec 20, 2012)

Having been in that dark frame of mind on more than one occasion, I can tell you with certainty, if she went out into the snow with the intention of ending her life, it was suicide. There's no gray area there. 

I don't have any issues with the subject of suicide. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 20, 2012)

@Phietadix: Yes, they were reunited in the Afterlife world even though it was not easy =)

@Jaded: Thanks, this is a really interesting, though dark, subject to talk about.


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## Penpilot (Dec 20, 2012)

Yes it's suicide. As someone mentioned above there's something called suicide by cop. All a person has to do is get a knife, walk into a public place, and act dangerous until the cops come. Then, refuse to cooperate and just march toward the cop and hope they shoot. There's a term called suicide by proxy that covers this and stuff like euthanasia. IMHO if you step in front of a train, or go into the freezing mountains naked, it's the same thing as taking pills or shooting yourself.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 20, 2012)

My definition of suicide is rather different, not defined only by the intention to die...

Well, I am convinced now that this part of my story would be considered a suicide by most readers. I should perhaps explain that it's not a suicide according to the culture and beliefs of that particular world, because she was letting the cold _take her away_ instead of committing a really direct and personal action against her life.

Maybe I should invent a term for this kind of death, like _Gray Death_ or something like that??


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## MadMadys (Dec 21, 2012)

Sheilawisz said:


> Maybe I should invent a term for this kind of death, like _Gray Death_ or something like that??



There are lots of possibilities here...

Perhaps your character met their... _Ice age_?

Or maybe they got their _ice_ kicked?

Even better! _ Cool _party!

I got a whole movie full of ideas!


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## wordwalker (Dec 21, 2012)

Sounds like you're trying to get into the head of a suicide-- in a case where she happens to be right, a universe where it's plain truth that she does reach an afterlife with her friend. Walking off like that simply *is* suicide, as all the other posts have said, but you're also trying to take a longer view than that.

That's an intriguing and romantic tale, but it's also going to be hard for readers to swallow what's still suicide. And I'd have to agree with them.

Some things that might help:


is she doing any good by her death? eg searching for lost children and staying out too long in the cold?
how much does the story continue with her afterlife? if she soon finds out that suicide cuts her off from her ancestors and she still has to go through the Hells to reach her friend...
is she _not_ the MC? if she's someone the MC can watch and think "she's so dedicated, but I know I'm needed here," you've put it in a different context.


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## Amanita (Dec 21, 2012)

If I remember correctly what you've posted some time earlier, the main character in this story is reaching a kind of parallel world through her death. Do you think you could establish this possibility earlier? Something like only the character's body is dying from things like cold but her mind/soul is able to wander somewhere else? This would move it away from earthly concepts of suicide. As I understand it, she's not really ending up in the afterlife or is she?
To me, the idea of a person's suicide actually leading her to meet the people she's lost is problematic to say the least, but it's your story and you don't have to worry about that.
Maybe you could have her go out into the cold for a reason other than wanting to die if she really has to die in the way we understand it. Something like worldwaker suggested or even the character being drunk/having taken drugs/having hallucinations and going out into the cold without realising it.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 21, 2012)

@Wordwalker: The Mage girl is not the main character, that story is totally about her friend =)

She really had to travel to the Afterlife worlds to go and find her, because otherwise, her friend would have been locked forever in her own world without any chance to escape or even to communicate with anyone... That's what being a _frozen ghost_ means, usually caused by suffering a particularly dramatic, tragic and unexpected death.

The Mage girl was unable to immediately find her dead friend, because her own dramatic death in the mountains turned her into a frozen ghost as well- However, she was able to break out of her own locked world and eventually she rescued the other girl, so the ending to all of this is happy after all =)

All this Afterlife stuff is actually the end of the story, but I feel that it's the most beautiful and meaningful part and I always cry a lot when I re-read it...

Thanks for thinking that this is an intriguing and romantic tale!!

@Amanita: Sorry, you are confusing this story with a different one that I have told you about before.

In the world and the species that these characters belong too, things like having a soul, an Afterlife and being visited in dreams by your dead loved ones are all pretty normal and accepted. That's why the Mages wanted the girl not only dead, but turned into a frozen ghost as well and locked away forever in a different reality...

There was a consequence for the Mage girl's death in the cold: She became a frozen ghost too (not to mention that she was thrown into a very dark, lonely and scary world) but being a Mage she was able to break out of it, and then she came back to the living world, traveling between both universes until she finally managed to contact, visit and release her friend.

What do you think of this??


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## Amanita (Dec 21, 2012)

I think I did mean the same one, but never mind.  Maybe my post was worded in a confusing way. 
I shall try again. If the mage girl knows what's going to happen after her death and knows that she's still able to act and actively help her friend, I wouldn't call the entire thing "death" but it's more like a way of moving from one world to the other. If it's described as such, the entire "suicide" issue shouldn't really be a problem. If she's able to return to the living world (not as a ghost, is she?) she's not really dead in my opinion. 
But maybe I should stop posting now, such matters are almost difficult to discuss across the internet.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 21, 2012)

The Mage girl thought that finding and helping her dead friend was perhaps within her powers, but she had no way to be sure that it would work and she was really venturing into the danger and the unknown...

She did that because all she cared about was to go and find her no matter the costs, not caring anymore about her life in the normal world, her future as a Mage and the new world order that was drawing closer.

For that species and that world, the definition of what Death means and what it means to be dead are different to Earth's definitions, so it's even more difficult to say what exactly was the Mage girl's unusual death in the cold.

Thanks for your opinion!! =)


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## wordwalker (Dec 21, 2012)

I see, it's Setting A Soul Free. Noble purpose supplied, everything fits now.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 22, 2012)

Then, if there is a good and noble purpose behind your actions then it's not suicide anymore... even if you intentionally set course towards your own death, knowing what you are doing??

That's exactly what happened in Harry Potter, and it could explain why Rowling got away with that without anyone saying that it was a clear suicide act. I am not going to say exactly what happened because it could be a spoiler, but the situation of my Mage girl is very similar to that.

I think that the real definition of suicide is when death is caused by your own direct actions, while in the other hand, simply letting something else take your life would have to be considered separately...


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## Shockley (Dec 23, 2012)

In the same way that I'd define exposing an infant as murder, I'd define exposing oneself to the elements as suicide.


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## wordwalker (Dec 23, 2012)

There are gray actions that aren't openly suicidal but daring the fates (eg battlefield recklessness), but most readers would agree that you can only march into so much cold before it counts as suicide. And she's not trying to leave it to luck, she _needs_ to die.

Then again, with such a clear other purpose to her action, this is the kind of "suicide" that's impolite to use the s-word when "act of sacrifice" comes closer to the whole picture. Don't worry about the word.


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## Sheilawisz (Dec 25, 2012)

Thanks a lot, everyone =)

I wanted to tell you that this story in particular is one of my most private and secret works, and the chances that I'll ever want to publish it are very low...

Anyway, I wanted to know what would be the view of possible readers about the _taken away by the cold_ thing, and this thread has helped me to understand some important key points.


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## JayEmma (Dec 27, 2012)

passive suicide.


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