Dating and Immortality in COH
By
2short2care,
Posted on: 2010-06-21 16:45 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Hee, just teasing. There was nothing untoward there. Although it would probably get more "hits" if there was. |
Dark_Respite has a mean right: *fwaps Decorum across the back of the head* I may write the two of them as a double-act, but not THAT kind of double-act, thank you very much. (And I don't write slash-fic.) |
What can I say? Sex sells!
Dec out.
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Oh, you dirty, naughty girl.|
Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
*fwaps Decorum across the back of the head*
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| I may write the two of them as a double-act, but not THAT kind of double-act, thank you very much. (And I don't write slash-fic.) |
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I see no reason to believe his biological development was stopped when he drank from the Well and even if it was his biology was kicked into over drive, why would that effect everything but his brain?
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Originally Posted by Starjammer
So my guess is that Marcus Cole probably thinks and acts like a man in his mid-30s because that's where the magic of the Well froze the development of his brain. He probably also relates to others in that fashion and that's probably the level of maturity he seeks in potential companions.
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Wonderful. I made a pistol blaster named "double action" which I can now no longer play.
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Originally Posted by Dark_Respite
*fwaps Decorum across the back of the head*
I may write the two of them as a double-act, but not THAT kind of double-act, thank you very much. (And I don't write slash-fic.) Michelle aka Samuraiko/Dark_Respite |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Wonderful. I made a pistol blaster named "double action" which I can now no longer play.
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A couple of points here:|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
The neural networks that contain memory and learning in the brain probably work like most neural networks do, which is a lot like holograms work. You can't "overload" a brain any more than you can overload a beach with writing in the sand. At some point, you fill the beach with writing everywhere, and start overwriting things. And like holographic storage, you don't delete one memory and write another in its place, you write both memories into something that can only store one of them at high fidelity, and both end up stored at lower fidelity. Sort of like compressing your older JPEGs at higher and higher compression ratios to make room for the new ones, so your older memories don't go away but they get steadily less detailed and more pixelated. Eventually they degrade to the point where all of the information in them is gone.
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First of all, the above applies if we view brain as fixed-format system, where a piece of information is saved the exact same way in the exact same space every time, hence why compacting it would cost detail. I have my doubts as to whether this is true. A lot of the case, it seems like we "re-remember" old information in a new, much more concise format that both gives us more ready access to it and bogs down our memories a lot less.
Either I'm some kind of super-genius who gets smarter as time goes on (which I rather doubt), or we naturally remember things much more compactly the longer we use them and the more we learn how to actually remember. Speaking for myself, I'm the kind of person who constantly goes back over old memories, extracting the "essence" out of them and trying to remember that, instead. If I need to remember, for example, how to pick my nose without rupturing my capillaries (a common problem), I may start with a general, rough idea which involve much memory which has no practical purpose but is a leftover from my brainstorming possible solutions. If I trim enough excess information and keep only the key essential techniques, I can learn to pick my nose AND remember my complex algebra at the same time.
Secondly, memory or no memory, we seem to be ignoring humans' adaptive nature. There is this idea going around that repeated pain and suffering will break a man and drive him insane, and for some this is indeed true. However, certain personalities react to these experiences differently, learning to tune the negative emotions out and control their own psychology. Such people will actually grow insensitive to psychological torture over time and not show any signs of insanity or disturbed personality.
"Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Few people still believe that these days, but it's a matter of attitude more than anything else. At the end of the day, some can simply accept their unhappiness, adopt it as a status quo, learn to cope with its factors and in so doing make it no longer BE unhappiness. It's only torture if you want something badly, but never get it, or when you don't want to lose something, but lose it anyway.
Those who can accept the consequences of their own immortality and come to terms with the fact that they will outlive all of their love interests can very much still have healthy relationships. I know from experience that after you've lived with a death clock for some time, you start tuning the approaching deadline out and focusing on the here and now. Such people would very much be capable of having true, genuine romantic relationships despite their full knowledge that these relationships will end.
After all, we all know we're going to die. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in sixty years, but we will all die sooner or later. That doesn't seem to stop most people from functioning normally. I don't see why knowing that your spouse will die sooner or later as being much different, unless we're talking of the kind of jerkass who's hoping he'll die first to spare himself the pain of loss.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I met Mr. Doohan briefly in the mid 80's and occasionally wondered how that happened. I never noticed it in watching any of the movies/TV shows.|
Originally Posted by TonyV
Did you know that he fought in World War II at Juno Beach on D-Day, taking six bullets, including one in the chest that was blocked by a cigarette case, and one that took off his right middle finger?
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It says a lot that he shook hands with his right and obviously had no self-consciousness about it.
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Actually, no. It only assumes brains remember things in the same way that neural networks do. Neural networks don't remember things in any way you can possibly analogize to "files" and "formats."|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
A couple of points here:
First of all, the above applies if we view brain as fixed-format system, where a piece of information is saved the exact same way in the exact same space every time, hence why compacting it would cost detail. I have my doubts as to whether this is true. A lot of the case, it seems like we "re-remember" old information in a new, much more concise format that both gives us more ready access to it and bogs down our memories a lot less. |
Suppose you make a small neural network of about ten thousand nodes. And then you start training it to respond to a particular set of inputs with a particular set of outputs. Once its trained, in a sense it has "remembered" something. But *what* its remembered is something that is a very complex thing to describe and explain. First of all, its not a local phenomenon usually. You can knock out any ten, fifty, a hundred, sometimes even a thousand of those ten thousand nodes and the neural network will still "remember" what you taught it. They can be any set of a hundred or a thousand. The memory is not stored in any one place, but as a holistic pattern throughout the net.
Furthermore, something interesting happens when you knock out nodes, and its related to the analogy to holograms I mentioned earlier. As you knock out nodes, the neural network continues to "remember" what you trained it to remember, but it starts to make mistakes. Its memory becomes "fuzzy." Normally, values close to the original input still generate the same output - the neural network can "remember" what it was taught with only vague "hints." But as you knock out more and more nodes, it takes greater and greater fidelity to recover the same memory. Eventually, even perfect inputs don't always generate the right output: it starts to forget. And eventually, there's no correlation between the inputs and the outputs: its "forgotten."
Holograms work in an analogous way. Take a piece of holographic material and store a hologram into it. What happens when you break it in half? Do you get the left side of the hologram in the left piece, and the right half in the right piece? Actually: no. You get two copies of the *entire* hologram in *both* pieces. However, each half gets slightly fuzzier: the image loses resolution. That's because the material has a maximum recording density, and the way you recorded the hologram also has a recording density. As the object storing the hologram gets smaller, the amount of information available to recover the hologram drops and the hologram is generated at lower and lower levels of information density - it gets fuzzier.
Neural networks and holograms are, in my opinion, important keystones to understanding human memory (and memory in brains in general). Its a metaphor that defies most people's common sense notions of how memory ought to work mechanically, especially people whose common sense is informed by computer technology.
As a totally separate matter, human brains clearly "compress" memories. In fact, experiments show we compress *experience*. We virtually *never* experience the actual world our senses detects. We experience a "model" of the world our brain constructs for which our senses are only one input.
Memories have to be constantly reinforced, or they fade. Much of that reinforcement happens subconciously, but it happens. When we remember something, we send inputs into the parts of our brain dedicated to memory (still not fully understood, but this is regulated by the hippocampus). Outputs come back which are the stored memory. We "feedback" those outputs back into the memory system to reinforce the memory. But if we focus on some parts of the memory and not others, we tend to reinforce some parts and let others weaken. Eventually they fade. This is also why memory is mutable, and can be greatly in error. Keep telling yourself something happened, and eventually your memory system will say it happened, like a bad screen burn-in from a old arcade game that persists even if the screen itself no longer shows that image.
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| Either I'm some kind of super-genius who gets smarter as time goes on (which I rather doubt), or we naturally remember things much more compactly the longer we use them and the more we learn how to actually remember. Speaking for myself, I'm the kind of person who constantly goes back over old memories, extracting the "essence" out of them and trying to remember that, instead. If I need to remember, for example, how to pick my nose without rupturing my capillaries (a common problem), I may start with a general, rough idea which involve much memory which has no practical purpose but is a leftover from my brainstorming possible solutions. If I trim enough excess information and keep only the key essential techniques, I can learn to pick my nose AND remember my complex algebra at the same time. |
Its *extremely* dangerous to think that you're fully capable of introspection about things like this. Studies have shown that when people try to think about how their own brains work, their own brains will lead them astray because so much of conscious introspective perception is an illusion. Probably the most interesting experiments related to this are ones where people have had their corpus collosum severed: the part of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. What generally happens is that both halves seem to have their own separate conscious agenda, even though the "person" doesn't perceive two separate halves. When they cannot communicate internally, they automatically try to communicate externally. Classic experiment: have the person draw something with their left hand - which is controlled by the right side of the brain. Now ask them what they drew and why. They will correctly describe what they drew, and give a complete explanation for why they drew it. Now block their line of sight to their left hand, and repeat. This time, they will either not be able to state what they drew, or give an incorrect answer. That's because language and speech are controlled by the left hemisphere. The part that can talk cannot know what the part that can draw with the left hand could possibly have chosen. Which means when they answered correctly the first time, and gave a reason the left hemisphere made one up and convinced itself that was correct. There was no attempt to lie: the brain simply did what it always does, but usually invisibly: it fused together what the right and left sides of the brain were thinking, and spackled over the discontinuity so our conscious mind didn't perceive the seam. This happens in normal people all the time, but we just cannot detect it when it happens internally. Only when confronted by evidence, like in experiments like this, do we get a hint. And by the way, when confronted by these experiments, most people with this condition still refuse to believe they made up a story to describe what they drew. To them, there was no process of deception going on in their heads.
There was a deception going on, but the deception was in the brain itself. The left side of the brain and the right side of the brain decided to collude together and try to create a unified view of the world in the background, and lied to their own conscious mind about what was happening. There's actually evidence to suggest that consciousness itself is One Big Lie: the lie that the brain tells itself to allow people to function as singular beings rather than cachophanous scatterlings.
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Actually, this was how I expected you to explain it:|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Reminder everyone:
Woman: The differences are subtle, but try not to confuse the two. |
Women are a combination of two things. Time and Money (T and M for short)
So, Women = T x M
Now as we all know, Time is Money (T = M). So, Women = M x M, or M^2
Now Money is well understood as the root of all Evil, or M^2 = E
So, Women = M^2 = Evil
Women = Evil.
Thank you very much.
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While I generally agree with this setup, it fails to account for my own personal experience. I'm fully aware of how mutable and false memory is, such as how old games are always better in your head than they are to play. But the fact remains that I've been able to call back memories I have not had any use for in the past fifteen years. I recently started replaying the Lost Vikings on a whim, and I found that I remembered all the buttons. The last time I played that game was, what? 1992? 1994? Easily 15 years ago. I have not touched the game since, not in the slightest, yet I was fully capable of remembering much of its story, many of the levels and how they were arranged, some of the dialogue and a lot of the puzzles. Pretty much as soon as I saw a scene, I remembered for quite some time on. I even managed to recognise a breakable wall secret in a place that was completely indistinguishable from every other corner in the level, but I just KNEW there had to be something.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Memories have to be constantly reinforced, or they fade. Much of that reinforcement happens subconciously, but it happens. When we remember something, we send inputs into the parts of our brain dedicated to memory (still not fully understood, but this is regulated by the hippocampus). Outputs come back which are the stored memory. We "feedback" those outputs back into the memory system to reinforce the memory. But if we focus on some parts of the memory and not others, we tend to reinforce some parts and let others weaken. Eventually they fade. This is also why memory is mutable, and can be greatly in error. Keep telling yourself something happened, and eventually your memory system will say it happened, like a bad screen burn-in from a old arcade game that persists even if the screen itself no longer shows that image.
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The same thing happened to me when I replayed Final Fantasy 7. The last time I saw the game was 12 years ago when it came out, and it wasn't even me who played it. A friend of mine did and I watched over his shoulder. Yet when I sat down to play it, myself, I found I was predicting plot points that I had no reason to predict. When I've tried to think about these things before, I remembered basically nothing. I didn't know the first thing about Final Fantasy 7. Yet when I sat down to play it, heard the music and fought the monsters, my memories came back to me, even for minute details. For instance, somehow I remembered that my friend's Lightning spell levelled up to its max level on the abandoned train tracks fighting a giant chicken. Sure enough, as soon as I hit the train tracks, I started getting the feeling that I was expecting my lightning spell to level up to its max. And it did. I guess I played a lot like he'd played before.
Point is, I know from experience that I've been able to recall memories from over a decade ago which I had even forgotten I had. I don't think about these old games, I don't run across them by accident, and the few times they come up, I don't remember jack squat. And yet as soon as I sit down to play them, it all comes back to me, like I stopped playing just yesterday. In fact, I hadn't watched America's Funniest Videos since 1989 when in around 2008 I ran across the old "America, America, this is you!" theme song and as soon as I heard three notes from that, the whole song played out in my head.
I don't think memory is as fickle as it seems.
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| Its *extremely* dangerous to think that you're fully capable of introspection about things like this. Studies have shown that when people try to think about how their own brains work, their own brains will lead them astray because so much of conscious introspective perception is an illusion. |
The more I can boil down a particular piece of information to its basic essentials, the more clearly I will remember it and the longer it will last. I haven't done integral calculations in almost five years now, but I could probably quote the basic integrals off memory. I've not done much trigonometry since grade school, but I remember most of the formulas. But if you try to quiz me on differential equations or statistical methods, I will be DEAD. I don't remember any of that stuff, because for a lot of it, there was never anything to "get." Just a lot of special cases, each with its own unique formula and approach. Far, FAR too many to memorise without internal logic behind them.
I'm also the sort of person who's learned to trust his subconscious. If something "feels" like it should be a certain way, there's probably a reason I feel this way. Most people are very quick to dismiss the subconscious mind as nothing more than the source of Monsters from the Id, but I've learned over the years that the logical mind is worth bo diddly squat on its own. As you will probably explain, it's just one logical construct over a much larger network. As someone who trusts his subconscious, I can tell you that the subconscious mind can be trained to operate how the conscious mind requires, usually by repetition. After a while, it's possible to find your own rhythm and just learn how your own memory stores things the best, allowing you to keep more memories for longer and without any extra effort.
All that is to say that while looking at the brain in scientific terms is probably the proper approach, one should never entirely discount empirical evidence, especially when it is backed up by physical proof. It's one thing to think about these things, but it's quite another to put them to practical tests and at least seem like you're on the right track.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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You don't know that. Experiments show that dreams are one way for the brain to commit short term memory into long term memory, and reorganize and review long term memory. Interfere with dreaming, and you can impair the ability to form new long term memories. Those memories could have been sifted through unconsciously in many ways.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
While I generally agree with this setup, it fails to account for my own personal experience. I'm fully aware of how mutable and false memory is, such as how old games are always better in your head than they are to play. But the fact remains that I've been able to call back memories I have not had any use for in the past fifteen years.
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Memories can also be used implicitly as part of learning. The brain can review memories as part of learning other activities entirely outside the perception of the conscious mind.
Even if the memories are not touched at all, how fast a memory degrades and how it degrades is based on a lot of other factors, including how closely related it is to other information being processed.
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| Point is, I know from experience that I've been able to recall memories from over a decade ago which I had even forgotten I had. |
Nothing of what you describe contradicts memory as neural network learning.
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| For instance, I went through an entire bachelor's degree of applied mathematics on one simple mental trick alone - that things understood are easier to remember than things memorised. If I can glean the logic behind the formulas and see the intent of the mathematics, then I can COMPLETELY forget everything I've learned about it and I'll still be able to piece together the theory completely off memory. |
You've replaced a walk through town with a logical process you do in your head. But that process is familiar and repeatable to you, and every time you walked through it and reconnected it to the class lessons you strengthened the memory of the lessons and connected it to the logical thought process. The act of rewalking the logical process creates the right signals to retrieve that memory, so you don't have to rely on the memory being strong enough to be "stumbled upon" by less specific thought processes.
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Hrmmm interesting thing about holograms...didn't know that...
So basically the brain is...
a quantum computer with hologram HDD with a multivector array running pattern finder program.
Also the oldest known hard things to remember are oral traditions/stories such the vedas and beowulf... It well known that these are all done in a poetic manor, had motions that go with the story, and music...
Rhymes are keys, motions are keys, sounds are keys. That's why you can sing songs years later when their music starts or you hear the lyric even though you can't remember them off hand.
Why do you think when we give phone numbers for example we go ###-###-##-## rather than ####-##-###-## and why phone numbers given in those styles are much harder to remember along with extensions.
There are many things like that, many people deny, and why when you know that type of stuff the world is much easier to navigate in someways if you can use it.
For example... a number of buildings have been analyzed and it has been discovered that we tend to build in certain patterns. the golden mean being one, and that you can associate musical notes to these structures. Because of this, someone that is blind, if they were to know the score of building they could easily navigate it because them humming it would help them remember where to go if they knew at any point how it correlated.
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I don't think so: I just think that thinking about how those things work can expand your horizons into thinking about how neural networks work, which is in a much more holistic fashion. A lot of times when you describe how neural networks work, people can get the idea that its all weird mumbo jumbo and maybe its all just made up. Then you look at holograms (which store images as interference patterns contained within every piece of the material they are stored in) and its a physical object you can actually see (in theory) and its a much stronger way of illustrating that this holistic form of information storage is not just hypothetical.|
Originally Posted by Durakken
Hrmmm interesting thing about holograms...didn't know that...
So basically the brain is... a quantum computer with hologram HDD with a multivector array running pattern finder program. |
But I don't think brains are holograms mechanically. I think they do with electrical patterns what holograms do with optical interference patterns, but only at a high level.
I also don't currently buy the notion that human brains are quantum computers, except insofar as a potato chip is a quantum computer. I think that is just a defense mechanism for people who need to believe there's something particularly special about human brains that complex order itself cannot explain. Which is weird to me because there's nothing a quantum computer can do that a classical one can't simulate, albeit slowly. Computation is computation. Declaring the brain a quantum computer is just declaring it to be a slightly more sophisticated pinball machine.
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Also the oldest known hard things to remember are oral traditions/stories such the vedas and beowulf... It well known that these are all done in a poetic manor, had motions that go with the story, and music... Rhymes are keys, motions are keys, sounds are keys. That's why you can sing songs years later when their music starts or you hear the lyric even though you can't remember them off hand. |
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| Why do you think when we give phone numbers for example we go ###-###-##-## rather than ####-##-###-## and why phone numbers given in those styles are much harder to remember along with extensions. |
Also some of the structure is really mandated by the structure of telephone numbers: country code, area code, number. I met someone from South America not long ago that quoted his phone number XX-XXXX-XXXX. Same number of digits as mine, but rhythmically different because of the way their numbers were structured (the first two were the local area code). Once he said that, I actually found the number easier to remember that way. Even though I still cannot think of my own number that way without difficulty.
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I wouldn't say the brain is a quantum computer i do think that there is something more than just pure computation and cause and effect because there are things that I do that make no sense within that pure concept at least to my knowledge of everything about me that i know. For example there is no reason I should have taken up art. There is no logical progression from me being whoever I was to me writing and drawing at a very young age before i was ever taught or shown that stuff. In other words there is no way that I know of that I could have picked up the idea for art from anywhere to start the cause and effect chain. However if you add in a bit of virtual particles and such it makes more sense to me.
But then again...my first memories, like most peoples are from about when I was 3 so there may be stuff that happened that I simply don't know about that led me to already have an idea of art.
as far as why music, rhyme, motion, helps increase memory I think it has more to do with the fact that you are making a proprietary connection between an action and data... in other words...it's kinda like loading up a variable array where there are several keys that if you are missing one bit of data due to degraded pathway the several connections reinforce and re-add the missing data/connection.
Basically if you have 7 connections that are (on a scale where 1 = massively degraded and 10 = perfect) at 1 you will still easily remember it over 1 connection that is a 10.... in effect making many lvl 1 connections equal to better than a lvl 10.
This is also where OCD and things like that come from. Your brain gets stuck in a cycle because you've somehow created too many connections to something and that reinforces it and continues the cycle...
It'd be interesting to see a good programmers take on abnormal psychology states. I'd think it would give some interesting results in AI and Psychology
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It's interesting how each generation analogizes how the brain works by the current technology. That's only natural, I suppose, but as you imply the truth is probably far different from how we struggle to explain the mysterious workings of the mind. Since the brain's interconnections are so numerous they actually rival the stars in the sky, it'll probably take a very long time to truly explain how it operates.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
I also don't currently buy the notion that human brains are quantum computers, except insofar as a potato chip is a quantum computer. I think that is just a defense mechanism for people who need to believe there's something particularly special about human brains that complex order itself cannot explain. Which is weird to me because there's nothing a quantum computer can do that a classical one can't simulate, albeit slowly. Computation is computation. Declaring the brain a quantum computer is just declaring it to be a slightly more sophisticated pinball machine.
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Although "pinball machine" feels how my brain works most days.
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Jumping back, as MDanger already pointed out:
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The greeks were quite smart, and had lots of things figured out. You see, Zeus didn't go around looking for equal partnerships or anything like that.| Staying true to myth, the joke answer is the most obvious: Anyone he wants. |
He went around looking for hot chicks.
So, assuming, as it's been said, that the Well didn't quite froze his biology at 30 but merely sent him into overdrive, what we have here is a blazing testosterone-fueled powerhouse and almost whole-Earth leader of men. Who's he going to date?
The hottest woman he can find.
So, to answer the OP:
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| I'm thinking that an 18 year old fresh out of high school would probably not fit the bill ... |
However, I bet she'd have pretty strong competition. If rock stars have such a following, I can't begin to imagine what Statesman's groupies may be like.
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I've got a character who's somewhere around 350 years old. She actually lost track herself a few decades ago. She vividly recalls Matthew Perry's steam ships arriving outside Edo, if that gives some perspective. She lost all interest in romance about fifty years ago, after a long period during which she would, on repeated occasions, consider starting such a relationship for a short time (maybe a few minutes), realize that anyone she might be interested in would be (depending on what year it was) one fifth to one tenth her age, and then pick up the first alchoholic beverage she could lay hands on and drink until her skin stopped crawling. Somewhere in the 1950s, she went through what she likes to describe as a "psychological restructuring", which most people think just means she went slightly crazy.
These days, she's far too interested in the fascinating complexities of personality found in virtually everyone to focus so much on just one person anyway.
Another couple of characters I have aren't quite immortal, but their aging has been drastically slowed, to the point that they'll probably outlive all our grandchildren. They're lucky enough to have found each other, and their relationship has been working out well so far, if only because they still think the way they did when they first got married, as well as looking the same. Even though they're still in their forties, they know they're going to live for hundreds of years, and their psyches are already showing the effects. Mostly in their unusual perception of time, in that they feel like they have a lot of it, but don't much notice it's passing. More cynically, it helps that they both have a number of psychological hang-ups and are unnvervingly dependent on each other, a situation either addressed or worsened -depending on your perspective- by their realization and acceptance of their own, and each other's, issues.
So there's the solutions my immortal or long-lived characters have. One stopped caring, two fell in love with someone just as long-lived. The first option, of course, may be easier.
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As long as the novels are something to go by Statesman is still very much a product of his time. He may have been granted the powers of Zeus but he didn't inherit that aspect of the god's personality. He was completely soul-broken when his wife died. In the pages of Freedom Phalanx we learn that she was pretty close to the only person keeping Marcus tethered to, well, anything. At least that's how I understood the peek into his grief addled mind that we're given then.|
Originally Posted by Aliana Blue
The greeks were quite smart, and had lots of things figured out. You see, Zeus didn't go around looking for equal partnerships or anything like that.
He went around looking for hot chicks. |
I'm not sure how to reconcile the Statesman from Web and Phalanx with the Statesman of the comics as I think they're considerably different in character. That Statesman seems to be the beginnings of channeling a more Zeus-like persona.
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So, assuming, as it's been said, that the Well didn't quite froze his biology at 30 but merely sent him into overdrive, what we have here is a blazing testosterone-fueled powerhouse and almost whole-Earth leader of men. Who's he going to date? If she's really hot, and minimally pleasant, she would in fact have a pretty good chance. |
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To be fair, the Statesman from the novels hadn't gone through everything that Marcus from the comics had. In Freedom Phalanx he had just lost his wife of fifty years. By the time of the comics he's been living without her for over 25 ... and in the interim he's had to deal with a devastating war and the near total loss of his super powered community. (Remember, almost every other hero of Paragon died during the first Rikti invasion.) |
Originally Posted by MDanger
As long as the novels are something to go by Statesman is still very much a product of his time. He may have been granted the powers of Zeus but he didn't inherit that aspect of the god's personality. He was completely soul-broken when his wife died. In the pages of Freedom Phalanx we learn that she was pretty close to the only person keeping Marcus tethered to, well, anything. At least that's how I understood the peek into his grief addled mind that we're given then.
I'm not sure how to reconcile the Statesman from Web and Phalanx with the Statesman of the comics as I think they're considerably different in character. That Statesman seems to be the beginnings of channeling a more Zeus-like persona. Being human he could be tempted to dalliances with pleasant and pretty girls but, again, I'm not convinced Marcus Cole is the one night (or even 'few times') stand kind of guy. And even for more long term companionship (normal human scale long term) it would take someone exceptional to compete with the 50 plus years he spent with Monica. |
There was a Marvel Comics miniseries in the 80s or 90s featuring the Eternals. For those who don't know, the Eternals are an offshoot of humanity with cosmic powers and virtual immortality who fight an everlasting battle with the other offshoot of humanity, the Deviants. The Eternals were often mistaken for gods while the Deviants were often thought to be demons in humanity's myths and legends.
One of the Eternals is a man named Ikaris. Ikaris is constantly falling in love with mortal women. He has a graveyard where he buries them ... and (presumably) his offspring. (Eternals can interbreed with humans but the offspring are always human rather than Eternal). Over a lifespan of thousands of years, he's buried countless lovers that he's outlived there ...
I don't know if the writer meant it to be romantic, but I found it kinda creepy ...
That being said... I think it's pretty clear that Marcus Cole is not a love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy. I think that it's certainly possible that he could find love again, but it will take an extraordinary woman to convince him to take that step again.
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I wasn't merely going off Zeus' persona, I was referring to how the Greeks knew about human nature. Zeus chased hot women because he was a man (something to remember, the Greeks really had very mortal-like gods with their affairs and drives).|
Originally Posted by MDanger
As long as the novels are something to go by Statesman is still very much a product of his time. He may have been granted the powers of Zeus but he didn't inherit that aspect of the god's personality. He was completely soul-broken when his wife died. In the pages of Freedom Phalanx we learn that she was pretty close to the only person keeping Marcus tethered to, well, anything. At least that's how I understood the peek into his grief addled mind that we're given then.
I'm not sure how to reconcile the Statesman from Web and Phalanx with the Statesman of the comics as I think they're considerably different in character. That Statesman seems to be the beginnings of channeling a more Zeus-like persona. |
A man's desires are strongly driven by his Biology, and as the Greeks put it, not only with Zeus but with many others, men will go after the hot women, and women will go after the strong men. That basic desire is there, although modelled and tempered by the culture and environment.
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| Being human he could be tempted to dalliances with pleasant and pretty girls but, again, I'm not convinced Marcus Cole is the one night (or even 'few times') stand kind of guy. And even for more long term companionship (normal human scale long term) it would take someone exceptional to compete with the 50 plus years he spent with Monica. |
He may very well not be the one night stand kind of guy, but the biological drive for hot women is there even in one looking for more committed partnership. Biology's a b***h.
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| That being said... I think it's pretty clear that Marcus Cole is not a love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy. I think that it's certainly possible that he could find love again, but it will take an extraordinary woman to convince him to take that step again. |
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Anyone who commits to a marriage lasting 50 years -- especially if you suffer no decrease in vitality in any regard -- is probably not going to take relationships lightly. I rather doubt Cole would find temporary diversions with a "hot chic [sic]" to be all that enticing. Especially after having lived for more than a century.|
Originally Posted by Aliana Blue
I really don't think so. His late wife may have been a wonderful person, but I doubt she had such an encompassing personality to overshadow every other woman in every possible aspect. All he needs is a hot chic with a different (and pleasant) personality.
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I think the greater likelihood (and risk) is that Statesman would start losing his intimate connection to humanity. Someone who doesn't age might come to relate to mortal humans the same way we relate to pets. As you can see in my sig, one of my favorite dogs of all time lived 16 years and died of cancer. I grieved his loss but my grief wasn't overwhelming because I've been through this before. Later in the year I lost Allie, who I cared for even more and the following year I lost Fred. How many people do you outlive like that before you start to become disconnected? Even to a minor degree, it must take its toll.
It may seem that to engage in casual relationships might be the only solution he could find, but everything we've seen of his characterization leads me to think he'd go the opposite way and take a step away from any close relationships at all.
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I guess this is my take on immortals and relationships, although it's only one angle and doesn't particularly apply to a public figure like States.
An excerpt from The Milk of Paradise, by Yours Truly wherein the main character reminisces about the life of an immortal man...
It was not until decades later that he was able to determine that what had seemed like a blink of an eye in the frozen caves had actually been a century and a half. His long trek through the Siberian wastes towards civilization had taken several decades as well, as he stopped for whiles at villages that would have him, in no hurry to move on when contented. He had headed west, fearing to see his homeland and people he knew in his new state. And many times, then, and thereafter, he would suddenly find himself living in forests and woodlands like an animal or a barbarian or, he thought as he looked at the slim cigar he had just lit, like one of those Red Indians on the American continents from whence came this excellent tobacco. Months, years or decades might pass while he was in such a state, with no recall at all of how he got into such a position and why. After returning to civilized lands, first in Western Russia, and later traversing most parts of Europe and the Mediterranean, he learned to amass and hide away small fortunes to facilitate reintegration after such incidents. With much time on one's hands, it was easy to learn to manipulate economic situations in his favor, and make wise investments yielding long term gains that his "son" or "cousin" might be bequeathed with upon his "death". It was a long life, and often an easy one, but putting down any roots was impossible, and he was always on the edge of having to move on to areas unfamiliar. He had lost count of how many names and identities he had adopted, and remembered even less of various peoples he had encountered. Faces blurred together over the long centuries, if for no other reason than sheer volume.
The name he was wearing at this time was Etienne Bernaux. When he bothered to reveal, he claimed to be an Austrian merchant of French parents. He often appeared prosperous, but never overly so, a modestly well-off merchant but not a superior one. Enough to have a few conveniences, but not enough to draw undue attention. His exotic good looks often drew women to him, but he turned away their advances for the most part. There were families to consider, and he did not like disappointing people, but nor did he wish his secrets discovered. He fulfilled his physical desires with the usual detached fallen women, knowing there would be no ties, or chance of discovery. Some times, in moments of weakness, he had revealed his secrets to the occasional friend or lover (and that blasted poet, Coleridge, who had sworn to never reveal the secrets, and had no doubt begun his illustrious poem the moment he had departed! At least he had not been mentioned, but it taught him to be more careful, even in more sophisticated times.). For the most part, he had been considered to be a teller of tales, or someone good, just addled in this specific area. He was relieved in retrospect when he was disbelieved, and more than once had to flee when he was taken at his word.
Dec out.
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Once again, the fact that he's lived more than a century does not have that much bearing because his body (which affects your brain too, hormones are funny that way) isn't changing and aging like that of a normal human. It is a fact that men do find attractive women enticing, as you put it, for quite some time, since they hit puberty until several decades later.|
Originally Posted by Ironik
Anyone who commits to a marriage lasting 50 years -- especially if you suffer no decrease in vitality in any regard -- is probably not going to take relationships lightly. I rather doubt Cole would find temporary diversions with a "hot chic [sic]" to be all that enticing. Especially after having lived for more than a century.
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And why on earth do you all keep insisting on the whole "temporary diversion/use them and toss them/one night stand" thing? Saying that a guy who's attracted to a woman physically is only looking for such a diversion is a fallacy, attraction for men has a strong physical component in all cases.
As I said before, people who become widowers at middle age do grieve, move on, and look for companionship again. Ten or 50 years, someone who's not going down the path of old age will grieve, move on, and look for companionship again.
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For instance, it's documented that starting at puberty, the brain ages kind of back to front, with the emotional/impulsive bits in back "growing up" first and the logical parts up front coming in around 21-25. Which is why teenagers tend to have poor impulse control and a heightened sense of personal drama.
Dec out.
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