"This tag is for art that includes a character being killed." Death Wiki

If the character is being killed, it is still alive. So shouldn't we use imminent_death instead? Why this statement is at the wiki?

I also checked some of the posts tagged as death and I realized that maybe people are mistaging a bunch of them as it should be imminent_death instead. But I also saw some posts that we can't know if the character is dead or is going to die, so I thought we should have an ambiguous_death tag.

With that in mind, how can we accurately and objectively, in every case, tell if a character is dying or is dead? What is the metric on what should kill something right away or a fatal wound that would cause an imminent_death?

"The absence or loss of life, in something that was once living." Death Wiki

What counts as "something once living"?

• Do Robots, androids or other living machines counts? Let's suppose there's a post with a computer with an IA and someone breaks it until there's only scraps, could it be tagged as death?

• Can an undead like zombies, mummies, skeletons etc... "die"? Also shouldn't they implicate death, weren't they once living beings that died?

• What about animate_inanimate and other inorganic beings can they "die" and be tagged as death?

• What about ghosts, plants and food? Can I tag a salad as death? A broken tree as imminent_death? An hamburger as death? If someone shots a ghost and there's a bullet hole with a liquid coming through it and it is in pain, then becomes unresponsive can I tag it as death?

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And I think that's it for now, if more questions arise I'll ask them.
I tried to make this text the most cohesive possible, if something didn't made sense, ask me.
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Thanks for reading! ⠀(⠀👍⠀.⠀⠀_⠀.⠀)👍

sieghelm_lockayer said:

• What about [..] food? Can I tag a salad as death? [..] An hamburger as death?

I'm not sure if anyone's brought up plant matter but a hamburger would merely be meat if it was already a burger before being shown. I'd assume plants don't count as living for this unless there's evidence that it's from some kind of flora_fauna.
There was a thread talking about food and the corpse/death tags a while ago

Examples

• post #2795235

He seems at the moment still alive and there's NO WAY he can escape that, shouldn't this be tagged as imminent_death instead of death?

• post #2678922

Same thing, the character is still alive here. So it should be tagged as imminent_death instead of death, right?

According to imminent_death these two posts should instead be dying. imminent_death appears to be for before the process of dying begins.

magnuseffect said:
I'm not sure if anyone's brought up plant matter but a hamburger would merely be meat if it was already a burger before being shown. I'd assume plants don't count as living for this unless there's evidence that it's from some kind of flora_fauna.

Thought Experiment | The death of Burger-kun and Salad-chan?

_{Note: It may sound like a joke, but I'm dead serious with these two characters.}

~ What if the burger is sapient? Burger-kun. ~

• He can talk.
• He can bleed.
• He show emotions.
• When someone touch without consent, he'll get angry which can be seen as he'll get more red-colored and veins will pop from him.
• When he get sad, he would start tearing from where should been eyes;
• Can feel pain, which can be confirmed with screams, popping veins, sweating profusely and a more red colored body.

So if someone gets a knife and slice him, can it be tagged as death? There would be also a ungodly amount of blood and surprisingly even internal organs and bones.

~ What if the salad is sapient? Salad-chan. ~

• She can talk.
• She can bleed.
• She can show emotions.
• Anger in the same way as Burger-kun.
• Sadness and tearing.
• She's also a tsundere.
• When someone touch her, she would blush and call baka.
• Can feel pain, which can be confirmed with screams, popping veins, sweating profusely and a more red colored body.

If someone shreds her, can it be tagged as death? There could be internal organs, albeit smaller than Burger-kun and bones.

magnuseffect said:
According to imminent_death these two posts should instead be dying. imminent_death appears to be for before the process of dying begins.

e.g.

post #2578247
I'd call this imminent_death

post #2580535
But at this point I'd call it dying

I didn't realize there was a dying tag, thanks for pointing this. But dying's wiki and death's wiki still doesn't explain what counts as "something once living" as I mentioned before.

sieghelm_lockayer said:

"This tag is for art that includes a character being killed." Death Wiki

If the character is being killed, it is still alive. So shouldn't we use imminent_death instead? Why this statement is at the wiki?
[...]
I didn't realize there was a dying tag, thanks for pointing this. But dying's wiki and death's wiki still doesn't explain what counts as "something once living" as I mentioned before.

The word "death" without additional context refers more to a process -- the process where life ends. Consider phrases such as "time of death" and "after his death". It refers to the moment that their life ended. Working from this definition, I think "death" would be applicable any time that it's clear that a living being is sustaining fatal damage. This may be playing fast and loose with definitions here, but I also think it's fine to extend it to situations where a being has recently died, even if the actual moment of their demise is not shown.

sieghelm_lockayer said:
[thought experiment with anthropomorphized food and other difficulties with defining life]

What makes something a "living thing" or "sapient" is actually really tricky to pin down. In my view, I think it's worth shifting the discussion away from the actual definition of death, and instead direct our attention to the utility of the tag "death" on this site. "Death" is likely a popular blacklist term for many users. I'd venture that using the tag "death" as a way of defining the themes of an image rather than accurately describing the actual cessation of life is more useful to the average user.

In a more direct response to your questions about the various situations where "death" is tricky to define, I think that the most important considerations for whether the average person would reflexively say "yeah that counts as dying" would be

>Evidence of awareness
>An assumption that the damage sustained will result in an irreversible loss of awareness

Trying to keep it really broad here, so there may be some flaws with this, but I think it covers the "animated objects" and "artificial intelligence" angles pretty well. Both animated objects and artificial intelligences are depicted as being aware at some level and any time destruction of their physical form is shown to snuff out this awareness, I think many people would just say it "died" without thinking too hard about it.

It also technically covers the undead angle, since by the time you see the undead they have already lost their life, but that's definitely a tricky one. Again, I think this is more people using "death" as a means to tag certain themes in an image rather than describing things technically.

EDIT: Fwiw, I personally would leave the "death" tag on the image of the undead horse, but remove it from the Minecraft image. The undead horse image showcases significant physical damage that leaves no doubt that if not for the necromancy at work, it would be dead. However, for the sake of consistency, perhaps it would be better to add tags denoting the exposed internal structures and other injuries? Either way, the undead horse definitely gives me more of a "walking corpse" vibe than the undead in the minecraft image.