I've got a little bit of a ramble, and just over an hour before midnight, so here's to hoping I can get it all in.
Once again, it's talking about Red Hood Rider, which I'm considering naming the Rubyverse. (Because, yaknow, why not?) I've certainly put enough thought into the setting for it to have a Universe-portmanteau name as is traditional for bigger works. The story itself would of course still be Red Hood Rider. It's the setting which'd be the Rubyverse. I like the idea.
But I digress. I didn't come here to talk about a small thing like that. I came here to talk about how I decided to expand on the setting, on the Rubyverse, even though it's a detail not directly relevant to the main story. In this case...on Death. With a capital D. (Death with a lowercase d is for a different ramble--the short version being, there is an afterlife, and truly evil souls suffer in a hell-like environment for a set punishment time yet are explicitly not eternally damned, whereas the vast majority of people go into the afterlife even if they were slightly evil so long as it wasn't an unforgivable sin.)
Death is the entity of...well, death (imagine that), residing over the cessation of existence on the mortal plane. (Be it temporary--because some superheroes have in-built powers to come back to the dead or friends who will bring them back--or permanent.) Death is omnipresent, like all fundamental forces of the universe, but prefers to work through avatars stationed throughout the world. These avatars--Grim Reapers--are not Death itself, but Death channels itself through them when doing its work (i.e., when someone dies and a Reaper greets them), thus, why Death is simultaneously a He, She, and It.
Death has a personality, and each Reaper a unique one as well, which when the Reaper is using their powers (i.e., when someone dies), gets combined with Death's own, hybridizing themselves into a single entity temporarily, one which is an equal mixture of both. Thus, every encounter with Death is both the same (because Death is present each time, and has knowledge of all death, and gives its own flair), and different (because each Reaper encountered has different personalities).
Death is constant, having the experiences of both itself and every avatar of Death throughout time. However, since Reapers aren't (though part of the job perk of being a Reaper is that they're immortal--they know that the afterlife exists and is better than the mortal realm, but they for various reasons offer their services to Death anyway), different Reapers = different apparent personalities of Death.
The result? Death can be more lenient, less lenient, be friendly, be cold, play favorites, be objective, strike bargains, or be absolute; these are all traits dependent not on Death (who is, frankly, a whimsical entity that doesn't really care that much), but rather, on the Reaper Death speaks through. Death holds override on this, of course, should the Reaper extend too much of their personal influence, but mostly, Death gives them largely free reign.
This is due to what Death is. Being one of the oldest entities in the universe, and not having an agenda, Death is...actually remarkably down-to-earth compared to a fair number of other comparable forces. Without influence from a Reaper directly, Death is slightly-benevolent, humorous, and largely bored force of nature, who cuts people a lot of slack in large part because it's more interesting that way. (So, yes, Death plays favorites itself, because if you entertain Death, then Death will reward you for lessening the boredom of eternity, since Death of course sees a lot of tricks as effectively being reruns.)
In fact, in spite of being quite busy, Death often will separate its will from a Reaper's, allowing the Reaper to speak fully as their original selves to the soul, so long as they do so on the condition that they guide the soul to Death itself for a nice chat. (Basically, the default interaction with Death is a merge between Death and Reaper. However, some interact with the Reaper and with Death as individual halves of death rather than as a combined picture of it.) Again, largely because Death plays favorites.
Incidentally, Death also has least-favorites. Though the afterlife is better in every way to life (think everything we have, but better), the afterlife for evil is effectively like a jail: the dead inside of it have to repent, truly, fully, honestly, on a fundamental level to escape their suffering for a shot at reincarnation and living as a better soul, but Death is a little bit spiteful, because if a soul did something particularly terrible, then sometimes, Death will inflict upon them a curse where they're under worse pain than they would be in hell, yet cannot die to be sent to there.
For Death's part, by the way, Death itself has no definitive physical form, since fundamental forces of the universe are without shape...however, as a result, they can take whatever form they please, to serve as their body, and over time, if they keep it long enough (think millennia), then it becomes pretty much their default form, as close to an absolute shape as they can get. So what does Death look like?
...Well, I said Death was down-to-earth; I meant it: Death takes the stereotypical form you would expect--the black robe where the face is invisible (though Death can will glowing white eyes visible to emote), the bone hands, and the scythe in hand. That's not Death having liked the look and others learning to portray Death as it. That's others portraying Death as it, and Death going, "Sure, why not?" and taking it as its default form.
Soyeah, that's Death in the Rubyverse, with a side bit on how death works. A pretty cool person, who combines basically every trope about the grim reaper out there in a fairly plausible, manageable way. (And I have half an hour to spare!)
Once again, it's talking about Red Hood Rider, which I'm considering naming the Rubyverse. (Because, yaknow, why not?) I've certainly put enough thought into the setting for it to have a Universe-portmanteau name as is traditional for bigger works. The story itself would of course still be Red Hood Rider. It's the setting which'd be the Rubyverse. I like the idea.
But I digress. I didn't come here to talk about a small thing like that. I came here to talk about how I decided to expand on the setting, on the Rubyverse, even though it's a detail not directly relevant to the main story. In this case...on Death. With a capital D. (Death with a lowercase d is for a different ramble--the short version being, there is an afterlife, and truly evil souls suffer in a hell-like environment for a set punishment time yet are explicitly not eternally damned, whereas the vast majority of people go into the afterlife even if they were slightly evil so long as it wasn't an unforgivable sin.)
Death is the entity of...well, death (imagine that), residing over the cessation of existence on the mortal plane. (Be it temporary--because some superheroes have in-built powers to come back to the dead or friends who will bring them back--or permanent.) Death is omnipresent, like all fundamental forces of the universe, but prefers to work through avatars stationed throughout the world. These avatars--Grim Reapers--are not Death itself, but Death channels itself through them when doing its work (i.e., when someone dies and a Reaper greets them), thus, why Death is simultaneously a He, She, and It.
Death has a personality, and each Reaper a unique one as well, which when the Reaper is using their powers (i.e., when someone dies), gets combined with Death's own, hybridizing themselves into a single entity temporarily, one which is an equal mixture of both. Thus, every encounter with Death is both the same (because Death is present each time, and has knowledge of all death, and gives its own flair), and different (because each Reaper encountered has different personalities).
Death is constant, having the experiences of both itself and every avatar of Death throughout time. However, since Reapers aren't (though part of the job perk of being a Reaper is that they're immortal--they know that the afterlife exists and is better than the mortal realm, but they for various reasons offer their services to Death anyway), different Reapers = different apparent personalities of Death.
The result? Death can be more lenient, less lenient, be friendly, be cold, play favorites, be objective, strike bargains, or be absolute; these are all traits dependent not on Death (who is, frankly, a whimsical entity that doesn't really care that much), but rather, on the Reaper Death speaks through. Death holds override on this, of course, should the Reaper extend too much of their personal influence, but mostly, Death gives them largely free reign.
This is due to what Death is. Being one of the oldest entities in the universe, and not having an agenda, Death is...actually remarkably down-to-earth compared to a fair number of other comparable forces. Without influence from a Reaper directly, Death is slightly-benevolent, humorous, and largely bored force of nature, who cuts people a lot of slack in large part because it's more interesting that way. (So, yes, Death plays favorites itself, because if you entertain Death, then Death will reward you for lessening the boredom of eternity, since Death of course sees a lot of tricks as effectively being reruns.)
In fact, in spite of being quite busy, Death often will separate its will from a Reaper's, allowing the Reaper to speak fully as their original selves to the soul, so long as they do so on the condition that they guide the soul to Death itself for a nice chat. (Basically, the default interaction with Death is a merge between Death and Reaper. However, some interact with the Reaper and with Death as individual halves of death rather than as a combined picture of it.) Again, largely because Death plays favorites.
Incidentally, Death also has least-favorites. Though the afterlife is better in every way to life (think everything we have, but better), the afterlife for evil is effectively like a jail: the dead inside of it have to repent, truly, fully, honestly, on a fundamental level to escape their suffering for a shot at reincarnation and living as a better soul, but Death is a little bit spiteful, because if a soul did something particularly terrible, then sometimes, Death will inflict upon them a curse where they're under worse pain than they would be in hell, yet cannot die to be sent to there.
For Death's part, by the way, Death itself has no definitive physical form, since fundamental forces of the universe are without shape...however, as a result, they can take whatever form they please, to serve as their body, and over time, if they keep it long enough (think millennia), then it becomes pretty much their default form, as close to an absolute shape as they can get. So what does Death look like?
...Well, I said Death was down-to-earth; I meant it: Death takes the stereotypical form you would expect--the black robe where the face is invisible (though Death can will glowing white eyes visible to emote), the bone hands, and the scythe in hand. That's not Death having liked the look and others learning to portray Death as it. That's others portraying Death as it, and Death going, "Sure, why not?" and taking it as its default form.
Soyeah, that's Death in the Rubyverse, with a side bit on how death works. A pretty cool person, who combines basically every trope about the grim reaper out there in a fairly plausible, manageable way. (And I have half an hour to spare!)
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