Trope-a-Day: Only Mostly Dead

Only Mostly Dead: Slightly alive.

Namely, the state between corporeal death (what medical science, say today, calls “dead”), and the point at which your brain has decayed sufficiently that the very best scanning technology and interpolation can no longer reconstruct a mind-state sufficiently accurate to meet the legal definition of “close enough to you to be you” (information-theoretic death).

The degree to which I regret that prior usage prevents me from actually calling this state “only mostly dead” in-universe cannot possibly be overestimated.


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://eldraeverse.com/2015/05/18/trope-a-day-only-mostly-dead

I should like to stipulate that one of the few guaranteed consequences of Earth contact is that someone there will import The Princess Bride, and after that everyone in the business will be calling it “only mostly dead”.

(The likelihood of someone trying to open the “Miracle Max’s Resurrectorium” chain Earthside, on the other hand…)

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