Worldbuilding 205: Killing & Murder
Greetings and synoecy! Well, you could say that about me and Anne, I guess 🤔 Anyway, it is the spoopy time of the year again, and apparently we’re doing a scary theme for October! Today's theme is death, killing, and murder. Check my old blogpost on death for some prior info!
Ways to die
Read the previous post on death for the full definition, but here’s a summary:
Death is the termination of biochemical pathways to the point where they cannot be resumed through external stimuli.
But that is very vague; how can that happen? Well, would you be surprised that there are more than one ways to cut a biochemical pathway? Of course not, you are smart!
What is crucial to life is the ability to gain energy and have it do, well, work. Read my blogpost on energy! Anyway, what is important to know is that for life, absence of energy can cause irreparable damage. Just because the cell doesn’t have energy doesn't mean that chemical reactions come to a complete and immediate stop; all it means is that the cell stops having control over what is happening. And if it cannot control what is happening for long enough, the cell will experience destruction within itself that ultimately kills it.
If you are technical about it, all forms of death eventually boil down to cessation of energy production, as that is what is required to maintain pathways. As long as the cell has energy to use, it can restore most things back to normal. Cyanide, HCN, for example, stops the process of energy acquisition, targeting the enzymes that help make the energy that cells use.
One important component of energy production for cells is oxidation, which, as the name suggests, has to do with oxygen. Oxidation is a form of chemical reaction where something reacts with oxygen; it technically allows for more, but for our purposes, oxygen is all we need. Without oxidation processes, the sugar molecules, or anything, cannot be converted to energy that the cells can use.
This can happen through lack of oxygen itself. This would include drowning and strangling. In case it wasn’t obvious, the reason drowning kills you is because of water in the lungs where the lungs cannot extract enough oxygen from the water to sustain life. Water is remarkably oxygen-poor when compared to air. This is why aquatic gill-breathing species have a max size of about what sharks can reach in general, and why aquatic creatures often have it so that they have to be on the move constantly to keep water passing by their gills.
But you can also stop oxidation through various toxins. Carbon monoxide, CO, is a famous one from incomplete combustion processes. This one is nasty: odourless, colourless, it just is, and you breathe it. Remember your biology class about haemoglobin transporting oxygen? Well, haemoglobin works such that there are spots in it where oxygen molecules, O2, bind and then can be released later. CO however binds to the same spots and… won’t let go. Once it binds to a spot on haemoglobin, it is stuck there, which means it is not possible for oxygen to be transported around. So you strangulate, but you can still feel the air get into your lungs only to suffocate you more.
Other ways that death can occur are blood loss, internally or externally. It is similar to strangulation, if you think about it, in that lack of blood means no oxygen is being transported, along with nutrients, and then the aforementioned lack of energy happens. Lack of energy tends to be the most crucial to nerve cells because they are energy hungry. Working to send signals takes lots of energy, so even a short time without energy means they start having severe damage done to them due to lack of energy.
This is why brain damage is the first to occur in all ways of dying, and it results in final death eventually. Which isn’t difficult to see why: the brain controls breathing and muscles, the brain stops working, the body stops breathing, cells stops getting oxygen, everything dies. This is also how several toxins work, neurotoxins, to be specific. They target breathing and heart muscles and prevent the flow of blood and/or oxygen. A lot of physical wounds and death are primarily about the whole blood oxygen thing, but some can be more subtle by harming non-vital parts of the body. For example, if your liver gets shot to oblivion, it won’t kill you instantly (assuming you survive the bloodloss), but it will kill you over a longer period of time because the liver still does jobs relevant to survival, namely filtering the blood of natural toxins and byproducts. And as the toxicologists say, quantity makes the toxin.
Killing vs Murder vs Manslaughter
Alright, fun’s over telling how you die in classical cases which can be used to create creative toxins and ways to die. Let’s get to the bulk of today’s topic, and let’s start simple. What is killing, exactly?
Killing is the act of causing death.
You know, this definition is BORING, but it is how it is used, so c’est la vie. Killing is, quite simply, when you, or something, causes the death of another living being. Notice however this in no way states anything about intention or social context. So let’s get into intent.
Manslaughter is when killing is caused by a person that had no intent to kill.
The lack of intent is the important part here. A manslaughterer–is that a word? Well, if it isn’t, it is now! A manslaughterer had no intention to kill. Through various circumstances, their actions caused another person's death. This is contrasted with murder:
Murder is when killing is caused by a person that had the intention of killing.
Unless you plan to actually kill someone, it cannot be murder. Even if you defend yourself, it is not murder. Being ready to kill to protect yourself is not the same as having the intent to kill. After all, you can disarm a person and protect yourself without killing them. Which is why most of the world doesn't allow guns willy nilly.
Methods of killing
Death caused by people can be done in many ways. Let's go through some, shall we?
Strangulation
A classic! This is a very personal way to kill someone. Cut off their airway, or however they breathe. I don’t know, maybe your aliens breath out of their butt? Anyway, this is when you cut their ability to get oxygen into the body.
Blunt force
This is generally hitting someone with something blunt, so it doesn’t penetrate into the body. This process causes internal bleeding, and if it isn’t the lack of oxygen to the brain killing the person, it is the blood itself in the brain building up and literally crushing brain cells to death by breaking them apart.
Penetrative
Stabbing, piercing, slashing, this is any method that causes an object to penetrate through the skin and cause damage on the inside and outside of the body. These objects generally tend to be sharp, as the skin does not like being penetrated. In the old days, these could be extremely deadly even if they did not harm any organs. Why? Infections come easily through an open wound. So in old settings without anything to act like antibiotics, be wary that any open wound is at high risk of infection.
Infectious
This is what the previous can lead to. Some microorganism, bacteria, virus, gets inside the body and starts ravaging. Normally, organisms generally do not want to kill their host–dead hosts are useless. You can read more about this in my post about diseases. This can be used to intentionally kill people, but it has the problem of risking spreading beyond where you wanted, which is why it's not popular.
Projectile
The name says it all. This is any projectile launched from a distance. It can result in penetrative death if it is like an arrow or throwing knife. But it can also do much different damage, such as gunshot wounds. These do different kinds of damage because a bullet has a lot of kinetic energy, is relatively soft–lead is not a hard metal–and then, it is suddenly slowed down by the body. This means that all that kinetic energy is dispersed into the body, causing massive injuries.
Toxicosis
This is the method to kill with a bit of class. Why do something so brutal as cause damage on the physical level? Bah, we do it with style! Feed a drop into their food or into their drink, then let biochemistry do the job for you! What happens depends a lot on the toxin used. Some will paralyse the heart or the breathing muscles. Others block cells from functioning, some can target muscles, others target the nerves. The really nasty toxins are indiscriminate but slow acting.
Just as a fun addition, notice, if you think about it, that despite these being the most common methods of death, the majority of them still tie back to the lack of ability to oxidise that I discussed earlier.
Motivations to kill
This is a bit of psychology, but you know, motivations are still important when it comes to killing and even the choice of how to kill. One thing you need to remember is this: people are programmed genetically to not want to kill. And when I say they are programmed, I mean it. It is in the genes that people really do not want to kill other people. This is why people struggle even if they accidentally kill someone and feel immense guilt and shame over it, regardless of how little they caused it.
But if that is the case, why does it happen anyway? Many reasons. We are going to ignore manslaughter as that was not intentional, and focus on actual murder. One reason is… nature is not perfect. You have autistic people like myself, and Divinum knows what mistake zhi made to come up with us. But you also have people that have this built-in brake in the head broken, often called psychopaths. I won’t go into details about psychopathy because currently I don’t know enough about it, but I might read up on it and give some explanations at a later date.
The point is that the normal limit that exists no longer exists. But those are the exceptions; what about normal people? Well, this limit has two exceptions in general: if it’s not other humans, and if you’re in danger. And those can be hijacked to make ordinary people kill others. If you dehumanise others to the point where the brain stops registering a group or class of people as human, the limit starts having trouble going off when seeing people of said group, and, well, now it is much easier to kill because they don’t trigger the program.
The other is the threat response. This one is easy in most cases: you pose a threat to me, and it is valid and easier for me to accept that I must kill to survive myself. The trigger can still go off, but it is much less prone to it. The thing is that when it comes to threats, they can be nebulous and not real. Have you ever felt that kind of immense rage where you want to kill someone despite them posing no threat? Well, your anger is a threat response, the threat just isn’t to your physical existence. It can be a threat to your status, to your family’s status, to your livelihood, and much else. For most people, this threat perception tends to die down fast, so as long as you don’t have time to act in the moment, it doesn’t matter. If you can act… Well, there is a reason why the phrase “crimes of passion” exists. But for some people, the feeling of threat keeps existing, which means that in their brain, there is a legitimate cause to kill, and thus the trigger will not go off even if it takes years.
And that is how you can even view revenge: as a threat response that is heavily delayed. Sure, it is the usual “They wronged me so I will punish them,” but if you think about it, basic punishment of others is a way to deal with a threat by making the person unwilling to commit the same acts again and thus threatening you again. In my post on law and order, I describe the difference between punitive vs rehabilitative systems, and both can be viewed through the lens of threat management: one is to beat the person until they fear being a threat, the other to offer a hand to make the person not feel the need to be a threat.
Choice of method
The choice of method of murder is quite important. Blunt force and strangulation require physical strength to do the work. So unless you are physically fit, they are not ones that are preferred. This is why they are often preferred by men, as men often have the physical strength to overpower others, especially women.
Along with penetrative killing, these methods are said to be “personal,” which here means that they require the person being close to the victim. Being close to the victim has a strong correlation with the motive of the killing being very personal. It is not absolute, mind you, but the correlation is strong. These also have the issue of triggering the “don’t kill” system because you are doing it very hands on to the point where you can see and feel the person die in your hands.
This is contrary to the other methods where you’re at a distance and technically not directly killing someone. Interestingly enough, toxicosis tends to be the favoured method of killing by women historically and to this day. It is thought that the reason for this is that it requires no physical strength, and it removes the danger associated with killing. If the person isn’t aware that they are dying before they are too weak to react, they pose no threat to you, the killer.
Killing & characters
I could go into more on choosing your method, but for this time, I will stop now and go into more about characters. Killing is part of life, and when it comes to story writing, it is also important. Sure, it is not present in all kinds of stories, like children’s stories rarely have it, and several genres do not necessitate it, but it still happens a lot, so how does it relate?
Well, remember the “don’t kill people” trigger? It works in stories too. That is why people that you want to be killed and not invoke a lot of feelings are nameless, faceless, and much else. Writers utilise the tool of dehumanisation to make you, the consumer, not react strongly. And equally so, by humanising characters. That makes them feel real, and thus our desire to not kill or for someone to die is triggered.
So if you want to make a character disliked, having them kill people who are well established is a quick and easy way to get people to hate them. Another way is to show them having a complete disregard for any other life than their own. That tends to get people going quite easily, as people hate characters that can dish out but cannot take.
But what about protags? Well, the one thing they do there is to make certain that any form of killing they do is justified. And the first step toward that, and the easiest is to make it so they are never a murderer, is that they never ever plan ahead to kill. Sure, they are killing left and right, but it was never planned! It just happened at that moment!
If they have to kill someone and it is planned–that is, murder someone–make certain the target really really deserves it, and that it is the only way. Very few people like a person that murders pointlessly. This cannot be understated.
The third and final way to help make people connect with even a murderer is… having the trigger go off, and they feel guilt and more for their actions. If they have to murder someone, and they take responsibility, and their own conscience is punishing them for doing it and eating the character from the inside, it will help humanise the person and show that they are sorry for what they have caused even if there is nothing they can do about it.
These are rules of thumb, of course, because we all know characters that violate any and all of these and people still love them. But that is generally because the character has other traits that carry them instead. Maybe they are cool, maybe they are generally a very kind person but have this one dark side. And some characters can be enjoyed just because they are ruthless killers. Their motives and actions all combine together to make a whole that is more enjoyable and “good” than any of the components are. The sum of negatives can be positive in storytelling.
Summa summarum
Hopefully you’ve learned that ultimately there exists only one type of death! Lack of energy! Which is an utterly useless thing in everyday dealing and storytelling. It is much better to split it up into the categories we have.
But to cause this one single method of actual death, there are many different ways to act on it. We have the six methods and their loose ties to motivations. The more personal the motives for wanting to kill, the closer and more personal the method of killing tends to be. You know those scenes where someone in the media keeps stabbing, beating, strangeling, anything close, until the life drains out of the eyes of their victim? It is a very personal experience and something few draw pleasure from, and others want to make certain that the threat can no longer do harm again.
When it comes to killing in stories, make certain that your protags are always justified in some way for the deaths they cause, or they are so affected by the death that they start punishing themselves with their conscience. But don’t overdo it; no one likes a whiny character.
That will be all to start off this spooptober special month! 😀
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Copyright ©️ 2024 Vivian Sayan. Original ideas belong to the respective authors. Generic concepts such as death, killing, murder, and manslaughter and the definitions given are copyrighted under Creative Commons with attribution, and any derivatives must also be Creative Commons. However, specific language or exact phrasing are individually copyrighted by the respective authors. Contact them for information on usage and questions if uncertain what falls under Creative Commons. We’re almost always happy to give permission. Please contact the authors through this website’s contact page.
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