Mar 12, 2024
Celebrity Mortality
I think I want to try and write something here at least once a month. That's my goal. I don't really want this thing to be pure journaling, but it makes sense that events will happen in my life which will inspire some introspection and therefore blogs, and there are actually at least two recent events this month that I could easily fill a lot of space on. The first is that I got my fursona's latest redesign done. At some point I'd like to write how they've evolved over the years, but I probably should get the characters section of this site done first and that is simply not working with my brain right now. The second event is the passing of manga legend, Akira Toriyama.
It was just before midnight on March 7th. I was heading to bed after watching some TV (been going through The Sopranos, which I hadn't seen before. It rules, but you already know that.) and I went to put my computer to sleep. I don't remember which Discord was open but there was a Twitter link containing an image of the announcement. I could see from the context of the reactions that somebody had died, and when I saw the little Toriyama doodle in the image. I remember hoping, for just a second, that my instinct was wrong and it was someone else. Kind of dark in retrospect. Anyway, my instinct was right, but this was easily the strongest reaction I've had to a celebrity death ever. I felt sad about this one.
Part of me chalked that up to "I am taking estrogen now and I get weepy and movies and shit more easily too" but the thing I noticed in the days after is that I wasn't alone. People who, like me, didn't have big reactions to celebrity deaths, even people who weren't particularly fans of his work, kept saying that this one felt more meaningful.
I started thinking about the last time, the only other time, when a high profile death made me stop and think. It was 2006, and the person in question was TV Personality Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter guy. Never in my life had I seen anything of his. I still haven't. I had heard goofs about him getting his baby too close to a crocodile at some point but that was about it. In other words, I didn't have an actual emotional reaction to this, per se. I was amused by the irony of the situation, for sure, since he passed at the stinger of a famously pretty benign animal, but that was about it. The thing is, I remember having a realization that this event was a change in the world as I knew it. I was 17 years old and not to get too maudlin here but I was watching the live shot on TV when the Twin Towers fell. I was aware of Big Events. But for someone with no particular connection to this guy, this was a Small Event. Obviously it was huge for people who knew him personally and at least notable for anyone who was a fan, for me the impact was as minute as possible. Before, there was a guy I knew about from jokes. And after, that guy was no longer around. An event had occured that required me to update my mental model.
Like I said, I was 17. I was just sort of conceptualizing that the world was vast and yet interconnected. It's not an uncommon revelation, but it was one that I had at a specific time in response to specific news, and I remember it nearly two decades later, even as the places I was in when I had the thoughts have ceased to be retained.
That's why it's been so affecting, I think. When I called Toriyama a legend, it wasn't just because I like his stuff (I do) but because his stuff is bedrock, for mediums and works in the decades he was around, but also in a lot of our lives. There are people who's work I love just as much that I won't feel quite so strongly when we lose them simply because I understand that they are mortal human beings. Toriyama was more like a mountain or a river. Nothing is eternal, but some things are too vast to comprehend as such.
This is not quite grief, I think. This is a momento mori. I have to update my mental model.