"Free shopping carts, radium"

[zdashamber]

was the title of the latest spam I got. The shopping carts I can steal for myself, and the radium I don't want.

So, I've been thinking about Marie Curie lately. I did a crapload of reports on her in my early years at school, pretty much every year in some class or another. From this, three things stick out to me right now:

1. Women can be scientists all by themselves.

This was the point I was supposed to get.

2. Marie Curie: when she'd first come to Paris to study, and got a place of her own, she was so caught up in reading and studying that she often didn't bother to eat, or forgot. There were times she'd be hanging out with friends, stand up quickly, and nearly faint, with the whole, "The hell, girl, when was the last time you had something to eat?" "Oh, um... Yesterday?" Her friends took to coming over, dragging her out of the book, and watching her make some toast or something.

This is a point that I was not supposed to get.

3. Pierre Curie: run over by a cab. World-famous scientist, two little girls, in the prime of his life and just beginning to scratch the surface of the phenomenon of radioactivity, won a freeking Nobel Prize... And then, wrapped up in thought, he stepped out onto a Paris street and a cart killed him instantly.

I always used to suggest that to GMs who were fretting about the characters of players who'd dropped out, "Have a hansom squash him." And thinking about it, I still don't see any reason why not. Why go for the continuity-wrecking "warping the character to suit the ends of the plot" or "pretending the character never existed" or "having the character be inexplicably incommunicado"? I generally heard, Oh, I want deaths to mean something, I'm going for an epic feel... Bah. If it was good enough for Pierre Curie, it's good enough for anyone.

Comments

[follybard.livejournal.com]

2: The most recent time my spouse went out of town, I mentioned it in passing to one of my officemates, who immediately asked, "And did you remember to eat today?" Heh. They know.

[zdashamber.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah, my housemate was out of town last weekend, and I didn't cook a single thing. Without the thought of someone else relying on me for food, my own hunger just wasn't enough to justify the fussing. Chips and canned green beans, baby. :)

[cochese.livejournal.com]

Ah, if only you'd suggested that to Ginger.

[arden-ranger.livejournal.com]

Feh. I always kill them off. I have enough NPCs to deal with as it is without adding more and I get some preverse satisfaction when I off a character like that. :D