Forums » RP Discussion » Writing death & decay

Thank you so much!! I'll be sure to give all of them a watch. I think I might actually be subscribed to Ask a Mortician. but I don't think I ever got around to watching her oops

I don't... know if I've ever fallen in love with a bunch of strangers so quickly before. Thank you for this, these are my people. my creepy peeps.

I've been subscribed to Caitlin / Ask A Mortician on Youtube for years and I can't get enough. She's so knowledgeable and her desire to share it is so admirable. Plus her humor just frickin' gets me. I've never really come across anybody out in the world who's mentioned her before so I had to ooze about it real quick.

And I have to THANK YOU for the same things, Yersinia. This was an absolute delight to stumble upon. I learned things that I did not know I wanted to know. And your sense of humor gives me heart palpitations, in the most wonderful way. Sadly, I didn't go perusing the discussions with prepared death & decay related questions, but I'm going to sleep on it and come back to you.

I don't want to gush all over your feet and leave so I'll drop a little nugget question before I come back. What's your experience with eyeballs? You mentioned the jelly texture, which is fantastic. Did you have to remove them from the corpse yourself? Or like a class dissection type scenario? I've never gotten the pleasure myself.

Ahh you're too kind! I'm glad my chattering is being received well lmao. I've held off on this topic for a while now because I wasn't sure it was forum-appropriate.

Anyways! Eyeballs. You can remove them yourself to speed up the decomp process, but generally speaking they're the first thing to go, so I just leave 'em. They go flatter, glassy, and well, dead-looking soon after death (blood pressure is what keeps them nice and round and well, no more of that happening). I've never questioned why they go cloudy-- some light reading suggests it's the potassium starting to break down in the red blood cells. I suppose it could also be due to bacterial activity.

If you want to wet preserve eyeballs and have a steady hand, you can actually cut them right out of the head with a scalpel. The trickiest part is severing all the nerves at the back without cutting the actual eye (which is full of viscous goo and an unpleasant surprise when it ruptures). If you make the right cuts, though, it pops right out.

I did one bovine eye dissection in high school. My memory is cloudy (haha) but I remember it being colorful on the inside. I also had to remove the eyes during a fish dissection and they had very hard little balls in them-- I'll get back to you on whatever those were.

I've come back and forth to this topic several times now largely because I have curiosities without any direct questions as it applies to one of my characters specifically. Seeing as you're offering to share your expertise in the hopes to help 'writerly' types like myself, I wonder if you'd be willing to simply advise in general rather than answering direct questions?

Isabella learned growing up that the living were the enemies. They were capable of judgement and hatred etc while her natural affinity to the undead left them unwilling to attack her. Thus she has spent her childhood more comfortable with risen undead types and is even unphased by dead bodies at this point.

Throughout the course of her short life, what does your expertise suggest she would be confronted with as she grew up hanging out with dead bodies, be they reanimated or not, and whether or not they were freshly dead or been sitting a while?

If this kind of generalized advice thing is not something you're willing/capable of doing I will accept that also, I just thought it would be interesting to ask, and perhaps provide follow up questions upon recieving your answer.

Hm...I've been mulling this over all day and will take a stab at an answer.

- depending on the thing that died, they have different smells. For instance, I can immediately tell if there's a mouse rotting about (sniffing them out was one of my jobs at a heritage house I worked in lmao). They have a particularly weird, pungent odor. I also notice that these smells linger in my nose for at least the rest of the day. Sometimes if I've been doing a lot of processing I also get phantom smells and will wake up in the middle of the night thinking there's something around. Not sure if this is the kind of thing your body would ever truly get accustomed to (unless maybe the undead don't have functioning noses)

- she would be able to tell how long someone was deceased for by looking at them, perhaps even where they decomposed. Someone who spent a lot of time dead in a desert would look mummified, for instance

- you can also tell a lot about how that organism lived from their corpse. I processed a cottontail rabbit that had a scarred pellet rifle hole through one of its ears and hemorrhaging under the pelt where a car hit and killed it. Bones are great for that, too. In the case of most animals you can tell their sex, how old they were, which side of their mouth they chewed on, what kind of illnesses or mutations they had, injuries they healed from, etc. To wax poetic for a moment, it's really cool to learn the stories of things that can't speak just by observing them

- there would be a lot of insects. Like, a lot. Flies will lay their eggs in a corpse as soon as physically possible. A corpse in active decay would literally hum with insect activity. Unless, in Isabella's world, the magic of being undead repels them. Maybe bugs don't like zombie flesh

- ashy skin, sunken features, receding gums and cuticles, wispy hair stripped of proteins

- noses and ears are just cartilage and quickly rot away

- many organisms make a "death rattle" when they die

- immediately after death, there may be some residual nerve impulses. I've seen videos of freshly skinned rabbits "jittering" and snakes continuing to strike

- you will always be shadowed by vultures and crows; following them is a good way to find a body

- in the case of animals, they tend to die downhill or near a source of water (if you're in the middle of dying you won't want to fight gravity, and who doesn't want a sip of water)

I'm not sure if any of this will be helpful, but it's a general overview of things I've noticed.

Actually I'm terribly glad I asked, this is hugely helpful in setting down more permanent ideas that would help estrange her from the living.

The smell thing I am curious, does long term exposure to the aroma of dead things damage the ability to smell? Do you think if she were to expose herself to this a lot she would lose some, a lot, or perhaps all of that sense?

Shes a smart girl, so I think being able to pick up on some of the ways something died is possible, but being young and inexperienced I feel like she will have limits. This could, however, stimulate a hobby of hers to research things that could perhaps be applicable to the cause of death for some things. She does love to read and excels at it too.

I have already given her an affinity for insects, they don't much bother her and she enjoys playing with them sometimes even. Her universe definately has the dead being eaten by bugs.

Death rattle is a cool idea, and perhaps a similar sound she could find calming in stressful circumstances?

The crowd and vultures I never thought of though, it makes me wonder if her natural undead 'aura' as it were (she really is alive btw) would encourage these birds to follow her around as if they expect she is going to die soon. Definately a cool idea I might add in for her.

Downhill at a water source...perhaps somewhere she enjoyed spending time alone was in ine of these areas if she began finding dead things there?

Mind you it wont always be decaying corpses shes hanging out with, but often when she is bored or lonely she will find one and reanimate it, allowing/instructing it to act as a normal person might or in other certain ways she is interested in experiencing to feel less lonely or bored.

I really appreciate you spending the day considering this and giving me this valuable feedback. I've been planning to overhaul her profile (along with literally everyone elses) and some of this info is going to really help set her personality and development as a character. Thanks a lot!

Hehe
I have a manual on bone articulation as it was a hobby i wanted to get into. However, at the time i did not live in a location where it was feasible.

Have you worked with the flesh eating beetles? Im curious how easy/hard it is to get ahold of them or if there are regulations on them from state to state (or country, im im US)

Its always nice to see other people involved in this. I did a lot of funeral services studies and worked in a few museums but they had more... Equipment versus biological stuff.

Glad I could help! I can't say for certain, but people who work in occupations that involve bad smells (ie; sanitation workers) don't seem to damage their noses as much as they stop noticing and build up a tolerance for them. Reacting to bad smells is an evolutionary trait to keep us away from things that might be dangerous or diseased-- if you're already dead, maybe this instinct would be dulled.

Welcome to the thread! The one dermestid beetle I did have (Mr. Meat) I got accidentally in an order of crickets for my lizard. I let him live in the cricket bin and he did a great job cleaning up the casualties and keeping the bad smells down.

However, dermestid beetles are normally kept in colonies. My acquaintances who keep them only recommend doing so if you're in a profession like taxidermy or specimen prep that requires you to churn out clean bones in large amounts and quickly. The beetles are super efficient-- they can skeletonize most things in a day, depending on size, and because they're small they can get into most any nook and cranny. That said, in large groups they absolutely reek. You have to maintain their terrarium and feed them meat even when you're not processing anything. They also have fussy temperature and humidity requirements. Once they pupate, they could potentially fly off and infest your house-- they're scavengers that'll eat any organic fibers. Carpet and larder beetles are common household pests.

tldr; unless you work for an institution or taxidermist, they're more trouble than they're worth.



As for regulations, I can't say. I've seen some for sale on US sites but imagine it could vary from state to state. In Canada I could buy some from a taxidermist, but imo it's not worth the hassle.

I could see why that would be a problem. I have heard its better to keep them in a 'workshop' sort of space if you dont want them in your pantry.
I appreciate the response. Always difficult to say what the experience might be out of a manual. It certainly didnt say they were such a hassle. So now i know!