/pony/ - Pony

I can see both:

>Death is an entity that can and should exist to fulfill a metaphysical job by existing, same as how things like Dreams, Learning, Love, and other concepts get personified.

And:

>Death can screw up its job to the point of becoming malignant and damaging to the fabric of reality itself, thus requiring Death to either be temporarily killed as humiliation or made dormant in a punishing way.

As two things that make for interesting narratives, assuming one takes a kind of Greek and/or Roman view of polytheism and heroic journeys.

I don't remember a specific story that I can cite, though, but I'll say that in general I think "God One messes up and then Gods Two plus Three or more clean up the mess" was a highly common trope. So, either a new entity takes the place of Death or the older version of Death returns from a kind of inhibited state of unhappy dormancy. To be specific.

One way a lot of stories handle this, which I'm a fan of, is that when that being dies, it is immediately replaced (usually by the one responsible). Killing the God of War, or the captain of the Flying Dutchman, means that mantle passes on. Such a being is a necessity, but sometimes it's necessary to replace the one doing a bad job at it.

In D&D, some death gods love to make armies of undead, while others despise the idea of undeath, and try to depose the others.

My personal favorite instance of this has to be in the Discworld book "Reaper Man", which is definitely my favorite of the (admittedly few) Discworld books I have read. It definitely does help that Death is an actual, recurring character in this series with a genuine personality and quirks.

And, granted, he doesn't so much die in this one as he sort of gets fired  for "caring too much", deciding instead to try and live, something that is completely alien to him. This results in him actually SAVING lives, seeing first hand the effect the passing of someone has on those they leave behind, etc. Definitely gives him a new perspective and what the end of a life means.

This book, however, goes with the "a new entity takes his place" theory already stated here, but in a different way. The new entity that springs into Death - who is a very classic Grim Reaper - is instead a maniacal being, even wearing a crown, who takes pride and sadistic pleasure in its task, where our "main" Death treated it as a duty and a job. A necessary one, if not one he always likes, but one where he at least always takes the time to gently let people know their time is up and sets them up off in their path for whatever comes next. According to the book, the new, "eviler" Death is shaped by people's perception of Death as a dark, evil and malicious thing rather than a fact of life. And one of the more powerful moments of the book, Classic Death counters the new Death, when the latter calls mortals "nothing but a harvest" with the question:

"For what can the harvest hope, if not the care of the reaper man?"

It's good stuff, what can I say.

Of course, the books B-plot is on the Funnie side of things. People and things do indeed stop dying, and it actually leads to there being an "overflow" of life, to the point where ideas start taking physical shape... With one of the big threats being what appears to be a Fantasy equivalent to a modern day supermarket.

... Yeah, Discworld is weird. In the best of ways.