Discussion Main / MethuselahSyndrome

Pulled this from the Discworld entry:

• This is made even more impressive since the disc runs on Alternative Calendar where a year is equal to 800 days. This means that in regular earth years Windle nearly reached the age of 285.

Ages don't work like that on the Disc, to the extent that the Companion has to explain that almost no-one actually uses the 800-day year. We're not meant to understand that Susan was still in boarding school at 35, or that Tiffany Aching was nearly 20 when she first appeared. They're a little older than their given ages, since the Disc's "agricultural year" is still 35 days longer than an Earth year, but that's all.

Pai Mei is a Taoist, not a Buddhist, and Taoists are renowned for their elixirs of immortality. Unlike Buddhists, Taoists *do* seek to prolong this life.

Does someone who knows the comic want to take a crack at writing a slightly less angry version of this example?

• While Tropes Are Normally Not Bad, this is played up for all the Wall Banging its worth in Kronos. Apparently, Kronos has been alive for ten million years. And its immortal because it has an unlimited supply of telomeres. However, it is said in the book that more than just one of them would destroy the food chain of the oceans. And yet somehow a reproducing population managed to survive fifty-five million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs (Ninety million if you want to nitpick to when Kronosaurus actually died out). Of course, seeing that they fail plesiosaur biology forever, that is by far not the worst thing in the story. Or The Reveal that Kronos was created by God to eat people and store them in its mouth so they will be able to talk to God and be saved.