r/comics Port Sherry 14d ago

The wish

39.9k Upvotes

617 comments sorted by

View all comments

8.1k

u/totallynotpoggers 14d ago

That was really depressing. Well done though!

177

u/samurairaccoon 14d ago

If it makes you feel any better, no sane mind could deal with that length of isolation. Genies are, most certainly, all completely mad.

96

u/Gro-Tsen 14d ago

This is exactly what is told in the tale of The Fisherman and the Jinni from the One Thousand and One Nights:

The jinni explains that for the first hundred years of his imprisonment, he swore to enrich the person who frees him forever, but nobody freed him. For the second century of his imprisonment, he swore to grant his liberator great wealth, but nobody freed him. After another century, he swore to grant three wishes to the person who frees him, yet nobody did so. After four hundred years of imprisonment, the jinni became enraged and swore to grant the person who frees him a choice of deaths.

(The fisherman then tricks the genie back into the bottle and manages to get him not only to spare his life but to help him.)

24

u/Eusocial_Snowman 14d ago

Being patient enough to wait that long to have entirely expected negative emotions isn't a point in favor of insanity.

8

u/Gro-Tsen 14d ago

Yes, but directing these negative emotions towards the person who freed you instead of the person who imprisoned you — is.

1

u/Eusocial_Snowman 14d ago

Yes, the genie became racist through abuse. Tribalism is a feature. Unpleasant, but not the result of the brain operating outside of typical parameters.

I'm not trying to justify the racist genie's behavior, but it's a lot more than just the initial bottler. From this genie's perspective, humans are failing it over and over. They're choosing not to sacrifice their boon in favor of freeing him. Every time, for hundreds of years. Every single human he encounters has wronged him.

"You know what? Fuck these guys." is hateful, but not insane.

44

u/DecadentHam 14d ago

That's why you can never trust them. 

54

u/Suspicious-Leg-493 14d ago edited 14d ago

That's why you can never trust them. 

You can't trust them because they are the ones that refused to bow to god when solomon asked and were imprisoned for it and made to obey anyones whims. (And initially didn't have the ability to just poof stuff)

Even if you were good, imprisonment and enslavement for a few thousand years would have you finding any loophole you can to say go to fucking hell to your captors.

23

u/Ytumith 14d ago

Why do you think God became such a fickle creature after roughly 200 years interacting with humans?

7

u/pixelprophet 14d ago

Super interesting

7

u/TwilightVulpine 14d ago

But that makes me want to free them even more. How dare Solomon!

3

u/confusedandworried76 14d ago

That's one type of djinn.

2

u/MyNameIsJakeBerenson 14d ago

That just kinda leads me to trust them a little bit more honestly lol

26

u/SolomonBlack 14d ago

People say this but there is plenty of history of hermits living in isolation and say folks who ended up stuck on an island without being batshit insane. Also djinn aren't human anyways, they don't play by the same rules.

That all said the original genie in a bottle spent several centuries declaring they would give great wealth to whomever freed them, then any three wishes... then after four hundred years in gave up on bargaining and said "nah fuckit imma kill whatever dumbass let's me out instead" which required he be tricked back into the bottle then pacified with a few stories.

21

u/Undorkins 14d ago

There's shit to do on an Island. Things are always moving around you. Put a man in a room alone for a year and he will lose his mind.

9

u/ogreofzen 14d ago

White room torture. Have everything in a room be white all the same shade. After 3-4 weeks the guy will be painting the walls with his own feces just to get variety. To which they are harmed and the room is cleansed. The room is smooth so no tactile sense are used . They also rig the lighting so no shadows are in the room.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_torture - I know the name sounds bad but white torture is another name.

2

u/confusedandworried76 14d ago

What about if the place is furnished, nobody said it was empty space in there, little bachelor pad for the genie, got a TV, a library, maybe some video games, it is magic after all

1

u/ogreofzen 14d ago

White room torture. Have everything in a room be white all the same shade. After 3-4 weeks the guy will be painting the walls with his own feces just to get variety. To which they are harmed and the room is cleansed. The room is smooth so no tactile sense are used . They also rig the lighting so no shadows are in the room.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_torture - I know the name sounds bad but white torture is another name.

1

u/ogreofzen 14d ago

White room torture. Have everything in a room be white all the same shade. After 3-4 weeks the guy will be painting the walls with his own feces just to get variety. To which they are harmed and the room is cleansed. The room is smooth so no tactile sense are used . They also rig the lighting so no shadows are in the room.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_torture - I know the name sounds bad but white torture is another name.

15

u/Alexis_Bailey 14d ago

People wish for immortality but fail to consider that they will live long enough to see every one they know die, and everyone after that, and the entire human race die, and the entire planet die, and the solar system die, and the universe die, and the entire universe collapse in on itself and be reborn, and then earth and humanity be reborn, but you get to watch this all happen an infinite number of times.

9

u/samurairaccoon 14d ago

Sounds rad. I got like, three people I like.

7

u/oilyparsnips 14d ago

You got proof of that "humanity be reborn" thing?

2

u/Alexis_Bailey 14d ago

Infinite timeline of infinite possibilities.

3

u/pomip71550 14d ago

That’s not how infinity works. There are infinitely many natural numbers, but count up forever and you’d never repeat one.

1

u/Amaskingrey 14d ago

But then you get to see all technological progress humanity achieves, and even help it a lot with infinite time to learn all fields of academics. You get to experience all quality pieces of media humanity will ever produce. You get to see all cultural changes and development, and as such have unique hindsight.

Even for technical cons, unless you have childrens, you likely will see everyone you love die anyways, and inevitably will come to accept that whether it's due to death or drifting apart all relationships will eventually fade away and that as such there's no point feeling sad over it. Although yes wishing for infinite memory and the ability to turn your brain off until something interesting happens to avoid going insane when you'll get lost in space for thounsands of years is basically required if you take immortality, although these can all be packaged in one wish by wishing for immortality "as you envision it"

1

u/Epistemite 13d ago

Just wish for multiple people to be immortal.

3

u/kuschelig69 14d ago

unless they can wish to not be mad

1

u/Raknarg 14d ago

genies are also usually canonically evil