Something satisfying...

[lithera]

About being right.

In this case it isn't anything important. Just comic book stuff. But it is very, very nice to know a character well enough to know what has to come next. It also makes me very happy to know that I'll be seeing much more of that character in the future.

And I'm coming back to my thing about chracter death. It sucks to lose characters we love. It does. It doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. BUT! In a world such as comic books there is no saying who may or many not come back at some point. Also, it is very important to me that character deaths in comic books /mean/ something. For example - Jean Grey's first death was a good death, I think. Her coming back.... I don't know. It made it mean less. I'm not sure about Jason Todd yet but I'm still leaning toward it being lame to have brought him back..... but with what is happening in the universe, it makes sense. The door between life and death is broken...

So. I'm not going to talk about specifics because I know there are people who are hating all this. I'm still on the side of really liking it.

Comments

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I don't think killing of a character is bad writing. I don't think it has to be. I think that there have been some cases of it. I think that when you kill off a character because you don't want to deal with them anymore - that's lame. It's totally crap and lazy writing.

However, I think worlds where no one is killed, where nothing changes, where nothing is different than the way we remember it being is boring. If nothing ever changes, then what's the point? I understand what you're saying about the people who haven't gotten a chance to tell stories with those characters but I disagree that you can't ever kill someone off. Some of the best moments in fiction are character deaths.

It shouldn't be used to prop up lazy writing and it shouldn't be used because you don't want to deal with it but the most frustrating thing to me as a reader, as a roleplayer and in general is when there is no element of risk to things. The experience loses something if there is no possibility of loss and a possibility of loss needs to be followed through everyonce in awhile or it isn't truly risk. Everyone once in awhile someone needs to lose.

Shayera is bad. I'll agree with that one.

[angrylemur.livejournal.com]

But who's to say when something needs to change? And who's to say that killing off a character is the only way to change things?

You can have danger and drama without actually killing the characters. The awareness of death can be there even if no one actually dies. And it's also possible to turf characters temporarily without actually killing them - they did it to the entire JSA when they sent them to limbo to fight Ragnarok, didn't they?

This is where the whole suspension of disbelief comes in. It's possible to be concerned for the outcome of a story when you know deep down in your heart of hearts that the character is going to survive. You know that House is always going to diagnose the problem and cure the patient, but it doesn't stop you from having to look away when the patient starts coughing up blood. When you know that House is probably going to fail and the patient is probably going to die... what's the point of watching? Except to hiss at Cameron for being a spineless wuss but that's another issue altogether.

Yes, there are occasional exceptions that prove the rule - Jason Todd comes to mind, as his death was planned, built up to, executed well, and affected canon long afterwards - but for the most part, I can think of a dozen different ways to get a character out of the picture without killing them off, all preferable to killing them off (on Coronation Street, they send them to Canada, which makes me giggle).

[lithera.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying that killing people is the only way to create that effect. I am saying that after awhile if nothing permanent ever changes, it loses something for me at the very least. I don't know if it applies to anyone else in the world but it does to me. If there is no threat, no danger of loss, how is anything dangerous?

Any world that gets static gets boring. It gets so what happens to me with comics all the time, happens even more often. When I pick up a comic book, unless the writer is truly gifted, I can give you a general idea of what happens inside it. I love comics for the times they suprise me.

See, I never think that this is /proabably/. I want maybe, possibly. I want it to be something that could happen. I want people to be able to do something different. I'm not saying that this /has/ to be death but I want things to be able to surprise me.

That and there are just as many stories to tell with a character alive as there are with the character dead as there are with the character never having existed or any character to be a transvestite who only dresses in puce. Saying that there are more stories for a character ... Of course there are. That's what stories /are/.