...Dear God people! I meant death in fiction! Don't kill me before I've even started (ironic)! And now for my weekly thread! Now with more misleading titles!
Anyway, this week I want to talk about something that really irked me when I was watching a certain anime recently, Code Geass. Now before anybody tells me I missed the point it was just a little detail that irked me slightly that I found in it, it was the refusal for most of the main characters to die.
Now you may be yelling at me right now about wanting characters to die in a beloved series, but what I find irritating is when a character is constantly faced with life or death scenarios... and more often than not we get the life portion. Now that may be a good thing for people desperately wanting their favorite character to return, but when this happens too often you loose the thrill of them nearly falling off the building, it becomes trivial, mundane, boring. Fiction needs characters to die to prove the mortality of the characters in question.
Let me ask you this, what effects you more, thousands upon thousands of soldiers dying through various reasons, or a well developed character meeting their end. I'm going to assume the latter right? (unless it's through a weapon of mass destruction, but thats a topic for another time) That isn't a bad thing! When well executed both sides of the life coin can be used for powerful storytelling, weither it be a man coming out of a near death experience, changed and more badass than ever, or him meeting his untimely death.
For some discussion to go with this rant, does a characters failure to die after repeatedly going into life or death situations annoy you? (Bleach and Naruto are big offenders here as well) I personally like to be reminded about how fragile the existance of the characters is, by killing off one you create a better atmosphere for the entire story, but thats my opinion, whats yours?
EDIT: The last paragraph has the discussion here people, the question in the second last paragraph was rhetorical.
Anyway, this week I want to talk about something that really irked me when I was watching a certain anime recently, Code Geass. Now before anybody tells me I missed the point it was just a little detail that irked me slightly that I found in it, it was the refusal for most of the main characters to die.
Now you may be yelling at me right now about wanting characters to die in a beloved series, but what I find irritating is when a character is constantly faced with life or death scenarios... and more often than not we get the life portion. Now that may be a good thing for people desperately wanting their favorite character to return, but when this happens too often you loose the thrill of them nearly falling off the building, it becomes trivial, mundane, boring. Fiction needs characters to die to prove the mortality of the characters in question.
Let me ask you this, what effects you more, thousands upon thousands of soldiers dying through various reasons, or a well developed character meeting their end. I'm going to assume the latter right? (unless it's through a weapon of mass destruction, but thats a topic for another time) That isn't a bad thing! When well executed both sides of the life coin can be used for powerful storytelling, weither it be a man coming out of a near death experience, changed and more badass than ever, or him meeting his untimely death.
For some discussion to go with this rant, does a characters failure to die after repeatedly going into life or death situations annoy you? (Bleach and Naruto are big offenders here as well) I personally like to be reminded about how fragile the existance of the characters is, by killing off one you create a better atmosphere for the entire story, but thats my opinion, whats yours?
EDIT: The last paragraph has the discussion here people, the question in the second last paragraph was rhetorical.
