Not Yet Dead
I have Civil War 7 in my hot little hands, but am waiting until after Ash Wednesday services this evening before I read it, mostly because I have to psych myelf up, but also because it's a form of penance/self-denial/torture.
Am I the only one who thinks it's weirdly ironic that the last issue is coming out today? Of course, if I ran Marvel's schedule, the Civil War storyline would have started and ended in April. And the follow-up arc would totally be called Marvel: Reconstruction instead of Initiative or whatever they've decided on. Because I am a sad, sad history geek.
Anyway, I have non-CW-related meta, before I dissolve into Marvel fangirl wank and/or squee.
[Edit] Have totally read it now, and Spiderman. The outcome was better than I feared, though not as many loose ends were tied up as I'd hoped (i.e. like, none).
Someone much more talented than I (either Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman, maybe both) once said that all good stories have a 'shape' to them--a way that they are supposed to go, a way that people expect them to go, because we've heard versions of this story before, and real stories have a life of their own. Fandom in particular is all about story-shaped stories (that's one reason some fans insist on warnings--so that they can know the shape of the story in advance, rather than have it shift form on them half-way through, like the lover in Tam Lin), and one of my personal guilty favorites is the Pseudo-Deathfic, or what I like to call "Reports of Character A's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated."
I've seen this kind of story derided as the author "chickening out" and sabotaging the dramatic effect of her death scene with a happy ending, but when done well, I think it is, at heart, a different shape of story from a deathfic.
Deathfics are about death (obviously) and the permanence of loss, or the cruel and arbitary nature of fate, or the high cost of war/vampire fighting/[insert dangerous canon activity here]. Pseudo-Deathfics, whether the character actually dies and is somehow brought back, a la Buffy Summers, or is just believed to be dead, are about life, about hope, about affirming the bond between a set of characters, about, ultimately, a different kind of emotional catharsis.
Because a pseudo-deathfic doesn't just have the vicarious emotional experience of the surviving characters' mourning, it also has that moment when the Character A re-appears, when Character B rejoices because his friend that was dead is alive again, his love that was lost is found, etc.
And that, y'all, is a very old story-shaped story.
One, in fact, that is drummed into the heads of numerous Western readers from early childhood, when they regularly hear a story about a character who dies, is mourned, and miraculously returns from the paths of the dead--and whether you believe that story or not, it's still part of the story-framework many of us have in our heads. Vicarious loss, vicarious mourning, and then, vicarious joy at the promise of redemption.
After all, Lord of the Rings is a vital and central part of Western culture.
What, you were expecting Jesus?
Now I have to go get ashes smeared on my forehead, and contemplate the fact that all human life is carbon based.
Am I the only one who thinks it's weirdly ironic that the last issue is coming out today? Of course, if I ran Marvel's schedule, the Civil War storyline would have started and ended in April. And the follow-up arc would totally be called Marvel: Reconstruction instead of Initiative or whatever they've decided on. Because I am a sad, sad history geek.
Anyway, I have non-CW-related meta, before I dissolve into Marvel fangirl wank and/or squee.
[Edit] Have totally read it now, and Spiderman. The outcome was better than I feared, though not as many loose ends were tied up as I'd hoped (i.e. like, none).
Someone much more talented than I (either Terry Pratchett or Neil Gaiman, maybe both) once said that all good stories have a 'shape' to them--a way that they are supposed to go, a way that people expect them to go, because we've heard versions of this story before, and real stories have a life of their own. Fandom in particular is all about story-shaped stories (that's one reason some fans insist on warnings--so that they can know the shape of the story in advance, rather than have it shift form on them half-way through, like the lover in Tam Lin), and one of my personal guilty favorites is the Pseudo-Deathfic, or what I like to call "Reports of Character A's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated."
I've seen this kind of story derided as the author "chickening out" and sabotaging the dramatic effect of her death scene with a happy ending, but when done well, I think it is, at heart, a different shape of story from a deathfic.
Deathfics are about death (obviously) and the permanence of loss, or the cruel and arbitary nature of fate, or the high cost of war/vampire fighting/[insert dangerous canon activity here]. Pseudo-Deathfics, whether the character actually dies and is somehow brought back, a la Buffy Summers, or is just believed to be dead, are about life, about hope, about affirming the bond between a set of characters, about, ultimately, a different kind of emotional catharsis.
Because a pseudo-deathfic doesn't just have the vicarious emotional experience of the surviving characters' mourning, it also has that moment when the Character A re-appears, when Character B rejoices because his friend that was dead is alive again, his love that was lost is found, etc.
And that, y'all, is a very old story-shaped story.
One, in fact, that is drummed into the heads of numerous Western readers from early childhood, when they regularly hear a story about a character who dies, is mourned, and miraculously returns from the paths of the dead--and whether you believe that story or not, it's still part of the story-framework many of us have in our heads. Vicarious loss, vicarious mourning, and then, vicarious joy at the promise of redemption.
After all, Lord of the Rings is a vital and central part of Western culture.
What, you were expecting Jesus?
Now I have to go get ashes smeared on my forehead, and contemplate the fact that all human life is carbon based.