Don't Fear The Reaper: Character Death Meme
Belated Oscar thoughts: pretty much as expected, except for The Social Network winning best music. Because maybe I'm biased, but to me the only really brilliant use of music in the film was the Baby, You're A Rich Man sequence at the end, and, err, that song was written and recorded in 1967 by you know who (or you should, reading my journal *g*). Personally, I was rooting for How to train your dragon in that category, but never mind.
And now, from my flist: the character death meme.
1. Do you dislike, tolerate, or enjoy fiction or art that depicts people dying?
It depends on the kind of mood I'm in, and on the depiction. Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith paintings are amazing to look at, visceral, powerful, and I think even if I didn't know the artist's backstory I would feel the sense of rage, and be struck by the fact the paintings focus on Judith and her maid rather than on Judith and Holofernes which is the case with virtually any other painting of Judith. And Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus is one of my favourite poems. But you know, that still doesn't mean I could watch Artemisia's paintings or read Lady Lazarus every day. Ditto for death in tv shows, films, books, etc. when I respond positively to the work in question. (When I can't stand the film/show/book anyway, it's usually not because X dies but for a variety of factors and the fact X dies is but one, or leaves me cold along with the rest.
Writing-wise, I've killed my share of characters when I felt the story I was telling demanded it. With fanfiction, that wasn't the case very often, but it happened. Which brings me to the next question.
2. How do you feel about ratings/warnings when it comes to depictions of violence or death?
I get and approve of ratings and warnings for violence, but I really resent death warnings. I loathe that it's become an established custom. It just goes against every instinct I have as a reader and a writer - I don't want people to know these things ahead of time, I want them to engage with the story unspoiled.
3. Does what you'll consume vary depending on the medium or author?
Absolutely, plus again on my mood. Still: there is a reason why the Eric Kripke rumour a few months back re: a possible Sandman tv series horrified me. I don't want him anywhere near the Sandman canon because those storylines as executed by E.K. could go horribly wrong, especially the deaths and depictions of same. Whereas with the way Neil Gaiman wrote them I was fully on board.
4. To what extent do you think what you produce or consume is affected by personal/cultural/religious views/beliefs you have concerning death?
Not that much. For example, I don't believe in reincarnation, but I can be deeply moved by well-written stories stories for which reincarnation is a central premise. Iny my own writings, I try to go with what the characters in question believe in, and how the universe around them is shaped in that regard in their own canon.
5. Are there any characters/groups of characters (apart from the 'bad guys') that you are happier to read dying than others?
While I certainly dislike some characters I can't say I've gone searching for stories in which they're killed off. (Not least because that usually falls under the category of bashing fic, which I don't like no matter how I stand towards the character in question.) When a character I don't like or am indifferent to dies in canon it usually gets an "eh" out of me, nothing stronger than that. What I can't stand is character death that feels like lazy fan service. (BSG, I'm looking at you for two particular women in season 4, and Alias, you were guilty of that in regard to Lauren Reeds as well.)
Do I want my favourites to survive? Of course I do. But not if it feels more right to the story that they don't.
6. In terms of fiction, is there such a thing as a 'good death'? How would you define that?
Trying not to have too many Klingon flashbacks here. :) Okay. A good death in fiction to me is one which feels organic to the story in question. This doesn't mean only the characters with no more potential should be killed of, or that the death should get central focus. Sometimes you can make an important story point by treating the death in question as something the other characters can't dwell on, that comes as a surprising shock to audience and characters alike. For example, killing Derek Reese early on in the episode Adam raised a Cain by a random terminator, not in an epic fight, and in a way that meant the other regulars had no time to take in what happened, plus the rest of the episode focused on another matter - that was shocking, but I also think it wasn't gratitious or just for shock value. It re-emphasized how dangerous even a random terminator is (in a season where we had seen Cameron defeat most of them) to human beings, how easy we die, how being a regular is no protection, how if you're Sarah and John there is no time to mourn because you're on the run all the time.
7. Do you prefer deaths to be explicitly depicted or to happen 'off-screen', if at all?
Leaving aside unfortunate Doylist circumstances like, say, sudden actor death and a storyline where you can't just say, oh, character X suddenly decided to go on vacation for the next year, and can't recast either, I prefer on screen death. (And there are ways around the actor problem if it does happen; see Leo McGarry in The West Wing. We don't see him die, and it wouldn't have happened if the actor had not, but they found a way to integrate Leo's death in the show and make it feel in tandem with the story told in the last season.) Not least because in genre shows you're practically trained to expect a double cross if there is no body.:)
It's different in fanfiction. If the story deals with the mourning process than you can start it with your main character(s) finding out X has died, for example, and we don't need to read the scene in which X does.
8. In general, do you have a preference/anti-preference for the perspective from which a character death is written/discussed, be it the dying person, the killer or a bystander/someone else?
No, I don't. It really depends on what you want to achieve as a writer. When I wrote Five in One the key premise of that story was to take five canonical instances of Spike killing characters and tell those deaths from the victim's pov (or in one case from one of the people mourning her), so the perspective was a quintessential part of the story I was trying to tell. Conversely, when I wrote Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds as a character portrait of Lucy Saxon, remaining in her pov and not breaking it in favour of the Master's victims was quintessential to how I described Lucy.
9. Are there any forms of violence you're more/less comfortable with than others?
Err, sexualized violence when it's not mutual and consenting? Generally fight scenes are rarely the highlight for me anyway, and they're terribly difficult to describe interestingly, too. And rape - again, there are films and books which deal in what feels to me like a responsible way, but it can go wrong so easily.
10. Are there any situations in which you think a death cannot/should not be 'bought back' either through resurrection or soap-style coma/amnesia retconning?
Absolutely. Sometimes the resurrection is an important part of the story, but all too often it's a cheap plot device. As for retcons, you know what one reader told Arthur Conan Doyle, after a decade of campaigning by other readers for Doyle to resurrect Holmes finally paid off? "Holmes was never the same after the Reichenbach Falls."
Otoh if we're talking the Marvelverse, well, resurrection is practically part of the character deal. In most cases. :)
11. Will you produce/consume depictions of the afterlife/dimensions or realities beyond our own that are usually accessed through death?
Yes.
12. Does it matter to you whether the afterlife depicted is positive/'heavenly', neutral or negative/'hellish'?
It depends on the individual execution in all three cases, and on the story told. Hell dimensions as important to the Buffyverse were established as early as s2, but not until s6 did it become important there was such a thing as heaven as well. Wisely, it was never depicted (I think unless you're going for satire it's next to impossible to portray a positive afterlife in a visual medium without it feeling hokey), but that it existed became a really important point for the development of two characters.
13. Does it make a difference whether the characters depicted in these realities have died or are 'just visiting'?
Nah. Execution, again, is key.
14. Do you have any pet hates when it comes to depictions of death?
As I said: cheap fan service. (Or: so we never thought this character through and the audience doesn't like her anyway? (Because in 90% of the cases the character is female.) Off with her head! Or, in fanfiction, when the death clearly occurs because the writer can't stand the character and wants to kill her/him (though again, mostly it's a female character) off as brutally as possible.
15. What do you wish more stories containing character deaths would include?
Interesting aftermaths and and in-character consequences. The current season of Being Human is particularly good in that regard. Also the deaths in question should be written in a way that makes character sense. Two examples of how not to do it from Alias and BSG: . I would never have been happy about the death of Nadia in Alias because I loved the character, nor about her death as part of a process that reverses Arvin Sloane's road to atonment into a definite fall. But both are possible and plausible within the world and the characters' stories - however, it could have been done ever so much better than Sloane pushing Nadia away from his Rambaldi manuscript and her falling on a never before seen glass table, dying on splinters of same. I've said it before, I'll say it again: if Nadia was to die anyway, letting her die from Sloane shooting her in the s4 finale (when he had to for Sydney- and world-saving purposes as the ultimate tragic irony) would have done the trick, and Sloane subsequently falling would have felt far more organic. As for BSG, I know we all love Dean Stockwell, but listening to him and letting Cavil kill himself when the character's determination to live was such an important trait was really not a good idea.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/659016.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
And now, from my flist: the character death meme.
1. Do you dislike, tolerate, or enjoy fiction or art that depicts people dying?
It depends on the kind of mood I'm in, and on the depiction. Artemisia Gentileschi's Judith paintings are amazing to look at, visceral, powerful, and I think even if I didn't know the artist's backstory I would feel the sense of rage, and be struck by the fact the paintings focus on Judith and her maid rather than on Judith and Holofernes which is the case with virtually any other painting of Judith. And Sylvia Plath's Lady Lazarus is one of my favourite poems. But you know, that still doesn't mean I could watch Artemisia's paintings or read Lady Lazarus every day. Ditto for death in tv shows, films, books, etc. when I respond positively to the work in question. (When I can't stand the film/show/book anyway, it's usually not because X dies but for a variety of factors and the fact X dies is but one, or leaves me cold along with the rest.
Writing-wise, I've killed my share of characters when I felt the story I was telling demanded it. With fanfiction, that wasn't the case very often, but it happened. Which brings me to the next question.
2. How do you feel about ratings/warnings when it comes to depictions of violence or death?
I get and approve of ratings and warnings for violence, but I really resent death warnings. I loathe that it's become an established custom. It just goes against every instinct I have as a reader and a writer - I don't want people to know these things ahead of time, I want them to engage with the story unspoiled.
3. Does what you'll consume vary depending on the medium or author?
Absolutely, plus again on my mood. Still: there is a reason why the Eric Kripke rumour a few months back re: a possible Sandman tv series horrified me. I don't want him anywhere near the Sandman canon because those storylines as executed by E.K. could go horribly wrong, especially the deaths and depictions of same. Whereas with the way Neil Gaiman wrote them I was fully on board.
4. To what extent do you think what you produce or consume is affected by personal/cultural/religious views/beliefs you have concerning death?
Not that much. For example, I don't believe in reincarnation, but I can be deeply moved by well-written stories stories for which reincarnation is a central premise. Iny my own writings, I try to go with what the characters in question believe in, and how the universe around them is shaped in that regard in their own canon.
5. Are there any characters/groups of characters (apart from the 'bad guys') that you are happier to read dying than others?
While I certainly dislike some characters I can't say I've gone searching for stories in which they're killed off. (Not least because that usually falls under the category of bashing fic, which I don't like no matter how I stand towards the character in question.) When a character I don't like or am indifferent to dies in canon it usually gets an "eh" out of me, nothing stronger than that. What I can't stand is character death that feels like lazy fan service. (BSG, I'm looking at you for two particular women in season 4, and Alias, you were guilty of that in regard to Lauren Reeds as well.)
Do I want my favourites to survive? Of course I do. But not if it feels more right to the story that they don't.
6. In terms of fiction, is there such a thing as a 'good death'? How would you define that?
Trying not to have too many Klingon flashbacks here. :) Okay. A good death in fiction to me is one which feels organic to the story in question. This doesn't mean only the characters with no more potential should be killed of, or that the death should get central focus. Sometimes you can make an important story point by treating the death in question as something the other characters can't dwell on, that comes as a surprising shock to audience and characters alike. For example, killing Derek Reese early on in the episode Adam raised a Cain by a random terminator, not in an epic fight, and in a way that meant the other regulars had no time to take in what happened, plus the rest of the episode focused on another matter - that was shocking, but I also think it wasn't gratitious or just for shock value. It re-emphasized how dangerous even a random terminator is (in a season where we had seen Cameron defeat most of them) to human beings, how easy we die, how being a regular is no protection, how if you're Sarah and John there is no time to mourn because you're on the run all the time.
7. Do you prefer deaths to be explicitly depicted or to happen 'off-screen', if at all?
Leaving aside unfortunate Doylist circumstances like, say, sudden actor death and a storyline where you can't just say, oh, character X suddenly decided to go on vacation for the next year, and can't recast either, I prefer on screen death. (And there are ways around the actor problem if it does happen; see Leo McGarry in The West Wing. We don't see him die, and it wouldn't have happened if the actor had not, but they found a way to integrate Leo's death in the show and make it feel in tandem with the story told in the last season.) Not least because in genre shows you're practically trained to expect a double cross if there is no body.:)
It's different in fanfiction. If the story deals with the mourning process than you can start it with your main character(s) finding out X has died, for example, and we don't need to read the scene in which X does.
8. In general, do you have a preference/anti-preference for the perspective from which a character death is written/discussed, be it the dying person, the killer or a bystander/someone else?
No, I don't. It really depends on what you want to achieve as a writer. When I wrote Five in One the key premise of that story was to take five canonical instances of Spike killing characters and tell those deaths from the victim's pov (or in one case from one of the people mourning her), so the perspective was a quintessential part of the story I was trying to tell. Conversely, when I wrote Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds as a character portrait of Lucy Saxon, remaining in her pov and not breaking it in favour of the Master's victims was quintessential to how I described Lucy.
9. Are there any forms of violence you're more/less comfortable with than others?
Err, sexualized violence when it's not mutual and consenting? Generally fight scenes are rarely the highlight for me anyway, and they're terribly difficult to describe interestingly, too. And rape - again, there are films and books which deal in what feels to me like a responsible way, but it can go wrong so easily.
10. Are there any situations in which you think a death cannot/should not be 'bought back' either through resurrection or soap-style coma/amnesia retconning?
Absolutely. Sometimes the resurrection is an important part of the story, but all too often it's a cheap plot device. As for retcons, you know what one reader told Arthur Conan Doyle, after a decade of campaigning by other readers for Doyle to resurrect Holmes finally paid off? "Holmes was never the same after the Reichenbach Falls."
Otoh if we're talking the Marvelverse, well, resurrection is practically part of the character deal. In most cases. :)
11. Will you produce/consume depictions of the afterlife/dimensions or realities beyond our own that are usually accessed through death?
Yes.
12. Does it matter to you whether the afterlife depicted is positive/'heavenly', neutral or negative/'hellish'?
It depends on the individual execution in all three cases, and on the story told. Hell dimensions as important to the Buffyverse were established as early as s2, but not until s6 did it become important there was such a thing as heaven as well. Wisely, it was never depicted (I think unless you're going for satire it's next to impossible to portray a positive afterlife in a visual medium without it feeling hokey), but that it existed became a really important point for the development of two characters.
13. Does it make a difference whether the characters depicted in these realities have died or are 'just visiting'?
Nah. Execution, again, is key.
14. Do you have any pet hates when it comes to depictions of death?
As I said: cheap fan service. (Or: so we never thought this character through and the audience doesn't like her anyway? (Because in 90% of the cases the character is female.) Off with her head! Or, in fanfiction, when the death clearly occurs because the writer can't stand the character and wants to kill her/him (though again, mostly it's a female character) off as brutally as possible.
15. What do you wish more stories containing character deaths would include?
Interesting aftermaths and and in-character consequences. The current season of Being Human is particularly good in that regard. Also the deaths in question should be written in a way that makes character sense. Two examples of how not to do it from Alias and BSG: . I would never have been happy about the death of Nadia in Alias because I loved the character, nor about her death as part of a process that reverses Arvin Sloane's road to atonment into a definite fall. But both are possible and plausible within the world and the characters' stories - however, it could have been done ever so much better than Sloane pushing Nadia away from his Rambaldi manuscript and her falling on a never before seen glass table, dying on splinters of same. I've said it before, I'll say it again: if Nadia was to die anyway, letting her die from Sloane shooting her in the s4 finale (when he had to for Sydney- and world-saving purposes as the ultimate tragic irony) would have done the trick, and Sloane subsequently falling would have felt far more organic. As for BSG, I know we all love Dean Stockwell, but listening to him and letting Cavil kill himself when the character's determination to live was such an important trait was really not a good idea.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/659016.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.