Question

[cleolinda]

A Formspring question (yes, I do sometimes answer those still, although I have a backlog of 80+ now) that I don't know how to answer:

I don't usually get emotionally involved in fictional stories, but I have been strongly affected by the death of my favorite character. (The story is not Harry Potter, by the way.) How do I move on from this? I am feeling genuinely depressed about it.

I got really upset when Philip Pullman killed a character off in one of his series--but more because it seemed so incredibly senseless, and it was right the red hot second after a relationship had finally come to fruition. I didn't get depressed over it, though--I just refused to read the next book, because I was terrified (as a reader, I mean) what he might do next. I know people got upset over the Harry Potter deaths (MARK, YOU PROBABLY DON'T NEED TO READ THE COMMENTS), but--well, I'd already read the His Dark Materials trilogy Pullman also wrote, and all of these books together convinced me that he had no writerly mercy at all, and I just wasn't ready to put up with what he might do next. So maybe I'll go back and finish that series, I don't know. But it was genuinely I am afraid what he might do next rather than THAT WAS MY FAVORITE CHARACTER, GO TO ALL THE HELLS. So I don't really know how to answer the question of emotional investment. Thoughts?

(Yes, we can include the works of Joss Whedon.)

Comments

[farasha]

I agree, I was always more upset at this death than the second one. I mean, I cried like a stupid little baby at the second one but the first just made me mad.

Which to think about it, is what Whedon was probably going for. The Operative is supposed to be a monster, pure and simple. You're supposed to hate him and the regime that created him. As a writer, I think what Whedon did here was very successful. Even if I don't like it.

spoilers for Serenity

[highways]

Haha, it just made me mad -- I thought Wash's death was more successful in a writerly way, because it showed how random deaths can be in a battle and you don't always get a chance to say goodbye. With Book ... another thing is the race issues in Firefly bug me a lot, so sacrificing a COC for like nothing beyond giving our white cowboy hero a dramatic cowboy moment really rubs me the wrong way.

Honestly this is sort of my answer to the original question -- you can kill off a character I love and I will accept it, but don't do it in a way which makes me think the writer(s) never cared about them in the first place. Book's death left so many unanswered questions about his history that I'm pretty sure Whedon must not have found them interesting, which sucks because I really did. (See also: Supernatural).