BWprowl wrote:I’m not saying that characters aren’t important, I’m saying that their value isn’t determined in and of themselves: it’s determined by the skill of the writer using them. When I read, say, ‘Scarlet Spider’, I don’t go “Wow, Kaine sure is interesting the way he struggles to attain heroism, I hope everything goes well for him!” because I recognize that Kaine isn’t a real person and whatever happens to him has nothing to do with anything he ‘does’. I read it and go “Wow, Chris Yost sure has a handle on weaving themes of trying to fight against your nature for self-betterment, and he’s making great use of the established elements of Kaine’s character to do that!” I like Kaine because I like what Chris Yost is using him to do, but I don’t give any of that credit to Kaine as a character unto himself, because I understand that any other writer that comes in and writes Kaine is probably going to use him to make a different point, and will probably write him differently (significantly or slightly, but still differently) simply due to different backgrounds, life experiences, and writing styles, so all the credit for what I like about ‘Scarlet Spider’ and find good about it as a story goes to Yost as a writer, not Kaine as a character. I’m not taking the plot and the characters separately the way you’re implying, I’m looking at them as the whole picture of what the author’s putting down on the page.
You said, and I quote: "It's the ideas and the qualities of the stories themselves that are important, not which characters the author chooses to keep around while he's telling them." That's not looking at the whole picture. You literally are saying there that ideas and qualities of the story are more important that the characters kept in the story, and separating the characters as a quality of the story by making a distinction between the two concepts. Characters are a quality of a story. A pretty big one. And you're still not understanding what I meant by giving character credit. That's not to say characters are a means unto themselves, but you're that you aren't appreciating how important they are to the story. Believe it or not, a lot of people read a story often for a character. They aren't all that interested in some point the author wants to make using that character as their soapbox.
…unless Arikawa took the story from where the Elrics died and continued it with Winry or Mustang or somebody following up on their deaths, continuing along their path to expose the corruption of the State, or defeat Father and the Homunculi and their agenda, or whatever caused the Elrics’s death that would necessitate the story continuing to follow up on those elements and what they meant for the setting. We don’t know where the author would go with that sort of thing, because she chose to keep the Elrics alive throughout the entirety of the story, but if she did choose to kill them off partway through, then who are we to tell her otherwise, as if we know where her story should go better than she does?
You do know why they made Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood in the first place, right? They didn't want to wait for Hiromu Arakawa to finish writing the manga series when they had begun working on the first anime so Shō Aikawa, the head writer of that anime, pretty much made up his own version of the story about half way through the series. And surprise, surprise, even with a different author, with a *very* different take on the storyline, the brothers survive to the end. Because it's their story, and is an extremely character driven story at that. Everything about the plot ties directly to the Elric's in both versions, even about the corruption of the State because of Hohenheim's connection to all of it. Winry or any other character cannot defeat father, because they are not the characters with the tools, knowledge or background for it. It's the Elric's that do, and only them, again because it is their story.
My point was that it’s petty to drop a series because a main character you were attached to got killed, and you could end up missing out on a lot because of it.
If they don't want to continue reading a story because they aren't as interested in that story with out their favorite character in it anymore, why should they have to keep reading it? How is it petty to drop a story if killing the main character also killed their interest in reading that story?
He got depressed because it was a sad fucking part of the show, but he still reacted in a rational way: by being sad for a little while and then getting over it.
Why get sad over it though? It's just a fictional character. What does it matter if he died? It's not real. It's not rational to get sad or upset over something that didn't actually happen or has any baring on real life, is it?
He didn’t beg the series creators to bring Hughes back because his life was somehow diminished without that character appearing in the latter half of the show, he recognized that the character’s death was significant to the story being told, he was just saddened by the emotion attached to the point where the character did die. Writing in to yell at the authors of the work you’re supposedly a ‘fan’ of is not rational, because they have no obligation to satisfy your need to continuously have ‘new’ stories with that particular character in your life, and the stories would actually be diminished by never actually having characters removed or by repeatedly bringing characters back to life to the point that any deaths that occurred lost all significance.
And yet, you did mention before you had some friends that stopped watching the show after Nina died. I didn't see you calling them irrational then. Again, you are over-exaggerating this. You think these fans think their lives are somehow diminished with out that character? It's about their enjoyment of that story, not because they feel some loss in their life without that character being in the story anymore. They don't like an event in a story, what's the harm in writing to the publisher about it?
I don’t think you can compare the story of the death of a fictional character to actually losing a loved one to death. This is what I (and others) have been trying to establish in this discussion for some time now. Saying that an actual human being in your life dying should elicit the same type of reaction as a cartoon character you liked reading about having a story written where they die seriously diminishes the value of the human life.
The reason I said that was not to compare the death of a loved one to a fictional person. The point was to illustrate that everyone reacts their own ways. Some people go into a depression. Some cry. Some talk it out to friends. Some get angry about it. Some bottle it up. And so on. Getting angry is a rational response. It's what you do with that anger that can make it irrational. And writing a letter about it is harmless.
You think? I’d say the digital age we live in has quite eroded the difference between communication via text on a screen and confrontations that people initiate face-to-face. Just look to some of the drama that erupts on Facebook for an example. And I’d say that the petitions and online rants and death threats that these people put forward in response to character deaths and changes and the like portrays a level of passion that some would consider unhealthy to have towards a fictional character.
You think there is little difference between text and face-to-face? Text is just words. There are many things you simply cannot convey with like you could be able to do in person. While conversely, it would be easier for a line to get crossed face-to-face. And we're not talking about the type of people who issue death threats here. These are fans who simply are expressing their dissatisfaction with how Marvel treated the character.
And as I keep telling you, some of those ‘different ways’ come off as extremely irrational and unhealthy.
How is simply writing a letter to a publisher express one's opinion of a story irrational or unhealthy?
It works like this: If I came into work and said “Man, last night’s episode of The Walking Dead sucked, the way that guy got killed by those zombies was totally hackneyed and didn’t work with the story at all!” my co-workers would look at that as being a rational reaction to a stupid episode of a TV show. However, if I come in and go “I can’t believe they had the gall to kill off Joe on last night’s episode of The Walking Dead! Joe was my favorite character and my life is EMPTY without him in that show! I’m going to write an angry letter to AMC telling them that if they don’t have that zombie vomit Joe up in the next episode and have him revealed to be fine, then I’m NEVER watching the show again, because it’s just RUINED otherwise!” my co-workers would probably look at me a little sideways and wonder if there weren’t some other issues in my life I wasn’t telling them about.
When did you get onto this "my life is meaningless without this character" kick? Because that hasn't been the type of reaction we've been talking about here at all. Does any of the letters in Superior Spider-Man say anything remotely like "my life is empty without Peter Parker"? Because I extremely doubt that. You're over exaggerating to make these people seem irrational rather than representing what they truely said.
Yeah, one is text-based, the other is verbal, but the end impression is still the same: Someone getting irrationally angry about the fictional death of a fake character they were too attached to.
No, yelling at some one face to face is very different than writing an emotionally charged letter. Face-to-face it's easy for rational to go out the window, especially in a heated confrontation. But that stays on the page in a letter.
‘Tried to save it’? Seriously? A story doesn’t need to be ‘saved’ just because a character got killed off or replaced, to feel like it’s somehow up to you to ‘correct’ a series that did something you don’t like is self-important craziness.
Not to save the story, to save the *character*. What have we been discussing here this whole time?
This goes back to why this discussion started in the first place: You taking issue with me making fun of the people writing into Marvel to whine about how the company took their precious Peter away. I’m not saying they *can’t* do that, far from it, they have the right to all the emphatic, ‘sick to my stomach’ letters, Facebook campaigns, and character-saving petitions they want! But when they do that, I have the right to regard them as what they come off as: Irrational, immature crazy people with skewed priorities and way too much time on their hands, and laugh at them accordingly when I’m reviewing a book that was specifically concocted to provoke these reactions from them and expose them for the shallow, too-attached readers that can’t separate reality from fiction that they are.
Wow. How arrogant of you, to presume to make fun of these fans for a reaction you don't seem to understand and tell them how they should feel because they got attached to a character and hated the story direction, to call them immature, irrational, crazy people just for expressing their opinion to Marvel, and that they should just 'get over it' because you personally don't get attached to main characters. Frankly, you seem like you're just being a bully toward these fans for not liking how Marvel handled this story just because you think they should get over it. There is nothing wrong with voicing complaints of dissatisfaction.
Shockwave wrote:God damn it Sparky, come on, you know damned well that there are people out there that are over the top batshit crazy and that some people react irrationally. Those are the people that Prowl is referring to.
No, he's not. He's talking about the fans that wrote letters that were published in Superior Spider-Man. Do you honestly think Marvel would actually print the letters from the truely over the top batshit crazy people? Hell no. If Marvel decided it was OK to print them in the comic, they weren't anywhere close to that. These are normal, albeit passionate, fans who hated to see what Marvel did to their favorite character and wanted to write a letter in to Marvel to express that opinion. And BWprowl has exaggerated that to the point that he's started talking like these are the batshit crazy fans for simply expressing that opinion, when he thinks they should be just like him and 'get over it'. But they aren't those fans. They just wrote to express how much they hated what Marvel did to Peter Parker.
I don't think anyone here is trying to argue that it's irrational to get mad when something you like gets what you consider to be ruined. Hell, on these very boards all of us at one point have vented that very thing about various things.
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what BWprowl is arguing. And I made that exact same point earlier in this...discussion actually. And yet...
