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View Full Version : Has Rich mastered the art of writing "the death scene"?



littlebum2002
2013-08-22, 01:00 PM
I have noticed a trend in this comic, and I know many others have noticed it, too. There have been a few characters who have been written to be bland and one-dimensional. They are hard to like and even harder to empathize with.

And yet, when they die, in the final moments before their death, we seem to learn something more about them. They had a method to their madness. Maybe we might even feel a bit of sympathy for them before they die.


Let's start with the latest example, Nale. He was an idiot. He made incredibly complex plans that never worked, to carry out revenge on people for the slightest insult. He spent the last few years trying to kill his brother simply because he wouldn't join his team. He spent his entire adult life trying to kill Malack for who-knows-what reason (although that plan succeeded!) But he was a one-hit-wonder, with little character depth. Until he died, and we realized that he had to live under the thumb of his father his entire life. he could never be an individual, he was always a pawn in a game. Could it be too much to hope that, at the end, he felt some sort of relief due to finally being free of his father's oppressive hand, even though the price of that freedom was death?

And Miko. Oh, Miko. To paraphrase the Bureaucratic Diva, she constantly tried to murder anyone who was evil, or who looks like they might possibly be thinking about getting anywhere sort of near an evil person at some unspecified future point, just to be sure. She was nuts. But, again, as she lay dying, we learned something. She really was, in her own crazy way, trying to do what she thought was Good. As much as she obsessed over destroying the Order, her final worries were solely about her oath and the safety of the gates. And, of course, on seeing her companion, her only true friend in the world, once again.

What about Tsusiko? She was little more than a joke, really, playing on the humor of her love of Xykon. But when her own creations turned against her, she truly felt despair. She had an emotional connection with them, although it was not returned, and I can think of nothing worse than being destroyed by someone (you think) you really, truly loved.

Therkla was a bit more complex of a character than the above, but she still only served a purpose in Elan's unnecessary B-plot. She was an unlucky evil assassin, with a bit of humor thrown in for her (again) unrequited love. Not an astounding amount of character depth. But when she was finally killed by the man who raised her like a daughter (again, what could be worse?), what were her last thoughts? That dying was better than living in a world where she could never have the one person (she thought) she truly loved.

Even Durkon followed this formula. He was the least developed main character, and his death was planned from the very start of the strip. He liked beer, hated trees and undead, and was about as loyal as they come. But there wasn't much more character depth than that. We always knew he was happy to go back home, even if it meant he had to die first, but it's easy to rationalize things like that when they're an abstract prediction about a possible future from an oracle. But even in the moment of his death, he smiled, knowing he could finally see his grand-pappy again, while using his dying words to try and protect his friends.
(And, again, killed by someone he regarded as a friend.)


Obviously, Rich is sticking to a formula here, but why not? He does it so well. I'm sure it will happen again, and we will know it's coming, and it will still be amazing. Maybe we'll even get to feel sorrow for Ian, or Tarquin, or even Xykon before they die. Who knows? All I know is I can't look any any of these characters in the same way anymore, knowing there might be some justification to their actions we will only learn about when it's too late. I also know, when reading his quote that I have in my signature, that there is a real-life lesson to be learned here as well. Don't judge a book by its cover. Also, don't judge a comic strip by it's art style. Who could have known that stick figures could make us cry?

[/ramble]

Bulldog Psion
2013-08-22, 01:04 PM
Well said, good sir.

Tris
2013-08-22, 01:10 PM
Even when the death doesn't show much about the character dying, it still seems to reveal more about another character. For example Zz'dtri and Malack's deaths gave more insight into Nale.

Synesthesy
2013-08-22, 01:13 PM
Good writers are Giant writers.

masamune1
2013-08-22, 01:17 PM
Actually....that's slightly cliché.

Lots of serials and series do that whole "death in the limelight" thing. The character is going to die, so they reveal a bit of their backstory and motivation to give it more impact.

The downside of this is that it usually means that their motivation perhaps wasn't properly spelled out earlier. It was probably deemed distracting or irrelevant, or maybe it just wasn't thought of until the time came to say goodbye.

The Giant handles it better than many, but I don't think he has mastered it yet.

AKA_Bait
2013-08-22, 03:48 PM
Going to have to disagree with you. I'm not seeing a formula, other than well written death scenes for several characters, both major and minor.

Two counter examples, one major, one minor. Roy: Roy's death scene was also well done. Atypical, jarring, shocking to many fans on these boards at the time, but well done partly because of those attributes. Roy was, at that point, the central character of the story. Shinjo: Minor character who, although funny and likeable, didn't have all that much fleshed out backstory to him. Death, and refusal to return, scene quite moving without any moment of new insight into the character.

As to your examples, I disagree with the assertion that any were "bland and one dimensional" at the time of their character's demises or that we learned much more about them at their deaths. I'll focus on three:

Miko: We knew Miko was a zealot the whole time and that even after her fall she couldn't accept that she was wrong. She was also, obviously, a profoundly lonely character (which the added strips in the books make very clear). More, whatever you want to say about Miko, bland she was not.

Tsusiko: We knew Tsusiko was deeply attached to her undead children, highly emotional, and far from just a joke. She wasn't around all that long, granted, but I think we saw her developed around as much as she possibly could be in that period of time.

Last, Durkon: We knew Durkon was both a simple and a good man dwarf who tried with every breath to do the right thing, including his last. It seems to me that there is an assumption here that just because there was not some in-your-face big emotional back story to a character that a character cannot be well developed. I don't think it's terribly controversial to say that every reader of this comic who has read from the beginning knows and understands the character of Durkon. Just because the waters are still, doesn't make them shallow.

Faldrath
2013-08-22, 08:59 PM
There's one thing about Nale's death that I've just realized. And apologies if it's incredibly obvious and has been pointed out plenty of times already, but it's so chilling, in a way, that it bears repeating:

When Nale fights Elan for the first time, his reason for trying to kill Elan is because "Elan denied him". And now Nale dies *exactly* because he denied his father. I don't think this is a coincidence.