The Triviality of Death

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AliceShiki

『Ms. Tree』『Magical Girl of Love and Justice』, Female
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If there is one thing I never ever allow in any story I'm writing, is the capability of reviving someone. I don't want anyone to ever be able to revive anyone under any circumstances.

Why? Well... Because what's the whole point then? Just what is at stake if you know nobody's life is? Does it matter if thousands died in the war against the big bad if you can just revive them all? Just what is the tension in the great battle between the hero and his old evil rival that he fought numerous times by now, if we know the hero can be revived in case he loses and dies? I mean... The only reasonable stake against revival magic is the entire world, anything smaller than that is just meaningless.

Or at least that's how I always felt about it... Recently I have started thinking a bit differently on the matter... As in, I still will never write anything that involves revival, but... Well, suffice to say I am seeing an interesting usage of revival right now? And if I think carefully about it, it's not the first time.

I mean, the easiest example to think of how revival can be handled is by limiting it... Good old Dragon Ball did that at first, you can't wish for the same thing twice, so... Whoever died once can't revive again. Of course they then bypassed it with Porunga, but it still shows a way revival can work.
... At the same time, Dragon Ball is the prime example of a series that is carried by the fact the world is always at stake, so... >.>

Another one is Shaman King, they had revivals, they even got stronger when they revived, but... It really didn't matter that much, even if they can revive they still couldn't beat Hao, and so they did what is probably my favorite way of handling a big bad unbeatable bad guy... They didn't beat it. As simple as that~
I think it was nice how they played with the idea of revival and yet did it in a way that the revival really didn't hamper the way the story progressed and still had its purpose in causing tension, it was a well-executed story for sure.

And now I'm playing Adventure Quest and our character just died in the recent event of the story... It's no secret that we revive all the time in AQ, but that fact is rarely built up on... It's interesting to look at it, our character's life is never at stake, but many other people's are, because we are the only ones that have death's favor and keep getting revived over and over again.
A heroic sacrifice is suddenly not only a selfless option, but also the best option, because our life is expendable, while everyone else's isn't... And on the other hand, we never know if death will ever decide to collect the favors we own it, we never know if this time that we die will be the last one.
It's a very interesting situation that I like quite a bit... Really curious to see how it will be developed later this week, but so far the story stopped at our death~

Dunno how to conclude this blog, I guess it was just interesting to me to see how different stories handled keeping things interesting when they already made it canon that death was not a problem that is hard to solve... It's nice when we see this actually paying off for sure~

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Comments

    1. Das Sep 3, 2019
      Well that's the thing @AliceShiki, ophi cant die. It's impossible for him to die in any state or plane. Thought that is entirely our fault for why he is like that now
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    2. AliceShiki Sep 3, 2019
      @A5G_Reaper True, but I think it's harder to make revival work out well than it is with most other tropes... But yeah, it can work~

      @SpearOfLies Oh yeah, RPs are pretty different from writing in general~

      @kyuukestu @Kuro_0ni Those are some interesting ideas for sure~
      Overusing them would be horrible though... But yeah, all that is needed is not overusing them then~

      @akki Well, he has plenty of real experiences available, he doesn't need stories too! xD

      @Das But we kill Ophi-kun for real? *tilts head* We don't wanna kill him only in stories~ *giggles*
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    3. Das Sep 3, 2019
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    4. Kuro_0ni Sep 2, 2019
      A transformative death is plausible too. The physical death of one character, leads to their soul being used in another way.

      Character B dies in an attempt to save the MC. From that incident, because MC has a deep obsession and can't let go, harbors the soul of Character B within an artifact.

      So Character B isn't dead, but isn't really alive either.
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    5. akki Sep 2, 2019
      So @Ophious will never be in any of your stories? Poor ophi~
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    6. kyuukestu Sep 2, 2019
      I think it has some interesting ways to play around with it, or if the main stake at hand isn't really the life of the characters, but a fate even worst than death.

      In that case, you can extract a bit of conflict from the character(s) doing the revivals.

      E.g. Would it be right to force this person to keep living in whatever horrible circumstances they died in, stuff like that.

      I think most tropes have their own situations where they can enhance the story just by being there, even if they're never directly utilized. You don't have to actually revive anyone to produce some sort of internal or moral conflict like the example I used above, you only need the possibility to exist.

      Of course, you can't exactly milk that repeatedly or it'll get stale.
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    7. SpearOfLies Sep 2, 2019
      That is just side note of me but it's really annoying for me when people think death matter in a RP. Player's character only dies in a RP if the player doesn't want to play anymore with that character or want to revive the character with some BS mc power up. People should stop making a drama off people that want to change character and people should stop making lazy power up just for the sake to gain more power up.
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    8. A5G_Reaper Sep 2, 2019
      [​IMG]

      Revival is, just like any other trope, good if done right. It's just many fails in the attempt to do so.
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