Exactly. Sometimes you'll get one major character dead, but that's always something meant to really affect the audience.
True, Tolkien chronicles the extent of most of the characters' lives, so everyone dies eventually, but if we're looking at the main story and not the appendices, the only real casualty is Theoden and a few very minor characters. Obviously there are many, many unnamed deaths during the big battles, but in terms of emotional impact, Tolkien has lots of near-death suspense but few actual deaths.
Whedon likes to torture his characters emotionally, but as you say, he doesn't kill off many of them. I can't comment on Angel as I haven't seen it all yet, but in Dollhouse, I think it's only maybe four main cast members who die? There's an inferred death of millions or billions in the epitaphs, but most of the main cast makes it out okay. All emotionally traumatized, but alive.
I agree about Buffy-- in a horror series, there have to be some deaths. For the most part it's red shirts, but if there weren't a few main (or main-ish) characters killed (like Jenny) there wouldn't be any suspense.
I think for fantasy especially, Mark has only read The Hunger Games, Song of Ice and Fire, and The Golden Compass series... all of which tend to be darker and defy the standards of the genre (which is usually more like 'something evil threatens the land, stuff happens, the hero defeats it, yay!') Now he's reading Tolkien, and I think he still doesn't realize that expectations from later works just don't apply to Tolkien, because he was originating ideas, not trying to subvert ideas used dozens of times already. And obviously Tolkien was working off older mythology archetypes, but you know what I mean. The fantasy genre mostly takes its cues from LotR.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2012-03-06 06:40 pm (UTC)True, Tolkien chronicles the extent of most of the characters' lives, so everyone dies eventually, but if we're looking at the main story and not the appendices, the only real casualty is Theoden and a few very minor characters. Obviously there are many, many unnamed deaths during the big battles, but in terms of emotional impact, Tolkien has lots of near-death suspense but few actual deaths.
Whedon likes to torture his characters emotionally, but as you say, he doesn't kill off many of them. I can't comment on Angel as I haven't seen it all yet, but in Dollhouse, I think it's only maybe four main cast members who die? There's an inferred death of millions or billions in the epitaphs, but most of the main cast makes it out okay. All emotionally traumatized, but alive.
I agree about Buffy-- in a horror series, there have to be some deaths. For the most part it's red shirts, but if there weren't a few main (or main-ish) characters killed (like Jenny) there wouldn't be any suspense.
I think for fantasy especially, Mark has only read The Hunger Games, Song of Ice and Fire, and The Golden Compass series... all of which tend to be darker and defy the standards of the genre (which is usually more like 'something evil threatens the land, stuff happens, the hero defeats it, yay!') Now he's reading Tolkien, and I think he still doesn't realize that expectations from later works just don't apply to Tolkien, because he was originating ideas, not trying to subvert ideas used dozens of times already. And obviously Tolkien was working off older mythology archetypes, but you know what I mean. The fantasy genre mostly takes its cues from LotR.