Death unto Dawn page up

[Kesey]

So... what I'm seeing in this thread is that a character absolutely has to die to make the story meaningful, but just killing a character wouldn't have any meaning.

Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

The point about character deaths have been dancing around this thread so let me try to clarify a few things:

A character death will cut off potential story telling avenues in the future. The author of the story has to decide when that time has come. Also bringing a character back from the death cheapens the death and can be very damaging to the integrity of the story trying to be told.

At the same time, deciding that the story telling avenues around that a character are complete, the character's death will have to move the story forward. Characters cannot be killed without impacting the plot enough to move the story forward. If this isn't met then there is no reason to kill the character.

The sentiment that a death is long over due is a logical fallacy, as both points above need to be met before killing a character. So any 5.5 or 5.55 or Endwalker deaths must be impactful enough to move the plot (and I think we can speculate a few characters who could meet this example) but also would be cut out of the season 2 story which starts in 6.1 (which is too early to call as we don't even have the sliver of a cliffhanger to even judge yet).

Also lets not confuse the "threat of death" which is used to create suspense and also move the plot. A great example of "threat of death" was when the scions bodies were soulless on the source while they were in the first and those bodies could die to kill them. This was to create suspense, because if we think about it hard enough the whole thing falls apart if all the scions die because the main cast is gone.

[Iscah]

Also lets not confuse the "threat of death" which is used to create suspense and also move the plot. A great example of "threat of death" was when the scions bodies were soulless on the source while they were in the first and those bodies could die to kill them. This was to create suspense, because if we think about it hard enough the whole thing falls apart if all the scions die because the main cast is gone.

The whole thing doesn't fall apart, because the Scions weren't called all at once, and those who have been out of their bodies the longest are also the first to show symptoms of the connection fraying. It was unlikely that the whole group would be lost - even that they would die if it happened - but there was still tension as to what might happen and when.

(Though they kind of broke it at the end by having everyone resolved and ready to go and then... "hey let's do a victory lap of Norvrandt!")

[Vyrerus]

We can really highlight things going the protagonist's way, when Varis was informed that the Scions were defenseless, Zenos came calling. Elidibus was literally going to perform a raid on the Rising Stones in Zenos's body and kill'em all.