Saga, Chapter Fifty-Three

[laughing_tree]

Sooner or later, we’re all going to die, and there’s no coming back. Fiction used to exist to help prepare us for this inescapable tragedy, but over the years, as characters in popular fiction became “intellectual property” owned and controlled by corporations, these creations became too valuable to ever “die,” and I think the whole idea of death in stories became cheapened. But because Fiona and I own and control Saga completely, we can be cruel and vengeful gods, like authors used to be. -- Brian K. Vaughan

Comments

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

I can't help but think that if the plotting were a little tighter, they would have a card to play other than death.

[mindsweeper]

I find the quote interesting. I'd argue that overusing death also cheapens it, perhaps to an equal extent.

There are a lot of things in comics that impact me emotionally more than death of a character. And so I'm surprised when anyone gets upset when an event starts with some major death of a fan favorite. I'm equally as surprised at this point that Saga deaths have such impact.

[locuatico]

The sad thing is... this and the next one are, IMHO, the ones that have been telegraphed for a while now and SHOULD be one of the most emotionally impactful moments of the entire series. But because of so much death, it feels no different than other deaths.

[kore]

Yeah, ITA. This has been coming for a while now, but the impact feels really....lesser, somehow. Muffled.

[jlbarnett]

excuse me? there were tons of stories in the past that didn't end in character death

[rainspirit]

This story arc was just straight up "Kill your darlings" all the way through, wasn't it?

I'll admit, I screamed "No" at the top of my lungs when I saw Prince Robot bite it. :(

[deh_tommy]

“Kill everyone until only your darlings are left.”

[janegray]

That quote reminds me a lot of those people who argue against safe spaces. "OMG REAL LIFE DOESN'T HAVE TRIGGER WARNINGS THINGS SUCK AND WILL KEEP ON SUCKING YOU CAN'T PRETEND OTHERWISE JUST ACCEPT IT!!!"

We know. Ok? We know. People who make use of safe spaces do so precisely because they are intimately familiar with how much things suck, and would like to take the occasional break to catch their breath. Watching a Disney movie with its happily ever after is not going to make me forget about my dead friend and my own mortality.

I'm not belittling the importance of stories that deal with death as a way to help people cope with death IRL. Hell, there was even a scientific study that showed that watching the movie Ghost brought comfort to people who had lost a loved one and helped them cope with their loss better.

But it's insane, not to mention obnoxious as hell, to argue that the purpose of fiction, with its countless genres and messages and cultural/social contexes, is to prepare people for tragedy. It's like saying that the purpose of an oven is to bake bread and bread only, and if you like cupcakes and pizza and cookies it's just because the Corporations tricked you into thinking that there could ever possibly be anything worthwhile in anything other than bread.

Also? There is no surer way to make something cheap than to make it overabundant. If you could find gold pebbles in your yard, gold would be considered garbage.

[kore]

But it's insane, not to mention obnoxious as hell, to argue that the purpose of fiction, with its countless genres and messages and cultural/social contexes, is to prepare people for tragedy. It's like saying that the purpose of an oven is to bake bread and bread only, and if you like cupcakes and pizza and cookies it's just because the Corporations tricked you into thinking that there could ever possibly be anything worthwhile in anything other than bread.

Hah, I like that.

[informationgeek]

Oh get over yourself Vaughan. Have you ever considered that overusing death is just as f**king cheap as not killing characters? Its shite video gaming writing where the creators and writers dont know how to ellict an emotional response or have a big moment without killing or attempting to kill someone or some animal.

I'm sorry but Saga is just bad at this. It wants to be taken so damn seriously and say something so much, but it's often clouded and obsurced when the only memorable things end up being killing characters and Adam Sandler level of shock, grossout humor. It's not insightful or engaging, it's just tedious.

If I want to read a story that says things about life and growing up, I'll just read manga. Complex Age, solanin, Dead Dead Demon's Dedede Destruction, Silver Spoon, and such. They speak and say way more without feeling the need to yell at my face about death all the time. Sure, people and animals do die in them, but they aren't the only card trick the creator has to speak to you and capture a feeling of a worry you had.

Is there anything modern or not-manga nowadays you actually do like?

[deh_tommy]

Eh, I’m finding there are plenty of great emotional moments in this series that don’t just rely on death and shock to work well.

Re: Is there anything modern or not-manga nowadays you actually do like?

[informationgeek]

I've sadly fallen by the wayside of a lot of my comic reading due to work, graduating, and money. Though I do really enjoy Paper Girls, Manifest Destiny, Lazarus, anything by Mark Russell, Waid's Archie, several superhero comics, and East of West.

ROBOT, NOOOOO

[deh_tommy]

...well, I was affected by this at least.

[kore]

What with this death, the upcoming one, and what he wrote in the endnotes for both issues, I don't think he's going to give up on the book, but it does feel like there's going to be at least a timejump or some kind of soft reboot. IIRC he's said this is him writing about family and refugees/people on the margins of combat and the effects of war on non-combatants, and it feels like Hazel's had her family -- biological and found -- slowly stripped away from her. I wonder if maybe we might see connections built up again in the next generation, with Hazel and Sophie, Squire, Ghüs, Petrichor, maybe Gwendolyn, along with Alana and Upsher....

Although tbh I quit buying the trades after vol 7 and quit regularly reading single issues after the Abortion Town arc which was a whole mess of DNW on several levels. I don't think he's deliberately being brutal or gross, but it feels like a lot of the reasons why I loved the original story are gone (literally, re a lot of the characters).

[sisterofbloomerjunior]

How many heirs did the royal family have that killing a prince would have meant nothing?

[kamino_neko]

Sir Robot was Prince Robot IV before he was disowned. It's unclear how the robot numbering/naming works, but, to me, that suggests, at the very least, one sibling ahead of him - assuming King and Queen Robot are I and II. But since they don't have numbers given, so the numbering seems to be paired with the title, I would assume 3 siblings ahead of him.

[invadertoph]

Oh good grief. Even Joss Whedon is staring in awe at the amount of characters that have been killed. And now Prince Robot (and Marko too I believe) just, what the hell man?