Though that's an environment where character death is way less final than in other media
From your lips to God's ears. *grins* The eternally-painful-but-undying hope that Marvel will bring Steve Rogers back soon is the main reason I keep reading comics.
In some ways it would be easier/better without any hope, though, because the hope/expectation that the writers will fix things makes every succeeding month where they haven't done so more miserable than the last, because the emotionally manipulative jerking around the reader receives is ongoing and cumulative with every issue Ed Brubakerwrites. If the writers just told fans, straight out, "Okay, we're bringing him back in issue #[X] or on [X] date" or "we are never, ever bringing him back as long as Brubaker's on the title" or something (i.e. if there were no uncertainly and I had an iron clad knowledge of the outcome whether good or bad), then I'd be able to either happily read and vicariously wallow in the other characters' grief in the knowledge that I was eventually going to get a happy ending, or accept Steve's death and mourn him and give up reading that particular title.
As you might be able to tell, I have a lot of fandom-and-creator-specific bitterness regarding character death. Once upon a time, I used to be much more relaxed about it, but Order of the Phoenix and the last year and a half worth of Captain America have made me far touchier (i.e. I used to have a more live-and-let-live, roll-with-the-punches attitude, and then the canon writers killed off my favorite characters rather than somebody else's favorites, and my entire outlook changed). I don't trust any canon writers anymore, which means I'm continually afraid that something sudden and horrible will happen to any character I like now.
My theory is that for a lot of fans, there's that one, major betrayal-by-source-canon you never really recover from (whether it's the X-Files descending into suck, season six of Buffy, Rowling killing off Sirius Black and/or putting Hermione with someone the fan didn't ship her with, DC comics' treatment of Stephanie Brown, Brubaker killing off a character that had been an icon for over 65 years to replace him with his own Mary Sue, etc.) and after that, it's once bitten, twice shy, and some fans can't let themselves really enjoy and experience canon in the same way after that unless we have proof that we aren't going to be bitten again, because even when things are going well, we're continually braced for the other shoe to land on our heads.
no subject
From your lips to God's ears. *grins* The eternally-painful-but-undying hope that Marvel will bring Steve Rogers back soon is the main reason I keep reading comics.
In some ways it would be easier/better without any hope, though, because the hope/expectation that the writers will fix things makes every succeeding month where they haven't done so more miserable than the last, because the emotionally manipulative jerking around the reader receives is ongoing and cumulative with every issue Ed Brubakerwrites. If the writers just told fans, straight out, "Okay, we're bringing him back in issue #[X] or on [X] date" or "we are never, ever bringing him back as long as Brubaker's on the title" or something (i.e. if there were no uncertainly and I had an iron clad knowledge of the outcome whether good or bad), then I'd be able to either happily read and vicariously wallow in the other characters' grief in the knowledge that I was eventually going to get a happy ending, or accept Steve's death and mourn him and give up reading that particular title.
As you might be able to tell, I have a lot of fandom-and-creator-specific bitterness regarding character death. Once upon a time, I used to be much more relaxed about it, but Order of the Phoenix and the last year and a half worth of Captain America have made me far touchier (i.e. I used to have a more live-and-let-live, roll-with-the-punches attitude, and then the canon writers killed off my favorite characters rather than somebody else's favorites, and my entire outlook changed). I don't trust any canon writers anymore, which means I'm continually afraid that something sudden and horrible will happen to any character I like now.
My theory is that for a lot of fans, there's that one, major betrayal-by-source-canon you never really recover from (whether it's the X-Files descending into suck, season six of Buffy, Rowling killing off Sirius Black and/or putting Hermione with someone the fan didn't ship her with, DC comics' treatment of Stephanie Brown, Brubaker killing off a character that had been an icon for over 65 years to replace him with his own Mary Sue, etc.) and after that, it's once bitten, twice shy, and some fans can't let themselves really enjoy and experience canon in the same way after that unless we have proof that we aren't going to be bitten again, because even when things are going well, we're continually braced for the other shoe to land on our heads.