"My response to random character death is completely opposite: when a character dies for no apparent reason, I am thrown out of the story. It seems less realistic, not more. One could draw the conclusion that I simply have a more optimistic worldview; but I'm not convinced that that's true, and in any case I want to discuss more literary questions."
I would conclude not that you have a fundamentally more optimistic worldview (though that may be the case), but rather that you place more value on a carefully constructed, false story. I prefer my stories to be more real. I don't enjoy stories about the pretty princess in the tower coming down and saving the life of the poor village boy from the lion even through she's never held a sword before. Even universes with magic, or other reality altering devices, have to be internally consisent to not raise my ire.
I suppose that my point is that I value a story more when it is constructed within a framework that closely mirrors reality, or is a logical extension of it. The more a story strays from this, the more fundamentaly false it becomes, and the less I enjoy it.
Even with characters I like, it gets grating when they barely survive yet again for the twentieth time.
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Date: 2004-02-04 11:36 pm (UTC)I would conclude not that you have a fundamentally more optimistic worldview (though that may be the case), but rather that you place more value on a carefully constructed, false story. I prefer my stories to be more real. I don't enjoy stories about the pretty princess in the tower coming down and saving the life of the poor village boy from the lion even through she's never held a sword before. Even universes with magic, or other reality altering devices, have to be internally consisent to not raise my ire.
I suppose that my point is that I value a story more when it is constructed within a framework that closely mirrors reality, or is a logical extension of it. The more a story strays from this, the more fundamentaly false it becomes, and the less I enjoy it.
Even with characters I like, it gets grating when they barely survive yet again for the twentieth time.