Is Dying A Trope In Fantasy?

[Abhorsen]

Hello again all!

Thank you all so much for your in-depth analysis on my post about Hard Vs Soft Magic Systems! You're all too damn smart for a small-time writer like me haha

Anyway, another potential discussion topic I was just mulling over; In a fantasy setting, presumably full of magic and wonder, a world where anything can happen even just by chance. Yet, death is almost always abundant and unavoidable in most circumstances.

Has death itself become a trope?

Could it be avoided altogether through unique magic or even simple religions? Perhaps. But, what I'm wondering is; Have any of you ever built a world where there is a calamity looming far more destructive than simply passing onto the next world? Infertility, loss of magic, changes in brain chemistry, what're the dire consequences you set before your valiant warriors and resplendent witches?

What do you, the writer, torture your civilisations with?

How do you instill fear on a whole other world?

(On the off-chance I've not been able to convey this train of thought correctly I apologize, my brain is constantly running at a panicked million miles per hour so my typing and thought process can't keep in pace with one another. I hope you can understand it though, hearing all of your replies, differing opinions, and insights into your worlds truly solidifies your existence for me, people outside my home are just NPCs at the moment but you, the struggling artist with a million hidden problems, I see you. I see you and I hope you know that although I may be half a world away...I love you. Stay safe, sane, and keep creating.

The colour has almost left the world, save it.

 

[Queshire]

I am of the firm opinion that, yeah, you can entirely write a good story with immortal characters. Death is easy as a fail state for your protagonists. Naturally you can't stop the big bad from destroying the world, become the best there ever was at your chosen field of expertise or confess to your childhood sweetheart if you're dead, but what happens if you're immortal yet the big bad manages to blast the world into a post apocalyptic setting anyways? What do you do? How do you handle that failure?

As for the actual question, Elves in my setting are biologically immortal by default, but unless they train to roughly an equivalent point where members of the other races start becoming immortal they're faced with a higher chance of having their magic turn against them. The end result is generally insanity and turning into a monster.

 

[Abhorsen]

That's fascinating! It reminds me of Ciro's Elder Blood or the powers-that-be in the Dragon Age series. Magic is such a powerful medium and I am of the firm belief that wielding it should come a price, regardless of how little you use it.

Obviously to each their own when it comes to how their magic works but it is what it is.

Dying is the greatest mystery we've ever known and to be able to create a world where it is not so much that, but more of a challenge to overcome or an illness to eradicate is so intriguing.

Death is something that can only be known to the world's we create or have yet to create.

Thank you for your input.

- Abhorsen

 

[Queshire]

Well in the case of those Elves it's more that their immortality comes from an era before a massive cataclysmic event altered the laws of magic. Since it's still running on the old type of magic it ends up basically accumulating errors over time.

Trust me, I've got... opinions on prices for magic, though that'd be off topic.

 

[Abhorsen]

That's fair enough, opinions are crucial in creation, they alter the norm and lead to whole new views and ideas in the future of the written word fantasy-wise.

Thank you again

 

[Chasejxyz]

Dying is a trope in how eating is a trope. It's just a thing that happens. It in itself is not a trope, as a trope needs to be more specific. The love interest dying and motivating the protagonist is a trope, or the wise old mentor sacrificing himself for the hero is a trope.

All stories are written by humans, for humans, based solely on experiences by humans, so, therefore, it will be inherently biased towards human perceptions, wants and fears. And we're all fascinated by death, because it WILL happen to us someday, and for most people that is scary. Or they've lost a loved one, and that is a painful experience, and they're trying to learn how to live their life while processing that death.

17776 and this one SCP series both look at situations in which all humans are forced into not-dying. In one, people's bodies regenerate and they also have eternal youth, so they play Extreme Football. The other, the body still ages and decays, and even taking a brain and throwing it into an incinerator doesn't cause cessation of consciousness so...well, you know how it is with the those-who-haves pass their suffering onto those-who-haven'ts so they may live lives of comfort. That, uh, still happens, but in new, horrible ways. These are both really good stories and I recommend anyone check them out, as they both have very different presentations and examinations on this topic that so many things revolve around.

 

[Mad Swede]

I'm not sure you'd need to torture your civilisation in any way. My personal experience is that mortal humans are more than capable of doing some very unpleasant things to one another and to their surroundings, something which is reflected in my writing. Dying is something which follows from this, and it can be a driver for subsequent events. In that sense, death is just another factor which leads your characters to act in certain ways.

I've never bothered to bring immortal characters into my writing, partly because I'm not sure it would add anything to my writing. If, for example, someone is immortal, what would their feelings for other people be? How would they react to the deaths of those they know and love? Would they become distant and detached, unable to relate to others? If eveyone was immortal, what does this do to relationships and to society itself? Does society stagnate, become debauched from sheer boredom or what? A stagnating society is implied by Tolkien regarding the elves. Immortality and its consequences comes up in a number of different ways in Iain M Banks' Culture novels. Even Douglas Adams mentions immortality - the bitterness of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged is quite apparent.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that immortality, as with magic and its uses, is all about characterisation. How do your characters react and behave, and what consequences does this have? I don't think you need to dream some awful catastrophe for your immortals to face, their own personal foibles and weaknesses will be more than enough to keep them occupied with problems caused by their own actions.

 

[Ban]

17776 and this one SCP series both look at situations in which all humans are forced into not-dying.

Those sound inspired by the novella "the metamorphosis of prime intellect". Might be something for you if you like those horror angles.

 

[pmmg]

Yeah...I dont like the word trope used in this context. I am sure I could write a story where death is not a feature, but death is one of the big questions for humanity. I feel I would rather write stories that ask big questions and have such consequences instead.

 

[FifthView]

I was going to bring up the idea of immortality as a punishment, but Chasejxyz beat me to it.

Even when immortality is used as a punishment, death is still ever-present. Heck, even the latest Deadpool [spoiler alert!] has him trying to off himself and failing. Just look at Phil Connors for another example. This is a common subversion of the normal trope of death: Death as the reward.

I think you could divide the issue into two different approaches. Either death is just a normal part of the world; it's not used as a "trope," then. Or, death is more about the idea of death than the reality, in which case it is a trope. Maybe there is a third approach, in which these two approaches are combined.

Take a look at the audience. For many people, real-world death is a thing to be ignored—except, it can't be ignored forever. Nonetheless, most people go about their everyday lives "believing" they are immortal. Naturally, they don't truly believe this, but they do live their lives without the question and reality of death ever-present in their minds. We do a lot of things, waste a lot of time, that we would not do if we knew we were dying within a fortnight.

When I was younger, that was me. Heck, even now I have hours during the day when this is me again. But I've reached the age where 1) I've had to deal with real, near deaths, of those I know well, and 2) my own body and mind are foreshadowing my own death, via different methods including an actual heart attack. (As for #1, between Sept. 2021 and Jan. 2022, my mother died before my eyes and a coworker died suddenly after dealing with Covid for about a week. I've attended three funerals in the last couple years.)

So the questions,

Has death itself become a trope?

Could it be avoided altogether

strike me as the sort of questions coming from someone who holds death to be some abstract idea rather than a fundamental fact of our lives.

Naturally, fantasy tales must have elements of fantasy, and that's part of their charm, eh? Imagination and ideas can be quite fabulous, intriguing, heck even inspiring. Playing around with the idea and reality of death does, imo, "tropify" death.

I think purposely removing death, for example by writing only about immortals, would still tropify death, heh, if only by approaching it from an opposite trope.

The only way to remove death as a trope would be to use it as a naturally occurring consequence of life and living in the world in x, y, and z conditions. (Example of such a condition: a time of war. There are so many conditions that would naturally include the reality of death.)

This other half of the original post is interesting:

Have any of you ever built a world where there is a calamity looming far more destructive than simply passing onto the next world? Infertility, loss of magic, changes in brain chemistry, what're the dire consequences you set before your valiant warriors and resplendent witches?

I think, if looming death is the only hazard, the only thing keeping the protagonists moving and fighting, then death could be a trope but might be only a plot device. These are two different things.

I do like having other consequences as focal points for the protagonists. Death might occur naturally while trying to prevent these other things, but some worse possible future conditions exist to haunt and goad the protagonists.

 

[Prince of Spires]

This thread just reminded me of a story idea I have filed away somewhere. I keep a (ever growing) list of random ideas to turn into parts of stories.

The setting idea is one where some kind of eternal war is being fought and the soldiers who die just keep being resurected. So you basically have to keep fighting the same battle over and over again. I haven't taken it further than that yet. But I can see how you would end up with completely depressed and disillusioned soldiers who just keep having to fight and die over and over again.

 

[Abhorsen]

Kind of like Edge Of Tomorrow? Super cool! I do love to see how Humans cope in stories when the only certainty they have is stripped away.

It's such an interesting perspective psychologically!

Thank you ^~^

 

[Puck]

If death is a "trope" in fantasy then it is also a "trope" in science fiction, action adventure, war stories, historical fiction and thrillers - in fact in just about every genre of fiction writing.

I would argue that is cannot be a "trope" since death is undeniably a fundamental aspect of human existence. Therefore any story in any genre of fiction will need to reflect this. You may not need to have it in every single story but the only way you could really eliminate it entirely would be to write a story in which all the characters were Undead.

 

[Righmath]

Very interesting! I feel like loss of magic is particularly a good route to go down, however I've not explored this in any of my writing. For me, death, sure, can be a trope (I never really thought about it before). If anything, I feel like we don't see it enough in main characters. But in my writing, I wield death as an emotional tool with its sole aim to wrench at your heart strings.

Basically it's how I attempt to get readers to feel something deep and gut wrenching, and to me that is powerful and trumps the trope. Personally, I have decided to go even further with death, and have my main character suffer with subtle depressing/ suicidal thoughts and fighting demons as a consistent theme throughout. It's part of my story arc where the protagonist finds out about the truth of his parents. I wont lie, I'm slightly worried how it will be perceived, but I think it's a valid route to explore! Hopefully this way avoids the trope!