AAC - if you were talking to me, i was talking about the other death in WOLP! If Rob, then all he said was someone died...



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Do something pretty while you can...

Sorry Dante...I forgot about A*** S**** ...I was assuming it was someone from HP... My brother, the a$$ has been trying to spoil HP for me for quite a while now so I'm a little touchy. And your post came right after Rob's HP reference. LOL SORRY <blush>

I'm so mad right now. My brother IM'd me in HUGE print last night telling me who died in HP and it was on top of my sister's IM telling me to ignore my brother's...Too late! I told him I wasn't speaking to him anymore and I almost blocked his IM's...still don't think I'll talk to him though...the sh*t!!! He did it just to make me mad. Well it worked! Sometimes I wish I were an only child!

Congratulations Jon, it's been quite some time since I've seen 'sanguinity' used in a sentence, much less to set up a pun.

(and no, while you seem to be looking for or offerring to get your coat rather often, I've yet to see it. I do hope it fits better than your trousers for the wedding.)


As to the subject of this thread (which has been mostly on topic thus far), I was rather surprised myself. I hadn't expected her to get killed off, although I can see why it happened from a narrative perspective. I just wouldn't have expected it to happen so soon, particularly given the previously qoted bit about their "historic pairing", which was in my mind as well.

Okay, here's a question:

When a BookWorld character dies in the context of their own book's narrative, do they need to be replaced with another Generic on every reading?

I would hope that in most cases, they only pretend to be dead. Otherwise you'd go through an awful lot of generics in popular tradgedies.



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&quot;I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around.&quot;
--Ross Smith

Ah, welcome to the generic production line for 'Titus Andronicus'....



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

I'd assume that characters who die as a result of plotted events in their books remain "alive" in the Bookworld, and still appear in fresh readings of those books, but can't visit any "read" parts of those books (other than dreams & the like) which are set after their "deaths". Consider the role of Humpty-Dumpty in 'Caversham Heights' after this becomes 'Nursery Crime', where he has to be already "dead" before the story starts so that he will have enough free time in which to help the other Nursery Rhyme characters adjust to being in a novel. Consider also the scene in WOLP during which Thursday was being shown around a book that was under construction and somebody invoked 'Character previously thought to be dead returns' device...

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Warning! Product may contain Newts!

Bertha Rochester dies in Jane Eyre, but she still was around in the book when Thursday went into it, so I guess it depends where in the book in question you are...





Maybe....

So does that mean that Miss H could actually pop up again from earlier in the book, given what Edward Rochester said about them being able to go back to earlier chapters in Jane Eyre when they were happy? Or is death outside the BookWorld actually terminal?

Another thing I wondered - if Thursday has her baby in Caversham Heights, will he be part fictional (on the dual passports principle) or wholly non?



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If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.

Kaz - who says that Bertha dies in the 'original' version of Jane Eyre? Without Jane there to narrate it, it won't have happened to all intents and purposes. It's only with the new ending that.....



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

The death issue is confusing because there are 2 types of death in the Bookworld: narrative death (e.g Bertha), where the character continues to exist with each reading until the time of death; and boojum, where the character/text is essentially erased. That's why Miss H has to be replaced with a generic, whereas Bertha does not.

In the Outland, the analogous situation is death vs. eradication.

V clear Nicky - thanks.

Psd - good point. Didn't think of that one. Drat. Thought I'd actually given an intellegent answer for once.

Okay, here's another possibly intelligent answer. Catherine dies in 'Wuthering Heights' but is still around in the Bookworld for the Rage Counselling. Ergo: a character which dies in the book must not need to be replaced by a new generic each time the story is read, but a character who dies OUTSIDE of their books original storyline is a different matter. 'Great Expectations' original storyline didn't have Miss H dying. A whole new part of the story needed to be mocked up quick-smart. So since her death was caused OUTSIDE her book, that's where the problems start.

hmm, sounds good, but to add to it I suspect the problem was that she was taken back to the book to die of her injuries - if she'd died outside of it then they may have been able to slip a generic in. So the cause must be outside of the book's events to be terminally fatal, but the death within. Would that work?

That would also leave the 'original' Bertha non-terminal, as Jane wasn't there, and hence the narrative of the book wasn't there either, so Hades doesn't count as part of the book still, so....



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Am explanation from the Great Panjandrum would help about now .....

It is horribly confusing: death in the story, vs. death outside of the story, vs. death outside of the story with a funeral that is incorporated into the story...

I follow Thursday's dad's advice and don't think too hard about it...

... whoah. Talk about going off on a million tangents and then coming back to the original topic.

Always follow Colonel Next's advice, it gets you far.

... what was I actually going to say? I guess nothing productive, just trying to catch up after being away a -long- time.

Sad, just tragic :(