So, spoilers.  OK, in season two of Lost, which I just now finished, they kill three, count them, three romantic interests.  One was a major character, one was a semi-major character, and one had the promise in the episode before she died that she would be a major character.

First death, I appreciated the drama.  It made sense; it built to the tension and the plot, and was on the whole a good thing.  Second and Third deaths happen in the same episodes, and by the gods, it made me hate the character who killed them, and not as a “person” but as a “bad character.”  I can’t fully mesh the back-story of the character to the way he is acting presently.  Of course, I guess the beauty of lost is they can kinda retcon things as needed with a new flashback.

But, furthermore, the second and third slayings were very foreseeable.  Not foreshadowed mind, no, you can tell from the way the scene plays out that it is supposed to be a complete and utter surprise to the audience.  The only surprise I had was “really, actually did that?”  In a show that has so far been good about making you think one thing might happen then throw a curveball the other way, well, it was odd.  I’m guessing that some people will disagree with me, but it thing about it in retrospect.  Two super major characters get romantically involved in a show that has thus far killed off the only girl to have sex on the island on screen.  Granted, the third slaying didn’t, but it was just as miraculous considering who she was falling for.  You then kill them again as a cliff hanger to the episode, just like you did not even half a season earlier.  Overplayed, and the result was not me being freaked out, but instead let down.

Now, I grouse, but I’ll still finish Lost.  Although, more and more, it is becoming a quest of “literary analysis” than a question of being drawn in.  More thoughts as I get to them (with a big one on authorial fait coming soon to a Fife-mart near you.)

Oh, one last thing.  Another thing that irks me about this trope, such as it is, is the cheapness of it.  Need to send your hero on a killing spree?  Kill his beloved, chop her up, and leave her in the freezer for him to find.  And why—WHY!?—is it always the girl that dies?  I’ll tell you why.  Because those goram stereotypical gender roles say the woman is weaker and her death will make the hero feel not only enraged, but a failure.  A failure for his inability to protect what he loves.  It’s like using swearing in Improv.  Sure, you might be able to get a quick laugh out of it, but in the end, it is just bad humor.  Killing a romantic interest makes sense if it makes sense in the story.  If it is just to spice up the drama, well, you failed.

I’m going to stop ranting now.  See ya Tuesday.

And when Pandora opened the box, all of the evils of the world were let loose.  Plague, famine, pestilence, war, hatred, jealousy, and anger.  All that was left in the box was a single, small glimmer of light.  Slowly, she reached into the box, wondering what small light could have survived in the box with so much darkness, and she found Hope.

Sentience is sometimes defined (in part) as having the ability to contemplate one’s own death.  Morbid, and perhaps not exclusive to humans (or “sentient life”) but it’s a good place to start on why hope is so intrinsically human.  Everyone feels it in one form or another.  The good religious person hopes for an afterlife, and the good atheist hopes that there is a rational, “scientific” reason for everything.  The good hero hopes to win and so does the good villain.  A boy might hope that he didn’t come off as too pushy, and a girl might hope she hasn’t made a mistake by starting a relationship with a bang.  We hope that our lovers don’t hurt us, and we hope that our enemies never have the chance.

So, to tie into writing for a bit, a character building trick is to understand what your character hopes for.  What does he or she have faith in or hold out for despite having no “good” reason?  What is that light that can hold out against the bleak despair of a universe that has perhaps been most aptly described in its carelessness by H. P. Lovecraft?  And no, I’m talking about fish-men, but about how it will grind us in its gears without a second notice, or a first for that matter.  If you can understand these things, you are going a long ways bringing your characters into the third dimension.

OK, back to philosophizing.  Want to know how to get into a character’s head?  Get into your own.  What do you hope for, and why?  I mean, really, why?  Why do so many people hope for an afterlife, any afterlife at all?  Not all of the major religious afterlives offer reunion with lost love ones or blissful continuation of your mind (or soul, as you may prefer).  Why do some people hope to be reborn instead?  Or to be absorbed into an eternal tranquility where they can live on without actually having to?  How can an atheist contemplate death (and mark my words, they do) without falling into utter bleakness?

Personally, hope for me is a self-made thing.  I carry hope in myself to be a good father, a caring lover, and successful writer.  Hey!  I can’t be completely mushy and sublime, can I?  But yes, I don’t hope for some “lucky” break where an editor is taken by an odd mood and grabs my stuff up.  Well, alright, yes I do, but I want that mood to one of “I want to publish the next good thing I see.”  And I want that good thing to be my manuscript, and the only thing that can make it good before the editor sees it is me.  Well, me and my small cadre of test-readers.  (LOVE YOU GUYS!)  Do I have any logical reason to think I’m gifted specially to do these things I hope of myself?  Not really.  I just know that if I hope, it will actually help me to make it happen.  And that, I think, is all the hope one could ask for and ever need.

OK, so Char is chasing Actor (see what I did there?).  Whatever will ensue does ensue, and then the dam breaks, whatever prevented them from being together is overcome, and they live happily ever after.  In theory, a fine, generic formula with lots of room to play.  But what irritates me is when you get the mutation of the formula where Char just cannot life without Actor.  Char needs to be with Actor, and the way the novel is written, this is actually romantic.  Yes, that irritates me.

Mainly because in reality, relationships like that are usually, if not always, self-destructive.  Someone who NEEDS to be in a relationship is going to drain anyone they get attached to like a vampire at twilight.  (See what I did there? hur hur)  Char needs Actor, and even if Actor needs Char back, it is very unlikely to be as much (or perhaps could be more).  Then it’s like watching a feedback loop in a flux capacitor at 1.21 Gigawatts.  Wait . . . heh, sorry.  But yeah, one drains faster, and boom, relationship explodes when drainee NEEDS a break from drainer.

So, what should the good relationship end with?  Want.  Char wants to be with Actor, but does not need to be, and vice versa.  Well adjusted individuals able to take care of themselves, but that wish to “complicate” their lives with another person, or to be less a pessimist, wish to share their lives.  I’d go so far as to say that could even be a good romance novel base-plot.  A character having to learn to want instead of need.  Hmm… *note to self*.  We shall see . . . . (NOT!)

So, what do I want to talk about in regards to this?  A particularly nasty subset of this subplot: failed romance.  See, everyone wants the hero to get the gal (or the heroine to get the guy), but you know, that just isn’t the case all of the time.  Sometimes the romantic interest is brutally murdered, or dies in some other dramatic yet necessary way for the plot.  Or, sometimes it just doesn’t work out.  This can be useful for both existing relationship type stuff—such as a character having to deal with an ex-lover—or it can be used in the new connection.

Of course, this is also a good way to anger your readers.  See, if you are just a bitter anti-lovey person who wants to make everything seem like it should work out fine and then an unrealistic, unforeshadowed, and most of all, un-satisfying twist destroys the relationship, well, that just makes you seem like someone with an ax to grind, or maybe worse, a bad writer.

Wait, Unky Richard!  How can a relationship that falls to pieces be satisfying?  Do you mean like we never actually wanted them to get together cause she was a mean-spirited witch that didn’t deserve him?

Um, no.  Well, that can work, but it’s a little trite, truth be told.  Doable, but difficult.  I was getting more at “yes, you want them to get together, but it makes sense within the natural flow of the story and plot of why.”  Example, two people seem to be overcoming social mores that would prevent them from being together only to realize that they really just aren’t going to work out well together.  This can work very well, oh say, if the resultant action of the story—and that Big Black Moment thing—changes one characters outlook on life.  Um . . .  oh!  Think Gone with the Wind or Casablanca.  Yeah, there we go.  Satisfyingly failed romances.  And, because of that, they were successful romantic subplots.

On that note, I’ll shut up.