Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-26512661-20200125162058/@comment-33389681-20200126193517

Kaitryona Acheron wrote: Chikkane wrote:  resurrecting anyone  would  be cheapening their deaths because it just means that anyone who died before can easily come back. Death has less meaning if it's not permanent. People need to stop saying this. Death has already been maximally cheapened in this show. When you verify the afterlife, death becomes a mere hiatus. You say that death has less meaning if it's not permanent. The afterlife makes death completely impermanent.

What makes death so awful and so scary, in the real world, is the idea that those that have died will never be seen again. That they're lost forever. When you introduce an afterlife in any fictional narrative, what you've essentially done is taken away the scare factor that comes with death. It becomes meaningless.

I would argue death only has meaning if those that die cease to exist. If they still exist on a different plane (I.E. heaven), then they're not really dead. They've just changed location. It's like someone being on vacation and they're not answering their phone. You can't communicate with them, and you can't see them, but they're still there, and you'll still see them again later.

This is why I truly don't think it would matter if they started resurrecting dead characters on this show. As soon as Miles and Kerry verified the afterlife, they essentially resurrected every dead character simultaneously. Bringing them back to life doesn't negate their death, it just reincorporates them into the plot. The afterlife clearly doesn't make death impermanent, since there are no easy ways of returning from the afterlife, barring the Brother Gods powers. There are plenty of fictional works that showcase the afterlife but also have death not be cheapened.

We also don't exactly know what's going on in the afterlife of RWBY so we don't know what it's like.

And one of the scary things about death is that you'll never get to see these characters in action again in the regular world. The regular world of the living is very separated from the afterlife in RWBY, save for some exceptions. Permanent separation from certain things is scary. They didn't just change location, you can't even locate them anymore. You can't communicate with them ever again, and people don't like having their options taken away.

God, why is this even an argument?