Monday, January 26, 2026

Why Would Your Character Want To Be Resurrected?

Buffy tells Spike about where she went when she died
I'm far too cynical/sceptical and logical to be a religious person, but I'd like to be able to believe that if there was some kind of life after death it would be along the lines described by Buffy in the early sixth season episode After Life:
"Wherever I... was... I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn't mean anything, nothing had form... but I was still me, you know? And I was warm and I was loved... and I was finished. Complete. I don't understand about dimensions or theology or any of... but I think I was in heaven."
Of course, Buffy had just been yanked out of there by her well-meaning friends resurrecting her after she sacrificed her life to save the world (at the end of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Season Five), but that doesn't stop it from sounding wonderful.

Before things get too maudlin or I start waxing philosophically, let's drag this round to gaming. A lot of games fixate on their universe/world's answer to Hell (because that's a good battleground/rescue zone/artefact retrieval site), but how would you go about depicting your world's equivalent to Heaven?

In Peter Jackson's The Return of The King movie we have the famous Gandalf quote:
"No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it... White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise."
Meanwhile in The Chronicles of Narnia novels there is an enormous, standing wave at the edge of the world, beyond which are the "impossibly tall" mountains of Aslan's Country (i.e. Heaven).

The final Narnia book, The Last Battle, concludes thus:
"All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before."
So let's imagine your character dies in a hard-fought conflict, and wakes up in a place like those described above (or Valhalla, if that's more their speed).

But then - back in the "real world" - they get resurrected by, or on behalf of, their companions, dragged out of this idyllic afterlife... don't you think there's a chance they'd be as pissed off as Buffy was?

4 comments:

  1. A great question! It's such a cool.part musically in 'Something to Sing About' when Buffy reveals she was in Heaven, and the melody hits that really dissonant note...

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    1. Not only - probably - the best episode of Buffy, but also one of the smartest hours of TV to date.

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    2. Agreed...I still think that's the best single episode of a TV series I've ever seen. And I'm not even a huge Buffy fan, so I can only imagine that if I were, I would love it that much more! (I experienced that, the whole of Firefly, and the first story arc of Astonishing X-Men all around the same time, so there was definitely a point at which I figured Joss Whedon had to be one of the greatest geniuses the world has ever known... ;)

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    3. You've reminded me I haven't watched Firefly in ages. Not sure when I'll squeeze it in though 😉

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My pop culture Odyssey: a slice of super-powered geek life with heavy emphasis on pulp adventure, horror, comic books, westerns, superheroes, sci-fi, giant monsters, zombies etc