Tarmys's Resurrection

Any of you who are up to date on CaC2 should know that I resurrected Tarmys Darumar in my last post. I planned both his death and resurrection from before the beginning of the fight with the Dark Hunters. The idea had come to me late at night, and at that time, the idea was so awesome that I was hyperventilating and my mother came in to ask whether I was all right. That moment is now infamous in our family.

As I wrote the scene in which Tarmys came back to life, however, much of the awesomeness departed. One, I dislike most resurrections in stories. (There are several notable exceptions, though.) This is because I see most resurrection as a weak plot device where the author kills off a character in a moment of sadistic glee and then brings them back to life because the author himself can't handle the character's death. Two, I want to keep the amount of resurrections I write to a minimum, especially in CaC2.

One of the major reasons I resurrected Tarmys was to emphasise the theme running through Kyra's subplot—that the Light does indeed restore, redeem, reveal. Another was because a specific scene far away in my planning requires Tarmys. But I could have done without both of these. The theme that the Light restores is already prevalent in Kyra's subplot, and that specific scene will likely not appear in CaC2, as it takes place in the distant future.

I think I've posted the scene of Tarmys's resurrection three times now, in two of which I edited it out in order to keep thinking over it. I nearly edited it out of my latest post. I'm still not sure about it…but the secret's out now, so now I can write this post.

Imagine that I never resurrected Tarmys, that he was still dead. What would you say? Would you want me to resurrect him, or would you prefer that I keep him dead? And, equally importantly, why?

Dmitri Pendragon
Jedi Artisan