Character deaths in fiction.

[Nakama_the_witnesser]

Character deaths are great! It increases tension for both the readers/watchers and the characters in story. Character either reviving or turning out not dead on the other hand seems to get flak often from reviewers and critics but some fans really love it when a dead character comes back.

From my experience, I really want to say that character death/revival is neither good or bad conceptually. It depends on how you do it and what you’re doing it for. I want to talk about a few anime examples.

Attack on titan – season 1 spoilers
Eren’s death. Was it shocking, yes. It was crazy. But Eren came back with a sweet titan form. Was it good writing or bad writing? Well, I would say it’s neither because the very concept of good and bad is a mind concept. And everything pretty much depends on how your mind is conditioned to look at things or how you want to look at things in spite of whatever anyone else says.

On one hand. Eren’s death was so tragic. So wonderfully done. And his absence also challenged both Armin and Mikasa. Armin learns to be more independent, proactive and tries his best to manage the situation while Mikasa reaches a decision to survive for herself and for the memories of Eren who had passed away.

But then Eren comes back. Some people felt cheated and trolled. Their tears were wasted. And also, it feels like the main cast is being plot armored. Some don’t like the twist because it basically pushes Mikasa’s character development back and she now lives and breathes for Eren’s sake like she did before. That resolve to live for herself and find meaning for herself outside of Eren seemed to have been pushes aside.

But on the other hand. The titan transformation creates a new layer of mystery. Eren himself also gets challenged by the various obstacles of the plot in the latter episodes of the season thanks to not dying. Becoming a more interesting character than he would have been if he had just died.

Personally, I’m okay with Eren’s survival. It might have been a better decision than actually killing off Eren. You still get to make the watchers tear up and devasted while still retaining him who the fans like. I know some people say it makes the show tensionless. But viewer anticipation and tension will always be an extremely subjective experience.


For me, if a writer kills off a main character, the tension I have for the story actually decreases. Because by meta logic the writer now won’t actually try to kill another character because the previous death was just too much. And killing off important characters too many times close to one another lessens the impact and could damage the story.

Personal tension when reading a story is well…personal. Certain elements make the show unpredictable for some people but for some It’s the exact opposite.

Another example I wanna talk is Naruto Shippuden and the events of its final arcs.
“Itachi’s death and revival. Some people just don’t seem to like the concept of someone reviving back to life especially if their death was well executed and meant a lot to the characters in series.

On one hand. Itachi’s revival is absolutely necessary to flesh out his character. Because throughout the entire series, this dude was lying to both Sasuke and the viewers. Trying to look like an evil, power-hungry sociopath when in fact he was actually a really kindhearted person within. Seeing him interact with Naruto and then Sasuke was a real treat. Especially since he is such a cool guy when he is not pretending to be an evil person.

On the other hand. There are people who just don’t like the revival of any character. It feels cheap and most importantly unnatural. And Itachi simply talking the issue with Sasuke to unburden him from all the hatred seems to be a cop-out. Because realistically the dead won’t come back to life to help the living. And the story might have been even more interesting if Sasuke’s hatred for the Leaf was resolved in a creative way without Itachi literally coming back to life and telling him why its not a good idea.

So yeah. Both sides have arguments as to why they like/dislike this plot element.
As for people who just don’t like a character’s revival under any circumstances simply because its against the laws of nature, I have an interesting argument.

Since fiction is a reflection of reality I wanted to tackle certain real-life subjects. Such as science and religion. The First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation) states that energy is always conserved, it cannot be created or destroyed. In essence, energy can be converted from one form into another.

If a person dies then their body will turn to ash if it’s burned. Or will sink into the ground, if its inside a tomb. And in case there is something like the “soul” it will most likely:

A) Reincarnate by entering the womb of a pregnant female.
B) Go to the void
C) Go to heaven, hell, soul society.

In any case, if Einstein is true about energy not being created or destroyed then death is nothing but an illusion. We are fooled into believing that someone has died due to them losing their form. But in reality, nothing really dies. And if science and technology were to advance expodentially it is theoretically possible to revive someone.

So, what’s my view on the subject matter? Well, I don’t have any fixed belief on whether you should or shouldn’t revive someone. But I am interested in stories where the characters deal with losing contact with someone they cared about and was attached to. Characters dealing with loss and regaining the will to live on always feel emotionally mature and encouraging to me.

Dragon Ball Z spoilers
In DBZ when Goku died by teleporting Cell away, I kinda felt sad. But then a few moments later he contacts Gohan and still supports him throughout the fight. Even if Goku decided to live in the afterlife and even if it is also sad, the characters being able to contact one another easily does take away some of the drama for me regardless of the rules of the world completely making sense.

Death is the ultimate separation. To me, the emotions and the meaning of stories that deal with characters separating from one another ultimately is interesting and engaging. Which is probably why Danganronpa V3 is probably one of my favorite stories ever. There is just something special about seeing characters mourning the death of their friends while pondering about the fragility of life and how nothing remains as a constant.

The characters either grow to be weaker or stronger from the experience. Weaker if they cling to the past and try to hold onto the memories and escape the harsh reality, stronger if they overcome this emotional turmoil thus becoming more accepting of the unpredictability of life.

It’s totally okay if stories don’t have death. But its also true that stories will miss something special if they also try to ignore the concept of death altogether as well.

 

[Mwpensword]

Well that was a lot to chew over. My stories have plenty of death in them lol. Check out my top story atm

 

[Yairy]

Too many deaths can desensitize the reader to the entire ordeal. As in a series like Danganronpa for example. The first initial deaths are surprising but by the later chapters when someone dies it more like "Okay, on to the trial." as you run with the motions. However, what Danganronpa does to try to lessen that desensitize of character death is to add meaning behind the reasons why they died and the truth of how it will affect relationships with other characters as it goes on.

I was working on a story featuring serial killers a while back and what I found when coming back to the story all these years later is my lack of understanding that "death gets old." I found in the story that I killed off major characters but the impact was lost because of all the death previously. Now with that understanding behind me, when I do write a death scene there is the meaning behind it. Shock value only works so well.

Now I think about all the reasons why killing off a character is necessary. Meaning I give death more value than I originally used to do. I dislike bringing back characters who die in a powerful, meaningful way though. I feel all of that build-up to it was lost the moment they stepped back through the door. If I am going to bring back a character from the dead then I make sure I foreshadow the method in the early parts of the story to lessen the backlash over why X is alive.

 

[LilithFairen]

Death can be a way to raise stakes and tension in a story.

But when a writer thinks killing off characters is the best or even only way to effectively do so, it becomes very obvious in the quality of the story.

 

[thedude3445]

When Tony Stark comes back in a later Marvel movie in like 5 years, it'll be applauded like crazy.

Deaths in stories tend not to make me move in a certain way, with some major exceptions that are spoilers to note. I appreciate Quentin Tarantino movies (and his countless imitators), where the story is willing to kill off major characters at a moment's notice with very little reflection or drama about it. Those kinds of deaths often get me, because in a weird way the LACK of focus on the characters feels a bit more harrowing than always doing the stretched-out noble sacrifice dying words thing movies tend to do when someone dies.

I don't tend to kill off characters in stories. I mostly don't write the kind of stories where people die a lot in the first place, but I think this whole thing that character deaths are used for building tension is usually bunk, as in it rarely works. What I see a lot is that people kill off side characters who have already served their narrative purpose, because they are useless now and therefore easy to let die. It feels cheap and actually in a lot of stories it's much easier to just wipe the slate clean with all the minor characters because then you get to make all the people who liked them sad. Conversely, there exist some very action-packed stories where almost no side characters whatsoever die and it feels a bit unrealistic or narratively unsatisfying.

The idea of killing off characters whose narrative purpose has NOT been fulfilled is always fun to me in theory, because the author is throwing a huge wrench into their story that changes everything. But it's very hard to pull off.