You know what I'm talking about. The writers want to put some poignancy into a moment so they kill off a character. Like in the rescue attempt where everyone gets away clean, for some reason one of the characters says "you go on ahead while I slow them down for half a second, which will really be an affective use of my life."

Or one of the characters takes a superficial wound that barely slows them down, and rather than splitting off from the group and trying to get away, or following behind them at the best pace he can, he stops out in the open and pulls out his sword and charges in screaming.

It just feels contrived and unrealistic to me. I could see someone getting shot in the back in an escape and suffering a mortal wound, forcing them to leave him behind, which would be just as dramatic and much more likely. Or even some character actually finding an effective way to sacrifice his life for the good of the group.

But it seems like a majority of the character deaths you see are these stupid, meaningless sacrifices that serve no point, leaving you wondering why anyone in that situation would have actually done that. It's as if writers can't allow their character's death to be meaningless, and since most deaths are random and meaningless they try to put some meaning into it, which only makes it worse.

As far as whether it's OK in a story, it's just a plot device. Like all plot devices, it's up to the author to do the spadework to prepare us to accept it without seeing through it. It's the writer's job to manipulate our emotions, and when it's well done we don't perceive his machinations.

I agree it has more to do with a character needing to be removed from the show then it does with the show needing to be without the character.

It's like this.

Data gets punched in the face by his mechanical glove.
Then, when he's near the waterfall and the Fratellis are coming, he says "Go on without me, guys. I'll stay here and hold them off."
Then Data proceeds to get shot to pieces by the Fratellis who are barely slowed down at all by his noble but completely unnecessary sacrifice.

That would have made a very different movie now, wouldn't it?

We need look no further than Terminator 2 for an example of how this is done right. That scene at the end was intense.

In the movies this isn't new even though it could be increasing. It does seem like its the in thing to do at the moment.

But there is a WWII movie made in 70s I think where that happened twice. The first time it really was needed sacrifice. Three Americans and one native woman fleeing the Japanese. One solider is badly wounded. He really couldn't go on so he stays behind and throws a couple of grenades at the Japanese chasing them, maybe slowing them down. But the woman gives up her life for no reason later. They could have escaped without that sacrifice but as it turns out the other two Americans are spotted anyway so she dies for no reason. I decided I didn't like that movie because of that scene.

Another example I can think of is the self-sacrifice scene of the old robot in Transfomers 2. It may've appeared a noble gesture but to me it was simply stupid. Why is self-sacrifice so cherished in Western culture? If the most able members of any group get themselves killed, they impoverish that community in the long run. The able people should be allowed to carry their genes onward, not squandering them in foolish acts like that.

That's why I love Song of Ice and Fire. Characters are people and they get killed just like any other person. At least it's usually their own fault.

But it seems what the writing mechanics is missing is the will to survive. All of the scenese criticized seem to be about a character who could live, but just essentially throws in the towel in exchange for some nobility which apparently doesn't mean anything so their life = cheap.

Killing a character in a random "life sucks" way is something entirely different reflecting the world they live in rather than their own "quitterness".

Characters can die random, heroes need to have some meaning. It doesn't have to be the specific way they die, but it needs to follow as a result of heroic action otherwise, why am I reading/watching a story about a loser who quits?

Good example that might come to mind is Pirates 2...don't hate me.

I hate twisted-ankle moments because they're always used the wrong way.

The Wire is a great example of a show that doesn't operate under those constraints. Not only does it have a huge, rich cast but they're not afraid to kill off characters when those characters need to die. You never know if someone's going to make it out of a situation alive or not, and the death is always not only a surprise but completely believable.

I realize most shows don't have the kind of funding The Wire did, but it would be nice to see them at least try to reach that standard.

Edit: And Reziac I think "twisted ankle moments" is the perfect way to describe these types of character sacrifices. As soon as someone falls down and cries out in pain I immediately think "Well, I give them less than five minutes." Apparently in TV land people who twist their ankles need to stay behind and kill themselves.

I'd like to repeat this for emphasis.
And hilarity.

I stopped watching HEROES because that just kept happening.

And now Kate Beckett appears to be dead in CASTLE (and a couple of seasons before that, they thought Seeley Booth was dead in BONES).

People do die heroically in real life too. I think it was in Joplin a husband protected his wife but got pulled away. And I know of one incident where a guy took a few bullets while blocking his wife and another where he distracted a shark from his wife. In war soldiers really do jump in the grenade. It does something for the human psychic.

It's the fact that someone would be willing to give themselves to save someone else. It's the ultimate love and friendship. It's almost mystic and maybe a touch of a fairy tale come to life. And I don't think it's just Western culture, Jesus mentioned that idea to a Middle eastern culture. And it wasn't a strange idea.

In the past, people were indeed raised to think of themselves only as part of the tribe. Today, things are different. Not everyone wishes to lay down their lives just so others could go about their normal day.

Speaking of the twisted ankle excuse, it can make sense in the right circumstances. Considering group dedication and the fact the group is usually being pursued, it makes perfect sense for the injured person to think "I'm slowing everyone down. If they catch us, I'm dead anyway. If I stay behind, nothing changes for me but it might give others a chance."

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What was it they said about Star Trek? If you saw a guy in a red shirt where one of the regulars usually was, you knew he was going to die by the end of the scene...

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And I would agree about if the sacrifice was really necessary and meant something then it isn't so bad even when the hero or other character who has been there the whole time dies.

sjeanne did she die? I don't know if she was in the next one but they made it out like she became something else which someone said happened in the comics.

Kathleen as to someone coming back from the dead. In that case I wouldn't mind him dying so much. Like Spock in the Star Trek movies. They did that type of thing a couple of times in Voyager. Of course in one ep they ship was duplicated at the beginning and by the times the ep was done two characters on one ship were dead but were replace by characters on the other.

Loved this quote by Capt Janeway. Can't recall the exact words but when one of the two survivors said he felt weird She said This Starfleet we do weird all the time.

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My pet peeve example of unnecessary sacrifice is Jean Grey in XMen 2 - I'm supposed to believe that she can psychically control everyone in the ship (Nightcrawler, even Professor X!) but can't manage to lift the ship up with herself inside it? Yeah, whatever.

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If you've ever read Richard Henry Dana's autobiographical *Two Years Before the Mast* the "contrived" event Robert mentions actually happened on Dana's voyage. One of his fellow sailors was swept off deck returning to the forecastle from the galley. If you wrote that in fiction, some readers would assume you did that to demonstrate that the voyage was dangerous. And they'd be right. In fiction, *everything* is contrived. It takes artifice to hide that.

The flip side is that the same suspicious readers who would see the man washed overboard as contrived would also ask, "if they voyage is supposedly so dangerous, how come nobody ever dies?" So you pretty much *have* to have somebody washed overboard, but you've got to make it believable somehow.

So ... how would you handle a situation like that?

Although it does bring up its own points about when an author should kill off a character, and how, and why . But that's such a broad topic we could be discussing it ad infinitum.

My hypothesis was that the irritation is the "unnecessarity" of it. The character just suddenly becomes a wuss who won't fight to stay alive, letting some "twisted ankle" defeat him. Jack Sparrow was willing to leave, but was betrayed into staying behind to save others while at the same time realizing it was necessary. But even as it was necessary he was trying to get free and ultimately goes down swinging.

That case aside, I do see your point about lame deaths. Tasha Yar's death is an example of lame.