IDK, I’d say if the death is pretty emotional and harrowing, it probably counts. Especially if the resurrection comes at significant cost. So, “comic book dead” doesn’t count. “Raised as a zombie” counts. Gandalf… debatable.
depand on how they are ressurected .
there is this character in the anime who die , and even though I read he was gonna die . Urgh…I was still whaling when it happen . Then later he was ressurected but temporarly , and his 2nd death was even more sad .
So if the character die , thats will make me sad . And if they come back , well great! super happy! but doesnt change the scene of being heartbroken (unless someone spoil you before hands lol then I just be pissed in general) .
so pretty much , even if a character come back…dont discount the scene where they die or fake their death . Cose the reader will fall for it . and will use kleenex .
You too, huh?
I killed off a certain very popular character at the end of Sabres of Infinity, and I went out of my way to make sure that in the context of a traditional narrative structure, it was pointless. The main character doesn’t gain anything from that other character’s death. It doesn’t help the MC grow as a person - they don’t even see it happen.
But that level of pointlessness in itself was my point. It was to highlight that the world did not revolve around the player’s experience, and that much of the tragedy of wartime death comes from its randomness: that it doesn’t matter how much a character deserves to die. Giving battlefield deaths immediate meanings or some sort of romance - those are the kinds of moral narratives we tell ourselves to make sense of it all. War is terrible partly because it’s so senseless, and the concept of having a beloved, larger-than-life badass of a character die “off-screen”, without pomp or fanfare or famous last words except for some phrase which was likely made up after the fact to sell theatre tickets was something I felt conveyed that concept better than any amount of blatant monologuing.
Killing off your main character can make a sequel hard to pull off unless you’re into miracles or zombies!
