Killing characters is one of those weird and divisive things that is either totally cool or totally disallowed with little wiggle room in the middle. It is any writer's right to eject their character from the fiction they've created but doing so can sometimes exhaust your partners and co-writers.
Death happens. In a world like Eorzea, it's a facet of life given the refugee crises, the war, and the general nature of the world being unsafe. Logically speaking, everyone should be prepared for loss. We aren't our characters, though: Depending on who you talk to some people have never lost a close friend unexpectedly or had room and time to grieve in advance in the course of elderly family members or something similar. Hell, some people never even lost a pet. Our characters might be inoculated to the horrors and expectations of a maybe-grim world but that doesn't mean the people behind the screens are.
A character's death can be jarring, especially if it comes suddenly as part of a plot climax. It's a majorly derailing experience if you treat it properly (and it should always be given the proper weight, in my opinion) that is more or less forcing a potentially-miserable time on others. You know how people say that suicide is the most selfish thing a person can do, because they just leave all the grief and misery behind for everyone else to handle? This is the writing equivalent to that (again, in my opinion). A character learning someone they knew and cared about, even just in a friendly capacity, is forced to either go through a grieving process - or - they can completely brush it off which can feel extremely out of character. Death is a major event, after all.
None of that is to say that it's a bad thing to experience. One of my most impacting roleplay experiences came from the sudden expiration of someone close to my character, and it changed him in a major way that I wouldn't have considered on my own prerogative. My character grew in ways I hadn't imagined because of someone else's plot, which is one of the big payoffs to collaborative RP (once more, in my opinion).
Me personally? I don't put too much stock into someone's character passing on, even if it is a sudden situation. The big challenge that I run into is when it becomes a thing that occurs often, and in different circles. Sasha's a networking-type character, correct? How would she handle it if in the span of a season she had to process one or two or three or four shocking, sudden plotline deaths? It can erode people in dangerous ways. It can be worse if you're involved with someone who rapidly introduces and then kills off characters; All of the angst and wearying mourning without any of the lasting reasons to be involved with someone. Again, how would you handle it if you met and lost several new people in your life, all in a year's time?
It can become difficult to put faith in a return on your time investment. To put it in extremely callous phrasing: If someone gets close to my character and dies unceremoniously or randomly within a short time, and then rerolls and does the same thing again, I would be weighing very carefully how much enjoyment I was getting compared to the emotional taxes and weights that were being applied to my character. Pointless death is the sort that doesn't even convey a sense of closure, and while we're not entitled to that in any capacity, in real life or otherwise, so there's very little satisfaction being on the receiving end of someone else's death.
tl;dr: It's an endeavor and can be a pain in the ass for everyone involved ICly and the person killing themselves OOCly, but it can also be handled well and done excellently. Don't make it a habit and people will probably be understanding.
Death happens. In a world like Eorzea, it's a facet of life given the refugee crises, the war, and the general nature of the world being unsafe. Logically speaking, everyone should be prepared for loss. We aren't our characters, though: Depending on who you talk to some people have never lost a close friend unexpectedly or had room and time to grieve in advance in the course of elderly family members or something similar. Hell, some people never even lost a pet. Our characters might be inoculated to the horrors and expectations of a maybe-grim world but that doesn't mean the people behind the screens are.
A character's death can be jarring, especially if it comes suddenly as part of a plot climax. It's a majorly derailing experience if you treat it properly (and it should always be given the proper weight, in my opinion) that is more or less forcing a potentially-miserable time on others. You know how people say that suicide is the most selfish thing a person can do, because they just leave all the grief and misery behind for everyone else to handle? This is the writing equivalent to that (again, in my opinion). A character learning someone they knew and cared about, even just in a friendly capacity, is forced to either go through a grieving process - or - they can completely brush it off which can feel extremely out of character. Death is a major event, after all.
None of that is to say that it's a bad thing to experience. One of my most impacting roleplay experiences came from the sudden expiration of someone close to my character, and it changed him in a major way that I wouldn't have considered on my own prerogative. My character grew in ways I hadn't imagined because of someone else's plot, which is one of the big payoffs to collaborative RP (once more, in my opinion).
Me personally? I don't put too much stock into someone's character passing on, even if it is a sudden situation. The big challenge that I run into is when it becomes a thing that occurs often, and in different circles. Sasha's a networking-type character, correct? How would she handle it if in the span of a season she had to process one or two or three or four shocking, sudden plotline deaths? It can erode people in dangerous ways. It can be worse if you're involved with someone who rapidly introduces and then kills off characters; All of the angst and wearying mourning without any of the lasting reasons to be involved with someone. Again, how would you handle it if you met and lost several new people in your life, all in a year's time?
It can become difficult to put faith in a return on your time investment. To put it in extremely callous phrasing: If someone gets close to my character and dies unceremoniously or randomly within a short time, and then rerolls and does the same thing again, I would be weighing very carefully how much enjoyment I was getting compared to the emotional taxes and weights that were being applied to my character. Pointless death is the sort that doesn't even convey a sense of closure, and while we're not entitled to that in any capacity, in real life or otherwise, so there's very little satisfaction being on the receiving end of someone else's death.
tl;dr: It's an endeavor and can be a pain in the ass for everyone involved ICly and the person killing themselves OOCly, but it can also be handled well and done excellently. Don't make it a habit and people will probably be understanding.
![[Image: yEROfKO.png]](http://i.imgur.com/yEROfKO.png)
