Livre d'Or

Is killing a character necessarily a bad thing ? Given that humans are mortal, is providing a human character with a clean ending, giving resolution to what matters to them, necessarily a bad way of having them remembered ?
I'm very fascinated by the way you seem to be regarding characters as moral entities in the course of this discussion. I think this comment encapsulates partly the lack of moral equivalence; killing a person is necessarily a bad thing.

OK, let me try to be a bit more precise about what I mean here. Taking the axioms

1/ it is the purpose of fiction to hold up a mirror to reality that is in some ways true

and

2/ human beings are mortal,

and sweeping the enormous pile of assumptions underlying both of these under the rug for a moment, we are left with the conclusion that fictitious human beings are mortal in their own context.

Given that I have accepted that they are going to die, I consider it morally preferable though not imperative that any of them who die on screen do so in ways which are apt to their character, which fit with the goals they are concerned with, and which are well remembered.

I have problems, both aesthetic and moral, with the kind of novel which posits serious life-threatening conflicts but limits the actual casualties to spear-carriers and renders its central characters safe from certain kinds of fate simply because they are central characters. I think that's a culpably inaccurate reflection of the universe.