Bear with me as I untangle a thought here.
I was watching an animated series that was supposed to be about samurai. I suppose I should have expected a bit of hacking and slashing. They’re samurai, after all. They have swords. As I got into it, there really was an extreme amount of beheading. Like, every single battle, multiple beheadings. Also limbs cut off, bodies sliced at the waist… All that gory goodness (?). And did I mention there were sorcerers and giant robots?
Yeah, it wasn’t exactly historical fiction.
As a viewer, I have a limited tolerance for beheadings, impalings, and so on. As an author myself, I see them as a sign of an inexperienced writer. Someone who isn’t confident in their characters and plot, so they try to keep up interest by throwing blood around. Also, show how cool and edgy they are, I guess.
But come to the end of the series, there was one death that stood out from the others. Just a simple beheading wasn’t gruesome enough for this character. She had to be magically twisted into splinters by some sorcerers who showed up, did her in, and then never appeared again.
It made me wonder about why the screenwriter chose to do that. Why was that character torn apart, when so many others were “only” beheaded? The other female fighters in the series were shown to be more feminine, caring for loved ones and loyal to family. When they died, it was mostly off screen or in silhouette. But not the lady were-bear.
Why was she treated differently? Was it because she was Russian, and some of us apparently haven’t let go of the Cold War mentality? Because she was a mercenary fighter, not a noble samurai? Because she was a woman who dared to be as deadly as her powers allowed?
It’s been a while, but this is a topic I come back to from time to time. What is the writer’s thinking when they decide when, why and how to kill a character? I would suggest that we ought to be a bit thoughtful when we decide these things. If we aren’t careful, we might leave our readers or viewers with questions that aren’t so easy to answer.
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Wyrmflight 
Good topic. The big bad usually gets what they have coming, and a bit of gruesome is okay, but it can raise questions like this. Once the bar is set, what do you do next?
For sure, once you lop off 100 heads, what can you do that’s more shocking?
Exactly.
I’ve written about approximately 2,000 deaths–in crime reports and obituaries. But people seldom die in my fiction (although my RPG games have a higher death count). I don’t tend to care for death being “background noise.”
As for Russia, I remember the “Cold War stereotype.” I don’t know a whole lot of people from Russia. But I do know a medical doctor, a college student whom I RPGed with, a woman and her daughter, and an English-as-a-second-language student I tutored. All of them are very nice people. None of them come even close to fitting the Russian stereotype.
And as for violence, I was recently introduced to the 1960s Gena the Crocodile and related cartoons. Those cartoons are about accepting people who are different, making friends, caring for each other, and working together in harmony. Not the stereotype Americans were fed about the Soviet Union at the time….