Game of Thrones style

 

War is Heck! We know but even in the G1JP kid centered(for its time) TF V, TT/Toei killed DeathCobra and Ginrai. Only the latter got a new body in the form of VLeo. Convenient no? Rule is, only kill the guy in the"red shirt". 

 

No wonder Prime dies so often.  

 

But he is mixed with blue and white so it ain't permanent 

 

Explains Cliffjumper too come to think of it.  

 

Carefully.

 

Transformers is about as far from a true depiction of war as you can get whilst still technically being about a physical conflict between factions.

 

He didn't get no white and blue. More like drab grey so the offed him in Prime right?  

 

The Bumblebee movie too and I think one other continuity that I can't recall. That's how Cliffjumper became the Sean Bean of TFs.  

 

True. Doesn't mean you *can't* more than it is you *shouldn't* given the target audience tho'. There can be a happy medium between flippantly offing characters for shock value (bad) and a carefully considered death to add weight (good). But again, given the typical creatives Hasbro employs for most of their TFs mass media, I, like you, prefer they don't because you'll likely get the former and not the latter.

 

Dude, we have laws against war crimes.

Meaningless death is a part of life. Sometimes it's the meaninglessness of death that gives life its meaning. That pushes us to find meaning in life... because it often cannot be found in death.

Plot armor is overused and lazy. Writers should more frequently face and deal with the untimely and casual nature of death in conflict and war. Making characters immortal for the comfort of the audience and the convenience of the plot does us all a disservice, helping create an expectation that reality will not respect.

As someone said earlier, there is absolutely no reason Hot Rod can't die--permanently--of a stray laser blast from a Reflektor clone. Even when he's in the process of revealing a world-changing insight that occurred to him in battle. Let it teach people a more important insight: in a firefight, you keep your head down and don't betray your position by jabbering.

 

Yeah but that sounds terrible from a storytelling perspective

 

Indeed! 

As for your stray shot scenario, iirc, in the MS 0079 Gundam Novel, Amuro Ray in his nigh invincible prototype RX-78-2 got killed from a stray shot. Emphasis on the novel and not the actual show. Of course, can't do that for the then about to be burgeoning franchise to be failure show (though Sunrise eventually k!lled him in CCA togeher with Char who got cloned in Unicorn  

 

I will say this, I can confirm that with me, Cliffjumper gets spared the chopping block.

 

Yeah, in real combat there's no reason why Hot Rod couldn't just die randomly, but perhaps an author's story requires Hot Rod to make it to the end to accomplish something important. Generally speaking, events that happen in a story should serve a purpose within the narrative, either as a plot element or as a thematic element. Killing off Hot Rod (or any character) to serve such purposes might not be a bad idea, but if it's done for no reason, one might question whether it has a place in the story.

 

Like any other event in fiction, it would be up to the author to contextualize and capitalize on any events in a story, since in a story, all events are crafted intentionally. Such an event would be an opportunity to explore other characters and their reactions and means of coping with such seemingly-meaningless deaths, and could be refreshing if done well and if it leads to us getting a newer, deeper look at an under-explored character or a different chain of events resulting from such a deft and unexpected outcome.

 

I will write a story with Cliffjumper surviving being bisected and stabbed in the chest with Sheer Middle Finger Energy just to spite the forced "meme" that Cliffjumper is a redshirt who always dies in everything ever just because he was killed in two mainstream depictions of Transformers.

 

How often has he actually died? I was joking about it earlier but aside from TFP and the recent movie, I'm drawing a blank.

 

Fiction is not life. These are already stories written with massive contrivances for the sake of an entertaining story. Making death the single solitary true-to-life aspect in a series dominated by space robots who look and sound like humans with trademark-friendly names and conspicuously terrestrial alternate forms even before reaching Earth is about as forced and cringey as you can get.

When Transformers stops being Transformers and instead starts being a grounded reality with no narrative contrivances or plot-derived elements I will accept "meaningless death" as a legitimate facet of the story being told. Until then death should be every bit the plot device as their ability to speak fluent English and characters who haven't crossed paths in literal millennia meeting again just as the events of the story start, etc.

Not often at all:

Died in TFP because The Rock is expensive.

Died in Bumblebee because he was an easy recolour and headswap.

Died in IDW1 because pretty much everyone did when Unicron showed up.

But TF fans are desperate for memes so he dies "all the time."

 

Thank GOD someone else hates the "cliff always dies" shit as much I do, hell ironhide dies more fucking times than cliff ever has.
Hell you'd think it'd be more sensible to meme the obscene amount of times optimus, starscream, and megatron has dies in all tf media.