*nodnod* yep. GoT is a good example of going too far one way. on one hand it totes has me on the edge of my seat waiting to see if my favs will survive each episode or not (never read the books, and only watched up to the end of season 3, so please no spoilers!) and thankfully almost all of my favs have survived so far! *happy dance* but I will also agree with Dru that if there's no apparent danger (when it comes to suspense/adventure stories) a lot of the drama is lost. but I have to ask, Seracen... what do you mean by a death for shock value, and what do you mean by characters who are caricatures? can you give me examples? I mean, I know what a caricature is, but I'm trying to think of where it would apply in a movie or story I know... *ponders*
Glad you asked! Bear in mind, this is totally subjective, also long-winded:
Death for shock value is essentially killing off a character for no other purpose than to shock the audience...it's almost like torture porn (eg the SAW movies). The suffering probably doesn't have a purpose, other than to freak out the audience in that particular moment. Now I enjoy a good jump scare as much as the next person, and I can appreciate a good death scene. Hell, I can even understand the angle of "death is meaningless and makes no sense," like the final death in "All Quiet on the Western Front." However, picture a movie where the main character inexplicably dies in the middle of the film, for no apparent reason, with no appreciable fallout...and suddenly we move on to another unrelated character...it becomes a pointless death ("Pulp Fiction" was very close to committing this sin...but Tarantino knew what the hell he was doing...and Bruce Willis was a sufficiently badass replacement for John Travolta).
Here are my degrees of death, in order of acceptability:
1a) Consider Romeo and Juliet: there is little impact if only one of them dies, the tragedy comes full circle when both of them die. Granted, they die due to their own melodramatic stupidity, but it is a poignant moment. Or Priority: Tuchanka (ME3)...it doesn't have the same meaning if Mordin lives...for all that I love that character [sniff]. It is a defining character moment for these individuals!
1b) As you are a fellow anime fan, consider the show "Blast of Tempest." The show starts with the death of Fuwa Aika...and the entire story revolves around character reactions to that death. People who never even met her are affected by her death. Therefore, her death had meaning...indeed, it was profound, which is often difficult to pull off in a story.
2a) All deaths don't have to have such meaning. Consider Sean Bean's various deaths (Game of Thrones, Equilibrium, Lord of the Rings...every other movie he is ever in). Some of those deaths spur action, some have emotional impact. But never do we see a scene where we introduce him, he has NO impact on anything, then see him killed in a horrible manner.
2b) Some stories have death as a punchline and instigator of a story. In the film "Clue", a character's death matters little, aside from that they died. Conversely: consider the "red shirts" in Star Trek: pointless death of a meaningless character, simply to establish drama. Here, we have a purpose, but the death is still "cheap."
3) It is okay to start a story with an action scene, as it gets the story off to a fast start (hence why some enjoy "in media res," though I personally do not). Hell, often a side character (who we may or may not know) will sometimes die ("I was two days awake from retirement!"). Good and bad examples abound here. This is very similar to point #1b (Fuwa Aika), except that the character doesn't matter, like point #2b (red shirt).
A GOOD example is Batman. As much as I like the character, Bruce Wayne's parents matter little, aside from that they died. The story is GOOD, however, b/c it turns Bruce into an interesting character, and we care about his pain. A BAD example is Aidan Pierce's niece in the game "Watch_Dogs." She only serves as fuel for a revenge story, and has no bearing beyond that...I can't even be bothered to remember her name...and Aiden Pierce is unmemorable, his "anger" almost callous, further cheapening the death.
A lot of classic movies/books/games got away with this stuff all the time ("Commando" starts off with daughter kidnapping, "Double Dragon" starts off with murder of girlfriend), but those are SUPPOSED to be comically bad and mindless fun! Or, in the case of "The Count of Monte Cristo" (less death and more betrayal), the fun is in the revenge itself, and how it affects the characters!
4a) Now move onto "shock value deaths," which I consider the lowest common denominator. Say I was writing a sequel to Mass Effect...and in the first chapter I killed off Commander Shepard, simply to shock the audience awake, get them hooked into my story. Now, in his/her place, I introduce my own personal character (often a Mary Sue). They behave in exactly the same way as I would write Shepard. In fact, all the other characters forget about Shepard, as if he/she had no further impact in their lives. "Disregard Shepard," I say to the audience, "love my new character in his/her place, but only after you have cried and screamed over my (not) brilliant use of murder to create such a (fake) important scene!"
4b) But they don't have to be a main character...let's instead introduce a minor character the same chapter I intend to kill them off. But instead of making the death important (eg: establishing how badass that baddies are, or setting up tragedy for a main character), I simply have the death in there because I felt the story was moving too slowly. Spice things up with a quick death! Does it matter why I did it? Who cares!? I was getting bored, lets have a quick action/death scene before getting back to the story (eg: GARBAGE DAY...though that was a frikkin hilarious scene)!
The further down this list you go...the less important the death becomes, and the more potentially annoying...for me anyway. Obviously, the tone and impact changes if you move from drama to comedy, but unless I can hit a few of my middle ground bullet points, I am loathe to kill a character off. That my Mass Effect story starts off with a death is very rare for me...and even then, I took a pre-established side character...and their death brought the main characters INTO the story...so in a way, it was important, even if the only people who know this fact are the audience.
I am getting long in the tooth on this post. Several of my bullet points probably mixed into each other, and I apologize if I rambled, but it's a bit of a soap box for me. I shall address "caricature" in the subsequent post...
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I can't believe what I read. Ugh. 
To be fair, I can't really call any of my sex scenes "lemons," even the one I was challenged to write for the express purpose of sex (I ended up creating a potential story arc and had 4 chapters of actual fighting and plot before even getting to the "lemon" part).
! In the grand scheme of things, a relatively small price to pay really...doesn't mean that Jacob will ever see the light of day in my stories though (for very long anyways 
) and Allers....why?
