HarryPotterSpoilers

From HarryPotter:

Agreed. There's a rather obvious RedShirt in book 4, though (details omitted for obvious reasons)

Would you mind putting the details on HarryPotterSpoilers?? I'm not sure who you mean.

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Yes, I meant Cedric. There only to get killed. Yes, the author's too good to introduce him 5 minutes before the act, but still a RedShirt in my view, in that he had no other significant part in the story. Perhaps PlotToken would be a better term). It was obvious to me - I guessed Cedric was there to die - but on the other hand it was widely leaked that someone died in the book, so I was expecting something.

Trying to compete in any way with HarryPotter is bad news for any character. They will suffer some misfortune shortly afterwards - Cedric's is just the worst. HarryPotter is a jinx.

Malfoy has survived 4 books so far without serious harm....

OK, I'll give you Malfoy :-)

I won't. Malfoy gets seriously humiliated everytime, and I suspect that it is probably only a matter of time until something worse happens.

Potter may be a jinx - look at the trouble the Neville (the kid with the toad) has had, and he's never ever competed; however, Malfoy has not suffered any more than Ron w/r/t humiliation.

Not to mention Voldemort...

Ahem. Voldemort's "died" at least twice - as Professor Quirrell at the end of book 1, and as (the memory of) Tom Riddle at the end of book 2. I'd call that "serious harm"

...who seems to get stronger with each book.

Oh, come on. You expect the series to end with Voldemort's triumph?

Not at all. Nor do I expect Harry Potter to die in the series. Software Development and Architecture are not the only endeavors to make use of patterns. If you remember that it's a work of fiction, it's rather silly to debate about whether the protagonist is a jinx or not. If nothing happened to anyone, the book would be rather boring.

Well, of course it's silly. You were taking this seriously?

I don't see Cedric as a RedShirt. He was developed into a character that the reader could actually care for. We even got to meet his parents. As for real RedShirts, I propose the Tom Riddles family gardener and the witch Bertha: both of these people die without much ado and I doubt many readers felt sad at their deaths.

Cedric is probably not a redshirt, mostly because he is Harry's rival for Cho Chang, and Harry actually grieves about him in Book 5. The comment about him being a PlotToken is moot. Of course he is, it's a work of fiction, Everything is a plot token ...