fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2501

⌈ Secret Post #2501 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[American Horror Story]

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03.

[Beverly Hills, 90210]

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04.

[Homeland]

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05.

[Skins]

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06.

[Signs]

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07.

[Downton Abbey]

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08.

[Epic Rap Battles of History]

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09.

[Mass Effect]

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10.

[orange is the new black]

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11.

[The Swapper]

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12.

[Rune Factory 4]

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13.

[Skyrim]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 020 secrets from Secret Submission Post #357.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So I've been thinking about this a lot, and it seems like most of the popular stories these days involve getting readers/viewers emotionally invested in characters and then killing them off brutally. I know it depends on genre and agegroup, and there are a lot of things that don't involve that, but look at Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Hunger Games (probably a lot of other YA), Attack on Titan, Homestuck... probably a lot more I'm not too familiar with. Is anyone sick of it? I think I might be. Do you think it'll shift in any time in the next few years, or writers might start trying to counter it? Or is that just what makes a great story?

I think it's just a trend. If memory serves the last decade was a tad more saccharine.

And there's a lot of things now that don't have much of that either.

getting readers/viewers emotionally invested in characters and then killing them off brutally

I'm not sure if MOST popular stories do this, but it's a common theme, yea. As for if it makes a story great or not...I think if done right it can, but it isn't always necessary. It's an easy way to shake things up and get fans emotional, so it usually serves it's purpose, but sometimes it can be a bit much. It depends on the person and the series, really.

For instance: Spartacus. Just about every character I liked on that show died, and just about every character I hated did too. It was awesome and I have fond memories of it, but it was a depressing, depressing show. I can only be involved in a certain number of series that feel the need to pull that shit on a regular basis. It's too exhausting.

I hate this trope. Lazy writing, to me.

I think Harry Potter might be a bad example--it didn't start out as gloom and death, after all. That said, there's an interesting overlap between fans of the super depressing things and fans of really light-hearted things (Attack on Titan and Free!, for example.) I think it's just that some people like to have multiple extremes, and others like more balanced media. :)

I love it if the death serves a purpose beyond OMG SHOCK or THESE ARE THE STAKES or "okay this mentor needs to disappear so the main character can do some stuff on his/her own."

So Harry Potter deaths are just 'meh' for me since they fall into either Voldemort Kill Count or Harry's Dead Parent Figures. Cedric wasn't bad, but the last book was especially egregious with its tendency to kill off characters just to raise the death count.

Whereas I mostly like Game of Thrones approach. Deaths change the flow and tide of the overarching war that the characters are caught in, influence the plot, deeply affect the characters they leave behind, etc etc.

Homestuck... though. Homestuck is it's own different beast. I mean, characters die multiple times in multiple timelines but their ghosts live on and still interact in meaningful ways and sometimes even come back to life, so... yeah. I don't consider really anyone from that verse as truly "dead."

'These days'? Getting a reader invested in a character so their death will have more emotional impact is basic writing 101. If it's done well, those scenes can deep and permanent effect on both the plot and characters, even the whole tone of the work. After all, death is more-or-less a plot device when you come down to it.

I'd much rather have a character I care about die than some random side-character, and I'd rather have the main characters be ABLE to die than have them covered in plot-armor. That shows that at least the writer is willing to do what it takes for the sake of the story than coddle their precious characters.

As for brutality, it depends on the work. In almost all of the examples you mentioned (I don't know about Homestuck) the brutal deaths are very much justified because it's a war or a culling or whatever, and having cheap peaceful deaths will just weaken the story. In AOT, the brutality just makes the main characters more heroic, because they KNOW they will die horrifying deaths and yet join the Scouting Legion anyway.

'These days'? Getting a reader invested in a character so their death will have more emotional impact is basic writing 101.

I'd much rather have a character I care about die than some random side-character

Yeah. That's not exactly what I'm talking about, though. It's one thing when a death serves the plot, and you want it to have an emotional effect, and another when the whole story seems like it's specifically set up to kill people. And the things that have a lot of people dying just seem like they're everywhere right now.

Many of my favorite canons end with everyone dying or else their lives forever changed in a horrible way, so honestly I'm totally cool with this happening more frequently now. ;) Happy endings where everything is totally fine often felt like a cop-out to me after all the utter crap the characters had been through. (I was actually kind of disappointed when another canon I was watching as it aired a couple years ago DIDN'T go through with the major character death in the last episode, never mind that I love the character...)

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