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Hey so tonight I binged Letter for the King accidentally because it really hooked me but then oops they did bury your gays and now I hate it. So like, fair warning, two of the main characters end up having a very sweet moment and a kiss but donāt get too attached. ĀÆ\\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Iām just.......... so tired
It was just so goddamn unnecessary. His death added absolutely nothing to the plot, and had zero narrative impact. It was blatant emotional manipulation. He gets stabbed in the gut in battle, and survives long enough for the person with magic to come watch over him die.
(This is after a drawn out magical confrontation sequence, of course). Oh and cherry on the top? Earlier in the series another character gets the same exact kind of gut wound but survives because magic! Magic done by... the same person who just stands by and watches him die.
TLDR, watch the first 5 episodes of Letter for the King and then just skip the last one and make up your own ending. The BYG trope that they somehow managed to shoehorn into a 6-episode series isnāt the only annoying thing, itās just the thing that made me immediately hate it.
(The also, SPOILER pulled a Star Wars and presented the black boy as the hero with the special magic powers only to bait and switch and make the white girl the special magic one instead. At least in this series Tiuri actually is the protagonist rather than a supporting character)
(And like, I would argue that narratively speaking Tiuri is the hero here- the story follows him most of the time, and his actions and choices drive most of the narrative. And Iām often fond of subverting the āHero Of Legendā trope- this show plays around with lots of tropes
sometimes in a good way, but sometimes in really unfortunate ways. Take the diverse casting: I LIKE seeing generic medieval European themed fantasy not being universally white. And thereās the moment when the Authority Figure finally believes in the Hero and vows to help him-
- but Oh No! Heās immediately cut down and the Heroās on his own again! And one of the Heroās friends betrays him not once but TWICE. But when you combine those tropes with the diverse casting, you get the four main non-white characters being:
1) a black boy who experiences lots of fantasy racism (and the aforementioned power bait and switch)
2) his mother, a black woman who has also experienced fantasy racism, and who we last see behind bars
3) the only black man we see dies violently
4) the Asian girl is treacherous
2) his mother, a black woman who has also experienced fantasy racism, and who we last see behind bars
3) the only black man we see dies violently
4) the Asian girl is treacherous
And of course letās not forget
5) two boys kiss and then one IMMEDIATELY dies
5) two boys kiss and then one IMMEDIATELY dies
Obviously thereās a lot more to all of these characters than these tropes, and thereās a lot to love about this show, too- thereās a reason Iām writing this at 4:43am, and itās because the show was so engaging I literally could not stop watching until I saw how it turned out.
Itās just frustrating because the bad poisons the good for me, and the bad is so unnecessary. Most of it could be tweaked or left out with very little impact on the story. And the rest of it is well-written enough that the only thing I can conclude is that the writers
(or show runners) just donāt CARE. The diverse cast (while all very good actors) seem to fill a checklist to get diversity points. While Iām glad weāre at a place where people making shows understand the value of representation, I wish they would actually LISTEN to the people
they are attempting to represent. Iām sure thereās racial issues Iām not qualified to speak in, but I guarantee that most queer folks donāt want any more tragic gays. Weāre full up on that story, thanks. Just once I would love for us to exist in a genre story just like this one-
- as fully-formed characters who engage with a large plot, and during a quiet moment in that plot perhaps find love- and STILL BE ALIVE AT THE END IF THE STORY.
I am SO GODDAMN TIRED.
