i’ve certainly said this before, but i think it bears repeating that there is an important distinction between tragedy and cruelty.
both hurt, yes, but tragedy is a means to an end. pain for the sake of the narrative, pain that pushes the story forward.
cruelty is pain for the
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sake of shock value. notably, cruelty places more weight on audience reaction than narrative importance. hell, i like seeing my favorite characters hurt or even killed— i mean, i don’t, but i really do, if it makes sense. what i don’t like is seeing, say, a character killed and
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decapitated when they still have so much more character development we could’ve seen. that’s not satisfying. tragedy is satisfying.
yes, real life isn’t neat, and real life doesn’t wait for your arc to wrap up before it throws curveballs at you. that’s why we consume fiction.
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i don’t want to watch a character suffer constantly for nothing. there needs to be some kind of payoff. otherwise, it just gets draining after a while.
anyway i don’t have a good wrapup for this thread but tldr write with the story in mind, not the audience, also fuck shock value