Writing a show before people know you exist and writing a show after meeting your audience is just a different game.
It’s harder not to hold back and take the teeth out of the thing to protect the now real people, especially w/ all the cries against media that doesn’t hold back.

But is that what people actually want? I don’t think so. Sometimes it feels like assumptions are made about a creators values based on what they put in their work, but at the end of the day I think it’s better to tell a consistent truth.

The only way to crush the instinct that I’ve found is to go back to the roots of why I’m doing what I’m doing, what I’m trying to say and convey. And now that scene that seemed “too much” based on discord or twitter chats actually needs a bit more to work.

It’s rare that a work that threatens “Feelings Jail” in advance actually achieves it, I think our pain tolerance is too high for that kind of engineering to work for most people.
Reading @saucymincks thread yesterday, it happens when you don’t expect it, when truth is being told

And it’s definitely not something I’m attempting to achieve right now.
Some of the narratives I’ve finished up make me deeply uncomfortable. They feel too real and normal in a way that lacks the cushion of fantasy and horror.

Like, don’t get me wrong, there’s some truly “make people wince when I mention them” awful horror sequences, but they are horror, supernatural, we are protected by that lens.
In the long run it’s the uncomfortable normal situations that I think are going to stick long term.

That’s my unfocused writing ramble.

Here’s to all the writers out there trying to figure out how to tell their stories. And here’s to finding the right content warnings and release structures so that people can opt out when you’ve done Too Much.