If you ask a white dude creator to explain why the narrative dictates that a particular character had to die, and his answer is essentially “because that’s just REALISM and if you can’t HANDLE IT then the problem is YOU’RE TOO SOFT,” that’s usually a pretty good tell.

The fact that we could die any time for absolutely no fucking reason is the kind of thing that only rich white men in Hollywood with no real problems think is a point we need explained to us

The rest of us are like “yeah we know that’s why we’re watching fiction and not CNN”

It’s also an indicator of a writer who thinks the emotional jump scare of a shock death makes a better story than the meaning of a human life, which is why I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that the cynicism of prestige TV and its copycats is actively making the world worse.

But cishet white dudes see cishet white dudes at the center of stories all the time, they’re ubiquitous, so they have never HAD to, like, desperately hoard the tiny precious number of Dark-Skinned Romantic Heroines, or Lesbians Who Don’t Die, or Disabilities Treated Respectfully

They’ve never had to make meaning out of watching all the people who resemble them suffer and die onscreen - never get to find love or save the day because it’s “not believable” - because another cishet white dude hero protagonist will come along and they’ll see themselves again

I’ve yelled on here before about the forced dichotomy of “serious” vs “fluff” and the deeply misogynist implications that a story with emotional resolution is inherently intellectually lesser, but I am just so tired of the automatic assumption that cynicism is for the smart kids

Like Jesus Christ people, romance readers just raised a quarter of a million dollars to support the Georgia runoffs, what if we stopped assuming that caring about love and happiness and joy means you’re just a dumb girl who needs the world explained to you by smarter men

I’m just so tired of writers who visibly take such deep pleasure in causing their audiences shock or pain, and then being told it was my fault if I allowed that to hurt me because I was too weak and soft to Understand Their Genius

WHO DO YOU SOUND LIKE WHEN YOU SAY THAT?

no but I don’t think that IS bad, I think that’s the point!

media creators for children are really aware of the complicated relationship kids have with their great big emotions and the best kids’ media makes space for that because, crucially, they don’t see emotions as weakness https://twitter.com/beastly_drohan/status/1329897421732777986

The reason that genres powered by substantially female creators and audiences - like romance - or those targeted towards younger audiences, like YA or children’s movies - can juggle heavy topics with a lighter touch is that they aren’t crashing into toxic masculinity as often

If you think of emotional responses as a thing you inflict ON an audience - “if I kill off this main character with no warning they’ll all be so shocked HA HA HA HA HA!” - and not a journey you go on WITH the audience, holding their hand, then shock is sort of all you have.

My mother died 12 years ago and I’m still in therapy about it. You know what is NOT “realism” to me? Killing off a parent onscreen and then one episode later it’s like they never existed.

It’s not just about the one moment of shock. That’s not the interesting part of the story.

So if you’re a cynical male writer who feels like exploring the ongoing complexity of how humans deal with grief or love or hope or longing is getting a little too squishy, then just turning up the volume with more and more death means you never have to deal with what death MEANS

Which is WHY I think we see way more meaningful explorations of those complicated and messy emotional journeys from writers who don’t encounter those masculine cultural hangups within themselves while they’re writing, about power and stoicism and not showing weakness

I think this is a really critical point. A lot of shows trying to copycat Game of Thrones’ success assumed the thing audiences cared about was like, dragons and the Red Wedding, so they doubled down on violence. But most GoT fans cared way more about the CHARACTERS. https://twitter.com/valeriefinnigan/status/1330264162996457481

If you don’t even understand what the people who like your show actually like about it, or you’re cranky that they like the “wrong” things - you want them swooning over your brilliant world-building and they’re like “I’m just here for my ship” - that’s a recipe for disaster.

And a lot of this comes down to men who demand unquestioned power and control in their authorial role (ie “there is one Right Way to consume this narrative”) resenting the idea that anyone could come along and say “actually I choose to interpret that totally differently”

As always, the villain is white male power dynamics