i want to lay this out clearly since this is the third time in the past month i’ve seen people get dogpiled for this opinion (including myself). here’s what people mean when they say they are tired of dark, hopeless endings in fiction cw misogyny , death , rape , homophobia

no one is advocating for there to be no dark content (i mean come on, we wouldn’t be game of thrones fans if we had a problem with dark content). we’re asking for a solid, justifiable reason for tragedy in fiction and we’re asking for closure and time to process it.

people aren’t tired of dark themes in media because they “can’t handle it” or they’re “too soft” (jesus you might as well just call us snowflakes and get it over with). we’re tired because so often, it feels like it’s just there for shock value. it feels senseless and random.

leading your audience to believe that your main woman character has a destiny and a purpose only for her to completely change and die in the very last episode, giving her lover and her friends no time to grieve for her, and never speaking of her again is understandably

going to make people upset because we feel we’ve been misled. being made to care about a character, especially one you see yourself in, only for them to be murdered sucks and you can’t really understand that unless you are a person who doesn’t often see yourself in media.

“death and suffering is random, senseless, and violent and it could happen at any moment” is something only a well off cishet white man could possibly believe we need told to us through stories. we already know this. we don’t need it spelled out or we’d watch the news.

i’m reminded of the fight club effect, in which angry white men of the 90s suddenly felt they had nothing to fight for. the generations before them went to war, women, lgbt people, and bipoc were rising up, and they weren’t the most important members of society anymore.

so they created violence and suffering where there was none. they hurt each other for the sake of hurting each other. i imagine the cultural shift of the past four years has had much the same effect on men who feel disenfranchised and are now empowered to be vocal about it.

many people were angry about sansa’s rape, but it felt especially painful because it was at a time when women were beginning to speak up about the rape culture we live in and because it was used for shock value, as though it were just like jaime losing a hand.

having your character make a gay confession and then immediately sending him to extra special super gay hell would be offensive and homophobic anytime, but is especially tasteless considering the climate for lgbtq people over the past four years.

it’s also really important to note that these are big, influential IPs, not someone’s darkfic. i believe firmly that people should write whatever the hell they want, but i also believe that we should be able to criticize productions on the scale of got, spn, the 100, sw, etc.

this isn’t a “sanitize all media so i am personally comfortable” issue. this is often marginalized people asking for more satisfying endings for the characters they empathize and identify with. i believe we can only do that by giving more opportunities to marginalized creators.

i think media written for a large scale of people should be complex, nuanced, tragic, joyful, painful, sometimes difficult, but ultimately earned. during my time at school, some of the best work i read came from trauma. people can create beautiful things from pain.

i won’t get everything right or say everything that needs to be said on this subject, but i have tried my very best. please add any thoughts you may have. we should all be more empathetic, kinder, more compassionate to each other, especially this year.

if you disagree with me on any of this, that’s fine. i ask that you be respectful. i’m not sure why it makes people so angry but if any harassment starts, i will block you.

thank you if you read this entire thread! i didn’t realize it was so long oops