alt Hacker News> Barely anyone dies (no Red Weddings here)
Can I make a side-rant how since Game of Thrones, it seems to have become an expectation that characters must be killed off? Apparently readers are (expected to) be so desensitized that nothing below "the main party that is the main reason you're reading this story can die at any moment" registers anymore.
In fact, even that is just the bare minimum. To really make an impact, we need some mass casualties like the Red Wedding or Thanos' "snap" in the Avenger movies.
Can we go back on all of that?
Replies
It is backslash against years and years of shows where you are 100% certain characters will be unharmed. Cumulatively, shows lost tension for many of us - there were no stakes whatsoever. You have massive fight, but there is no excitement about the fight, because it is basically just an elaborate dance part. There are good and bad and good must always win and if bad thing happening is always punishment for moral failure forced formula got overfed.
Game of Thrones broke the spell, bad things suddenly could happen, substories could be ended badly. Writers learned there are two possible formulas not just one. Suddenly there was a tension and drama.
Contracts are shorter now. ;-)
It's to the point where grimdark fiction, for me anyway, is gauche and a cliche. At this point it's countercultural and transgressive for characters to go through hell and high water, but then have a happy ending.
Too many modern writers would have ended The Shawshank Redemption by having Andy Dufresne get shot by a prison sniper the minute he got free.
I found the essay quote,
> We have been so desensitized by a hundred and fifty years of ceaselessly expanding technical prowess that we think nothing less complex and showy than a computer or a jet bomber deserves to be called “technology” at all.
remarkable given the similarity in your comment yet that it was about something completely different: violence vs technology.