I really I am not digging this whole trend of kindhearted, victimized characters who gain power suddenly doing a complete 180 and becoming villains who brutalize innocent people for no reason.
it’s a new but already overdone formula: you take a person who suffers trauma their whole life, give them power, show multiple times that they are at their core a hero and fundamentally good person, have trusted characters suddenly warn against the dangers of that person (even though they’ve never actually done anything to merit this doubt), and then, out of nowhere, you have the hero do something completely irredeemable.
we’ll manipulate our audience into sympathizing with a character and then in the last twenty minutes of the third act it’s … surprise! i can’t believe you thought this person who we’ve only portrayed as good was GOOD! what a poignant commentary we’ve created.
this trope is not only alienating to an audience, but completely disrespectful to storytelling as a whole.
at the end of the day, tv shows, movies, books, and any other medium of storytelling are reflections of reality. we are drawn to a story because we can find ourselves, our societies, our friends, our enemies, and our families within it. from the time we are young, we look to stories to supplement our understanding of the world and other people. we learn from them.
what are these unnecessarily grimdark and poorly executed storylines teaching us? victims are destined to be worse than their abusers. people are unpredictable, and good people especially can change their values at a moments notice. emotions are dangerous. love is something to be overcome. evil will always prevail over good.
these lessons are depressing. they are pessimistic. they are dangerous.
storytellers need to think harder about the things they are saying to their audiences. in recent years, they’ve created a culture of being more preoccupied with “subverting expectations” and “creating something original” than actually trying to resonate with an audience.
by writing these stories, all these creators have done is breached the invaluable trust between the story and the audience. we get let down time and time again. we don’t trust stories enough to be invested anymore. we don’t trust them not to leave a bad taste in our mouth when they finish. in fact, we expect it.
stories have always been our friends, not our enemies. but through tropes such as this one, stories lost the essence of what made them meaningful and loved to begin with. i am waiting for the day where creators start constructing stories we can trust again. i am sick of them pulling the rug out from under us.
izzy806
blakekathryn
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
2087
tangentwithtanner
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