What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

dubiousculturalartifact:

peter-pantomime:

when I say, “don’t you dare kill or otherwise take this character out of the narrative of the show” and they’re someone of a marginalized identity, i do not mean “i don’t want to see this character treated like a fully-fledged character equally at risk of the highs and lows of the story like any other and i want them to live eternally on a golden pedestal that makes them impervious to the effects of the actions of the plot and therefore a drag on the story.”

i mean, “until this character no longer bears the entire weight of the acknowledgement and representation of marginalized existence in this show, i do not want to see this singular thread terminate in tragedy like it always does.”

it is not a demand that you treat them as untouchable. it is a critique that you are still lacking. it is calling you out on having concentrated so much meaning and significance in one single character that you have made them too important to function properly like any other character in the narrative, and it is asking you to acknowledge this deficiency and not make it worse by also having them end like so many of their tragic predecessors have. 

Create more of them to displace that weight youve assigned these individual characters, unhobble them from this iceberg-below-the-water existence, make them (plural them!!) part of the foreground and background, on the protagonist and antagonist sides, small parts and recurring characters - make diversity not some stale, recycled one-note effort you lazily check off the box for, but a conscious effort in including pervasive variety in your story, so that these characters can each become a fuller part of the narrative and have the equal opportunity to be impacted, positively or negatively, by the drama of the story.

When i say, “don’t you dare kill this character,” the real thing im saying is, “dear god, do better.”

*points*

*points emphatically*

*shrieks loudly*

*points again*

*gives hefty cheer & thumbs up*

(via myriadism)

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