#im not gonna tag g0t bc i don't really want to dip my toe in that fandom

[spaceshipkat]

Hey I wanted to know what your opinion on the whole gritty dark realism thing in modern media that we have going on??? I started watching a oldish anime (tbh it’s only from like 2011) and even though it dealt with pretty dark topics, I suddenly remembered how watching media is supposed to be fun, and I actually went and watched Good Omens afterwards, and I got that same feeling, and it just sucks how “realism” sucks the joy out of things. There’s a reason we turn to fiction after all

hi anon! so my answer is...twofold, i think, bc 1) i do enjoy the gritty dark realism thing going on (though i really, really wish people would move away from the whole “everyone must suffer and the ending can’t be happy bc that’s how you really drive home suffering and grimdark and current society”) bc it often sheds light on topics that need to have light shed on them, and 2) i also do enjoy the more upbeat fiction that’s been created over the years (the kind that ends with a happy ending hard-won and whose plots aren’t steeped, marinated, and glazed with suffering and darker than dark darkness), and i wish it would be much more commonplace in common media. GOT, i think, has simply ushered in this new era of “everything must be darker than dark”. 

re: Good Omens, if i understand you correctly, you think it falls into the gritty dark realism category? if so, i disagree (respectfully!). to me, Good Omens has that perfect balance of dark and light, and its stakes carry the same weight as the darker fiction out there without falling into the same category of “everyone must suffer and the ending can’t be happy” bc, in large part, the ending is very happy: Satan is no more, the end of the world isn’t nigh, everyone lived but they had to work hard to get there, Crowley and Aziraphale have their breathing space and, imo, the roots of a real romantic relationship starting (i mean it was always romantic but secretively, if that makes sense. now, they can hold hands and kiss in public without being worried that they’ll be immediately smote over it bc Heaven and Hell have both agreed to leave them be thanks to their body swap), and Adam is simply human. even though everyone survives (even the bookshop and the Bentley) we (or at least i and the GO blogs i follow/my friends who’ve seen the show/read the book) don’t feel cheated by the lack of loss bc the characters had serious problems to deal with that made the ending feel hard-won and satisfactory. the arcs the characters went through (though Aziraphale’s is the most overt, imo) were realistic, compelling, and fulfilling. 

to stop myself from rambling (i’ve been known to do that with GO lately), we can compare that to the ending of Game of Thrones and how i hope Supernatural ends. GOT’s ending was beyond disappointing bc d&d seem to think that the only plausible ending is one where the characters suffer and/or die, and the endings they give us are ridiculously unsatisfying. i mean, we have Bran on the throne (despite the fact he has never said he wanted it--and personally, i hate and disagree with the whole “you don’t want power and that’s why you deserve/need it” shtick), Jaime dead (despite his redemption arc and character growth that would make it implausible for him to return to Cersei in the hands of good writers), Jon exiled to the North (i wasn’t upset by his ending, but i know others were), Dany dead (again, i wasn’t upset by the ending bc i never really cared for her, but i know that there were a lot of people who were upset and i do feel for them bc it was a shit ending for her), and fucking Bronn on the council (or whatever the hell the term is). how does any of that make sense? i don’t personally know a single person who was completely happy with the ending, despite the stupid award nominations that the writers and show got. GOT is a show of constant suffering and unhappy endings, and the fact it ended that way, too, left a lot of people disenchanted with it and upset over it. and yeah, some people argue that it was realistic for the show to end that way and keeping in-tone, but therein lies the crux of the matter: why must everything be dark and full of suffering? (how many times can i say dark and suffering in this answer?)

in Supernatural, i’m in a few endgame positive camps: the Winchesters both surviving*, destiel being canon (even if that canon is literally just Cas and Dean holding hands or saying “to the world” to each other in the same tone of voice Aziraphale uses in episode 6: i, for one, would probably melt into a puddle of goo over either of those endings for destiel, bc they say a lot without saying much. i think a lot of people who aren’t endgame destiel positive don’t seem to understand that that would scream everything to those of us who are positive, or who want destiel to be explicitly canon by the end. we don’t need them to fall into bed with each other for us to be happy--or at least i don’t--but i digress), and Cas becoming human by his own choice. Supernatural is definitely a dark show, but it has its light moments (i wouldn’t have stuck with it and fallen so in love with it otherwise, unlike with GOT bc i was far more a casual viewer there) and i really hope that the writers decide to end on a light note, too, so as not to fall into the same camp as GOT. if it does fall into the GOT camp, this 15-season show will go down, at least to me, as one of the biggest tragedies in fiction of the 2000s and 2010s, and even though the show brings me a lot of comfort, i don’t think i could look at it the same way if that’s how they chose to end it come the finale. the characters deserve a happy ending (to quote Dean, him, Sam, and Cas retired with their feet in the sand--and with Jack now, too, obv), and i hope that the writers choose to make this the dark story with light at the end instead of the dark story with an even darker ending. 

and i think that’s the best way i can describe my opinion on the gritty dark realism stories that have become so pervasive. write those dark stories (my stories are always dark) but infuse them with enough light to make people find comfort in them, to leave them happy by the end, to give them that sense of satisfaction for a conflict with an ending of victory. for as long as i’ve been writing (literally half of my life now, since i started when i was 12 and i’m now 24), i’ve always written a hard-won ending with a bit of hope, even if there was a lot of darkness toward the end, even if it’s the first of a series. i don’t enjoy stories that are an entree of darkness with a side of darker darkness complete with a darker than dark dessert, so i tend to steer far from those or prepare myself going in (with Supernatural, i’m optimistic about a light ending, but i’m also keeping my expectations in-check bc i can’t be certain). 

i’ve said before that i hope that Good Omens the TV show’s success ushers in a new era of stories ending on a light note so people leave them happier than they came in (or satisfied by a hard-won victory that doesn’t end in suffering for everyone involved even if they’re on the winning side: GOT versus Good Omens, really, since GOT is 100000000% guilty of that fucked up kind of ending) and can find comfort in them. i want my books to be the kind where people can reread them for the comfort of finding that happy ending, and i hope i’ve achieved that (since i’m only just now getting into standalones, i’m really only just beginning to challenge my ending chops since my other books were the first of series and thus needed to have that hard ending with a dash of hope, whereas my standalones are free to end with hard-won happiness--tbh, @ripley-stark would be the only one who can say if i’ve achieved that, considering she’s the only one on here who’s read my first standalone from start-to-finish), bc those are the kinds of stories i seek and appreciate and love. 

does that answer your question? i think i just rambled a lot, as per usual. heh. 

*to go off-topic and fall into the land of speculations that i tend to stay out of, Jensen and Jared have both said they want Sam and Dean to die by the end bc that’s the only way they’d ever stop hunting. recently, Jensen said that the ending wasn’t what he expected and that he had to come to terms with it, though he now understands it and thinks that the audience will, too. there’s a huge part of the audience who want Sam and Dean to die by the end, too. however, Jensen’s comment has only further cemented my endgame positive outlook, since if Sam and Dean survive that would go against what he and Jared have wanted or expected to happen for years now, thus forcing him to come to terms with it. i know some people have been really worried by his comments, and obviously we shouldn’t put much stock into them bc the ending is a year away, it was an interview and you can’t rely on interview answers to make solid predictions, and PR isn’t showrunning, but it only helped bolster me upon going into the final season. 

#ask #anonymous #long post #good omens #supernatural #im not gonna tag g0t bc i don't really want to dip my toe in that fandom #it's dangerous as it is to tag spn #writeblr #booklr #i have no idea what else to tag this #kat rambles