Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-26415383-20170525022027/@comment-27819070-20170529100533

JCB95 wrote:

Janus100 wrote:

JCB95 wrote: ... when it gets to the point where writers and creators are too scared to kill off these characters it's ridiculous. Of course it seems ridiculous that on a survival show a certain group of people are immune from death. But the writers are in a no-win situation. Per JR: "I still write and produce television for the real world where negative and hurtful tropes exist." Since the show has to consider both the fictional world and the real world, it creates certain limitations. So there was no way for them to give Bryan an on-screen death. Their best option in this no-win situation was to have the character disappear. For those unaffected by the trope, this result can seem ridiculous and stupid. But the show and network can't just listen to those people – it has to consider the rest of audience and the media. Story wise, it easy to argue that an on-screen death was the best option, but real world wise, that was not an option. For a minor character like Bryan to die off screen it is ok, because that character doesn't matter too much. However for a main character to die off character that's ridiculous, in my opinion the writers shouldn't be scared to kill off any character no mater if they are LGBT or not. The fact that groups have such a hold on shows is ridiculous Oh goodness I know... another favorite show of mine (Into the Badlands) just killed off a character from a racial minority and the fandom exploded into absurdity. I run the #TeamWidow fan page on Twitter and the week since has been horrible. People bombarding the page with accusations that the character is racist (makes no sense since racial divides don't exist in the universe of the show), that the writers are racist (which makes no sense due to one of the writers being from that exact same minority), that fans of two of the characters are racists, and that people from that minority who still support two of the characters are "disgusting traitors". People threatening to leave the show over it and such. One of the creators came out and said he didn't even realize their was a trope around this and that he's sorry to have offended People, but that this is the direction needed for the story to work, and people didn't care, just went right on insulting him.

It's sad that a few people within certain groups (not the groups themselves, since the vast majority aren't jerks like these people) try to stir up inter-racial, inter-sex or inter-religious conflicts online over TV shows and characters, when those sorts of issues aren't even involved in the show. It ruins things. Not to mention that making issues where none exist only makes discrimination more prominent, rather than less. It's counterproductive, harmful to the fanbase, divisive, and frankly absurd to demand protection for certain characters based on ethnicity or sex or religion of orientation or anything like that. Diversity in shows is great, and should be strived for, but when it's achieved people must realize that everyone on a diverse show is fair game for death, other wise only a fraction of the characters would be at any risk and the story would suffer. People need to stop seeing people (including on TV) as their race, gender, identity, religion, etc. and instead view every charcters as just that, a character, who is a unique person. See them as who they are, not as their physical attributes or real life beliefs and lifestyles. Discrimination dies when people stop labeling others by their race or gender and start just calling everyone "people" regardless, no specification needed first.

I think the saddest part of all this though, is that this sort of thing is even an issue I have to talk about in several TV show fandoms :(