The point is that once an author is made aware of a trope which can be off putting to some readers, they can
attempt to avoid it in future. Obviously the author doesn’t have to, and sometimes this particular trope might be necessary, but I don’t think its bad to go “hey, this doesn’t work for me for x y and z reasons”.
From a story telling point of view, ignoring feminism for a minute, I personally find characters dying “randomly” unsatisfying. Joss Whedon does this occasionally, killing off characters essentially at random, rather than letting said character have a heroic moment then dying. I appreciate that this is deeply realistic, but the story lover in me rebels. This is, of course, a different issue from the one I’m approaching, but I wonder if it isn’t adding to some people’s reaction.
This was anything but a random death. It was foreshadowed for a long time, we knew who’d do it and why, it’s an integral part of the main storyline. Part of the story worked exactly because we were expecting this, but the characters were not.
The point is that once an author is made aware of a trope which can be off putting to some readers, they can attempt to avoid it in future. Obviously the author doesn’t have to, and sometimes this particular trope might be necessary, but I don’t think its bad to go “hey, this doesn’t work for me for x y and z reasons”.
From a story telling point of view, ignoring feminism for a minute, I personally find characters dying “randomly” unsatisfying. Joss Whedon does this occasionally, killing off characters essentially at random, rather than letting said character have a heroic moment then dying. I appreciate that this is deeply realistic, but the story lover in me rebels. This is, of course, a different issue from the one I’m approaching, but I wonder if it isn’t adding to some people’s reaction.
This was anything but a random death. It was foreshadowed for a long time, we knew who’d do it and why, it’s an integral part of the main storyline. Part of the story worked exactly because we were expecting this, but the characters were not.
Whether this is a reasonable request depends very much on whether the readers in question are themselves reasonable in being putt off by the trope.