#likewise. ds9. jadzia's friends and family will maybe never feel okay about the fact that their dear dax died horribly in front of them

[everysongineverykey]

"this was always going to happen" this. "she's been dead since the beginning" that. narrative inevitability and deaths that cannot be avoided once the story is in motion are great, but lately i've been thinking about television, and specifically the way that sometimes, the ongoing format of the medium creates deaths that weren't always going to happen, that were never planned by the writers, but that happen anyway, suddenly, completely out of the blue, sometimes even offscreen, because of real-world circumstances with nothing to do with the story.

an actor suddenly walks out, or decides to leave before their character's arc is planned to be completed, or dies themselves, and so their character's fate is sealed with a phone call, a resignation paper, a contract. a death in-universe that was never meant to happen, that isn't even satisfying or cathartic in any way, that happens for seemingly no reason, at least not a reason those characters will ever know.

those deaths are not fair, not even fun to watch. they don't make sense like everything else in that world. this wasn't always going to happen, but it did, and the ones who wrote the story are just as unhappy about it as the people in it who never got to say goodbye.

#idk i was thinking about cheers (shocker) #and it hit me like a brick. #diane will never understand why her dear old friend coach died suddenly of some vague illness #while she was on the other side of the world all alone and didn't even get to say goodbye. #she had no friends to talk to about it. she couldn't go to the funeral. it didn't make sense and it wasn't fair. #likewise. ds9. jadzia's friends and family will maybe never feel okay about the fact that their dear dax died horribly in front of them #when she had her whole life ahead of her #and then they won the war and ezri showed up and everyone was suddenly supposed to just get over jadzia's murder. #just like that. welp! no time to grieve! we've got a story to play out! and we now know that no matter how we try and appease it #it can kill us with no warning at any time if it feels like it!