- Me
It bothers me too, which is why I really love writing Invincible-style stories, where the heroes and main characters not only get the crud kicked out of them but it also feels entirely believable that they might lose or die, because they do upon several occasions.
It's thrilling and novel when both sides of a fight go all out, using the fullest extent of their skills and abilities without pulling any punches.
That moment when everything goes wrong- when named characters start dropping and almost anything could happen is something that rarely happens, except for when the author wants to write a lazy bad ending where everyone dies.
The idea that the characters might die adds a thrilling, almost addictive spice to the conflict. It keeps the audience on the edge of their seat, but you can't have that moment of tension if there aren't real stakes.
I think the best way to break that default audience expectation is to make an example- someone, preferably a character or multiple characters with significant emotional investment, need to be executed on-screen with no chance of recovery.
In today's sphere of media, with countless methods of resurrection and off-screen survival, I believe that's the only way to establish that a writer means business.
