not to be melodramatic but i think we've been deeply failed by our stories in a really fundamental way. hardly any stories explore what to me are the real sources of conflict. almost nothing gets past "identify and beat up the bad guy" as the primary conflict resolution strategy
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can't think off the top of my head of any popular stories that explore how fucked up things can get in a group of people all of whom are trying to do the right thing and care for each other
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Not to be a douche, but read better stuff. I'm mostly in queer sci-fi & fantasy spaces these days, and there's quite a bunch of emotional depth & pretty little "just beat things up"
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For a sampler, check out the winners & finalists of major awards recently, e.g. thehugoawards.org/hugo-history/2
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This.
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I watched Aladdin yesterday and that kinda does it? They try to beat up the bad guy but that was never going to work, then they beat him by exploiting their ideological differences (they deeply want personal freedom and he doesn't care about it, so they get him to sacrifice his).
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I feel like The Expanse is a pretty good exploration of this kind of stuff.
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Oh even more thoughts about this: you may want more stories that follow the arc of the heroine's journey (about interconnectedness, solving social problems) instead of the hero's journey (fighting stuff alone): amazon.com/Heroines-Journ
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