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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39324
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I think this is a TV/Comic problem. What I mean by that is you're used to ingesting stories which are made for TV, probably broadcast; or comics where each issue must progress with the same cast and have hundreds of stories. They have very short amounts of time to tell individual stories and if they engage in development, rather than returning to the same archetypal characters you often find those stories suffer given time. (note, not allowing development has it's own consequences). It's largely an issue of branding. The characters become iconic, farcical. And then it's super hard to change them. It's hard to challenge a group of people who have already been challenged. It's hard to maintain a readership or viewership when you shift. Agents of Shield is a prime example of a show suffering from this spectacle creep; perhaps it's fitting that it's both a comic book and a TV show in many respects.

If you don't want have this problem; the answer is actually quite simple. Don't make this problem for yourself. Don't play the game where you can only tell stories about a set of iconic people. Kill people off. Let them graduate from the trials and tribulations you've thrown at them and move on to new people with new ideas and new problems. Make the brand your world and not your people. Or, be very stringent about never escalating the spectacle; and if you do escalate... end the arc, write the end.

Look, it's not like the universe of books is having an escalation war. Many books in the past are still interesting. It's possible to jump from reading a book with high stakes to a book with different (if not lower, more personal) stakes. And if it's not true that stakes must escalate for the universe of books, it should be possible to build a series of loosely related works that do not engage in escalatory warfare with each other.

Original score: 11