Storytelling Is Dead
Okay so the title is a bit dramatic, but so is my spontaneous (and undoubtedly shortlived) return. And it's also a very bold claim. But I've been thinking a lot and frankly it makes sense.
Ever since watching the Stranger Things finale, I've been wanting to talk about it. I just...never had the words, I guess? But the other day Twenty One Pilots released a new version of their Breach Digital Remains exclusive Drag Path as a single and my thoughts are slowly coming together and I feel like what befell Stranger Things is a much larger epidemic within the creative community. Let me explain.
Last year in March I started getting into Twenty One Pilots. The lore of the "Story of Dema" is what pulled me in. The idea that lore and storytelling could be told over years of albums appealed to me. I think bits of pieces of the Story of Dema predates "Jumpsuit", but June of 2018 was the full release of the lore, and 2025 (7 years later) was when I got into it. Leading up to the release of the album Breach, I was getting excited. I knew Breach (specifically, the first song of Breach) would conclude the Story of Dema once and for all. The lore I spent months catching up on and researching was going to pay off in a final battle between Clancy and Nico, and I didn't know how but I knew Torchbearer would be involved too. September 12th 2025 was when the album released. I didn't stay up for it. My wife and I were traveling to the airport that day. I made her drive the first segment so I could watch the music video for "City Walls" and watch the finale.
It stung. The finale gave me all the feels. I had trouble accepting it initially but the more I thought about it the more natural it seemed. The more inevitable it seemed. My hopes had been high for the cycle to be broken, but to be fair, Tyler had previously explained in interviews that the Story of Dema isn't going to have a happy ending. Instead, it was going to reflect the fact that pain doesn't just end.
And yet, following City Walls being released I saw so many theories spread online about how the story wasn't over. And to their credit, Tyler has since said that the Story of Dema isn't the end of the narrative. But the theories that more lore was going to drop during the Breach concert! That Drag Path was secretly the final episode of the Story of Dema!
And with the finale of Stranger Things, I saw the same thing. People unsatisfied with the conclusion. Wanting more. And yet it was for two very different reasons. The Story of Dema was well crafted, designed to be a tragedy, with the hints of Clancy's betrayal. "If we can't defeat them, we must become them, and if we become them, we must be better." It was brilliant, really. The Story of Dema was everything it needed to be. Everything Tyler- and once I pondered it, everything I- wanted it to be. Stranger Things, in contrast, was a messy, rushed project that ran a mile and fell on its face. People wanted better.
What happened? Storytelling died. Or, more specifically, two opposing sides have destroyed the art of storytelling.
On one hand we have corporations allowing their greed to overrun their pride. We have seen this with AI and art over the last few years. There's been writer's strikes over AI usage in movies. This is not new.
On the other, we have consumers. In ye olden days, movies had target audiences. The Prince of Egypt is a fantastic movie, but it is not for everyone. Shrek is a great movie, but it is not for everyone. There are numerous examples. Die Hard is a great example; it's an absolute classic, but it's not for everyone. But video entertainment has become so mainstream that everyone watches everything and reviews everything. Everyone has a say in, say, "Here" from 2024, a movie that tried to be ambitious but failed because general audiences didn't like it. I distinctly remember "Tenet" releasing. I watched it in theaters and I absolutely loved it. Then I went online and everyone hated it and no one understood what was going on, until I went to the more niche threads where the people the movie was designed for were conversing and appreciating it.
By becoming mainstream, film has allowed itself to become strangled. Choked. Storytelling is dying because for a movie to be "good" and "successful", it needs to satisfy more than just the target audience. It needs to satisfy everyone.
And this isn't just a problem for film. Tabletop Roleplaying Games, Video Games, Art, even something as simple as Camping has become too mainstream, resulting in people uninterested in that area of entertainment influencing the activity and ruining it for others.
I know I started with the dramatic "Storytelling Is Dead" hook but it's much more than that. Niches and hobbies have become too mainstream to survive. There are obviously exceptions. The show "Dark" seems to be a successful project appealing to a specific target audience, for example. Pathfinder 2e is a successful TTRPG despite the roleplay craze. There are exceptions. But as a general whole, entertainment has become too safe to be specialized, and without that specialization, entertainment has fallen drastically in quality.
At least, that's my hot take on what's happening. It makes sense. It's a pattern. I'd say "Let me know what you guys think" but frankly I probably won't open Tumblr for another 6 months. Adios!
