This is a pet peeve of mine in like all genres except the comediest of comedies. And for all I love BSD and for all it handles its Mafia pretty well and gets the right balance of brutal and interesting, it's so bad for this in regards to the story over all. They recently (in manga terms) had a guy lost both hands trying to save his friends and we thought cool that's gonna be interesting to see how he handles this, then oh yeah there's someone who can heal injuries, but wait she's just had a break down because it turns out her power to bring people back from the dead might not be good for the mental health of the people she's bought back so maybe she won't use it and there will be consequences but no, no she's fine, she healed him like 2 chapters later, everyone's find, no lasting trauma or consequences. This is a really bad habit the author has, they set up life or death stakes and then back out at the last second so often.
I think this ties a lot to what I was saying about commitment. Don't set something up if you're not willing to do it properly.
This is really good advice for writing these things, I think (and in general). I think this is one of the reasons Black Lagoon is one of my favourites, because no one is trying to justify themselves. They're pretty much all open about "it's a shitty life and we're shitty people, but it happens don't try and romanticize me" which is a really interesting stance for the characters themselves to take. Of course, it does depend on the type of crime story, but yeah, when you're up on the darker more realistic scale, I think it's important not to shy away from these things. If anything, I'd think it'd be part of the draw (while not perfect, things like Dexter, part of the draw was seeing into the mind of a murderer in detail.)
