lizardgoats:

“Twin Peaks’s plot is sparked by the murdered body of seventeen-year-old Laura Palmer, washed up on the bank of a river. Palmer’s corpse is Twin Peaks’s truly memorable image: river-wet hair slicked around her perfect porcelain face, blue with death but still tranquil, lovely. One question, “Who killed Laura Palmer?” spawned a genre—Veronica Mars, The Killing, Pretty Little Liars, How to Get Away with Murder, and The Night Of are truly notable descendants of Twin Peaks. All Dead Girl Shows begin with the discovery of the murdered body of a young woman. The lead characters of the series are attempting to solve the (often impossibly complicated) mystery of who killed her. As such, the Dead Girl is not a “character” in the show, but rather, the memory of her is.”

— “Toward a Theory of a Dead Girl Show” in Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession, by Alice Bolin