Fiction
Comic BooksDark. I was gonna say dark. It used to be fun. But lately, it's so — angsty! Clenched fists and gritted teeth and... another Wolverine? Really?
—Utau, Watcher of Earth-65, Radioactive Spider-Gwen #23
Fanfiction
We were like the people from that shitty depressing book from English class, about the family who spends over four hundred pages road tripping to California only to find that California sucked even worse than wherever it was they left behind. I was pretty sure there was at least one dead dog in that book too. I think there was supposed to be a moral somewhere in there about the plight of American migrant workers, but all I ever got out of it was that the characters' lives were unlivably awful and that apparently the entire in-book universe had organized itself around the sole principle of making them miserable.
—Tom's narration, The Day the Earth Stood Still
Is that supposed to shock us? We found out a moment ago that the twins are Lori's. At some point you just run out of monocles to pop.
—Luan Loud, Peeking Through the Fourth Wall, After Dark: 4 (Lori is the twins' older sister by eleven years)
Film — Live-Action
Sherrie: Well, I like Jigsaw. I think he kills people very creatively.
Trudie: But you don't give a shit who dies because there's no character development. There's just body parts ripping and blood spewing. Ugh!
Trudie: But you don't give a shit who dies because there's no character development. There's just body parts ripping and blood spewing. Ugh!
Literature
Alice: I like the Walrus best, because you see he was a little sorry for the poor oysters.
Tweedledee: He ate more than the Carpenter, though. You see, he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise.
Alice: That was mean! Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus.
Tweedledum: But he ate as many as he could get.
Alice: Well! They were both very unpleasant characters!
Tweedledee: He ate more than the Carpenter, though. You see, he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise.
Alice: That was mean! Then I like the Carpenter best—if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus.
Tweedledum: But he ate as many as he could get.
Alice: Well! They were both very unpleasant characters!
Professional Wrestling
"Enough tragedy already in World Class! Let's do some positive things! Why do you want to beat up a 60 year-old man?"
—Gary Hart, The Triumph & Tragedy of World Class Championship Wrestling
Tabletop Games
It can't rain all the time. Know when to let the sun break through the clouds... Most down-and-outers have lost hope because they cannot change their world. Mages, even Orphans, can. That fact offers the key to the urban cage. Don't throw it away.
—Mage: The Ascension - The Orphan's Survival Guide
Video Games
"By the time you get to the game itself, it's just this ugly game filled with mean things that happen to people you don't care about."
—''Anonymous THQ employee, "Death March: The Long, Tortured Journey of Homefront.
"
"Web Animation
"Stick to an extremely cynical outlook on human behavior and be sure to wallow in darkness while completely failing to add any kind of contrast. It's not like the audience needs anyone to root for. Leave the audience hopeless, helpless, and alone. Subject them to a bleak future of silence and desperation as they struggle to make their voices heard only to face a dark empty and uncaring universe. There is no hope, only empty despair as one trudges past the broken works of those who came before, the silent ruins a testament to their false pride. Kinda like my Facebook feed."
—JP Beaubien, Terrible Writing Advice, POST APOCALYPTIC
"Remember that Grimdark is all about wearing down the audience by killing off characters and making things so hopeless and jaded that they just don't care anymore. Drowning everything in inky darkness is the best way to handle Grimdark. Never should an author use contrast or humor to take the edge off. Just keep lumping on more and more endless blackness until the whole thing becomes a twisted parody of itself and one huge joke. Then when everyone is making fun of your setting, just double down and keep going into that dark void. And if a writer gazes long into Grimdark, Grimdark also gazes into you... And then it tries to sell you its merch."
—JP Beaubien, Terrible Writing Advice, GRIMDARK
"If a situation is thoroughly hopeless, your audience is more likely to emotionally check out from the story than they are to hope extra-hard that things work out. If your heroes don't have a fighting chance, then why are we even watching?"
— Red, Overly Sarcastic Productions, Trope Talk: Post Apocalypses
Web Orignal
Web Video
"Making every hero on earth as dark as Batman? That was your master plan? Great. So, after the audience gets bored to tears by every hero being just like every other hero, they'll be so depressed over how freakin' BLEAK they are, they'll KILL THEMSELVES!"
Western Animation
"Yeah, I got royally screwed, know who was there for me? No one, because everyone's an asshole and the whole world sucks balls."
—Bojack Horseman, That's Too Much, Man (Season 3, episode 11).
Reviews
open/close all folders
On Anime & Manga
"This would be much more heartwrenching if not for the fact that this series has conditioned me to expect death every five minutes."
This is part of the reason why I've been putting off reviewing Genocyber for so long. It's not enough that the show is mean-spirited, but it revels in the fact that it's mean-spirited.
— Bennett the Sage on Genocyber Part I
"You can escape boredom by entertaining yourself. Anger can motivate you to do something better than what made you angry. But depressing misery? It just sucks the life out of you, and you just don’t know what to do with yourself other than making sure you never have to sit through that experience again, especially if it made you miserable for no narrative or artistically sound reason."
—Bennett the Sage on De:vadasy
On Comic Books
"Killing characters raises the stakes of a story. But when you get to the point that an average of five characters per issue are getting killed off, I think the law of diminishing returns kicks in and it stops meaning anything. I think this might've happened because Jeph Loeb was trying to mimick Mark Millar's work, and Mark Millar's stories can be dark and cynical. But I think that Millar was always trying to at least deconstruct comic book tropes and ground things, and I think Jeph Loeb maybe just took that surface sheen of sort of violence and negativity and just applied that to his story.
It’s a nasty piece of work that doesn’t wholeheartedly endorse the revenge fantasy-fueled nihilism of its deplorable protagonist, but doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with it, either. There’s a transgressive kick in rooting for someone with no sense of ethics whatsoever, but as a comic book, Wanted is repellent without being fun.
On Fanfiction
It appears that this story will never end with a good ending. I hope to see what is next in the next chapter. However, I have a gut feeling that everything will break down again in the end.
—TU4QU0I53T4IAN6L3 on chapter 52 of Trauma (we won't spoil it for you)
On Film — Live-Action
That things happen as they do in Shuttle I suppose is true, however rarely. But a film can have an opinion about them. This one simply serves them up in hard merciless detail. There is no release for the audience, no 'entertainment', not even much action excitement. Just a remorseless march into the dark.
—Roger Ebert on Shuttle.
Watching cardboard characters meet horrible fates can be entertaining, but where's the fun in watching real human beings die in what you thought was going to be light entertainment? A certain plot development in one of the films mentioned here made me sob so convulsively it almost washed my contact lenses away, and, honestly, I'm not sure how much of that level of cinematic trauma I could take.
"Is EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER in the film a loathsome cad?! Did Governor Schwarzenegger just designate Visalia as a haven for assholes that were too assholian for greater Los Angeles? Is the town built over a hellmouth that attracts people who are less appealing than Richard III? I don't want to sound callous, but I want to see this place become a CRATER!"
—Oancitizen, on Ken Park
"If anything, I feel disturbed by the fact that when I watch another person get their head bitten off by a monster, I feel no emotion whatsoever. It is wrong to feel uninterested, indifferent, and bored when you see somebody die. But, that's what this movie does to you."
"After Ripley survived the events of Aliens, along with Newt, Corporal Hicks, and what's left of the android Bishop, you'd think they'd get a little break. But nope, the ship has a fire and they crash on a planet. Nobody survives the crash except Ripley; all these characters that you rooted for in the last movie, are all dead! Even the little girl is dead! It's like a cruel joke! Even worse, this is a prison planet full of criminals and rapists, with Ripley being the only woman. With everything the character has been through, you'd think there'd be some light at the end of the tunnel, but no; Alien³ immediately drops her into Hell and starts off on a depressing note which sustains for the entire film. When I saw this for the first time when I was about twelve years old, I couldn't even stand to watch it! This movie is so depressing, it'll make you want to blow your brains out!"
— James Rolfe on Alien³
"This is the major problem with the movie. Because the movie doesn't actually side either one of them. I think perhaps they thought they were when they writing the script. But when you watch the film, Travolta's character is clearly over the top when it comes to being a fan of somebody..... [all the actions Travolta's character Moose has done] are all terrible things. So obviously we are not suppose to side with this obsessed fan. But, at the same time, Hunter is rude from the get go. He doesn't have a real reason to treat Moose the way he does. Now granted, Moose is invading his privacy, no doubt. But there is no reason to say what he says to him. And so on this way, you can kind of understand why Moose already being an obsessed fan freaks out and goes too far. But you can also understand why Hunter as the actor dealing with this obsessed fan is bothered by it. So there is no conflict, and there is no contrast. These are two people who are both doing it wrong. The film doesn't side with one of them, and so you don't give a shit. That in a nutshell is the biggest logical issue with this movie beyond a lot of other things that are unintentionally hilarious."
On Literature
When this story first appeared, the fans detested it. I read it over, perplexed by their hostility, and could see why: it is a superdowner story, and relentlessly so. Could I rewrite it, I would have it end differently.
—Philip K. Dick on his short story Sales Pitch
In Night Watch, there is criticism of the powerful who abuse their position, but anyone who tries to change it is mocked as an idealistic buffoon. The rebels receive a pile of ridicule even though they’re fighting a repressive dictatorship that kidnaps and tortures them. The people are depicted as petty, gullible and easily distracted, and almost deserve a dictator. Instead of fighting for what’s right, the book takes a “Giant Douche v Turd Sandwich” approach to politics and it's hard to avoid the conclusion that there’s no point trying to make things better, because it won’t work.
—Robert Nielsen, "Are The ''Discworld'' Books Overrated?"
"''This moral logic can get a bit tricky to follow as the series goes on and the body count of the Great Tribulation accelerates. It’s very important for us, the readers, to keep track of the particular source of each ensuing incident of massive, indiscriminate death. Remember: massive, indiscriminate death is, in itself, morally neutral. The morality of such killing can only be determined by discerning who is doing the killing. If it’s the Good Side killing all those people, then such killing is good and righteous and praiseworthy. But if it’s the Bad Side doing the killing, then it’s bad, unrighteous and “maddening.”
If you lose track of which side is ladling out the death, then you might miss out on the happy ending toward which these books are headed. I don’t want to spoil that for you, but as the series develops, we’ll see that the Bad Side just isn’t able to keep up. As powerful as the Antichrist may be, he is no match for an omnipotent God. Thus the Good Side ultimately winds up indiscriminately killing way more people than the Bad Side does. And that of course means that the Good Side wins — something we can all celebrate.''
—The Slacktivist mocking Left Behind
Left Behind On Live-Action TV
"Star Trek: Discovery...isn't fun. It's a war story with little war, it's an adventure story with little adventure, it's a science piece with idiot science and the most light-hearted character turned out to be the villain."
"I didn't watch Game of Thrones. I tried. At a certain point, after enough murders and betrayals, I stopped caring. Israeli politics has the same effect. After enough betrayals and lies, apathy is tempting."
—Zehava Gal'on, former member of the Israeli parliament
"The last two episodes are somewhat competently made, but it's two sides you don't like fighting over a city you don't care about for the fate of people that you don't know. Whoop-de-freaking-shit."
The Season 5 finale of Game of Thrones, a body-count extravaganza even by the HBO series’ carnivorous standards, has boosted an unusual form of protest: sympathy for the ice zombies. Angry fans have taken to Twitter to declare that they are now rooting for #TeamWhiteWalkers, the undead army threatening to overrun the land and destroy humanity. The show’s world, Westeros, they say, is so horrible that it doesn’t deserve to survive, and besides, the White Walkers couldn’t be any worse than its current masters.
13 Reasons Why is a miserable show. The best and worst things about it are all because of the despair the show is built around. I don't have a problem with attempting to tackle weighty and complicated subject matter, but we're over 26 hours deep with virtually no levity at all. I think there's a reason films like Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting, and Detachment are all under two hours.... Unlike something like Trainspotting that adds levity to the despairing subject matter with comedy, without any contrast of emotions, everything [in 13 Reasons Why] winds up feeling hopeless and overbearing.
On Music
The sound may be different, but the problems are all the same. Drake is moody and resentful of the women in his life. This is starting to sound like a you problem, Drake. Like, I thought this look into his relationship struggles was amazing ten years ago, but it's gotten so stale. It kind of feels to me like prestige-drama fatigue. Like when you're on the fifth season and it's like, "Oh, I get it. This guy's gonna keep having the same problems and complaining about them but never change or learn anything or grow as a person." What I'm saying is, this song makes me think I should start watching Ted Lasso instead.
—Todd in the Shadows on "Falling Back"
On Video Games
"The characters have achieved nothing, learned nothing, will hopefully now jump into a big black hole and return to nothing! Just as the visuals succeed too well at being deliberately hideous, the protagonists succeed too well at being deliberately wankers! There's nothing fun about the game, no light relief; just one piece of nauseating unpleasantness after another, like a roadside café breakfast special by Jeffrey Dahmer!"
"One of the big reasons I tend to stay away from triple-A games is their dark, gritty, and hopeless nature. These games are constantly showing you just how worthless, evil, and monstrous humanity can be, and in many circumstances, there's no hope for them, or even you. There's simply the somber and sobering story of 'life is cruel, then you die'."
"I'm pretty sick of tortured characters being depressing. Too many stories seem to revel in the second act at the moment. I'm not a fan of the second act."
—Tom Taylor, IGN Comics interview on Injustice: Gods Among Us
"This is why I hate horror games, too. So many times they just kill your ass at the end. 'Thanks for playing. You're dead.' 'Congratulations surviving all of the monsters; you're now fucking dead. Eat shit!'"
"You might get a kick laughing at how grimdark and edgy the story tries to be while being silly as all get-out, but it is not worth actually trying to play the game just to laugh at people who can't write."
"When you completely shit on the characters that we've loved for so long; when you replace them with worse characters; when you treat your few, new good characters like shit and misuse them even; when you leave everything in a worse place than before, and make us not even give a shit about the license anymore, it is a bad fucking time, period! And a bad fucking game!"
"To be honest, I'm hard-pressed to envision how a game about Gollum could've worked. On the narrative level, one can get behind a nasty, effective protagonist or a nice, ineffectual one, but nasty and ineffectual? That's just depressing, even before I had to watch the little scrote die an average of fifty times an hour, knowing that his eventual lifelong peak will only come after he bites a finger off a nice, pretty Elijah Wood."
"I honestly didn't like the characters. Hardly anyone's likable, especially when all of their confessions come out of left field and Alex somehow completely forgets about it after a scene or two."
— itch.io user 4MyHonestOpinions on The Sakabashira Game
On Webcomics
Thunt hasn't shown much ability to make the audience sympathize with the characters by fleshing them out (certainly not with the "main" group of characters), so his only recourse is to constantly shit on them so that the audience sympathizes with their plight.
On Western Animation
Every character is annoying. The bad guy always wins, every single time. The good guy isn't even that good in comparison.
General
"Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke."
"It's the monotone crapness of everything — governments, cultures, people, Exalts, gods, the cosmos, everything. No redeeming features, nothing worth fighting for, nobody who'd bother to get up off their ass or stop filling their pockets to do the fighting even if there were. Dark and shitty."
—Exalted freelancer Holden Shearer, defining the term "shitdark"
"People always say they want things dark, but if you don't have a plan to draw people out of that and show how these people overcome it, then you just leave your audience in despair."
Another big part of this is my realization, after a while, that grimdark is ultimately just as sterile and formulaic and predictable as its opposite. If the universe is always doomed, if the bad guys are always going to win, then there’s no dramatic tension, no possibility of surprise or innovation beyond a point.
One of the truths I feel I’ve stumbled across over the years is that the essence of good storytelling isn’t found in extremes, but in variation. No matter whether it’s grimdark or its opposite, too much of the same thing leads to habituation and a decrease in effectiveness. The result is either apathy or a constant arms-race of intensity that eventually becomes ridiculous.
One of the truths I feel I’ve stumbled across over the years is that the essence of good storytelling isn’t found in extremes, but in variation. No matter whether it’s grimdark or its opposite, too much of the same thing leads to habituation and a decrease in effectiveness. The result is either apathy or a constant arms-race of intensity that eventually becomes ridiculous.
By all means, writers, let your story wander around the dank, twisty little passages. You may even permit that journey to come to a bad end. But without some light source, your story will be eaten by the Grue of Indifference.
—The dePlume Dimension, "Always Keep a Door Open"
"A depressing world where horrible things are constantly happening to people who are, themselves, mostly complicit in making their world worse for everyone? Where have we seen that before? Uh... everywhere: Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Orange Is the New Black, 24, Oz, House of Cards, Utopia, Sharp Objects, Dead to Me, The Magicians, Vikings, Ozark, Westworld, Peaky Blinders, Narcos. ...Dark... The list of bleak shows from the last 10 years or so is extremely long. They all feature a cast of characters who range from amoral to downright evil. Anyone who is good or heroic is necessarily naive. And as a result, they are either killed off or so many horrible things happen to them that they lose sight of their own morality over time."
—Out of Frame, Morality is Dead. Hollywood Killed It.
