Darkness Induced Audience Apathy

It's not necessarily bad writing, not everybody will like a person even if they try to get you to like them; that sort of thing happens often enough in real life. I'm not going to say that something is poorly written just because I don't care about any of the characters, even if the work intends for me to care about specific characters. That seems rather arrogant to say "Well the author failed to make me care so clearly this is just poorly written." I recognize that it's rather difficult to make me care about anything and that my ability for empathy is either rather mangled or I just care about completely different things from a huge majority of other people.

That and like I said, the whole concept of DIAA is an alien concept to me and I don't really understand what people mean when they call a work "dark".

Well, if you take the driving test and flunk, it's a reasonable assumption that you drove poorly. Admittedly, not every instructor will score the same way, and there's probably a few you'll never please (and some you'll never fail to) but barring the extremes, it's a reasonable assessment. So just from the perspective of "the writer tried and failed" then yes, it can be bad writing.

The last two seasons of Buffy had this in spades, season 7 especially. Buffy is The Hero, hence the title, but she spends so much time being a stupid asshole that I was completely on board when everyone else told her to GTFO, and was straight-up pissed when the writers came to her rescue.

The basic problem DIAA is monotony. Take A Song of Ice and Fire: at this rate, there's no plausible outcome beyond "everybody loses." A massive civil war right before a seven-year winter should mean food stocks destroyed, depleted, and spoiled by neglect- sure, some characters will be decapitated, some will be skinned alive, and the "winners" will get the booby prize of starving to death. I just flat out lost interest because the specific names don't matter anymore- things sucked, are sucking, and will continue to suck, so why should I care?

Sure it can be bad writing if we're told/have some expectation that we should like a character but then never given any real reason to care about them (ex. "We should like Bob because he's a main character and a swell guy") but I wouldn't say it's bad writing if we're presented with a character that we're supposed to like, given reasons for why we should like/care about them (ex. "We should like Bob because he spends his free time doing community work, goes out of his way to help friends and family, and works really hard so he can start his own charity organization"), and end up not caring about/liking them anyway just because that character isn't to our taste or for whatever other reason.

Sometimes I like stories where everybody loses. I say sometimes because sometimes the way in which everybody loses can be uninteresting.

One of the big problems with DIAA is that it does for me often form from the story being too harsh - if there's some measure of hope, and somebody who is at least decent even though they have obvious flaws, then I won't find myself being bored by the darkness in question, and being made apathetic.

A Song Of Ice And Fire for example - if there were somebody I could relate to and I didn't feel they were going to be killed off quickly, then I'd actually enjoy it. So many characters though feel like complete bastards to me, and I don't care what happens because it feels entirely pointless. Why bother reading on if at any point there's just going to be more war crimes committed and it makes it seem pointless, no matter what happens?

Read the trope page. The second thing you described ISN'T DIAA. Unless this is what you're referring to: "(And even when there are clear-cut good guys, they can be so smug, priggish, hypocritical, unpleasant, or just plain annoying that it's hard to feel too sad if the bad guys defeat them, especially if the bad guys actually have a good reason for hating them.)" But even the second case can still be Bad Writing if their negative qualities are unintentionally (or even intentionally) given all the screen time while their positive qualities barely come up.

Same here. This is also why I also can't get into shows where Failure Is the Only Option. Why should I care what happens? They're just going to fail anyway. I'm not Fred Flintstone. I already know if I order that big ol' rack of ribs, my car's gonna tip over so I don't order the big ol' rack of dinosaur ribs. I also have yet to find a drive-thru that sells dinosaur ribs but that's beside the point. And just as I don't order those giant ribs I also don't watch something where I know the outcome sucking is pretty much a foregone conclusion. I turn to entertainment for escapism. I deal with enough problems in my life, If I want to be miserable I can just watch the news.

edited 20th Feb '14 9:56:33 PM by codytheheadlessboy

Though I Always felt A Song of Ice and fire has a undeserved reputation for this kind of stuff. There's a bunch of psychotic murders, but there are lot of decente people running around, and even the bad guys have shades of morality. Tywin Lannister, the character most associated with Big Bad, was a rather decent guy in governing terms.

Ading, your original point that

They have shades of morality, sure, but when we're going down the list of mass-murderers, torturers, rapists, Machiavellian schemers, and other squicktacular characters, Nice to the Waiter stopped cutting it a ways back. And, frankly, a lot of elements seem to be in there for nothing other than misery's sake (yes, castrate your supersoldiers before puberty. Because that won't stunt the development of useful secondary sex characteristics OH WAIT) to the point where my phone has memorized "GRRMdark." I just got tired of the oppressive shitdarkness of everything and went to go find some entertainment that actually entertained.

And that's the soul of the trope, I guess. "No, I'm sick of this. This is too much of a misery to keep spending my time on."

edited 21st Feb '14 1:48:45 AM by edgewalker22

When I know something is going to be basically "Dark. Dead people left and right. No hope whatsoever", I certainly shift my perception of a film or a show.

Besides, there's also the fact that, in terms of movies, I'm going to pay attention more to certain details (direction, lighting, cinematography, music, special effects). In order words, I tend to approach them from a more critical point of view rather than just "entertain me". Sometimes I end up having both things, even if they're dark (yes, darkness/hopelessness is also a form of entertainment - though not a cheery nature, obviously).

I like some stuff like Game of Thrones because no character is fully safe. Besides, I love Machiavellian characters (and Magnificent Bastards in general), so I tend to pay more attention not the deaths and hopelessness, but to the strategy and subversion of social conventions.

I also don't buy the "you have to root for a character". No, I don't have to. It depends on the kind of movie or show, the character's actions and morality, his relations towards other characters (friendly or otherwise), and most importantly, a sense of detachment in terms of the type of show or movie (in what I like to call "God Mode", that is, a viewer who just sees the action, but doesn't root for or try to change things in favour of a character).

So, would a black comedy fall under Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy?

Not usually - The one suffering it you can still feel hope for, and the author can be making a point through their suffering. The point of it, especially if satire, will be to laugh at suffering, and making a point of it gets over a good message that you remember. If it gets too dark before you drop your anvil or it just becomes plain sadistic, then it falls to DIAA.

What about stuff like Warhammer? Or does that not count since the oppression and slaughter of Warhammer is played for laughs mostly?

Well, it is a YMMV trope. It depends on who you ask.

Fun fact about myself: I once told a friend in absolutely complete seriousness that the only way to succeed was to give up all hope, and that if one had hope or even pretended not to have hope then they would fail (this is paraphrased of course but that pretty much sums up what I said).

Then about a year and a half later I started playing Dawn of War for the first time and heard the Librarian say "Hope is the first step on the road to disappointment." It was then I realized that I am basically an example of Poe's Law.

Well, considering that in that setting hope is governed by an Eldritch Abomination...

Anyway, I have a funny story about that. When telling my cousin about it, I tried to sum up the darkness and edginess of Warhammer 40,000 by saying "it makes even the most controversial episode of South Park look like Sesame Street." He thought I meant it really was like South Park in that it makes fun of people.

edited 21st Feb '14 10:10:02 PM by Demetrios

Maxwell - Warhammer, both of them, are generally on that border, but it does depend on how well each individual can take the humour from it. Those that get it don't find themselves feeling DIAA, those that don't get the humour will feel apathetic with it.

Depends on what bit of WH 40 K you are talking about. The Ciaphas Cain books are as funny as hell and not just black comedy either.

True, and then you have some of the more amusing situations where it's played as a farce, just to poke fun at something or the setting itself. Those generally never fall into DIAA, and some may play the darkness quite seriously - look at Cain's reactions to the Necrons.

Is there such a thing as Lightness Induced Audience Apathy? Because I'm pretty apathetic towards the Cain books. I hate the character but I'm neutral towards the books themselves, which combines to a feeling of apathy. For a contrasting example, I like the Night Lords books but I don't especially like the main character Talos (I don't hate him, it ranges from neutral to more of a mild dislike).

I remember reading A Song of Ice and Fire and realizing that the books were ridiculously overhyped for how "dark" they were. In a cast of dozens, having three protagonists Edd, Robb and King Robert bite the dust over five books (maybe four, depending on what the deal with Jon Snow is) is apparently considered shocking for some reason. The Starks so far have a survival rate between 75% to 63 percent, depending on what Jon's deal is, and that's one of the most unfortunate families in the series. To not even speak of the many unlikely survivals, like how Davos would have died in book two if it wasn't for his blatant Plot Armor.

The setting is apparently also considered really dark because there happens to be a big war going on. How this is different from every other fantasy epic ever is something I've never quite figured out, but it appears to have something to do with GRRM mentioning a bunch of details about the war that everyone who knows what a war is would figure out anyway. The biggest difference between the war in A Song of Ice and Fire and other fantasy series to me is that it's a lot smaller. Of the nine areas that make up Westeros, almost all of the warfare has been confined solely to the Riverlands; and that's not even mentioning how Danaerys character arc is nothing but a long list of "people and places who will go on like normal no matter what happens in Westeros".

Speaking of Daenaerys, she is together with Robb, Ned, Sansa, Bran, Arya, Tyrion, Jon, Brienne, Samwell and Davos among the many, many kind and moral protagonists the series is sporting, most of whom are still perfectly alive and well, if less safe and wealthy than when the series started.

All in all, the "darkness" of the series is the single most overhyped thing about it, with the overhyping of Littlefinger ranking second.

edited 22nd Feb '14 5:52:00 PM by Druplesnubb

Ach du lieber. You're right.

People do tend to overreact about "darkness" and "meanness." Several shows I like that have been called mean-spirited and "downright bleak"... really, really aren't. I should know. I've seen enough of them to know.

Somehow I get the feeling that Jon Snow has some Plot Armor going on, as the story that Ned tells Robert in the first book just makes no sense (and Dany being special is foreshadowed very early on, at least in the TV series, I caught it only after reading the book and several Wiki binges), and further details revealed about the relationship between Ned, Lyanna and Rhaegar most probably have something to do with it. And suddenly, the second head of the dragon was revealed in the last book, so Jon is the third one, or there's an Ass Pull coming.

edited 25th Feb '14 2:28:09 PM by NotSoBadassLongcoat