Do kids still like non-crapsack worlds?

That's what I figured.

...But now that you mention it, a YA novel going into full, "Chest like Adonis," mode over some love interest straight from Lovecraft would be eight levels of amazing.

edited 12th Dec '13 3:27:05 PM by Rem

If the love interest were really straight out of Lovecraft, he would be awkward, talky, well-educated and terrified of seafood and Asian people.

I know I do. I get burned out of crapass worlds after a while. Give me something that's a lot lighter from time to time.

Then again, being in my 20s I grew up in the era before YA as a specific "genre" existed.

I loved non crapsack worlds as a kid.

I remember staying up and watching Star Trek reruns and just being amazed at teleporters and spaceships and all the bright future stuff.

edited 13th Dec '13 11:56:25 PM by LeGarcon

Wait, you want to do Douglas Adams-style stuff that isn't particularly dark? His whole thing was Black Comedy about a vast, uncaring universe that does horrible things to us for no particularly good reason. Hell, God's Last Message To His Creation was 'WE APOLOGISE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE'.

You and I interpreted The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy very differently, it seems. Adams can be acerbic at times, but I don't think any of his books are particularly dark, except for (maybe) Mostly Harmless and even there the dark stuff isn't played for laughs. I adore the books, but the truth is that they aren't very cohesive; if there's an underlying theme to all of them, it's probably that trying to fully understand the universe is a fool's errand and that learning to appreciate it is both more manageable and a far better use of our time.

EDIT: I think the joke about God's Last Message to His Creation is that it's the sort of thing you'd expect to find on the desk of an office worker that's out to lunch, back at one. It's funny to imagine that God would be so casual about his job. I'm not sure we're supposed to be particularly put down by it. Hell, it even made Marvin happy; at least it shows that God cared enough to leave a note for us in the first place.

Besides, when I said I wanted to write "Douglas Adams-style comic literature," I wasn't talking about the cosmology. I meant the clever wordplay and subversive sense of humor. It's hard to really describe Adams's sense of humor, isn't it? His "attitude" seems passive, but his jokes have teeth.

edited 14th Dec '13 6:18:06 PM by ThriceCharming

It's the kind of soulless bureaucracy he spoofs throughout the series, starting with the double-whammy of Arthur's home being destroyed twice over. Despite the light tone of most of it, most of the jokes in the series boil down to 'the universe is fundamentally broken, weird and horrible things will happen to you, and nobody will give a shit'. Dude had chronic depression, and it kind of shows.

So was Marvin an Author Avatar, then?

I think there is a difference between dark settings and dark stories. I personally enjoy universes that are a bit gritty, as long as they're not overly so. A place where everything is sunshine and rainbows just isn't that interesting to me. That said, if the darkness starts to seep into the story as well you run into things like Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy and Eight Deadly Words, and I just stop reading. I think that's where most of the generic 'dark fantasy' goes wrong these days. It is possible for a story set in a dark world to have a bittersweet or even a Happy Ending.

Adams hated petty bureaucracy enough to make a video game about it, but he also loved science and nature, so I seriously doubt he meant to bash the universe. He's really not the brooding, tortured figure some of his more overzealous fans make him out to be. I can see him being a Sad Clown, based on some of the stuff his friends and family have said about him, but I can't see him going full "Life is a dark, empty void" because some bank tellers gave him a hard time. Overall I'd say the books celebrate more things than they condemn, even if some of that celebration comes in the form of Affectionate Parody.

No, Marvin is based on a friend of his named Marshall. He originally called the character Marshall, but then changed it because he thought the name had military connotations (that could confuse the reader / listener), and that his friend might find the reference unflattering.

I hope I didn't give anyone the wrong idea about my book, though. The setting isn't a Sugar Bowl; the closest thing I can compare it to is Kahani from Haroun and the Sea Of Stories (or Adams's Galaxy, for that matter, but it leans a little closer to Kahani). Parts of the book take place in the "real" world, too, so it doesn't overwhelm the reader, and the sequels would take the characters to various other locales, some darker than others. I'm simply not interested in giving credence to the reader's notion that the world is as sucky and miserable as it seems when you're fourteen.

I feel is is important to mention that there are two distinct types of dark. Explaining it would be easiest using examples of two polarizing Legend Of Zelda games, both fighting to be the definitive Gamecube title(and in Smash Bros, literally fighting)

Twilight Princess and Wind Waker.

Twilight Princess has darker foggy blurry visuals, more "realistic" designs of characters, more "scary" monsters and a very dark visual feel to it. That's the first kind of dark, the "outer" dark.

Wind Waker on the other hand, is cartoony cutesy chibi adventure, until you realise you're sailing on a giant tomb because Hyrule is drowned and you're essentially playing post-apocalypse. That's the "inner" dark, commonly showing up on Fridge Horror.

edited 16th Dec '13 5:02:24 PM by Luminosity

Of course, as even a cursory reading of Fridge Horror pages will suggest, "inner dark" has a tendency to come more from fans reading too much into something than anything else. So eh.