Can darker stories be unrealistic?

I know this has beaten to death already what with the whole deconstructions not meaning darker and edgier as well reconstrctions not meaning light and softer but a line from this blog caught me by surprise.

The blog post is old but poster had a point. I know that some stories strive to be realistic and some stories want their cahracters to be more ortal but is it good to have realistic characters or a realistic world? I like superpowers and adventures as much as the next person but what if you actually want to kill off characters or raise (or in this case lower) the stakes? Here is the rest of the paragraph:

I know deconstructions, post structualist and postmodern self awareness are whats in now but does that mean that darker, lower fantasy stores can be unrealistic and sometimes ego stroking? I know some works strive to be darker and more 'realistic' but what qualifies as realism in stories?

To start with, stories that people read or watch are different from the stories present in role-playing games.

In the latter case, it's at least partially wish fulfilment, so stories that are less gritty and thus have more of the "cool" factor, allowing them to do things that will make them feel well, are preferred by most people. Because why play a game where you play as a hero who isn't really a hero because he's too weak for it (unless the player is a challenge gamer).

And with the stories that are being read or watched, it's ultimately a matter of personal preferences and both idealistic and gritty stories have their place.

That being said, ultimately what both the players and the audience wants is to see their character, be it the one they play or simply the one they like most, to succeed. And the taste of said success is even better if the character has to struggle for it, sure, but problems happen when the struggle is taken too far. But it's not about it being gritty or not in this case, just about the fact that the story simply got too bittersweet—or outright bitter—and remained that way for too long and now the only thing left is distaste. And that that sort of result seems to be more common in darker stories is not because of the "darkness" of it but rather because the authors simply go overboard; and if they go overboard into the other direction and there's no actual struggle at all, the work generally gets forgotten instead of being ranted about and that's that.

And the answer to the question asked in the title is both yes and no. Because it depends on the author and on the story. But in the it doesn't really matter whether a fantasy story is "realistic", does it? I mean, we are already dealing with something that is inherently not realistic (I mean, hello, "fantasy"), so what we want is for it to be internally consistent and enjoyable to experience.

And as for what qualifies as "realism" in stories ... ho boy, ask ten people and you'll get six answers, all of them different. Ask yourself what it means for you first, and see if you actually can answer it.

The idea that realism in stories has to be dark and gritty is honestly something that bugs me a lot. A story can be realistic and still be lighthearted, because, surprise, the real world isn't dark and cynical all the time.

Look at the real world for the answer. No matter what some people may say, the world isn't dark and edgy. It's not light and soft either. It's too complex to be defined by one or two or even a hundred labels.

That is realistic.

Now, can darker stories be unrealistic? I think the definition of realism in fiction is subjective, but I believe it is possible for any work to be dark and edgy and be as unrealistic as its lighter and softer counterparts. After all, it may not have Deus Ex Machinas, but Diabolus ex Machina is also a trope.

At the end of the day I always say that realism is overrated. It is better to aim for believability, because it's been proven that, no matter how outlandish your work is, if it's believable and consistent with its internal rules, then your audience will accept it.

P.S. We should all laugh at Dark Fantasy works who justify their crappiness by claiming to be realistic when they keep their setting stuck in the Dark Ages for 8,000 years. Point and laugh, I say.

edited 30th Jun '15 3:08:57 PM by Lorsty

Horror movies are about as dark as it gets and they can be very unrealistic to the point of making zero sense.

So I guess the answer is usbective or its relative to the individual in question. It seems that some equate reconstructions with happy and awesome.

A deconstruction doesn't have to be darker.

In fact, here's what the page on that trope says:

Kinda make me wonder if anyone has ever tried a deconstruction of Darker and Edgier.

That would be getting into meta territory.

And that way may lie madness.

Now I definitely want someone to do it.

Bake everyone's noodles.

All the noodles would be baked!!!

Has anyone done a deconstruction of deconstruction? Now THAT would be meta.

Postmodern works tend to eat their own fiction.

Anyways, I would say of course! For example, there's a reason why most people consider Card Carrying Villains to be "unrealistic", because there's a general perception that people don't be evil for the sake of it (which actually isn't quite true, sadly).

One way to possibly deconstruct Darker and Edgier would be to have a writer who thinks that this trope makes things more "realistic" gets thrown into the Crapsack World they've created and realizes that they miss the good things they had back in their real life, meaning that their more "realistic" Crapsack World wasn't so realistic after all. Another idea is that the characters rebel against their creator for putting them through so much pain, especially if it's a retool of a story that was previously more idealistic. I remember reading somewhere that the anime Princess Tutu uses the latter idea, although I've never actually watched that anime.

edited 4th Jul '15 8:42:49 AM by Rainbow

I see two ways Darker and Edgier could be deconstructed.

1) Start the work as a typical dark (whatever genre) and, as the story progresses, show that not everything sucks and people still fight to have a better future. And, in some extreme cases, there are people who still try to make the best out of a bad situation.

2) Start the work as a typical dark (whatever genre) and have the protagonist utterly fail on her quest or have her kill herself. The world is so dark and edgy that the only option is... well...

Well, I think that it's possible to deconstruct it in a third way: Start with the hero trying to go on their heroic quest, try desperately regardless of the fact that the people around them who are immersed in the darkness are making it hard to do anything heroic and there are a lot more villains than heroes, and then have them get fed up with it and decide to be villains instead. And imply that this is a fairly common occurrence, that darkness breeds darkness, that the world is crappy because the people in it are so used to it being crappy they no longer even try to get out of the way of those who want to make it less so.

Although, to be honest, the labels of deconstruction and reconstruction and whatnot here on TV Tropes are just something to describe what already is. When actually writing a book, I recommend forgetting about the tropes and the "playing with" sub-pages (if you can't do that, I'd heard that blunt force applied to the head helps forget things, though I've yet to test it) and just writing what you do write instead of writing what you'd thought looks fancy on TV Tropes which is a pretty crappy approach to it and which a bajilion of fanfics had already proven to us and a few bajilions more will continue to prove to us.

edited 4th Jul '15 1:33:39 PM by Kazeto

I agree and disagree.

While it is important to write a good story first and foremost, there are many authors who write with a certain goal in mind.

More often than not this goal is to have a specific theme (e.g. War Is Hell) or to make a point about a social issue (e.g. Racism). However, just as there is nothing wrong with it (how Anviliciousness of a work is subjective), there is also nothing wrong with aiming to write a deconstruction or reconstruction as a literary exercise or whatever.

So I think that instead of telling people what to write, we should tell them how to do it properly.

edited 4th Jul '15 2:50:28 PM by Lorsty

Oh, I don't disagree about the "writing with a goal" thing. It's either that or writing for the sake of seeing what happens, and both are valid ways to go at it.

What I think is stupid is constraining oneself for the sake of doing [whatever sort of action] to [whatever trope], because this is like building and instead of making it using bricks, planks, nails, and so on, deciding early on that "no, this particular house will only be built with nails" and then going at it despite it being just plain ineffective.

So writing something that just happens to be a textbook example of a deconstruction of whatever trope, for the sake of writing something and seeing what happens and it just so was that what happened was that deconstruction? That's fine. But trying to force something to be a deconstruction even when something wouldn't be and shouldn't be one, because "noes, I has to writes a deconstruction, [insert fanboy/fangirl/fan-moron sounds]"? Yeah, might as well just run headfirst into a tree. And that's that: write a story that happens to have tropes, not tropes taped together to form a story-shaped poo block.

Oh, I'm totally writing a story that's a deconstruction of deconstructions... Actually it's more like a sendup/Take That! at works that try to be deconstructive and smurt by being grimshit but end up making no sense. But that's close enough, right? :P

Yes. Unrealism comes from contrivance. It's the moment when the audience realises that the only way the last event could have happened is by the author suddenly warping the stories reality or dramatically altering the characters personalities. And a grim moment can be just as contrived as a triumphant one.

Dark does not equal realistic and it always bothers me when people assume that it does. You can only kick the characters so many times before the audience sees that it is you, rather than anything organic to the story, that is doing the kicking, and the illusion will collapse at that point.

I guess it can get ot a point where no one actually cares about the sotry as it beocmes clear that things will not get better for our protagonists.

Pretty much, yes. Because if all the shaggy dogs are being shot by an automatic drone, then what's the point of reading about it at all?

That's absolutely a concern. We even have a trope for it—Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy. That said, what I was trying to drive at is that, even more than simply losing audience interest, making a story too dark can destroy the story's sense of realism (the topic of the thread) every bit as much as having it be too happy. Good things do happen in the real world, and if nothing good ever happens to anybody in the story, then the story starts to lose it's sense of realism—particularly if the setting the author has created fails to justify the constant misery.

Game of Thrones is very dark. Generally, it does a fairly good job of justifying this darkness in that the horrible shit that happens is typically caused by characters having rational reasons to oppose the existence or behavior of other characters- and failing that, are the product of well-established psychological foibles that the characters have.

However, the show still has moments where it falls into this. For an example- and I should warn that I'm about to spoil a fairly important event in the show-

Walder Frey brutally murdering Rob and Caitlin Stark makes perfect ratonal sense. Rob screwed him out of an advantageous political marriage and the Lannisters paid him off. Arya arriving to where they were having the wedding literally just in time to see Rob's headless corpse paraded around by Frey's soldiers is contrived nonsense purely to twist the knife in the audience's gut. That kind of thing is purely a product of the conventions of screenwriting.