Too Bleak, Stopped Caring

From Re:CREATORS

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: The show didn't have this initially, but toward the end of the series, it really began setting in primarily thanks to the Elimination Chamber Festival, wherein Altair challenged every other Creation to a fight and either killing or incapacitating them without breaking a sweat thanks to how the love of the fans give her new abilities completely out of thin air, including one that makes her untouchable in the rubber and glue sense (plus, the fact that almost nobody outside of the main cast seems to ever grasp what's actually going on and what kind of threat this poses to not just Creationkind, but also to humanity as a whole).To cap it off, the people in charge of this show also worked on Black Lagoon, Fate/Zero, and Aldnoah.Zero, which were similarly guilty of falling into this.

Despite what the write up says, the entire thing actually does end on an optimistic note, and the show still has fans that enjoy it despite the supposed "darkness". And Big Bad becoming nigh-unstoppable and creating a Darkest Hour during the climax isn't exactly something that triggers DIAA itself since otherwise every work with a good vs evil conflict would qualify. That's not getting into whether the other shows mentioned in the entry qualify.

The TRS thread for this page has been opened.

From YMMV.Seinfeld:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Some may find the show a bit hard to stomach, in the vein of Malcolm in the Middle, in that most of the characters, for the majority of the show, are unlikeable jerks who trip over themselves and each other in ways to sabotage each others lives.

Another comedy show and the example is general at that.

Axe it.

Umh no cut that. It's quite big fandom like it because of how Dicksh everyone is.

This was added to A Christmas Story:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: A contributing factor in the film's Hype Backlash is those who didn't grow up with the film or aren't fans of it's particular brand of cynical humor finding it's unapologetic depiction of sociopathic children, equally mean adults dated moral values being Played for Laughs less tongue-in-cheek and more downright unpleasant, not helped by the fact that the film still ultimately tries to have a positive ending.

Doesn't the positive ending negate all of that?

The example even admits that the film has a happy ending- although the wording implies that the troper who added it doesn't consider it one (and considers the ending a flaw...)

Well, TBF, Esoteric Happy Ending is a thing.

Bringing up the following example from It Comes at Night:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: This might just be the most depressing post-apocalyptic movie since The Road, even managing to be more depressing since at least The Road had a somewhat hopeful ending.

Bringing up the following example from DC Future State:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: The Flash miniseries has been met with this reaction, due it to being yet another story that demonizes Wally West and tries to turn him into a murderer. This time, the reasoning is that Wally's been possessed by the Horseman of Famine so he's technically not to blame for his actions. That hasn't changed fans being sick of Wally again being thrust into the role of the bad guy while Barry Allen is left to agonize over stopping Wally while the rest of the Flashes suffer. It's rather painfully clear this story's another holdover of Dan Didio's reign, due to Didio's infamous dislike of Wally and repeated attempts to destroy him.

Can said reaction apply to a specific arc/episode of a work?

YMMV.Dream SMP:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: The Doomsday War and the events of the Disunion Era after it result in the destruction of the oldest and most significant nation of the SMP, several characters having mental breakdowns or moral corruptions, the Badlands swooping in to fill the power vacuum left by L'Manburg, the only characters that remain uncorrupted and/or truly see what's going on (Tubbo, Puffy, Sapnap, Karl, Quackity and Ghostbur) so scattered that they'll never be able to form a meaningful front, and the antagonists (Techno, Dream and Philza) getting off without any major punishment or loss. This has resulted in quite a bit of criticism from fans, who feel like there's no reason to care anymore if everyone is going to hyperfocus on punishing Tommy, instead of going after Dream.

I watched the letsplay and it seems that things have gotten lighter after the end of the Disunion Era via Dream's imprisonment (though not sure).

On World of Warcraft:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy:
  • In general, the changes over the course of the series really rubs many people wrong. The fact that warmongering people like Garrosh and Varian are leaders of their respective factions, Jaina now hates the Horde, and reasonable figures like Thrall or Malfurion do nothing to prevent any of it. Or that many races such as orcs have been Flanderized to be far more negative. Mostly it's to keep the Alliance and Horde war continuous.
  • Cataclysm. A nice chunk of the player base thinks that it turned all the major lore characters into a bunch of brooding sociopaths, and anyone untouched is generally pushed into the background. One would believe in the war revolving around this invisible scarcity of resources had it been shown in any zone outside one (Westfall) and if almost all factional settlements hadn't gotten a makeover, contradicting this.
  • Surprisingly, Mists of Pandaria of all things falls in this. The Horde-side storyline consisted of many Horde races and characters becoming completely evil with no real explanation, while the players' questlines consisted of committing one warcrime after another and constantly being shamed by NPCs even when committing what should be good actions, then finally killing loads of soldiers from your own faction, including characters the player had befriended in previous storylines. The Alliance-side isn't much better, consisting of most of the Alliance being passive against the Horde's relentless aggression. Then when you successfully storm the Horde capital, the Leader of the Alliance just wants Garrosh, the one who made the Horde into a ruthless war machine, to be imprisoned for trial, only for him to escape for the next expansion with a new Horde, and letting the rest of the Horde get off scott-free.
  • Battle for Azeroth. The war campaign begins with the Alliance suffering a genocide at the hands of the Horde and ends with the Horde warchief turning traitor and both sides making peace. This story and everything that happens in-between has managed the admirable task of alienating every single segment of the fanbase. This is made all the worse by the fact that these events have been a beat for beat rehash of the unpopular faction war that tainted the otherwise well received Mists of Pandaria. Battle for Azeroth isn't yet over but a common refrain is that it will join Warlords of Draenor as the worst expansion to date (following on the heels of the incredibly popular Legion probably didn't help either).
  • Shadowlands was immediately hit with this due to being a continuation of the extremely unpopular and polarizing story of Battle for Azeroth, with an opening cutscene depicting Sylvanas Windrunner at her most untouchable yet. The combination of an unpopular story and a lack of truly new features has lead to a rather cold reception to the expansion as a whole, with some referring to it with the mocking label Shadowblands.

Bad examples, should I cut? The MMO is still relatively popular, there are clear heroes, the good guys win at the end of almost every expansion, it's more about complaining about bad or unbalanced writing, and the "muh bad writing" crowd is more of a vocal minority to be honest given how people rarely play a Blizzard game for story(I will concede the're right to a degree but the bad wiring isn't enough to sink Wo W).

Edited by xie323 on Jan 29th 2021 at 9:42:27 AM

On Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: The main duo are pretty horrible people, and the mean-spirited nature of the series would definitely be hard to swallow if not for how exaggeratedly over-the-top it is.

It's another over the top dark comedy show example and the entry admits it doesn't count. I'm axing it.

I don't even have to read that to know it's invalid. Cut with a +10 axe of wounding. (Wrong system, I know.)

Also removed Wo W from the Video Games section as well.

Found another misuse:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Though it starts out as a light-hearted superhero comic, it quickly takes a nosedive into Darker and Edgier territory, as the bad guys come out of the woodwork to heap piles of shit on Mark, killing thousands of people before he's able to put them down, assuming they don't get personal and attack Eve or his mother. That SHIELD expy he works for? Employs psychotic killers to make cyborg zombies that are fully aware and horrified at their own existence and more than once tries to kill Mark for not marching to the beat of their drum. After a while it gets hard to care.
  • Mark not only letting a villain take over the Earth but abandoning it as well didn't help much either. And there's the villain being pretty much invincible to those heroes that are still around on Earth.
    • This is particularly a grim and unwelcome bit of Character Development from the young man who was once willing to be beaten to death by his father rather than allow Earth to be ruled 'for its own good' by a superhuman with a Messiah complex.
  • Nolan, now Emperor of the Viltrumites, agreeing to a truce with Robot to protect his people, and shooting down the idea of fighting him. Looking at the characters' many horrible actions in the past, its hard to feel any sympathy for the decision whatsoever.
  • And there's Anissa raping Mark and his reactions to the fact (like hating being intimate with Eve. There is also Anissa's constant mocking of Mark afterwards with said fact). Whatever things could have been done to drop her over the Moral Event Horizon, the writers could not have chosen one that made more people sickened.
  • You also have the massive amounts of Gorn shown in the comic. Sometimes it comes off as cheap shock value, and the fact that a lot of the recipients end up surviving anyway, often in ways that feel like an Ass Pull only makes it feel cheaper.
  • Anyone Can Die is enforced in the most brutal ways possible (which comes back to the aforementioned Gorn issue).
  • The series feels less about superheroes helping people and more about 'heroes' so caught up in their own problems that they're more than willing to let villains roam free and rule with an iron fist.
  • Mark is given the chance to go back in time and undo all the bad things that have happened since he got his powers. After much Wangst (some of it understandable, like not wanting to risk the possibility of his daughter Terra ending up Ret-Gone), he decides not to make any changes (even if would save countless lives, which the alien points out repeatedly) and the alien that put him back in time brings him back to the "present"... and the battle he was supposed to assist on went to absolute shit without him and the arc ends with the Cliffhanger that while he was in the past, 5 years passed in the present and his kid grew up without him.
  • The series wastes no time in reminding us that heroes who aren't Mark, Allen, or members of Mark's alien heritage are inferior and are used as nothing but cannon fodder. So it makes it difficult to really give a crap about the rest of the characters.
  • Overall, there's a feeling that nothing Mark does really matters, as he can rarely stop anything without incurring massive casualties.
    • Averted in a major way with the final issue — though whether or not this mitigates all the previous events is up to the reader.

This series ended with a happy ending so going to cut.

Well that is one of the most nattery, confused entries I've seen on the site. Anyway nuke it. Invincible is one of Image comics most popular comics and is getting it's own carton so safe to say it didn't turn people off due to some darker stuff.

So couple of questions about qualifying for this trope?

• So for a work to qualify as Darkness Induced Audience Apathy, there have to be no sympathetic characters period? What if there are sympathetic characters but the audience finds issue empathizing with them (Unintentionally Unsympathetic, lack of screentime).
• What if a sequel to a successful work got notable criticism for audience apathy from news site, would that count as an example.

Like would Robocop 2 not count because Robocop and Lewis are still sympathetic, even though critics like Roger Ebert criticized the movie for its bleakness and lack of humanity? Does a work have to be Evil Versus Evil to qualify?

We have a TRS thread. Why not ask there?

This entry under Pearls Before Swine:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Many of the strips produced during the COVID Pandemic of 2020 reflect a more serious tone, at best (Pig) struggling to be hopeful, at worst (Rat) bitter and fatalistic, and very few truly funny. This is even in comparison to other newspaper strips produced during this time, and seem more akin to millennial, webcomic black humor. Your outlook depends on whether you want to get out the frustration of isolation, or you don't want to be reminded of the "new normal" world.
  • In fact, he slowly seemed to be going this route in the late tens, but 2020 took it into a nosedive. Even the puns dried up at this time.

I assume cut because it's still a comedy strip, even when it dips into Cerebus Syndrome?

From YMMV.The Wall

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: As with the other albums recorded late in Waters' tenure with the band, The Wall has been criticized for its bleak lyrics.

Considering that The Wall is one of the best selling albums of all time, and, as far as I know, is considered an incredible album by most people, I'm pretty sure this is misuse.

On Puella Magi Madoka Magica

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: This series can become this for viewers. Seeing everything after episode three be one long road of misery, suffering, and Deus Angst Machina until Madoka rewrites reality in the span of only twelve episodes can become really stagnant for some.

Pretty sure this is misuse, this is one of the most popular and beloved anime ever in Japan and one of the most popular anime in the 2010s for the West. I've never seen people complain that it's dark, in fact I think the reason it's popular is because it's dark.

Bringing up the following example from Malcolm & Marie:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Many viewers have noted that the two characters are so thoroughly unpleasant two each other for the entire film that it's difficult to like or care about them and their issues.

Yes, cut. Seems to have a nattery complaint appended at the end.