Too Bleak, Stopped Caring

Not saying they can't have trope articles, but we shouldn't consider them for CM or TBSC. They want that recognition and we shouldn't give it to them. Just list them as Dark Fic or Creepypasta and move on.

If you want a less (admittedly) prejudiced answer, it's very similar to why slasher films can't have Complete Monster examples. They are built around sadistic, irredeemable characters so nothing can stand out enough to meet the trope's "exceptional" standard. If someone writes a Dark Fic, the point is to appeal to the edgy, grimdark folks, so TBSC is an intentional reaction and thus not worth listing.

Edited by Fighteer on Jun 14th 2021 at 6:56:36 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I'd disqualifying Dark Fic examples (as they're supposed to be this such it isn't a meaningful audience reaction).

My question is how do we define Dark Fic as opposed to intended as meaningful but dark story? Other MLP fanfics that offer objective proof that large amounts of audiences stopped caring (decline in viewership/likes, creator acknowledgment) started less dark if at all but became this, which makes it sound more like Angst Aversion. Do they still count as TBSC if they only fell into such darkness later?

Similar to Dark Fic, Cosmic Horror Story and Sadist Show were considered as disqualifies but voted down as unneeded given the voted up proof requirement (which we have yet to actively enforce).

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Jun 14th 2021 at 7:49:27 AM

I don't know what to do with these entries on Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Obviously the series as a whole is too popular and beloved to count, but these specific books might be able to, since I believe they are unpopular with the fandom for how cynical they are. But I'm sure they still sold very well by nature of being DOAWK books.

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy:
  • While it's a stretch to call it outright darkness, the sheer amount of unlikable characters (for instance, the main character Greg already suffers from an unrealistic number of glaring flaws he hardly notices) and sheer amounts of What An Idiot from all characters moments can really be a bother when trying to find something to root for and keep going. Despite being sold as realistic fiction, the story is set in a cynical world of incompetence where bad things happen to good people, although this world is interpreted from Greg's obvious Protagonist-Centered Morality. It becomes even worse in later books when the humor just revolves around the Heffleys having bad luck. The movies, however, attempt to fix this by giving the characters better personalities and lessening some of the What An Idiot moments, even having Greg and Rodrick reconcile after their biggest schism in the Rodrick Rules movie, as they now treat each other much better. It even carries over into Dog Days, where Greg is horrified at thinking Rodrick was being loaded into a garbage truck, and upon seeing his brother is okay, hugging him tightly, to which Rodrick is obviously touched.
  • The five biggest offenders are:
    • The ending of Cabin Fever, wherein Manny's Jerkass tendencies are taken Up To Eleven as he cuts off the power to the house in the middle of a blizzard with the exception of his own room, leaving the rest of his family to die and yet he still doesn't get punished.
    • Hard Luck focuses on everyone being a jerk to each other and takes the books' cynicism Up To Eleven. Events include the teachers starting the Hero Points program to bribe kids into being nice (which leads to doctored points), Abigail using Rowely to make her ex jealous and dumping him without a word, Susan and her sisters nearly killing each other because of a ring, and despite feeling a bit bad for Rowely, Greg learning nothing from all of this.
    • The entirety of The Long Haul. The book's plot is mostly a series of misfortune events caused entirely by the family being completely idiotic or some form of Ass Pull. The film version is even worse and is one of the reasons why fans disown the movie, besides the changed cast of course, given that the first three movies notably made the stories less of a hassle to sit through.
    • The entirety of The Getaway, for many of the same reasons as The Long Haul. Yet another series of unfortunate things happening to the family who just want to relax, with most of their misfortunes either being caused by their own idiocy or just bad luck.
    • The last two pages of Wrecking Ball end up ruining the Heffleys chance of having a new home after all the trouble they went through. Just when things were finally looking up for them, the author just had to go and mess things up again! It's telling that the next book The Deep End finally gives them a Vacation Episode that ends well, though they suffer mightily to get there.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

YMMV.The Last Of Us Part II

• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This is a much more violent and depressing game than its predecessor, which was already pretty dark. Joel's brutal death early on in the game, in particular, is a point where some players stopped caring about what happens in the story, and it doesn't get better from there. In addition to the dark story, observations of the environments and flavor text show that the state of the world appears to be getting worse instead of better. All hope of a cure or vaccine is dead because Joel killed apparently the last brain surgeon in the previous game. Unlike most Zombies in fiction, Infected actually get stronger over time by mutating in tougher and deadlier forms, and every attempt at rebuilding civilization is thwarted by either the Infected, warfare or internal strife. Even many critics who gave an overall favourable review of the game agreed that it has an extremely nihilistic and unforgivably bleak story, for better or for worse. There's a reason that all but 4 of the most helpful user reviews on the first page of metacritic are negative.

Tiny nitpick, but weren't most of the negative reviews on Metacritic because of review bombing? Otherwise this entry is fine.

Thomas fans needed! Come join me in the the show's cleanup thread!

Yes it was review bombed so I don't know if it can be trusted.

"That's right mortal. By channeling my divine rage into power, I have forged a new instrument in which to destroy you."

Found these on the Video Games section for Too Bleak, Stopped Caring:

• In God of War it sometimes becomes hard to say why you should care whether Kratos kills that god/saves himself/kills that other god and all the rest too. It's not as though Kratos being in charge would be an improvement given how he acts. As it turns out, the game does manage to make them all lose, leaving the victimized humans as the ones left. Shame Kratos messed up the sun, sea, seasons, and sky before he died. And even then, he didn't. The only consolation is that he decided to release Hope into the world, hope to give humanity a reason to continue on. The ending slightly implies that the world can start getting back on its feet. Fear of this overtaking the series may be a reason for God of War (PS4) turning Kratos from a violent sociopath into more of an Anti-Hero and giving him a Morality Pet son.

Franchise was extremely well received by critics and fans alike, so non-example.

• Far Cry:
  • Far Cry 2 can be seen this way. Both the UFLL and the APR, as well as the Private Military Contractors working for them, are complete bastards. Even the Player Character and his buddies are pretty reprehensible people; for every mission one of your buddies sends you on to prevent an attack by destroying fuel, take out ammunition stores that would give one side leverage over the other, destroy a quack doctor's fake medical supplies, or kill drug dealers who are selling to children, they also have another one where they send you out to kill a salesman for petty revenge over The Alleged Car, eliminate an arms dealer so your buddy can make a big sale in his stead, destroy a stockpile of passports that their current owner is trying to price-gouge citizens on rather than give them away or sell them more cheaply, or mutilate the corpse of one faction leader's recently-deceased brother to send a part of it as a "trophy" to the other, and this is to say nothing of the fact that one of the easiest ways to gain diamonds to buy weapons and equipment before you start on the actual story missions is straight-up assassinating people. Ironically, The Jackal can be seen as the most sympathetic character in the game by some, if in a Well-Intentioned Extremist way. Every one of them is dead by the end of the game, though the player's fate is left open to interpretation if the player chooses to take the case of diamonds to the border.
  • Far Cry 4 concerns the fictional nation of Kyrat, which can end up with three possible leaders. None of them can be called good. Sabal becomes a religious fanatic who forces the Kyrati to convert or die, Amita becomes a ruthless child slave driver, and Ajay, while possibly being the best out of these options, is still vulnerable to the corruption that seeps into the other three candidates, especially since his path to power is littered with bodies and possibly assisted by previous dictator Pagan Min.
  • Far Cry 5 puts Hope County's conflict against Eden's Gate cult, who believe that society is falling apart and that the world will soon end, and it is depressing enough with not much in the way of lighthearted brevity. It examines the nature of faith and "end-of-the-world" predictions, and no matter how much the player does to stop the cult, the Collapse is inevitable. In the canonical ending, nuclear war is sparked between the USA and Russia for no particular reason, completely catching everyone off guard, proving that Joseph Seed was right the whole time. With The Deputy's buddies dead and the fates of Hope County residents remaining unknown, The Deputy and Joseph Seed are the only survivors. The other two non-canonical endings aren't much better; the 'Walk away' ending has Joseph Seed's brainwashing trigger in the Deputy and it's implied they kill all of the people they rescued, while in the secret ending where the player just waits in the opening and doesn't arrest Seed at all, it just ends with passing the buck to someone else who will presumably end up the same way it does normally. These endings even ended up overshadowing the entire rest of the game and considerably hurting its sales. Thankfully, its follow-up Far Cry: New Dawn, set 17 years after the Collapse, reveals that most of Hope County's residents have survived nuclear armageddon and it ends on much more positive note, giving Hope County a Bittersweet Ending after all the trouble they went through, with Joseph Seed truly defeated this time.

I think these games were well received and sold well. Now I can see the case for Far Cry 5 since it did mention the sales being affected but I'm not sure if the others fit here.

• The Trails Series started off as optimistic with The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky and while it had some dark moments, especially the ending of the first game, it still kept up an idealistic tone. Then the ending of Ao no Kiseki happens and while the heroes did get some sort of happy ending, the overall tone of the end is very dark but still did shine some ray of hope. Cue The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel where the endings in Cold Steel I just ended up being heart-wrenching, shocking, and feeling hopeless, Cold Steel II ended on a bittersweet note that makes one wonder if it was a gigantic waste of time, and Cold Steel III just ends on a really dark note, making players wonder if The Hero of the story will actually die without even accomplishing any of his goals when the fourth game comes out. Especially since Cold Steel III has the highest number of plot important characters that just end up dying all over the place, sometimes in the most anti climactic fashion. At this point, half of the fanbase is already skeptical whether the series can even deliver or not. Fortunately, Cold Steel IV manages to turn things around by revealing that several characters who were apparently killed in the previous game actually survived. To make things even better, some villains defect to the heroes' side, the heroes from the previous arcs show up to help out, and Rean finally gets his closure.

Don't think this one fits as well, game series was relatively well received

• Grand Theft Auto:
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories can invoke this feeling. In contrast to the rest of the 3D-Era games, the story is very bleak and it's one of the few video games of that era to have a Bittersweet Ending. It doesn't help the fact that one of the main characters (Lance Vance) is an incompetent, childish idiot who only causes problems for his brother, with the only truly positive from his presence being that, as the game is a prequel, we know he gets his comeuppance later on.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV:
    • The game runs the risk of provoking this reaction towards players and especially GTA fans by being a Deconstructor Fleet of the GTA series. The game is relentless about showing how unrealistic and flawed are concepts like Evil Pays Better, Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster! and the anti-heroic characterization of your usual GTA protagonist. The problem is that all this negativism and cynicism comes from a GTA game, a game known for its over-the-top portrait of organized crime.
    • As for the storyline: Niko Bellic moves to the United States for a fresh start at life, but it goes down the toilet when his cousin, Roman, gets him roped up in his debt and antics. The entire story shows Niko doing nothing but trying to please his selfish cousin who always seems to get himself into trouble, while Niko always bitches about it as he continuously helps his cousin out. It eventually leads to Niko being hunted down by a mobster throughout the game, but it doesn't build up from there; Niko just continues doing side jobs for random people while still complaining about his cousin's gambling habits and debt. On top of this, nearly every person Niko meets is either a backstabber or suffers from attachment issues, making nearly everyone unlikable and leaves the player wondering why they should care about a bunch of crazy people.
    • One of the selling points when the game was released was that you can make choices that will impact the story. The problem is, this isn't the case. Almost every choice you make does nothing to the plot, and the choices as to who to kill always have an obvious "right" answer (from a gameplay standpoint if nothing else). The only choice you make that actually changes anything is the Deal or Revenge choice that sets up your ending, and someone at Roman's wedding will still die either way.
  • Grand Theft Auto IV: The Lost and Damned. Even more than the main game. A constant criticism towards the game is that it is so negatively depressing, that you almost feel that everything you did in this game was in vain. It doesn't help that, five years later, we learn of the eventual decline of Johnny and his entire gang.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars suffers from the same problems as Grand Theft Auto IV: the criminal lifestyle is portrayed as unglamourous and dangerous and all of Huang's superiors are shallow, smug dumbasses who constantly treat him with contempt even though he's the only thing keeping them from being killed or imprisoned. While Huang does end the game in a better position than he started, the amount of crap he went through to get there means that player will likely be as unsatisfied as he is.
  • Grand Theft Auto V is even worse in this regard, with some players stating that they found no sympathetic qualities to the protagonists, who do their job mostly to get paid, as opposed to Niko committing crimes due to circumstance. The supporting characters are just as bad. Almost every NPC in the game is either selfish, an idiot, abrasive, violent, or some combination thereof.
    • There's a meta-example in this game as well. Outside of the heists, very few missions offer satisfying rewards. Financial rewards are slim for most missions, gameplay rewards (such as unlocking guns, vehicles, new modes of play) are rare outside of the main story missions and the ones that do show up in side missions tend to be jokes at the player's expense, which means that the missions aren't rewarding in a third way: from a dramatic or gameplay perspective. Examples of this include unlocking an antique tractor for a long string of intentionally mind-numbing missions, or a joke car for collecting 50 hard to find spaceship parts hidden all over one of the largest sandboxes in GTA history. After completing just a few Side Jobs or Random Encounters, going out of your way to undertake a new one will begin to feel like an exercise in masochistic futility.
    • What makes it worse is that at least part of this is intentional. The game is a big Deconstruction of Damn, It Feels Good to Be a Gangster!, showing how petty, self-destructive and selfish anyone would have to be to behave like a GTA protagonist, along with how ultimately futile the lifestyle itself is. The trouble is, it's doing all of this in a video game series known for playing most of those tropes straight, so it comes across as condescending towards the very people who buy the GTA games. Couple that with a few blatant stereotypes about people who play too many video games, and you've got a game that almost feels like it's trying to alienate its audience. Just to top off how confusing this game's messaging can be, the online multiplayer takes the tropes the single-player deconstructs and plays them straight again, making the player feel like even the game can't make up its mind.

Don't think any of the GTA games fit here, they're all rather well-received

This example from Joss Whedon may need looking at:

• Joss Whedon's shows are sometimes in danger of falling into this, due to his admission that angst is the driving factor in much of his writing. This tends to be the reason some Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans call Fanon Discontinuity after season five. You had Buffy Summers Wangst throughout the majority of the sixth season, had a mutually destructive and degrading hookup with Spike, and then became a complete Jerkass. It had gotten so bad that Buffy's close circle of friends would rather have Faith, a once Ax-Crazy rogue Slayer, lead the Potentials because she looked saner than Buffy around that point. The Scoobies themselves are no better, if they're not on a Wangst fest then they're doing something that makes them look unlikable to the viewer’s eyes and they are supposed to be the heroes of the series. Whedon has acknowledged this is an issue with season 6 of Buffy, as he signed off on a bunch of dark story ideas he liked, without considering that having them all happen at the same time might be a bit much. Also, Whedon's self-admitted tendency to kill off the most beloved characters in his shows discourages many from getting too attached to any one character. His other family members' work don't differ much from this Signature Style, either.
  • Season Five introduced the idea that previous Slayers tended to die after a few years because they got weary of constantly fighting and trying to save the world. After reaching this despair horizon, they would start to give less than 100% and would eventually die by letting their guard down. Towards the end of the season, Buffy has a mental breakdown because she also experiences this weariness and realizes that it may end up costing not her own life, but that of her sister. This belief that her not giving 100% may have contributed to Dawn's capture and possible death drives her into a coma. Fast forward a couple of years, and after Buffy is unable to save the life of a doomed teenage girl, she spends nearly the remainder of Season Seven going through the motions and becoming apathetic towards whether anyone around her suffers or dies, even her close friends or sister.
  • Dollhouse suffered from this right from the start, with even many of Whedon's existing fans finding the show's basic concept to be just too unpleasant, the whole idea of what the (mostly female) Dolls are subjected to teetering far too close to outright sex trafficking.
  • Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. suffers as well. The first series, while it had its Darker and Edgier moments, especially towards the end, kept up jokes and heartwarming moments, including plenty of Fitzsimmons flirting. Season 2, however, starts off with Fitz having suffered brain damage, he and Simmons snapping at each other most of the time, and loads of politicking between different factions of SHIELD, with the "Real" SHIELD folks almost grabbing the Idiot Ball thanks to their sheer paranoia and distrust of Coulson. Then there's all the angst over Skye getting superpowers...
    • This hits a new level on Seasons 4 and 5, where the show doesn't seem to care much about politics and spying plots anymore and just wants to find new ways of making the cast miserable. The protagonists are replaced by robot versions of themselves, one of which ends up being Driven to Suicide, while their consciousnesses are placed in a virtual reality where H.Y.D.R.A. won and half of them became Nazis themselves. Then they are kidnapped and forced to spend months in a post-apocalyptic future enslaved by aliens, and then come back to find out they are in a Stable Time Loop where they are all doomed to very painful deaths. And all of that to learn the only way to win is allowing their leader himself to die.

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I don't know if this example fits Too Bleak, Stopped Caring for a Reality TV series that was Darker and Edgier a decade ago:

• Police, Camera, Action!, a hybrid of Edutainment Show and Gearhead Show had five special episodes that fell right into this trope due to the way the material was presented:
  • "The Man Who Shot OJ", a two-part episode from December 1996 focusing on Zoey Tur's work as a helicopter pilot and journalist focused on the OJ Simpson pursuit, but despite the somewhat wacky police pursuits in Part One, there was a lot of bleakness from Part Two and the depiction of Real Life Los Angeles in the 1990s was a pull-no-punches approach.
  • "Highway of Tomorrow": a two-part 30-minute special from 2000 (later Re-Cut into a 60-minute special in 2005) focused on car technology which depicted the future but became very outdated by later airings. It was so bleak and showed the future of car ownership and passion for automobiles to be something that would not fit in with a dystopian future, and nice as the people were, the situation was so bleak the episode itself wasn't enjoying. Yes, there's No Antagonist, but it's still bleak as hell to watch. The episode was largely a hard sell anyway due to lack of police footage throughout the two episodes, it was relegated to a cameo role rather than the main attraction.
  • "Drink Driving Special" from December 2008, presented by Gethin Jones, was one of the bleakest episodes, focusing on Drunk Driver motorists, pulled no punches, but it was to get the aesop across, with it showing the horror of drink-driving. It was a far cry from earlier season's slightly light-hearted episodes. Good aesop, poor presentation. It was Scare 'Em Straight taken to the extreme.
  • The four-episode mini-series that ran from July to August 2010 presented by Gethin Jones, was incredibly bleak in tone, with none of the show's usual humor, police footage was largely The Artifact and the show's presentation method relied upon Don't Shoot the Message; good morals, but the show's method of doing it made it feel dull. The participants weren't huge jerkasses, but were presented in such a way that the audience wouldn't like them anyway.

This is on YMMV.The Binding Of Isaac:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: A lot of players don't like the very dark undertones that the game offers including Abusive Parents, anti-religious themes, and suicide. Afterbirth+'s final ending where it reveals that it's a Dying Dream does not help much. Repentance addresses this with the ending after defeating the Beast, finally letting Isaac Earn Your Happy Ending. It may be a Bittersweet Ending, but nonetheless the poor boy got a bone thrown his way.

---

I feel like this better fits Angst Aversion, I'm just posting it here to see if it would fit under Too Bleak, Stopped Caring. Also, "undertones" feels like an understatement because the whole game is bleak as fuck.

Sandbox help wanted.

Bump.

Sandbox help wanted.

Isaac is definitely enjoyed in spite of its bleakness, its popularity even surprised the creator of the game way back when it was first released and it got payed DLC expansions for ten years. If it wasn't successful, Repentance would not have been a thing: in fact, Repentance started out because a group of fans liked it enough to devote a huge Game Mod to it, and the mod itself picked up a big fandom on its own. It's a pretty big indie game/series, so I'm sure it's not TBSC.

EDIT: It still gets a lot of complaints, but most of it is for gameplay/balance reasons or buggy launches, not because of the story being too dark. The issue most people seemed to take with Afterbirth+ was things like the underwhelming and unfair final boss, not so much how dark the last ending was.

Edited by greatpikminfan on Jun 28th 2021 at 12:06:02 PM

I write stupid crap about naked people.

Bringing up the following example from Wolverine and the X-Men (2009):

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: With so many flat or just plain unlikable X-Men in such an unpleasant world it's kind of hard to care if the lot of them survive or not. You might just find yourself Rooting for the Empire (as seen below).

Edited by Anddrix on Jul 6th 2021 at 3:12:36 PM

Evangelion should've been put on it on Too Bleak, Stopped Caring. Any thoughts?

Edited by JakeTheHowlingWolf on Jul 29th 2021 at 9:05:57 AM

Any explanation? I have never seen Evangelion, so I have no idea what you're talking about.

Jawbreakers on sale for 99¢

While it's certainly a bleak series, it also has a huge franchise and fandom that has lasted for decades now, so it self-evidently is not an example.

Aye, and from a quick Google search it seems like it's still going. So no it should not be listed.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Erm. Why isn't this forum called Too Bleak, Stopped Caring cleanup thread? Just asking?

Btw, just found this in the YMMV of Recap.Fate Grand Order S 3 E 8 Fairy Realm Of The Round Table Avalon Le Fae:

• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: This story is dark. The number of Hope Spots that get yanked away during the course of the Lostbelt is uncountable, the biggest one being that this is a rare case of a Lostbelt's inhabitants being able to leave and thus be saved from the Cosmos Denial and give players a measure of satisfaction that previous Lostbelts didn't have. The problem? None of the good and/or sympathetic characters live long enough to try escaping — the only good thing is that none of the Hate Sinks do either. This on top of everything else made players unanimous in letting Status Quo Is God take its course this time, wanting nothing more than this unholy blight of a Lostbelt and every blasted soul in it to disappear.

Anything that needs to be fixed or removed?

MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB Dates

Because the thread was started before we decided on that name change.

Might be valid, but I'm not sure if needs proof audiences were put off by it is something we're following through with/implemented.

I am planning on adding this to TooBleakStoppedCaring.Fan Works

• The Dear Sweetie Belle Continuity shifting to foreshadowing/setting up an apocalyptic conflict has put off many who enjoyed the series character-driven Slice of Life, especially since the characters it made them so attached to are now at high risk of getting unhappy endings. Not helping is said conflict is being caused in part by the controversial actions of the series more controversial characters while likable characters are denied agency, most notoriously Pinkie Pie dying of unspecified causes prior. The first story fully set in this darker direction, The Changelings Have a King, had a high body count and higher ratio of dislikes to likes than any other work in the seres. While later works were much better received, they're having only one-fifth the likes shows a large majority, all save it's most dedicated fans, stopped caring about the series to the point its cancelation went largely without notice.

The cancelation was announced Oct, 17, 2020. I was think of specifying "went unnoticed by its trope page/this wiki for neatly a year." Is that too self-referential or myopic?

From TooBleakStoppedCaring.Fan Works, I also intend to cut A Puppet to Her Fame as: 1. the evidence is a single reviewer which I recall we decided insufficient proof it was widespread. 2. it has over 1600 likes while the other MLP fics on the page have at most a few hundred, giving tangible evidence most audiences liked it despite. Any last objections?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Aug 15th 2021 at 11:37:56 AM

(Changed thread title)

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Yeah, proof is what I exactly need to verify this.

Thanks!

MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB Dates

So is using this wiki, like inactivity on it's pages showing they stopped caring), as proof (that so many stopped caring they went a long time without noticing its cancelation despite being once popular enough to have a work page) OK? Or is it too myopic or self referential (there's proof enough without, but it adds specifics)?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Aug 16th 2021 at 12:19:53 PM

Personally, as long as it's not being used as the main "proof", I think that's a fairly illustrative detail.

Proof as in users from other sides agreeing that the story is not worth reading/playing through/watching/etc., not wiki inactivity.

MB Pending | MB Drafts | MB Dates

I'm pretty sure LISA would be considered successful enough to not qualify but I'm checking in to just make sure, mainly since it looks like Joyful in particular has gotten a bit of backlash for taking out a lot of the humor that was in Painful? If nothing else, I'm wondering if just Joyful could count by itself. Here's its entries as they stand now, starting with the one on its own YMMV page:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Likely to happen to the player. Despite all the humor, this is a dark, unhappy series filled with sad, depressing messages and with morally ambiguous "heroes". According to the author, this is deliberate, as he hates conventional, do-good heroes and stories. This is especially apparent in The Joyful, due to the general lack of humor this time around.

And from TooBleakStoppedCaring.Video Games:

• LISA: Brad Armstrong sets out to find his adopted Buddy, the last woman in a post-Gendercide world, where literally every surviving man is either a rapist, a murderer, a dangerous mutant, suicidal, or an idiot. Along the way every character that doesn't just want rape Buddy gives Brad grief including Buddy for wanting to lock Buddy away, and Brad never defends his actions. Admittedly Brad is doing it for selfish reasons, but it is hard to care about a story where an entire hopeless land of awful people are telling you that you are in the wrong for wanting to keep Buddy restricted, but safe. The follow-up, Joyful, is just as bad, if not worse: you play as a mentally broken, drug-addicted and near sociopathic Buddy who has come to the conclusion that the only way she can survive is if everyone else is dead. You can count the number of sympathetic characters on one hand, and they all end up dead, of course.

If nothing else both of them only talk about how dark the series is and say nothing showing that people drop interest in the game(s).

I write stupid crap about naked people.

Cut if it doesn't offer proof audiences stopped caring as opposed to just explain why it's bleak.

About my prior question. Would mentioning this wikis reaction/lack of it as proof they stopped caring be OK if the primary proof is separate and solid enough this wiki is such secondary proof it could be omitted without effecting the entry? Or should such be avoided as unnecessary and/or too myopic and self referential?