Too Bleak, Stopped Caring

I found this entry for Villainous. I have concerns about the entry since it contains Flame Bait (specifically a pothole to Villain Sue), but I've never seen the show. Anybody familiar enough to know if this entry is accurate?

Here's the DIAA entry from the show's YMMV page as well:

Cut the Flame Bait parts and it should be adequate.

DarknessInducedAudienceApathy.Video Games

• R-Type is a dark series about humanity fighting a seemingly powerful alien force in a Hopeless War and constant Body Horror vibes. It isn't until Delta that the series goes full-on Darker and Edgier mode, with each stage loaded with Nightmare Fuel. It's even worse with the Bydo, as it's revealed that they're actually a bio-weapon which is made by human DNA and created by humans themselves, which went successfully but then goes out of control. It doesn't help as most of the Bydo enemies are humans, man-made mechas, spacecrafts and any earth life-forms that are corrupted by the Bydo.

This seems textbook misuse, as its complaining about the darkness as opposed to how all sides are equally dark making it impossible to care about the conflict, especially given how light on story this sort of game tends to be. Will cut unless I hear anything.

Agreed, it's pure misuse.

Those examples don't fully state the trope. It's not just that the world sucks and the villain is overwhelmingly powerful, but that the heroes must be little better. If there's any hope at all in the world that good deeds can happen and make some kind of difference, it can't be DIAA. That could still be the case, but it's not made clear.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 20th 2020 at 5:34:45 AM

I am really coming around to the "this page is being crippled by an overly-broad name" POV.

Found this on A Memory of Flames:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: One of the main criticisms of the series. Characters die so frequently—even more often than in A Song of Ice and Fire—that it becomes very difficult to form attachments to them. The Black Mausoleum appears to have been written with this in mind.

It doesn't really establish the specifics of the trope.

Bringing up this example from The Multiversity:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: The Mastermen #1, which puts entirely too much focus on what absolute dicks the New Reichsmen are and how miserable Overman is for having helped Hitler's dream come true without the benefit of putting enough focus on the Freedom Fighters. The issue even ends with Overman having to commit more atrocities to make up for the ones that were originally committed in the 1940s, with him rising from the ashes of a devastated Metropolis.

It's a single-episode example and automatically invalid.

Maybe instead of an overly-broad name it's an overly-narrow definition, but either way, something about the trope needs to be fixed. The amount of misuse is insane.

I mean, yeah, the definition being too narrow is certainly the flip side of the name being too broad. I just favor the latter when it comes to a fix because the misuse proves pretty definitely that changing the definition to include it would result in a trope we don't actually want to have (Complaining About Shows That Are Too Dark).

Edited by nrjxll on Aug 29th 2020 at 1:46:17 PM

Bringing up the following example from Youngblood:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: One of the reasons why the series proved to be such a disaster: The nominal heroes weren't allowed a win because every enemy they faced was a potential Spin-Off, so they had to be subjected to The Worf Effect. For the book's entire run, they only had one clear victory: A Qurac dictator whose head was burst by a psychic hero...to set up his Face–Heel Turn.

Huh, this is interesting; an example that is actually not misuse, and explains why the setting is too dark for people to care... but doesn't explain how it was a "diaster" beyond just saying it was. It'd be great if that part could get more context.

Bringing up the following example from Parting Shots:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: It's a movie about a man that goes around killing people, with the only excuse being that they are all Asshole Victims.

Only counts if it makes people not enjoy the film.

Bringing up the following example from The Morning Show:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: Not only does this series focus on a #Me Too! target who was accused of sexually assaulting his co-host and is portrayed as a victim (it's strongly hinted that the co-host was making the whole thing up or at the very least greatly exaggerating the details of a drunken sleepover in order to make herself look good), but later on, he did the same thing to Hannah who ends up overdosing on drugs. Most of the people are also greedy/narcissistic (Alex, who is one of the main characters, is like this as well), which makes it incredibly hard to root for anybody.

I can't speak to the validity of the example in terms of people agreeing with it, but it does meet the criteria.

Bringing up the following examples from DarknessInducedAudienceApathy.Live Action TV:

• Doctor Who:
  • One of the reasons people hate "Underworld" is because it's about a race of deeply depressed immortals who have no feelings, and no desire to participate in their quest beyond the fact that it is there. The Doctor, Leela and K-9 get some jokes to say in the background, but they're so railroaded by the quest plot that they add very little colour.
  • "Warriors of the Deep" has this as one of the many reasons it's a disliked story. It's clear from the beginning that Violence is the Only Option, yet the Doctor procrastinates over taking that violent option for most of the story while characters drop like flies to give the illusion of the plot escalating. There is a Kill Em All ending because the script editor couldn't be bothered to finish off anyone's character development (the original writer left at least two major characters alive). Worse, both sets of monsters, in their first appearance, are strongly not difficult to care about, being well-developed Well-Intentioned Extremist characters open to negotiation in a strong subversion of the idea of doing a traditional monster story.
  • This is a frequent criticism of Season 22, which deals primarily with Darker and Edgier storylines about various groups of horrible and selfish people tormenting each other with the Doctor stuck in the middle. This was not a new formula for Who—some of the most popular Who stories ever fit it—but in those stories the Doctor himself acts resolutely on the side of love and light, whereas the Doctor in Season 22 becomes selfish and abusive after his regeneration. Companions in previous dark stories are active and enjoy the Doctor's company, but Season 22 companion Peri is one of the most hapless, powerless Damsel Scrappy companions in the entire series, with the Doctor bullying her for fun, and that's before you get into how sexually exploited she is.
  • The Russell T Davies revival sometimes veers dangerously close to this trope Almost every series ends with some sort of complication despite the day being saved, and the Doctor is often forced to realize that humans can be just as bad and sometimes worse than the monsters he fights, with the Series 3 ending taking it to what is probably the darkest extreme: After the end of the universe, humanity cannibalizes itself to become a species called the Toclafane, who ultimately kill and maim because it's fun. While the Doctor and his companions generally remain sympathetic, the endings can make it rather tricky to care about what happens to the other characters.
  • While Eighth Doctor stories are mostly in the Expanded Universe, knowing that his life is an extended Break the Cutie that he never recovers from doesn't exactly entice readers/listeners who don't believe True Art Is Angsty; only the Doctor he regenerates into — the War Doctor, who by Eight's design discards the character's standard moral code — has it harder.
  • The show can be pretty tiring in the fact that no adventure comes along that doesn't leave behind a tremendous amount of people dead and/or traumatized both before and after the Doctor comes along (including the Doctor himself). There is a reason why this show is the Trope Namer for Everybody Lives-it's just obscenely rare for the episodes to end in a happy ending (or leaning towards the sweet side of Bittersweet Ending—even then, a number of them have a share of Fridge Horror). It is no wonder that people accuse the Doctor of being a Walking Disaster Area. And the scary part? "Turn Left" demonstrates that things would be even worse without him around.
  • In the new series, with the sole exception of Martha Jones, every companion's departure is played for drama. After a while, it can get frustrating.
  • A common complaint about the Twelfth Doctor era (Series 8-10) is that he rarely gets a break from angst. There's a lot of humor and whimsy, but he's a Byronic Hero with No Social Skills who finds it hard to relate to humans save for his companion Clara Oswald, who is also significantly flawed and has trouble adjusting to him as opposed to his far more amiable eleventh self. In Series 8 they endure serious trust issues and even a brief estrangement, and the two-part Season Finale again ends with separation. The Christmas Episode brings them back together and they become platonic lovers. Alas, Series 9 has no Breather Episodes and wraps up with him temporarily going insane after Clara dies before they're separated for good. While the next Christmas Episode "The Husbands of River Song" is a breather, it still involves one of the more emotionally fraught ongoing storylines of the revival on the way to its Bittersweet Ending. (And then comes Class, a Darker and Edgier Spinoff that Twelve has a hand in.) Early episodes of Series 10 are a little more lighthearted, but then "Oxygen"'s last lines reveal he is now blind due to a Heroic Sacrifice and from there it's the usual drama, with the penultimate episode seeing new companion Bill Potts getting a hole blown through her chest, spending years apart from the Doctor due to Time Dilation, and then being converted into a Cyberman by the Master! Sheesh! However, Bill gets to Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence with her soulmate in the Season Finale, and while the Doctor is put through the wringer in that episode, he also is at his most noble and selfless, and the "Ray of Hope" Ending leads into an uplifting sendoff of a regeneration story — even though it ends with his metaphorical death.
  • One of the main reasons "Voyage of The Damned" is so often derided is this; you have mass-death, senseless sacrifices, most of the likable characters randomly killed off, while the Jerkass lives to the end—and did we mention this is a Christmas Special?!? (One wonders if "The Husbands of River Song", which also involves an intergalactic luxury ship, was partially written to invert this: All the over-the-top villains get what they've got coming to them, the goofy but nice secondary characters suffer but make the best of their strange fates, and at the end the Doctor and River spend twenty-four happy years together before parting, even though River isn't headed for a happy ending.)

DIAA can only apply to whole seasons or shows, not individual episodes.

Should any examples on YMMV pages for specific episodes be removed then?

Edited by costanton11 on Sep 10th 2020 at 6:15:24 AM

Yes.

If DIAA doesn't apply for single episodes, should we put that in the trope description somewhere?

I skimmed through the Western Animation subpage and found these entries that about specific episodes from The Simpsons and SpongeBob SquarePants:

So, should these entries be cut as well?

Cut both of them. Seasonal rot wank is something we want to avoid on those two shows.

On the topic of single episodes, there's an example on YMMV.The Loud House S 2 E 8 No Such Luck Frog Wild. I previously removed a different example due to it not fulfilling the requirements, but what about the current?

Edited by costanton11 on Sep 10th 2020 at 7:38:08 AM

For context, here's the example:

• Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy: While the show can be mean-spirited at times where Lincoln becomes a butt of many jokes, viewers thought the family went too far on how they treated Lincoln. While it is true that Lincoln brought it to himself by pretending he is bad luck and lying to his family while sabotaging Lori’s clubs and taking smug pleasure in setting his family up, his punishment outweighs his crimes.

If it's only for a single episode, it can be cut.