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Ask the Tropers:
Ferot_Dreadnaught
Since: Mar, 2015
22nd Apr, 2018 03:14:27 PM
openDarkness Induced Audience Apathy Misuse?
From DarknessInducedAudienceApathy.Video Games:
- Overwatch suffers from a variant of this effect. Most of the characters are genuinely good, likable people, and the story places a lot of emphasis on the importance of hope and heroism in a troubled world. But if you set all that aside and examine the story for what it actually is, you'll find something far more grim than the bright colors and fun characters would suggest. The game needed its own Woobie page before it was even six months old. Many of the heroes are defined by the ways in which they’ve failed, and most of them have made no progress toward their goals, and not for lack of trying, either. The villains are likewise not entirely unsympathetic, but they're also directly and unrepentantly responsible for a lot of the world's problems, and they're not doing anything to helpnote Well, maybe except for one, who might be covertly trying to expose the Greater-Scope Villain, but even she is an Unreliable Narrator who has exhibited some sociopathic traits and likely isn't acting out of the goodness of her heart. The crux of the problem is that the story initiated itself under pretty dire circumstances, with the titular organization in ruins while its enemies remain at large. The plot could be summarized as "Talon enacts its agenda, and Overwatch rises from its ashes to defend the world", but the glacial rate of progression means the lore has stalled in the "Talon enacts its agenda" stage, leaving the main conflict to become increasingly lopsided as the heroes continue to struggle with no appreciable payoff while some of their most noteworthy accomplishments are outright undone by later developments. Keeping the torch lit during dark times is one of the narrative's core themes, but when the darkness starts eating the torch, it's easy to feel like you're just being strung along.
The pointing out sympathetic characters exist and hope as a theme seem to argue with itself, and most of the issue seems to be Arc Fatigue and less this trope. Cut?
From
I have had a question about Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy for a while. If it does have characters who are likable and we want to root for, but they're ineffectual, minor characters, seemingly doomed, or their efforts are made irrelevent, does it count? Or do such characters disqualify a work since it give reason to care? If the latter we definitely need a cleanup.