Why ARE sad/dark stories overlooked? · 6:02am Jan 22nd, 2014
Sorry for being gone for so long, first of all. My tablet got a bad battery again and I sent it off for repairs. That aside...
Yesterday, my good friend Salnalus sent me this blog post.
To my surprise, this set off something inside me. Like I really felt like telling the author he was wrong, without realizing why. That would make me a hypocrite, because I wrote Kiss of the Dark and did seem pretty harsh drama in Within the Seas. But in the end, I know he has a good argument, and that there is merit to dark stories.
Dark stories can take you places light stories never will, and because light stories dominated for so long in media, sometimes dark stuff can feel like a breath of fresh air. So rather than seeking to prove him wrong, I will instead say why I believe dark and sad stories are overlooked.
You mentioned Toy Story 3 as a great example of how dark stuff can be deeply moving. And yeah, that's a great example and one of the best I've ever seen. It's a deeply moving movie that everyone should see at least once. But you kinda explained why dark stuff gets overlooked as well, because ultimately, Toy Story 3's dark stuff had one thing that made it work.
Balance.
Think about it. There were tons of cheerful, funny moments in the movie as well. In fact, the trash fire scene in TS3 is followed by another joke. It makes the dark moments work, because you know that once the darkness is over, there will be light. A day to follow the night.
I feel like much of literature, and this fandom especially, is guilty of not having that with dark stories. Like you only see dark and sad moments, and that's all those stories have to them. There's tons of examples, but if you want to know why i think dark stories get overlooked, its that there's so many dark stories that have no balance whatsoever that audiences believe all of them are like that.
It's why I cannot personally stand the works of Alan Moore(Batman the Killing Joke and Watchmen). He is one of the best comic writers ever and I think any writer getting into comics should study his works, but good God I have never seen more grim stories in my life. You don't have any hope or good guys to turn to so you can face the horrors, because the good guys may just be worse.
That's why I went with the good ending to Kiss of the Dark. Twilight went through hell and came out scarred, maybe for life. Yet I gave her peace at the end. She has to do a lot to get through what Sombra put her through, but at the same time she has peace for now.
Another thing is that...well, I feel like Hollywood has taken the dark and gritty concept and drove it to the ground. I remember just how big the movie The Dark Knight was, and its the best superhero movie I have ever seen. But the problem is that I saw so many movies try to cash in by taking existing franchises and being dark and gritty because TDK did so well, best examples being Man of Steel and the Amazing Spider Man.
When you just make a thousand movies dark for the sake of trying to be cool and not making art, audiences tend to get sick of it.
Like I said before, dark stories can be very good. But this is my attempt to guess why you see some people pass stories here just because it has a dark tag.
It's nice to See someone share my view onsdag dark stories. I Don't much see The point in it IF there aren't Anyas small patches of sunlight in that dark forest that is the story.
Probably they are overlooked because people finds life depressing enough and need fanfiction to cheers themselves up.
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This.
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This.
And generally because I find if Dark stories don't end in some form of redemption or peace-granting bittersweet moment, then my mind tends to go to dark places. Preeetty dark ones. And considering I've more than once suffered from depression, this is bad.
That, and when I read ponies, I've kind of trained myself to expect humor.
So yeah. No balance? Not worth reading.
I actually think that sad/dark stories have the most plot of any genre most of the time. I tend to read those the most.
I don't normally read stories with those tags, and the reason for this isn't exactly complex. I don't enjoy the emotional whiplash these stories feature; I don't want to be sad, horrified, or otherwise made to feel bad in the process of reading a story about cartoon ponies, and I don't feel like those stories are a breath of fresh air. So while I'm fully aware that there are balanced stories that are worth reading in these tags, I tend to see browsing those tags in the same light that I see myself walking through a minefield: the rewards are not worth the risk.
Honestly, I don't understand why you (and Salnalus) feel the need to post things like this. Everyone has their reasons for what they do and don't read, and I don't understand why this is such a difficult thing for authors to grasp. Write what you want to write and be thankful for the readers you get.
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I wrote it largely because of that blog post I linked in this one. If you haven't read it yet, it was the author asking people to give sad/dark stories a chance, and so that got me thinking about that topic. And I wrote this largely as a response to the post, explaining why some don't like those tags on stories.