Honestly, I'm surprised this hasn't been consigned to the No On-Page Examples bin already.
Edited by PokeNirvash
&)$;@9?@4$/8&;’
I wonder if Angst Aversion or True Art Is Angsty entries will pick up the slack on the audience being scared off by the sheer angst of a work or for praising how utterly bleak and hopeless a work is and why that's good (when it's not Too Bleak, Stopped Caring). Then again, would a case of this reaction specifically being the Intended Audience Reaction really fall under True Art Is Angsty or Angst Aversion? Not sure if that edge case really fits there considering this edge case is "the best part is it's so bleak the conflict loses meaning".
P.S. perhaps the blow of this trope is softened in media where it's less about the meaningful stakes or conflicts and more on something else (ie good gameplay or cool visuals or scenes nonetheless)
Edited by manhandled I got my political views from reddit and that's bad Hide / Show Replies
True Art Is Angsty is an In-Universe reaction not an Audience Reaction so it wouldn’t be applicable here. And many of these examples would fall under Angst Aversion but the tropes aren’t inherently intertwined.
In honor of Akira Toriyama
Would the Diablo series count as this? It seems like it would fit the series.
Edited by Nexu
I hate this trope/YMMV so much. Yes, it's a perfectly legitimate audience reaction, but almost every entry here acts like this reaction is the ONLY reaction anyone watching the work could possibly have towards it, almost to the level of an insult towards the fanbase that does care about its conflict, no matter how small. For being an objective reaction, there's an awful lot of subjectivity infesting the examples, especially in the anime section. Personally, I think it should go the way of Jumping the Shark and just bar on-page examples, leaving the attributions to certain media to said media's own YMMV page, and even then in a way that verifies that "Too Bleak, Stopped Caring" is nothing more than a reaction, not the reaction this page's language acts like it should be.
Even for YMMV, this trope is questionable. The fact that it's considered an "issue" for shows like The Wire and Mad Men, two shows that are highly popular with mainstream audiences, says it all.
Hide / Show Replies
I think it's a valid audience reaction. Note that the page says "If people enjoy the work despite its tone, this trope does not apply," so examples from works with large fanbases can be contested.
Knows-Many-Things
>If people enjoy the work despite its tone, this trope does not apply.
Can we please take this off? I don't think you guys realize how self defeating this addendum is. Every single work listed on this page has a small group of people who enjoy it. By this logic, none of it applies and we should just scrap the trope.
Is this supposed to mean you can't add something mega popular? By what metric do we declare that something is this trope?
Find the Light in the Dark Hide / Show Replies
It's not about being mega-popular. The point is that some work, by nature, is intentionally bleak, and that is part of the appeal. Horror movies exist, after all. Someone who is not a fan of horror movies and not part of the audience declaring they are uninterested because most of the cast will probably die by the end is irrelevant to this analysis - it'd be like non-sports fans complaining that watching a sports game is boring.
This trope applies when a work acquires an audience, then loses or annoys a substantial portion of it by going bleaker than the audience really wanted or expected. If everyone kept watching, then that's just becoming darker & edgier but doesn't signify a problem occurred. The first few seasons / books of Game of Thrones were very successful and very bleak at the same time, for example, so this trope probably wouldn't apply to them (but might apply to the final seasons of the TV series & book 5).
It honestly should be scrapped because it really just seems like an excuse to complain in a lot of examples. Only around 10% of the examples listed here seem like genuine fits.
You say a small number of people like the shows listed here but I see a lot of examples of works where people in the targeted audience who'd have a problem with it are actually in the minority. The Wire? Mad Men? Watchmen? Elden Ring? ASOIAF?
Whatever a tiny amount of the audience think of them personally, general audiences clearly didn't have a problem with them being too bleak to care about any of the characters, so the entire premise of the trope seems iffy to begin with. I'm sure I could find some people who find the 1989 Batman film too dark. What's the point?
Does the IRL problem of american mass shootings qualify as a real life example? I've encountered plenty of people who've resigned themselves that nothing will improve, and so have stopped caring.
Hide / Show Replies
It's listed on NoRealLife.Narrative Characterization And Plot Tropes, which is probably the safer approach (especially when it comes to politically charged topics like this). Though media about fictional mass shootings could qualify. (I'm not sure about media based on real tragedies — as much as I wouldn't enjoy it, it seems tasteless to take a real event with real victims and complain that you didn't care about them because the work didn't sanitize it enough. On the other hand, I would feel comfortable listing a story that goes out of its way to make the event even worse than it was in reality or portray the victims in an unflattering light.)
Edited by MathsAngelicVersion
The Dream Soldier
I'm sorry, but that's what I can't help but feel with the premise of Euphoria and especially with what I've read about Yellowstone (which is apparently World of Jerkass). I fail to see what's so entertaining about watching people either suffering or being jerks and not changing, outside of the occasional moment of Black Comedy?
This is gonna end up with no examples at some point, isn't itt?
Hide / Show Replies