Pop-Culture AHC: Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy Apathy nonexistent in fiction

For those who don't know according to TvTropes Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy is when if the world is too dark or crapsack, the audience won't care what happens next or find it compelling, or actually want all the characters to die off just because of how. Hence there are a lot of people VERY depressed about Warhammer 40K over focusing over the "badass" aspects or literally WANT, not just expect the White Walkers to win just because everyone "sucks" in ASOIAF. This however causes a problem because a lot of these works of fiction are supposed to be grey vs. grey morality and to show no one is truly right or wrong so the Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy can stem from a desire to see clear heroes even in works where the story would not really work, so it kinda disrespects the view of the author if he does not believe there can be such thing as true good guys.

So I wonder, how can this mentality be averted? How can we be made to care about extremely morally ambiguous or crapsack fictional settings?

I don't know any PODs inherent to any work of fiction aside from maybe discouraging viewing fiction as a form of escapism but think a good POD that could cause this effect is to change the political discourse through changing history of the 20th century by itself to be less possible to be intrepreted by people like Fukuyama to be "end of history, democracy wins" mentality. Maybe have a large political movement that promotes Leviathianism(AKA Hobbesian mentality) or a serious intrepretation of The Prince as a way of life or a necessary evil with an influence in many nations. Maybe have autocratic/absolute monarchy, or even fascism survive as a legitimate form of government in a great-power status nation, and we get a tripolar cold war, alternatively maybe no new left impact on society and society will be more tolerant of fictional crapsack worlds with moral ambiguity.

I really don't think you can just eliminate a way of human thinking like this. It's perfectly normal to sometimes find neither side of a particular conflict sympathetic and not care at all about the outcome, whether in fiction or real life.

I don't really relate to this, I personally love dystopian works, possibly because I am a pessimist. I think you always side with whoever the main characters are, because if you are engaged in the story you are in the room with them, and any threat to them is by extension a threat to you also. I usually find myself siding with the villain when the good guy is overly goody-two-shoes, or self-righteous, or the bad guy gets more than he deserved. And more often than not in Hollywood films, particularly those aimed at kids, have a full ten minutes after the story is finished just showing us the 'happilly ever after' part, which is usually cringey over the top nicey nicey bits, like the guy and the girl get together, then the supporting characters get together. And these bits are never funny. Btw whilst I am on this rant why do American comedies ALWAYS have to get serious at some point? Why do we all have to learn an important moral lesson from a film about a dog that becomes a chef, or whatever?

That's kind of impossible. This is a subjective reaction to a work and you can't really do anything about it.

eliphas8 said:

That's kind of impossible. This is a subjective reaction to a work and you can't really do anything about it.

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Not without a massive change to human psychology, anyway.

I vote with the remote....

I am a cynic, but I don't like to be. I do much prefer having "good guys" vs "bad guys", and pull for the good guys.

I bypass the gray on gray choices - there's already far too much of that in this world for my comfort.

As Darkness Induced Apathy goes, one example is a lot of the Dark Horse influenced comics in the 1990's going the darker, edgier route tended to give some fans an orgasm and others, a stroke that completely broke the base.

Another is the success of TV shows such as X-Files, Lost and lately, Heroes, Revolution, and The Walkiing Dead.
Some folks really dug the cynicism and exploration of crapsack worlds b/c RL can't possibly deliver the challenges and fun of post-apocalyptic scavenger worlds.
(I gotta admit I'm hate-watching to see how many of our "protagonists" on TWD bite it due to self-induced stupidity but onward.)

I'm looking forward to Sin City's sequel because Basin City's such a lurid mess to visit. Would I want to live there? Not on a bet!

Same for the London of Brazil. Drab grey, run by incompetent sadists? Fun to watch.

However, to answer your question, dispel the cult of the antihero starting in the 1970's and go from there. Problem solved.

I like dystopian apathy. It's a psychological thing about the people in the world; not just the reader. It makes the world realistic, and the normality of evil is subconsciously terrifying and repulsive to the reader.

A part of it is just how on occasion, it gets taken WAY too far. Think Man of Steel. Often rather than show how "shit just got real" it comes across more like... well, this.

The line between a good writer who can handle this tightrope walk, like George RR Martin, and the ones who can't, like Frank Miller, is a VERY thin one.

Yeah, I don't think that there's really anything that can be done to change this reaction, seeing as it applies to real life just as much as fiction. For example, just look at the number of people who don't vote because "everyone suck, and my vote won't count anyway." Really, it makes a lot of sense: If no one side is any better than the other, why should we want any of them to win? And as far as "disrespecting the worldview of the author," how do you think God feels about everyone who doesn't like how the Mideast War or Operation Barbarossa storylines were received?