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.
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.