16 KiB
[RT]? An interesting discussion on how "dark" stories that fail to be rational actually are merely "edgy"
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Author: u/ToaKraka https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png*
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Score: 20
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Created: 2018-06-11T10:02:31
Post:
Comments:
u/None [+108] (39 minutes later)
[deleted]
u/Nerenere [+72] (an hour later)
you know, that's the most succint summation of 4chan I've read so far
u/None [+30] (7 hours later)
[deleted]
u/reiniging24 [+5] (19 hours later)
Reddit more so than 4chan.
u/stevedoesIP [+3] (17 hours later)
u/None [+1] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/stevedoesIP [+3] (a day later)
No because it's a meme and it was just a girl meeting a band she liked
u/None [+1] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/stevedoesIP [+3] (a day later)
It's a girl in shorts dude
u/None [+42] (2 hours later)
For some reason people dissing Game of Thrones about things like this, without putting an obligatory "(but the books actually are dark and are pretty good you should check them out!)", annoys me. I know it's unreasonable, but after too many incidents of people hating on the show, and thinking that means they can also hate on the books, means that just seeing GoT hate in general annoys me.
But back on topic, I don't find all of those ideas completely idiosyncratic. Truth be told, I think that the original poster in the threads ideas on Dark and Edgy are actually something we, as the rational subreddit, should support.
The original posters idea could essentially be summed up this; in 'Dark' stories, characters, including the bad guys, act like logical, rational human beings; all the cruelty has a purpose, a guiding intelligence behind it that makes sense. In 'Edgy' stories characters are cruel for no reason, even when it works against their own self-interests. Essentially, Edgy is what happens when Dark stories are written irrationally.
And I think I agree with that.
The other posts below it are a bit sketchy tho.
u/vlad_tepes [+27] (8 hours later)
in 'Dark' stories, characters, including the bad guys, act like logical, rational human beings; all the cruelty has a purpose, a guiding intelligence behind it that makes sense
I agree with this, with the caveat that sadism must be considered a valid, rational reason for cruelty. Not that sadism in itself is valid and rational, but that sadism exists, and sadists will be cruel just for cruelty's sake.
u/CeruleanTresses [+13] (10 hours later)
This is true. That said, when it comes to roleplaying characters in particular (which I understand to be the topic of the screencapped thread), my experience is that characters motivated by sadism are almost universally badly written edgelords. Inexperienced or lazy writers who want to write dark, violent characters gravitate toward "cruelty for its own sake" as a motive because it's easy, so the archetype is dominated by bad writing.
u/hoja_nasredin [+11] Dai-Gurren Brigade (4 hours later)
an obligatory "(but the books actually are dark and are pretty good you should check them out!)",
That screen is from tg. Believe me they know the difference between GoT TV and asoiaf books. The thing was discussed to hell and came full circle to the point of "the books aren't perfect either and lot of shit happens just to be edgy".
Anyway I agree with your opinion on OPs post.
u/None [+8] (2 days later)
The books are great, and quite frankly underplay how brutal history is. I haven't seen the show, but from what I remember of the books there are only really a couple rapes. Medieval history, especially in war time, was loaded with rape. I don't think there were any excessively brutal executions either, which again are pretty common in history.
u/WalterTFD [+9] (3 hours later)
Essentially, Edgy is what happens when Dark stories are written irrationally.
Well said.
u/kaukamieli [+3] (4 hours later)
I'm not sure cruelty has such purpose in real life. People are sometimes just broken.
u/None [+6] (5 hours later)
true, and that's fine; but it's when even characters that clearly aren't meant to be 'broken' are acting cruel, for no reason, that a work becomes edgy, rather than dark.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+25] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
"Edgy" is an attempt to push boundaries. It doesn't even have to be depressing, gritty, or noir. Five years later it's "Classic" or "Camp" depending on how well that went down.
"Dark" is Apple's new Mac OS theme.
u/That2009WeirdEmoKid [+4] (5 hours later)
I know this isn't cool to admit, but I love me some edginess in my stories. That said, I can't stand it when it's the only noteworthy quality of a story or done for its own sake. Like, for example, I enjoyed Akame ga Kill because despite its edginess, it didn't take itself seriously all the time and never tried to sell itself as something it wasn't. Elfen Lied, on the other hand, just tries too hard to shock the audience and takes itself way too seriously for such a ridiculously stupid narrative.
I really don't think edgy and dark are two sides of the same coin, where edginess is a failed attempt at darkness. Imho, it's more like "dark" is a type of theme or atmosphere and edginess is a stylistic choice in how to present your story. You can be incredibly dark without being edgy and you can be edgy without being dark. It's just that edginess if often confused with dark because they both work well together.
u/Oaden [+12] (22 hours later)
Elfen Lied's edginess is aggravating cause its stretching probability beyond its breaking point.
Sadism on the whole, is rather rare. and the gruesome pointless "i really want to cut open a puppy" is really really fucking rare. To the point that if your story includes 2 unrelated characters with the trait, its already stretching credibility.
Elfen lied gives this character trait to every non mc the girl ever interacts with, at which point the viewer starts wondering how this society ever functioned.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (5 days later)
To the point that if your story includes 2 unrelated characters with the trait, its already stretching credibility.
Stories are often about incredible situations I find it hard to believe two sadistic characters is somehow beyond credibility when most of a cast will be beyond credibility in some fashion.
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+2] (5 days later)
Stories are often about incredible situations
That doesn't give a free pass to do whatever you want though. Good worldbuilding gives a few "incredible" axioms or changes to the world that we're asked to swallow without question, and then in return, as readers, we expect everything else to flow according to logic and probability within that framework. Anything else is an asspull or plot contrivance.
For example, even if all of a sudden human cloning becomes readily available (a setting we're just asked to swallow), that doesn't make it more likely to run into two unrelated sadists.
Now, if the axiom was "humans now each develop a superpower but this superpower can influence their personality", then it might in fact be more likely to run into two unrelated sadists, so it's okay to have your character do so in this case.
"Well it's [fantasy/fiction/scifi]" is never an okay justification for random unlikely things to happen just for plot convenience. I'm not saying I'll automatically drop a story if this happens once or twice (since it's near impossible to avoid completely), but every time it does happen (like meeting 2 unrelated sadists), it's still a negative point for me against the story and will lessen my enjoyment.
u/RMcD94 [+3] (5 days later)
Good worldbuilding gives a few "incredible" axioms or changes to the world that we're asked to swallow without question, and then in return, as readers, we expect everything else to flow according to logic and probability within that framework. Anything else is an asspull or plot contrivance.
Yes but even in good world building we understand that we're still probably reading a story that is incredibly unlikely. If we were to choose a random spot in the universe and observe it, we'd find nothing worth writing about. Most stories are built upon particularly momentous or unlikely occurrences. The farmer boy being destined to be King, well 99.999999% of farmer boys are not destined, but who is going "Well this really ruined my credibility".
"Well it's [fantasy/fiction/scifi]" is never an okay justification for random unlikely things to happen just for plot convenience.
That's not my justification and I didn't mention genre at all in my post. My justification is it's fiction. It's a story you are reading. By necessity it must be unusual otherwise it would not be interesting.
it's still a negative point for me against the story and will lessen my enjoyment.
The odds of two sadists meeting might be infinitely small, but the story of that event is not of the same interest as one where a sadist meets another person. Every combination of a deck of cards maybe be equally random, but you'll only hear about it when someone draws a royal flush, because that's the only interesting situation. No one will tell you about the time they drew a 3, 6, K, 7, and K...
u/Cuz_Im_TFK [+2] (5 days later)
I think what you want to say is that "the anthropic principle is applicable to fiction" and I agree with that which is why I said it isn't a dealbreaker, but which would you rather read about:
- A story where 1 unbelievable thing happens, leading to a series of believable but interesting things happening
- A story where 20 unbelievable but interesting things happen
The difference is that in #1, it doesn't break suspension of disbelief after you've accepted the first incredible event/axiom/setting. It allows you to then predict what's going to happen later on in the story with some amount of credibility, to use evidence to figure out what's really going on in the story world from partial descriptions and scattered facts, and to look forward to a satisfying resolution.
Whereas #2 allows asspulls and plot contrivance whenever and causes you to stop trying to think to deeply into the story because anything could happen.
If you don't strongly prefer #1 over #2, I'm not really sure why you're on this sub.
u/RMcD94 [+1] (5 days later)
You originally said that having two sadistic characters at all is a stretch in any story.
I responded to that. I prefer #1 very much over #2 and I agree with the anthropic metaphor
u/ToaKraka [+8] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (a minute later)
u/hoja_nasredin [+2] Dai-Gurren Brigade (4 hours later)
Well now I have confirmation that all those "back to reddit" posts were not so false.
u/Amonwilde [+9] (an hour later)
Don't post images of text please.
u/t3tsubo [+20] (8 hours later)
I'm quite happy with images of text, and less happy with comments that make it seem like the entire subreddit is opposed to images of text
u/Amonwilde [+34] (11 hours later)
I'm blind and can't read the text. If you post an image of text, I'm excluded from reading it.
u/cae_jones [+5] (a day later)
Me too.
u/CeruleanTresses [+13] (10 hours later)
It's a reasonable complaint. Images like this one aren't accessible to people with impaired vision, since their text-to-speech programs can't read them. Wouldn't be as much of an issue if we had one of those deals with the volunteer transcriber sub.
u/MagicWeasel [+12] Cheela Astronaut (12 hours later)
Or if we just started being those volunteer transcribers for this sub exclusively. I'm game.
/u/Amonwilde (or anyone else), if someone posts an image of text here and there's no transcription, let me know and I'll be glad to transcribe it for you. (I'm /u/MagicWeasel)
u/Amonwilde [+13] (16 hours later)
For me personally it's not a huge deal. I'm a programmer and I've created a small utility that lets me drag boxes on the screen and it will OCR the text and read it aloud. I have some residual vision so I can draw the boxes correctly. It's mostly my non-technical and totally blind brethren that I'm concerned about.
I appreciate the looking out, though, and think it's a great idea to do a transcription if another text in an image pops up. I could even probably do a transcription myself if pressed, though I couldn't promise that the formatting would be correct.
Anyway I could probably have provided more context in my initial answer. But this kind of thing happens a lot and sometimes you don't have a long response in you. The point isn't to make people feel bad or be self-righteous, it's just so we can read text that's posted like everyone else.
u/ToaKraka [+1] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (an hour later)
If you want the original text, follow one of these links.
u/Amonwilde [+1] (11 hours later)
I did find the link that someone helpfully posted below. But if a link is an adequate substitute for the image of text, it's better to post the link. If context is required, a text post with the link to included seems reasonable.
u/None [+10] (12 hours later)
The reason most people post images of 4chan is that 4chan is a cesspool and the surrounding comments are usually complete garbo. By isolating the comment in question they wanted to highlight, they're drawing their own lines in the sand. It's a common reddit thing actually
u/Amonwilde [+7] (16 hours later)
I understand that there are probably reasons this is easier or more expedient. It's just frustrating on this side of things. Imagine if a subreddit you were on were having a big discussion about some text that your computer wouldn't show to you.
u/ketura [+3] Organizer (17 hours later)
I think the more likely reason is because 4chan auto-deletes everything after a month. If they linked the text version, it would be a dead link a month from now.
u/PM_ME_OS_DESIGN [+1] (a day later)
That's why you link to an archived version.
u/cae_jones [+1] (a day later)
That, and, aiui, 4chan posts have been known to spontaneously disappear or change. While ctrl+a, ctrl+c, ctrl+v is less popular a solution, IDK.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Good point.
u/Flamesmcgee [+4] (a day later)
I'm pretty sure rationality is not an useful scale by which to measure darkness vs edginess. I'm sure I could write a perfectly rational story while remaining perfectly edgy, or dark, or neither.
The three are not related, I feel fairly comfortable saying.
u/causalchain [+2] (3 days later)
How would you describe your definitions of darkness and edginess? A lot of people consider edginess as a bad attempt at darkness or darkness just for the sake of it, which is why we get the above conclusions. Even with this definition I agree with you, a text can be both rational and edgy, but I wouldn't expect someone to write that combination and for me to enjoy it. An example of it does not come to mind, so I may simply have misjudged my expectations.
u/crnislshr [+3] (59 minutes later)
Attempts to make dark, which we don't believe, we call edgy. Yes, so what?
The real questions are what we believe and how we believe.
These people's attempts at classification based just on the belief in their own thin soup of "like-dislike"... seem just superstitious mind masturbation. The statements might look enjoyable for people with similar state of mind, but they're not rational.