scrape_r_rational/data/cache/7mcodt.md

why is there the idea of rational/realistic as dark, edgy and depressing in fiction?

Post:

I am kind of curious, what authors and readers of this subreddit think of this stereotype. it also happens in all "realistic" depictions I see. Why? and, which works would you consider be the best to not follow this stereotype?

Comments:

• u/TK17Studios:

  It's important to note that the majority of the rational fiction I've come across *intends to be positive at the end,* but doesn't flinch away from the darkness in the middle.
  
  Like, if you were telling the story of human history from 10000 years ago to the year 2000, that'd honestly be a fairly positive and uplifting ending, but it would be dark and depressing for a *lot* of it.
  
  AFAICT, most rationalist fiction follows this same pattern.  Things do come together, but they come together in *spite* of the darkness, rather than being cheerful all the way through.
  

  • u/None:

    Yeah true, is there a need to not be dark?
    
    Consider, this reddit, there is no place where it says it has to be dark.
    
    And for most of it, I think that the rational approach is kind of cheerful, it is like there is always a good ending... 
    
    I just do not understand, why the stereotype and why some authors stick to it.... 
    
    I do not know many stories but what would you indicate that are nor dark or depressing, but are rational or at least a bit realistic
    

• u/Kuiper:

  Consider many of the narrative tropes that are commonly part of "uplifting" narratives:
  
  * Underdogs can win through triumph of will/spirit/likability
  * Virtue is rewarded (and its corollaries: cheaters never prosper, villains always receive their comeuppance, etc).
  * You can achieve anything you want if you believe in yourself, try hard enough, persist long enough, etc.
  
  Most of these run counter (or, at a minimum, are orthogonal) to rational principles.  
  
  * It's irrational to bet on the underdogs: the underdogs, *by definition*, are the ones we can expect to lose, and yet when it comes to winning the football game in the third act of the movie, the most importance thing seems to be pluck and scrappiness, rather than competence.  In real life, it's surprising if the characters who seem the weakest at the start of the season turn out to win the championship, but in most (non-rational) narratives, it's practically inevitable.  Also, in many "rebels vs the evil empire" stories, there's an undercurrent of "the bad guys lose because they're stupid" (see [The Evil Overlord List](http://www.worldconquer.org/evil_overlord.html)), and once you remove irrational traits from the villain, you are left with a story where the powerful empire easily and predictably crushes the weak rebels.  (One could argue that a story where "the villains lose because they're stupid" works in the context of rational fiction, since it allows for a story where the main characters are able to win through superior cunning, but if the villains are really that stupid, it leaves us with the glaring question of how they rose to power and maintained it before the heroes showed up.  Hence, most rational stories that tell the classic "brains over brawn" story focus more on making the heroes smart, rather than making the villains dumb.)
  * Virtue certainly has its rewards, but there's no reason that petting a dog in act 1 should, as a logical consequence, result in winning a big football game in act 3.  Yet "small acts of kindness" early on are often a (narrative) indicator that a character is about to perform well at some sort of unrelated task.  This might be understandable if act 3 was about the main character being tested on something directly linked to traits like charisma (e.g. you can draw a logical connection between being courteous to the waitress and bantering with the bellhop in act 1, and then later succeeding at a big interview in act 3), but there's no reason that the villain's personality defects should lead to him being worse at throwing a football (as so often seems to be the case).
  * The majority of the time, the obstacles that lie between you and your goal go beyond things like sheer willpower.  No matter how much I want it, I'm never going to explore the moons of Jupiter.  And there are some times when persistence doesn't make you a good person at all, e.g. love.  (As Mary Robinette Kowal has pointed out, most rom-coms could actually be viewed has horror movies if you took out the laugh track.)
  
  One of the easiest way to avoid non-rational tropes is to intentional subvert them, which George R.R. Martin often does.  e.g. Ned Stark is noble, honest, and many of the other things we associate with a "heroic" character, and rather than being irrationally rewarded (good things happen to him for no reason other than that he's a heroic "good person" who "deserves it,") these traits are ultimately his undoing, as he is blind to the scheming around him (and unwilling to scheme himself).  Note that this doesn't necessarily mean that "virtue is (inherently) punished," I think the message is more that "many of the traits that we associate with virtue tend to suggest a certain kind of naivete which is easily preyed upon by those who are less burdened by notions of what is 'noble' and 'right,' and 'good intentions don't mean much if you don't have the ability to back them up.'"  (Simply inverting the trope from "virtue is rewarded" to "virtue is punished" would be just as irrational.)  Subverting these kinds of narrative tropes in this way tends to produce narratives that are darker.
  
  None of this means that rational fiction has to be negative and cynical.  And in fact, the nature of certain narrative tropes being orthogonal to rationality means that they can be compatible with a rational narrative: petting the dog won't make you any better at throwing a basketball, but it certainly won't make you any *worse*, so it's okay for our protagonist to pet the dog and then throw the game-winning basket so long as it's not implied that the fact the basketball victory is the universe's way of giving the protagonist a sort of cosmic reward for good behavior.
  
  There's also a lot of cases where things like persistence and optimism are not *sufficient* to achieving a goal, but they can still be *helpful*. For example, Mark Watney (The Martian) doesn't succeed *merely* because of how hard he tries; his cognitive skill as an engineer and botanist are critical to his survival.  But morale is also a critical part of keeping him moving from day to day, so The Martian can tell us a story about the triumph of the human spirit while also being a rational story where scientific knowledge is key to surviving the barren wasteland that is Mars.
  
  You can also preserve the appearance of some of the "feelgood" tropes simply by adding a few causal links between them.  e.g. "character was nice to a little old lady in act 1, rewarded by the universe for good behavior in act 3" isn't rational, but you could have "protagonist performs a small act of kindness for a background character in act 1, that character later comes back to help out when the protagonist is in a jam," and preserve the logic (assuming it's foreshadowed properly and executed in a way that doesn't strain credulity) while still feeling warm and fuzzy because we saw someone behaving well and then experiencing good consequences.  Again, this still has to hold up to a certain amount of logical scrutiny, and thus the execution matters: if protag is nice to a bellhop at a New York hotel in act 1, and then flies to San Francisco and just happens to encounter that same bellhop in in act 3 (who is on vacation in San Francisco his brother and randomly encountered the protagonist out of the millions of people in SF, for some implausible reason), then we're going to call foul, but you could arrange things in a much more narrative plausible way by making the settings of "small act of kindness in act 1" and "reward in act 3" more geographically proximate.
  

  • u/VanPeer:

    Thanks for analyzing that. Made a few tropes clearer for me.
    

  • u/xeroxedechidna:

    The initial Tropes mentioned almost seem to be carefully selected to avoid uplifting rational ideas. For example, a dedicated hard working smart hero overcoming the odds doesn't seem like it should be left out of uplifting ideas or rationalist fiction.
    

• u/ShiranaiWakaranai:

  Because most fiction is hopelessly idealistic?
  
  Reality **is** darker, edgier, and more depressing, so any work that attempts to add realism, such as rational works, tends to be darker, edgier, and more depressing.
  
  Disclaimer: I'm dark and edgy and very depressed. I might be projecting onto the world. ^(But I doubt that.)
  

• u/Sophronius:

  I get what you mean. This is a common trope with Naruto fanfiction (MFD being the worst offender, IMO), where you often have a crapsack world even though it isn't necessary: A world with rational use of chakra could easily be awesome to live in, after all, given certain assumptions. However, I think this is because a lot of canon just has objectively aweful things in it which are just glossed over, and so when you're writing a deconstruction it just feels natural to want to explore those aspects  of the world instead.
  
  The same is true for other settings: e.g. Metropolitan Man is darker than canon Superman because it is deconstruction of what is ultimately an escapist fantasy.
  
  However, Stoppit is right that this is a general flaw with aspiring rationalists: I think it's more than just PR, I think it's actually the case that most new rationalists find it exciting to point out all the way things suck. It's essentially a type of reversed stupidity where people will take society's "emotions are more important than fact, always be nice and optimistic and people will like you" and invert it into "the world sucks and most people are too stupid to realize it" in order to show of their intelligence. 
  
  It's actually a huge challenge to convince people to A) look at the world for what it actually is, and B) remain positive about fixing all of the problems, and it's an issue that shines through in our fiction as well.
  

  • u/None:

    Naruto fanfiction in general trends towards dark. The original setting is pretty dark to begin with, so non-rational fanfiction tends to explore that darkness and its impact on characters, while rational fanfiction tries to explain that darkness (usually by fleshing out how terrible leadership is, and the effect the tailed beasts have people)
    

  • u/None:

    there is a trope about it, its called anti nihilist and the ubermensc in TV troupes, but I fail to see works in that manner, even here, do you have a example?
    
    I would like to see a world like that, and there is in other contexts, for example, there was a manga with a rational and pretty depressing apocaliptic world, with a pretty down to earth character (and pretty much rational), but the story is a heartwarming story about the love and friendship, even in this barren world, why can't we have more of that?
    

    • u/Sophronius:

      Hmmm, anti-nihilist as in being genuinely bright and optimistic despite the world sucking? I think Dr. Stone counts. And I think other stories including the Need to Become Stronger, The Waves Arisen and even Marked for Death have moments like that, of the main character saying "screw the odds, I'm fixing this". Heck, actually, I think HPMOR totally counts as anti-nihilist. It's not always realistic, but there's certainly that very strong sense of "we can do better, we will do better, just you wait."
      

• u/Stopppit:

  My guess is it's the same reason rational people irl are seen as edgy downers. Many people like their magical thinking and comfortable fallacies. The same people do not like having these things criticized, even by example.
  

  • u/EliezerYudkowsky:

    ... And then conclude very incorrectly that to be rational is to go around scoffing at positive-sounding propositions in general.
    

    • u/Sophronius:

      Oh come on, that's way too self-serving. There are plenty of brilliant people who carry an aura that people find genuinely inspiring. Nobody thinks Elon Musk or Stephen Hawkins are edgy downers, even if they do talk about the world possibly ending - in fact, people find that kind of thing exciting! 
      
      However, many Less-Wrong types are prone to depression, and have difficulty getting motivated to do anything, and so of course they're not inspiring like Elon Musk. And yeah, if Elon Musk were a bit more rational he would probably be more doubtful about his own Mars ambitions, and in turn that would make him less inspiring, so sure there's an inverse relation there. But it is way too self-serving to say that the problem is with everybody else being too fundamentally irrational to appreciate our brilliance.
      

      • u/NotTheDarkLord:

        I wonder if people would typically describe Musk as rational (in general I mean, not on this subreddit). Brilliant, yes. But those aren't the same. I get the feeling that the answer is no, and likewise for other inspiring brilliant people. Perhaps even because they're not edgy downers.
        

        • u/Sophronius:

          Sure, that's fair. But the difference is in the way they act, not in the people that react to them. The idea that critical thought causes you to be seen as an edgy downer, and that this is somehow inevitable, is a self-serving falsehood I think. 
          
          Contrast Sam Harris when Steven Pinker: Both are pretty rational-minded people, but Harris is seen by the left as an edgelord because he blithely ignores political reality, while Pinker spends more effort on sounding nice. So I feel that "we get seen as edgy because people are dumb and can't handle the truth" is exactly the kind of edgy nonsense that causes the problem in the first place. Even though there is a kernel of truth to it.
          

    • u/Stopppit:

      Yes. It could also be true that because rational people have a consequently higher chance of ostracism they might channel evolution born angst into their writing. Thus making the literature *actually* darker. 
      
      Honestly not a very testable hypothesis though. Writers of any genre probably have a higher chance of ostracism (self-induced or otherwise).
      

    • u/None:

      well... I agree, just because we like to make sure of any assertion or belief, do not make it dark, just curious is my head, but culture seen to differ
      

  • u/None:

    pretty much... 
    that is what i consider dark and depressing... not realism.
    

• u/None:

  I think another possible reason is that there's simply a strong overlap between people who like "rational" stories and people who like dark stories. Someone could write a simple slice-of-life series that has a general upbeat tone to it that focuses on a rational main character, but the rational community doesn't want it. It probably has been written somewhere but we don't know about it because it wasn't very popular.
  
  I'm not sure what a light rationalist story would look like either. Stories where the protagonist gets presented with overwhelming problems pretty much have to be dark; if it wasn't dark then the problem wouldn't be overwhelming. But if the problem isn't overwhelming, then it's pretty easily solved for a rational protagonist and it's not an interesting story. I mean a great deal of conflicts in light stories are caused by lack of communication, and while good communication isn't a Less-Wrong style "rationalist" strategy, it is something that any protagonist who's just generally rational would do. 
  
  This is just all off the top of my head though. It may be totally off base.
  

  • u/None:

    great assessment
    
    yet, there is space for happy and realistic stories, there are some rare manga I read that had people in a post apocaliptic world that is pretty rational (not perfect thought) where there is a heart warming story of people working together to achieve happiness, same with some LitRPG, but even if they are somewhat famous, I fail to see where the stereotype comes from, and why we stick to it so much, come on!
    
    There is something happening, in other posts I ask why there is so many stories about isekai in a game world, but why it's so rare to have a story where there are normal people playing a game and having fun in a "realistic manner" (or comedy, like netoge)... maybe the trope is making momentum to this idea, and this momentum helps the trope, in a vicious cicle. but again, why not change?
    

    • u/None:

      You can always be the change you want to see in the world and write a story yourself. Or failing that go and commission something. They are probably past contest winners from this sub willing to write a few thousand words of what you're talking about for ~$20.
      

      • u/None:

        I wish I had the time and the money, but It is not possible, I earn 5 dollars a day.
        

  • u/nick012000:

    >Someone could write a simple slice-of-life series that has a general upbeat tone to it that focuses on a rational main character, but the rational community doesn't want it. 
    
    When you’re in a universe that centres around cute girls doing cute things, the rational course of action is to be as cute as possible, and smart isn’t cute by itself - it’d need to lead to some sort of cute vulnerabilities to be cute.
    

• u/Kishoto:

  I think the main reason this occurs is because, in most of the conflicting situations you're presented with in most narrative structures (specifically ones meant to entertain in genres like action/adventure, mystery, horror), you've got heroes and villains and some evil plot to foil. 
  
  In typical fiction, we can look the other way on things like "Why DIDN'T he just shoot James Bond?" or "Why is there a countdown?" and other typical tropes. 
  
  But rational fiction is all about being intelligent and acknowledging those things. And not ignoring them and leaving holes in your story. And, unfortunately, that means a lot of the darker implications of conflict acknowledged in rational fiction whereas typical fiction may gloss over things or present them in a more rose colored light. 
  
  Take, for example, Power Rangers. It's about a team of brightly colored guys and girls kicking monster/alien butt. With mega robot battles more often than not. In populated cityscapes. 
  
  You're never going to hear about the dozens if not hundreds killed as collateral damage in those giant robot battles. You're never gonna hear about when the Megazord fell on a school and killed a bunch of kids that didn't evacuate in time. You're not going to hear about how the Green Ranger has PTSD from nightmares about getting eaten by aliens, which is something that could totally happen to him. (To be fair, if you DO hear about mental health issues, it will be with them getting resolved in a 2-3 episode arc or the person in question getting on a bus)
  
  But it would be remiss of a rational story to not acknowledge things like that. And so, a lot of the darkness that's glossed over in a typical piece of fiction is brought center stage because it's something that logically *would* occur and it should be acknowledged if you're trying to stick true to writing a rational piece of fiction. Even the lightest stories have dark, dark implications/side effects that should be acknowledged in a rational fic, especially if your leads are the type of people to both notice and care about that sort of thing. 
  
  TL DR: Most fiction has dark implications that they gloss over. Rational fiction doesn't have that luxury and, thus, they tend to be darker on average.
  

• u/CopperZirconium:

  Part of the reason is that real life can be depressing. Realistic fiction tries to include consequences that would happen in the real world: CPR hardly ever works, being knocked unconscious can give lasting brain damage, PTSD is a real thing, friendship doesn't give you magic powers, random Evil-Corp contractor probably has a family to look after and is just doing what he can to make ends meet. When you take away the Cartoon-Mustache-Twirling-Villain and implement a Could-be-a-Real-Person-Villain (as rational fiction is want to do), you inevitably have a mess of motivations, consequences, and problems that don't have easy solutions. That is dark and depressing, yes, but merely a result of the premises and rules of rational fiction. Rarely is rational fiction edgy for the sake of being edgy. 
  
  Darkness is everywhere in the real world. If your story is focused on solving real problems, you have to look at that darkness to show why it needs the light.
  

• u/VorpalAuroch:

  The real world is pretty dark and depressing compared to most fictional worlds. Edgy I don't know.
  

  • u/None:

    Ahahhahahahahah yeah, that may make it a bit edgy in the end, but may I ask, why it has to be that way? There is stories that feel light and happy in apocaliptc worlds.... yet not so much in our world.
    

    • u/Cruithne:

      Look up the 'bright/dark' and 'grim/noble' axes. They help disambiguate some of these issues :).
      

• u/ajuc:

  Because in nonrational fiction authors like to give the irrational enemies overwhelming advantages so that the slightly smarter protagonists seem more awesome. And when you make both sides rational in a fanfiction this results in a crapsack world.
  
  I think original fiction is more likely not to follow this stereotype.
  

  • u/None:

    well we have many original fiction, and I fail to see the optimistic side of rational.
    
    and why is there always a villain? why do we focus so much in the bad things? we could just have some story that focus on a love story of 2 people working together in a rational and cruel world for a dream, like make a bakery or a objective like to go to a certain place, this seen interesting and fun. yet, rare.
    

    • u/ajuc:

      Well, I think Mother of Learning is kinda optimistic. The world is far from crapsack, civilization is progressing steadily. Yeah there is a looming doom, but isn't there one in real world, too?
      
      Same with Oh This Has Not Gone Well  - despite some bad parts, it's mostly about wish fullfilment and having lots of friends admiring you.
      
      >  why is there always a villain?
      
      It's easier to make conflict interesting. I was a dungeon master (pen&paper RPG kind) and the best way to lose players is to stop giving them challenges. If everything they try to do succeeds, 1 hour later they don't want to play anymore.
      
      But it's not always. For a story without a villain see Alice in Wonderland for one example. Solaris by Stanisław Lem, or Memoirs Found in Bathtube are another. Actually Lem had quite a lot of these, now that I think of it. He mostly writes about how impossible to understand everything is :)
      
      I don't know why people don't write rational takes on these. Maybe they are plenty rational already?
      

• u/Olivedoggy:

  Side-effect of considering NPCs stupid.
  

• u/muns4colleg:

  Well, the simplest answer is that making things darker is most obvious way to give your story higher stakes and make it more intense. The worst things are the more important the success of the protagonists is. In Home Alone the peril is in the thieves robbing the house and... maybe killing Kevin? In the Goonies the Fratellis are established as murderers early on and their willingness to kill the kids to get their way is made more explicit. They're both the same type of movie, but the Goonies is made somewhat darker and more intense by upping the peril.
  
  And more importantly one of the biggest pitfalls amateur writers tend to fall into is their desire for their story to be taken seriously as cool, intense and important, even if doing so is detrimental to the kinds of stories they want to write. This is why so many amateur works of fiction will, like, turn from light hearted fun to darkness and despair on a dime.
  

• u/crystal-pathway:

  Probably because real life is dark, edgy and depressing.
  

• u/MagicWeasel:

  I'd love some recommendations of lighter happier rational stuff too!
  
  I personally love Friendship is Optimal verse because it has such a good ending... but many people think it's a horrific ending so.... who knows. I do think the fact it is ponies makes it lighter and happier at least in "flavour" if not in substance.
  
  [self involved aside] I'm partway done with a supernatural romance novella that is pretty light and happy compared with other stuff I've read here, and I have a werewolf concept I'm thinking of writing up next that basically turns all the werewolf tropes on their head (my werewolves are quite old and collectivist/co-operative/nurturing) - but the fact my werewolves are all pretty light and friendly and supportive of one another makes it very, very hard to write up a plot that includes them as a focal point because their reaction to problems is "let's get into a big group and discuss it" and that tends to solve problems. Unfortunately it's pretty likely that none of this stuff will be available to be read any time soon so... let's get some recommendations people!
  

• u/Nighzmarquls:

  I'm not going to call my current fiction project rational per say. It's at best adjacent in that the characters all behave in as intelligent a manner as I can manage.
  
  But the entire thesis of the work is about optimism and the power of friendship and why/how that rationally can work in the given universe.
  

  • u/Geminii27:

    To be fair, friendship does result in improved access to resources, group actions, social safety nets, and so forth, so it's not *completely* wrong to say it does provide tangible advantages. It's just that in realist/rational fiction, those advantages don't extend to supernatural abilities, plot armor, and an absolutely perfect life.
    

  • u/None:

    may I ask the name of the work?
    
    and if you make it about the power of people who make friends, instead of power of friendship, you get a rational world pretty quick like the ones above said.
    

    • u/Nighzmarquls:

      Sure, I don't like to self plug without requests for weird pride reasons.
      
      [Here ya go!](https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/hope-and-silence-in-the-hive-warhammer-40k.583942/)
      
      I'm literally trying to dismantle the warhammer 40k universe with friendship, rainbows, hugs and feels without deviating from anything canonical in that universe's cosmology rules.
      
      It is a lot of fun really but I'm not sure it can count as strictly rational or not, I'll let some one else judge it with less bias then me as the creator and link it if they think it fits.
      

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